Is LV modeled on Crowley?

[James Maertens]

> --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Caius Marcius"
> <coriolan@> wrote:
> >
> > Crowley was more of a Lockhart than a Voldemort, IMO.  More than a
> > bit  of a flake, but certainly no evil monster.

I can see your point there about Crowley and his foppishness, but I
don't consider Crowley to be a "flake."  I don't personally consider
him to be a prophet either, but he is quite along the lines of
prophets generally.  Some strong similarities, for example, in Joseph
Smith, the prophet and founder of Mormonism, if you know that story.

You raise an interesting point, though, because Crowley was really the
founder of a religion that employed traditional magical arts and
theories.  Rowling pretty much excludes God and religion from her
books altogether, so they occupy a world that is radically different
culturally than ours.

But I have wondered in looking at Voldemort if he is not setting
himself up as a sort of Prophet or godlike figure.  His followers
treat him that way and it is hard to understand why they would follow
him willingly apart from religious feelings.


>
> > 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,"

And that's a phrase that is widely misunderstood because you have to
know what Crowley meant by "will" (and "law" for that matter).
Crowley's writing is very tongue-in-cheek and he liked to shock the
"muggles" as it were.


>
> I can't find the website again that I was looking on before. But
> actually it was one of his followers who said "there is no good or
> evil, etc" and that was L. Ron Hubbard.

L. Ron Hubbard was a Thelemite?  That's news to me.  However, the
statement that Voldemort makes about power and will is much closer to
the philosopher Nietzsche than to Crowley.  For Crowley the Will is
all about self-mastery, not domination of other people.


>
> As I understand it, Crowley was a necromancer, and did do many acts
> of dark magic. I am told that there were secrets of the Golden Dawn
> that were never to be made public and he did.

I am not aware of Crowley ever engaging in necromancy, which is
divination by consulting the dead.  Unless you count his communication
with ancient Egyptians!  He did reveal the rituals and teaching
materials of the Golden Dawn, but that's a complicated story of
struggle between and among leaders of the order.  Israel Regardie,
Crowley's pupil and secretary, was the one who ultimately published
the old Golden Dawn papers and rituals.


 Crowley
> himself said that he was the Anti-Christ. Not true,of coures, but he
> saw himself as evil and it was his desire to be so.

That also is a lot more complicated than Lord Voldemort's self-image,
so far as I can tell.  Crowley hated Christianity, and his mother was
the one who supposedly first nicknamed him "the Beast" when he was
still a child.  He took it up becaue he thought it was funny, just as
he did when the newspapers called him "the wickedest man in the
world."  It was mostly his sex life not his magical practices that got
him that reputation. He was rather a womanizer.

None of that for Lord Voldemort, eh?

How about Rasputin for a model?


-- Alferian