"Teitan/Shaitan 666, Pinchbeck and Crowley" -

Teitan/Shaitan 666, Pinchbeck and Crowley"

I've always found Daniel Pinchbeck to be annoying... he's less intelligent then Tim Leary, and less courageous then Terrence Mckenna, yet seeks to position himself as the Entheaogenic Guru of the Burning Man generation. One of my biggest beefs with him as a student of esoterica is his total neglect and disdain for Aleister Crowley. In his book "2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl He hints at Current 93 as the vibration of this age by quoting esoteric author John Michell writing:

“‘The number 666 is that of Teitan, a solar deity,’ he wrote, ‘It represents an eternal, natural principle, transcending any moral category.’ Teitan—Cheitan, in the Chaldean language–was the snake god who brought knowledge to humanity. As mythic polarity gave way to mental duality, this deity was reduced to a baleful influence, given the name Satan in the Bible. While the institutional church associated the number with evil. Gnostics within the church ‘recognized the number for what it was, an essential element in the true cosmic scheme, and in laying out their mystic citadels they allowed 666, the number of solar power, to occupy its due place in the numerical order.’ According to the Gnostic version of the biblical tale, the serpent in the Garden of Eden was actually an apparition of Christ, bringing knowledge to humans, seeking to liberate them from the wicked demiurge who kept them in ignorance. The ‘Great Beast’ of the Apocalypse, first appearing in Revelation 13, possesses an intricate ambiguity, linking him to these older traditions.

“The shattering of the Glastonbury Abbey as ‘the devil’s temple’ during the Reformation represented the final destruction, in the West, of the ancient mind-set that understood the necessity of maintaining a proper balance between cosmic forces. For the Puritans, ‘the beast represented some absolute principle of evil, irreconcilable with the iron rule of humanly created morality,’ Michell notes. ‘The beast, like the dragon, had to be suppressed.’ For this reason, as well as many others, Glastonbury could be the logical place for reintegrating Sun, Moon, and Earth, establishing a template for planetary civilization." (Pincbeck 2006: 394)

When I mentioned Thelema to Pinchbeck and Crowleys' HGA as "Shaitan/Teitan-Aiwass 666" he totally blew me off. He said he's more interested in Steiner because the "Fruits of Crowley's life were so harmful to other people." That in itself is a judgement rooted in Judeo-Christian Values (Pinchbeck is Jewish) that Pinchbeck seems to be critiquing above. Not to mention that it ignores the fact that the creative content of a person shouldn't always be conflated with their personal life (See Einstein, Picasso, Nietzsche, ect...) It also ignores the fact that Crowley was the PROPHET of Teitan/Shaitan-Aiwass 666 way before Jon Michell ever dug up the reference. Pinchbeck's disdain for Crowley is a direct reflection of his own desire to be a Prophet. Unfortunately, in his nebbish and pettily arrogant New York hipster intellectual manner, all he'll ever be is a regurgitator of other's greatness, and never great himself. Ironic that he critique's the suppression of the "Beast 666" by the Puritans while he himself suppresses the Beast in his own Mind...The Slaves Shall Serve.