CHRISTMAS GOOD WILL
“These words, ‘Peace to men of good will,’ have been mistranslated, ‘Good will towards men.’ Christ said that he did not come to bring peace, but a sword; that he would divide mother from son and father from daughter, careless of the effect of such remarks upon the feelings of Dr. Sigmund Freud. There is no warrant to suppose that Christ was any kind of a Pacifist. On the contrary, he not only prophesied the most terrible wars and disasters to humanity, which, by the theory, he had absolute power to stop, but he threatened eternal damnation to the great mass of men. Billy Sunday’s presentation of Christ is a perfectly scriptural one. Christmas is therefore a season of peace to men of good will, and to them only. But who are these men of good will? Only those who happen to agree with us for the moment.”
— Aleister Crowley, Pax Hominibus Bonae Voluntatis
“Yet by-and-by I hope to weave
A song of Anti-Christmas Eve
And First- and Second-Beast-er Day.
There's one who loves me dearly (vrai!)
Who yet believes me sprung from Tophet,
Either the Beast or the False Prophet;
And by all sorts of monkey tricks
Adds up my name to Six Six Six.
Retire, good Gallup! In such strife her
Superior skill makes you a cipher!
Ho! I adopt the number. Look
At the quaint wrapper of this book!
I will deserve it if I can: It is the number of a Man.”
— Aleister Crowley, “Ascension Day” from The Sword of Song
“The same care and toil that raise a dish of peas at CHRISTMAS, would give bread to a whole family during six months. To say, that, without a vicious luxury, the labour would not have been employed at all, is only to say, that there is some other defect in human nature, such as indolence, selfishness, inattention to others, for which luxury, in some measure, provides a remedy; as one poison may be an antidote to another. But virtue, like wholesome food, is better than poisons, however corrected.”
— David Hume, Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary
“My disgust with Christianity was so strong that there were a few years where I refused to come home for Christmas because I didn't want to celebrate the holiday.”
— Michael Osiris Snuffin, I was a Teenage Satanist
“all eight of the original Brethren agreed upon … meeting together once a year at the Sancti spiritus house on the ‘day C,’ which has been interpreted to mean Christmas by some”
— John Eberly, The ‘Arabic’ Parts of the Original Rosicrucian Documents
“Even Christmas was attacked as an evil influence by the Puritans.”
— Hakim Bey, Jubilee Saints Project
“I portrayed the Tree of Life as a lit-up Christmas tree with a power cord snaking out of the darkness of the En Soph and through the abyss to Kether”
— Colin Low, Binah, Chokmah, Kether
“One woman told me last Christmas that she did not believe either in Hell or in ghosts. Hell was an invention got up by the priest to keep people good …”
— William Butler Yeats, Belief and Unbelief