Is LV modeled on Crowley?

[Caius Marcius]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Tonks" <tonks_op at ...> wrote:
>
> I friend of mine who knows a lot about magic and alchemy but has 
not 
> read the books but has seen the movies says that LV is modeled on 
(You 
> Know Who) Crowley. I asked why he thought that and he said that he 
had 
> a picture of Crowley that looks a like like LV in the movie. So I 
> searched the web.. I don't see a picture of Crowley looking like 
the 
> snake like person of LV. However, I did find out some interesting 
> information. Crowley and his followers did think that "there is no 
good 
> or evil, only power and those too afraid to use it". So maybe my 
friend 
> is right. Crowley was a person who practiced dark magic and was a 
bit 
> crazy to boot.  


Crowley was more of a Lockhart than a Voldemort, IMO.  More than a 
bit 
of a flake, but certainly no evil monster. You may find this FAQ of 
interest

http://altreligion.about.com/library/faqs/bl_crowleyfaq.htm 

which convincingly argues that he was not a Satanist, and denounced 
Dark Magic.  

"To practice black magic you have to violate every principle of 
science, decency and intelligence . You must be obsessed with an 
insane idea of the importance of the petty object or your wretched 
and 
selfish desires ... I despise the thing to such an extent that I can 
hardly believe in the existence of people so debased and idiotic as 
to 
practice it."

Such magic that he did practice seems to have served as a pretext 
for 
having sex with as many people as possible.

Where did you find the "no good or evil, only power and those too 
afraid to use it" quote? The closest thing I could find was his 
motto, 
"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law," which he modified 
by adding "Love is the law, love under will"  - he may have taken 
this 
from Rabelais, a writer he was quite fond of - in "Gargantua and 
Pantagruel" the Abbey of Theleme, Rabelais' depiction of an ideal 
academy, has as its "Fais ce que voudras" or "Do what thou wilt".  

"All their life was spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but 
according to their own free will and pleasure. They rose out of 
their 
beds when they thought good; they did eat, drink, labour, sleep, 
when 
they had a mind to it and were disposed for it. None did awake them, 
none did offer to constrain them to eat, drink, nor to do any other 
thing; for so had Gargantua established it. In all their rule and 
strictest tie of their order there was but this one clause to be 
observed, 

                        Do What Thou Wilt; 

because men that are free, well-born, well-bred, and conversant in 
honest companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompteth 
them unto virtuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is 
called honour. Those same men, when by base subjection and 
constraint 
they are brought under and kept down, turn aside from that noble 
disposition by which they formerly were inclined to virtue, to shake 
off and break that bond of servitude wherein they are so tyrannously 
enslaved; for it is agreeable with the nature of man to long after 
things forbidden and to desire what is denied us."


     - CMC