The Drug Essays: Aleister Crowleys Reflections on Hashish, Cocaine & Absinthe

The essays in this collection represent Aleister Crowleys ideas and meditations on drugs. Part One explores Crowleys experiences with hashish and its uses in mystical rituals. Part Two examines cocaine and looks at whether it should be regulated by law. Finally, Part Three delves into the sensuality of absinthe and its role in society.The essays are fascinating, both for what they reveal about Crowleys views on drugs, and for the way they tap into some of the occultists chief preoccupations: the quest for transcendence and the marriage of science to mysticism.By his own account, Crowley was interested in drugs because he wanted to return to what he called the pure soul of the universe. He presents himself as a scientist, studying drugs for their ability to expand human awareness. He believed that hashish, in particular, was an ideal tool for putting man in touch with a deeper truth and consciousness. Hashish at least gives proof of a new order of consciousness, and (it seems to me) it is this prima facie case that mystics have always needed to make out, and never have made out, he wrote.Hashish opened the door to mystical experiences, but Crowley insisted the drug was nothing but a toolit was never to be used as an end. I have no use for hashish save as a preliminary demonstration that there exists another world attainable somehow, Crowley insisted.Crowley takes a similar view of cocaine. Using cocaine causes intense joy, he wrote; just one snort can make a man feel that he is being transformed from a grub to a butterfly. But like any drug, cocaine is just a tool which can help people break out of their terrestrial lives and catch glimpses of the divine: The happiness of cocaine is not passive or placid as that of beasts; it is selfconscious. It tells man what he is, and what he might be; it offers him the semblance of divinity, only that he may know himself a worm.The endgoal of drugs, in Crowleys view, is to expand mans horizons. Crowley presents himself as an experimenter, engaged in studying the possible uses of drugs. However, most modern readers will find it hard to swallow the idea of Crowley as a pure researcher.It would certainly be a mistake to take these essays entirely at face value, as the purely scientific and objective texts which Crowley intended them to be. But that, of course, doesnt mean that they lack literary value.Crowley wrote that intoxicationwhether from wine, drugs, or artwas what made it possible for man to rise above his grub life and achieve transcendence. He said it well here:The surplus of Will must find issue in the elevation of the individual towards the Godhead; and the method of such elevation is by religion, love, and art. These three things are indissolubly bound up with wine, for they are species of intoxication.Those lines come from Crowleys essay about absinthe, which is by far the most rhapsodic in this collection. Crowley makes no bones about his adoration for the liquor. He gets downright poetic about the drinks opalescent appearance and about the rapture it provokes. Absinthe is perceived as pure beauty, liberation from the grayness of the daytoday.Perhaps thats the gift that these essays can give us. Perhaps, rather than examining them too closely for truth and accuracy, it would be wise to read the essays in this book as objects of beauty. They are not cold, hard, facts. They are ideas, as opalescent as the absinthe in Crowleys glass. They read best when we can set aside our doubts and give ourselves up to the enjoyment of what this eccentric man was able to produce.