The BBC recently ran a piece on the 1920’s a decade of unprecedented technological and cultural change that was the backdrop for Aleister Crowley’s grand experiment, the establishment of the Abbey of Thelema, a Thelemic community located on the island of Cefalu. It would appear that the Prophet chose the time for its launch wisely as old norms had crumbled and the taste for innovation and boundary pushing was pervasive. Sadly, it’d all come to an end much too soon as a wave of “social reform” brought repressive new laws, like Prohibition in America, and the tide of Fascism began rising in Europe leading, among other things, to Crowley’s expulsion from Italy by order of its Fascist leader Benito Mussolini. But while the “Jazz Age” raged…oh boy:
“The speed of change during the 1920s was dizzying. Booming prosperity and social upheaval combined with a youthful, post-war euphoria and new female empowerment to make the 1920s paradigm-shifting, boundary-busting decade. ‘The generation before them had been slaughtered in the war, and there was a devil-may-care attitude,’ Nothdruft says. And like the musical genre it was named after, the Jazz Age was full of unruly spontaneity, improvisation and edginess. ‘Jazz was the sound of the ‘20s, and the rhythms and beats of the music permeate the visual.’”
read the entire article here: http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20161004-did-the-20s-really-roar
Thanks to Soror Hypatia for the tip!
