It's funny I actually just finished reading The Book of Thoth and I had pretty much the same reaction as you and those passages you quoted are some of the exact same ones that raised red flags for me. I pushed through and read the whole book because I actually really like the deck, it speaks to me and so far the readings I've done with it have been very accurate, but I was experiencing a lot of headaches and negative feelings while working through the book, like I was pushing up against a current. I found a lot of his interpretation of the major arcana to be distorted and of mixed quality and polarity (or just plain gibberish), but I actually liked the info on the minors and court cards, which I hadn't really understood very well previously.
I've been mingling with people who are into the occult and many of them swear by Crowley so I thought I'd check some of his work out but to me it seems a mixed bag and most of it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I'm actually friends with someone who runs a local initiatory school based on Thelemic thought and he seems pretty on the level to me, but they aren't associated with the OTO. I followed the main Thelema group on facebook but the people there take Crowley's word as gospel and gang up on anyone who says anything negative about him and like, get tattoos of his face and use the place of his death as true east when doing magic rituals, etc. The whole thing strikes me as a cult of personality. I think there is some useful material in there, and like anything with discernment you can sort out the good ideas, but it's not really enough for me to keep looking into it.
One thing the experience has led me to realize is that the Ra material is the best material for esoteric studies that I've come accross and has inspired me to read it all again from book 1.
I've been mingling with people who are into the occult and many of them swear by Crowley so I thought I'd check some of his work out but to me it seems a mixed bag and most of it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I'm actually friends with someone who runs a local initiatory school based on Thelemic thought and he seems pretty on the level to me, but they aren't associated with the OTO. I followed the main Thelema group on facebook but the people there take Crowley's word as gospel and gang up on anyone who says anything negative about him and like, get tattoos of his face and use the place of his death as true east when doing magic rituals, etc. The whole thing strikes me as a cult of personality. I think there is some useful material in there, and like anything with discernment you can sort out the good ideas, but it's not really enough for me to keep looking into it.
One thing the experience has led me to realize is that the Ra material is the best material for esoteric studies that I've come accross and has inspired me to read it all again from book 1.
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