Crowley, The Inversion & The Devil

PART 1: WHAT IS "INVERSION" IN CROWLEY’S THOUGHT?

Let’s start with this: Crowley doesn’t mean "inversion" like flipping a pancake. He means turning things inside out or upside down to reveal what’s hidden behind them.

Inversion is a spiritual key—he believed that truth is veiled, and sometimes you must look at the opposite of something to see its real meaning.

Kind of like this:

Imagine holding a mask up to a light. You only see the shadows.But if you invert the light, shine it from behind, the true shape appears.

So Crowley loved to take things considered “bad,” “evil,” or “taboo” and turn them around to ask:

“What if this is actually divine—but misunderstood?”

PART 2: PLANES OF EXISTENCE – LET'S BUILD THE STAIRCASE

Before we get to how inversion works between planes, let’s define those planes. These are levels of reality—think of them as layers of an onion, or floors of a tower. Each one is more subtle and more spiritual than the one below it.

Here’s a super simplified version of the classic Hermetic/Qabalistic model (which Crowley used and riffed on):

1. Material Plane (Assiah) – Physical stuff. Where your body lives.

2. Emotional/Energetic Plane (Yetzirah) – Emotions, dreams, symbols.

3. Mental Plane (Briah) – Thoughts, archetypes, divine blueprints.

4. Spiritual Plane (Atziluth) – Unity, source energy, pure will.

   
   

Crowley believed that all things exist across these planes simultaneously, but we usually only experience the bottom one or two unless we’re doing deep spiritual work.

PART 3: INVERSION BETWEEN PLANES – THE REFLECTING MIRROR

Now here’s the kicker: Crowley saw each higher plane as “casting a shadow” into the one below it.

Just like when you put your hand between a candle and the wall, and it casts a shadow. The shadow is not your hand, but it comes from it. So a divine truth in Atziluth (highest plane) might look totally opposite when it casts its shadow down into Assiah (material world).

Divine Love might look like Obsession. Creative Will might look like Destruction. Freedom might look like Chaos.

This is inversion between planes.

We misinterpret divine truths because we’re looking at their reflections, not their source. And the reflection is inverted—twisted by ego, culture, fear, or physical limitations.

PART 4: SO WHY THE DEVIL?

This is why Crowley’s Devil is not Satan. In the Thoth system, The Devil = Pan, not the Christian adversary.

He is:

• The spark of life.

• Sexual energy.

• Creative force.

But when that energy descends from the divine, it gets inverted on the way down.We see it through a fog of guilt, repression, and fear—so it looks “evil.”

So:

Divine Sex = Union with God➝ Inverted into → Lust, Addiction

Divine Will = Sacred Action➝ Inverted into → Control, Manipulation

The Devil card, then, represents the inverted face of God—truth made monstrous by misunderstanding.

PART 5: HOW TO USE THIS – CROWLEY’S ACTUAL GOAL

So what do we do with inversion?

Crowley didn’t want people to wallow in darkness. He wanted us to:

1. Recognize the inversion – See that our fear or shame might be a twisted echo of something holy.

   
   

2. Follow it back upward – Use ritual, introspection, magick, sex, symbolism—to trace the shadow back to the source.

   
   

3. Reclaim the divine spark – Integrate it, consciously. Heal the split between sacred and profane.

   
   

That’s what he meant when he said “Every man and every woman is a star.”

We’re not supposed to fight our shadows.

We’re supposed to understand them as echoes of light.

PART 6: FINAL ANALOGY – THE FUNHOUSE MIRROR

Picture a divine truth—like “love” or “will”—standing tall on the top floor of reality. As that truth reflects downward, through all the layers of existence, it hits distortions:

Foggy lenses of emotion.

Warped mirrors of thought.

Cracked surfaces of matter.

By the time it lands in our world? It looks like a monster.

But it’s not a monster. It’s God in a funhouse mirror.

Crowley’s work says: Don’t smash the mirror—learn how it bends. When you do, you can see God even in the grotesque.

TL;DR

Crowley’s "inversion" means spiritual truths appear opposite when viewed from lower levels of awareness.

Higher planes cast “shadows” down into the physical world.

What we call evil is often a distorted version of divine energy.

The Devil is the shadow of the divine creator—raw life force misunderstood.

The task is to see through the inversion, not deny it.