Aleister Crowley & Israel Regardie

[Jim Eshelman]

This is one of the most important relationships in the history of 20th century occultism.

Crowley was born October 12, 1875 in Leamington Spa, England between 11 pm and midnight: 11:30 would be the conventional working time (A data), and I find 11:35 PM aligns with events quite well.

Regardie was born November 17, 1907, 6:10 AM GMT, London, England.

If you aren't familiar with the particulars, you can study fine points of the relationship from Regardie's point of view in his book The Eye in the Triangle. The (excessively brief) gist is that young Regardie (living in the U.S. with his family) was quite excited by Crowley's writings and, through an introduction, started a correspondence. This led to Crowley hiring Regardie to be his live-in personal assistant in Paris in exchange for magical instruction. They were separated when they each had to relocate to London at different points in time. Regardie began writing significant occult books and eventually was initiated into the Golden Dawn, later famously publishing their rituals and primary teachings.

Even though Crowley had published most of the same stuff decades earlier, this act led to their break - Crowley accusing Regardie of breaking his oaths. Regardie retaliated that Crowley had done the same thing. Crowley responded that he'd been instructed to do so by the Secret Chiefs behind the order, but Regardie was just a crook. They then descended into writing hysterically funny, insulting, pathetically childish letters to each other in private and in public which severed their connection forever; except Regardie spent most of the rest of his life writing some of the most important literature on Crowley and preserving AC's unpublished or barely-published work.

The synastry is a marvelous example of complex admiration (even adoration) and hatred.

[Jim Eshelman]

There is so much in these charts - please take the time to work through them. What I find striking is that for all the intellectual connection, the great admiration and support, the potential for hatred and separation... there are no Venus interchanges. Nothing in their connection actually suggests love, affection, or friendship, and perhaps there never was any. The positives are in the form of admiration and respect.

Note especially AC's planets on Francis' cusps: AC's Mercury-Jupiter conjunction straddling Regardie's Ascendant (and square his Jupiter), his Saturn conjunct Mars (etc.) on Regardie's IC. Other things as well (AC Sun opposite Regardie's Moon; and AC Moon on Regardie's Saturn is important, but my Moon was even closer, and we got along fine).

In my recent reformulation of the co-aspect interpretations, I remarked that with Mars-Saturn interchanges the survivor may feel a posthumous duty or debt. This is SUCH a description of Regardie and Crowley (which was not one of the relationships I considered when writing this) and - again, as indicated in the interpretation - Regardie always spoke of this as "unfinished business" he had to complete.

The similarity of their interchanges to those of John Dee and Edward Kelley are remarkable!