The Faust Syndrome and the End of the Time of Enlightened Masters

Franz Simm: Illustrationen zu Goethes

A phenomenon which I have returned to many times in my books, especially in my book, Lucifer Morningstar – a Philosophical Love Story, is the Faust-syndrome. It is a syndrome which characterizes most Westerners: it is the dangers of ego-inflation in combination with spiritual practice. Ego-inflation is at the same time based on a great denial of our own collective shadow, or painbody, which are rooted in original sin. It is a kind of compensation.

Final Secret of the Illuminati (A Critique of Robert Anton Wilson)

”Perhaps the final secret of the Illuminati is that you don´t know you´re a member until it´s too late to get out.” Robert Anton Wilson, in Cosmic Trigger I – Final Secret of the Illuminati (page 88)

Cosmic Trigger I is the first book in the Cosmic Trigger series, first published in 1977 and the first of a three-volume autobiographical and philosophical work. It has a foreword by Timothy Leary, which he wrote in the summer of 1977. The first volume was published without numbering, as the second volume did not appear for nearly 15 years.

Wilson is one of many psychologists who want to be philosophers instead of the philosophers. The book deals with Wilson's experiences during a time in which he put himself through a process of "self-induced brain change" as well as vignettes of his earlier life. The main discovery of this process—which, he tells us, is known in certain traditions as Chapel perilous—is that "reality" is mutable and subjective to the observer. 

Aleister Crowley – The Eye in the Triangle

The Eye in the Triangle: An Interpretation of Aleister Crowley, is a book by Israel Regardie. The book description sounds like this:

“Aleister Crowley, the greatest Magus of the twentieth century, redefined the very basis of the Western Esoteric Tradition. His incalculably vast influence reaches through all modern occultism. Whether acknowledged or not, he is the father of the modern arts of ceremonial magick, Western Tantra, Tarot and Wicca. His devotees ascribe even greater significance to his life, regarding him as the prophet of the modern age.”