The Scorpion - A Tragedy In Three Acts
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Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) was an English poet, painter, occultist, magician, and mountaineer. Born into wealth, he rejected his family’s Christian beliefs and developed a passion for Western esotericism. At Trinity College, Cambridge, Crowley gained a reputation as a poet whose work appeared in such publications as The Granta and Cambridge Magazine. An avid mountaineer, he made the first unguided ascent of the Mönch in the Swiss Alps. Around this time, he first began identifying as bisexual and carried on relationships with prostitutes, which led to his contracting syphilis. In 1897, he briefly dated fellow student Herbert Charles Pollitt, whose unease with Crowley’s esotericism would lead to their breakup. The following year, Crowley joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a secret occult society to which many of the era’s leading artists belonged, including Bram Stoker, W. B. Yeats, Arthur Machen, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Between 1900 and 1903, he traveled to Mexico, India, Japan, and Paris. In these formative years, Crowley studied Hinduism, wrote the poems that would form The Sword of Song (1904), attempted to climb K2, and became acquainted with such artists as Auguste Rodin and W. Somerset Maugham. A 1904 trip to Egypt inspired him to develop Thelema, a philosophical and religious group he would lead for the remainder of his life. He would claim that The Book of the Law (1909), his most important literary work and the central sacred text of Thelema, was delivered to him personally in Cairo by the entity Aiwass. During the First World War, Crowley allegedly worked as a double agent for the British intelligence services while pretending to support the pro-German movement in the United States. The last decades of his life were spent largely in exile due to persecution in the press and by the states of Britain and Italy for his bohemian lifestyle and open bisexuality.
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The Scorpion - A Tragedy In Three Acts - Aleister Crowley
The Scorpion
A Tragedy in Three Acts
By
Aleister Crowley
Copyright © 2012 Read Books Ltd.
This book is copyright and may not be
reproduced or copied in any way without
the express permission of the publisher in writing
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Contents
Aleister Crowley
The Scorpion
PERSONS OF THE TRAGEDY: ACT I
ACT I
PERSONS OF THE TRAGEDY: ACT II
ACT II
PERSONS OF THE TRAGEDY: ACT III
ACT III.
Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley was born in Royal Leamington Spa, England in 1875. Raised by Christian fundamentalist parents, he attended Trinity College at Cambridge University, but left before graduating. Upon leaving the college, he devoted his life to the occult, studying magic, qabalah, alchemy, tarot, and astrology. From 1900 onwards, Crowley travelled extensively, mainly in India and China. In 1904, while in Egypt, he produced one of his most popular works, The Book of the Law, and three years later he founded his magical order.
Throughout the rest of his life, Crowley was a prolific writer, producing essays, prose and poetry on a wide range of subjects. In 1913, he published Magick (Book 4), a lengthy examination of his belief system which draws on a vast range of sources and is regarded by many as his magnum opus. In his later years, Crowley became addicted to heroin and struggled with bankruptcy. He died in Hastings, England, aged 72. To this day he remains a highly influential figure, both in occult circles and popular culture.
To GR:Alpha-Gamma-Alpha-Theta-Alpha in memory of the Hour of Initiation, and to Lampada Tradam and Mohammed ibn Rahman in memory of our wanderings in the Desert, and to my brothers of the O.’. of K. D. S. H. in memory of the Martyrdom of our G.’. M.’. J. B. M. I dedicate this tragedy.
The Scorpion
PERSONS OF THE TRAGEDY:
ACT I
• SIR RINALDO DE LA CHAPELLE, Preceptor of the Knights Templars
• SIR RAYMOND, SIR JAMES, SIR EUSTACHE, and OTHERS, his Knights
• JOCELYN, a Troubadour, in their company
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• ESQUIRES, etc., to these
• SAID OMAR, an Arabian Emir. His band of Warriors
• LAYLAH, his newly-wedded bride
• A NYMPH, and children attendant on her
ACT I
SCENE: "The desert. In the foreground, a walled well with a lever. Three palms. Tall grasses. The ground is uneven. In the background other palms, among which are