Liber Oz

by Aleister Crowley

Liber Oz is mentioned in a number of the essays on this website. It was first published by Aleister Crowley in 1941. It was designed to be an unequivocal statement of the rights of man written in words of one syllable.

Crowley wrote: "By the way, about attracting people to the O.T.O., I still think Liber Oz is the best bet. There is a vile threat to the “rugged American individualism” that actually created the U.S.A. by the bureaucratic crowd who want society to be a convict prison. “Safety first” — there is no “social insecurity,” no fear for the future, no anxiety about what to do next — in Sing Sing. All the totalitarian schemes add up to the same in the end. And the approach is so insidious, the arguments so subtle and irrefutable, the advantages so obvious — that the danger is very real, very imminent, very difficult to bring home to the average citizen, who sees only the immediate gain, and is hoodwinked as to the price that must be paid for it."

The text above on the relation between Liber Oz and American liberty is extracted from a letter written by Crowley to Karl Germer, his representative in America, and, upon Crowley’s death in 1947, his successor as Outer Head of the O.T.O. or Ordo Templi Orientis. (Letter in Yorke collection at the Warburg Institute, London, dated March 8 [no year, but probably 1945].