Crowley and the V sign

The first clear reference to the V-sign in Crowley’s dia-ries is an entry for 31 January 1941:Should anyone challenge my authorship of “The V Sign”, I reply in the words of my predecessor in poetry and Magick, Publius Vergilius Maro: Sic vos non vobis – If he fail to understand exactly why this is an answer, his claim is unlikely to be well-founded. If he understand, then: To it!5

Crowley’s quotation from the Roman poet Vergil exists in two forms: Sic vos non vobis melliscatis apes (Thus you bees make honey not for yourselves) and sic vos non vobis val-lera fertis oves (Thus you sheep make fleeces not for your-selves; see Oxford Book of Quotations, 1941). One Bathyllus, a dancer and pantomime performer, claimed authorship of certain lines by Vergil. Vergil was saying, in effect, ‘it’s there, but not for you (the false claimant)’. The false claimant will not understand the original meaning and force of the ‘honey’.
 Crowley is saying: ‘They plagiarised my predecessor in poetry and magic – the great Vergil – and now you plagiarise me! But the honey is mine! Posterity will reveal the truth.’ And if the hearer of the quotation did not understand what Crowley meant by the V-sign, he had better ‘get on with it!’ And what Crowley meant by ‘get on with it!’ is revealed in a work he was planning called ‘Thumbs Up!’ which he believed would serve as a magical gesture to help win the war. The ‘thumb up’ is a symbol of good will and well-being. It is also phallic, an image of the erect and ready penis, standing firm for action, fecund and positive, symbol of the true will.

On 12 February ’41, he had fresh thoughts: “Thumbs Up! Being phallic, how can I put it over pictorially or graphi-cally? I can point out the result of ‘National Prayer’ to the Castrato-deity [Crowley was concerned that the ‘God’ imag-ined of many believers had no ‘balls’, inducing resignation, defeatism and suicidal pacifism]: but I want positive ritual affirmation…”

The positive ritual affirmation being offered by the Church in England was the ‘National Prayer Day’. These proved popular but Crowley’s view of them was that they sapped will and played up to irrational fears, leaving out-comes to the caprice of ‘divine will’ not inside, but outside
of Man. On 23 March, he noted caustically: “Day of Na-tional Prayer No.3. No.1 smashed the B.E.F. No.2. smashed France. So what? Wait – and see. No.3. smashed into Greece, Egypt and Jugoslavia. No.4. Ought to assure the fall of London.” Crowley was certain that the “old formula” of  a self-sacrificing deity was outworn and counter-productive. As he predicted, Germany invaded Greece and Yugoslavia in April. He included his observations in the finished version of Thumbs Up!

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