Just like the New Age craze that swept the United States, and then parts of Europe, in the late-70s
through to the modern day, Crowley was a product of his time. Ever the man to lie, cheat, or otherwise
engage in acts of fraud, Crowley invented more than he had actually learned. A member of the Ordo
Templi Orientis (O.T.O. - the first and third words are often switched in position), he wrote many
and numerous works on Ceremonial Magick, which relies upon the position of the stars and planets, and
the latitude and longitude of the Mage, just to determine the exact hour and minute of the exact day a
working must be performed in order for it to work (it is worth noting that most Ceremonial Magicians
still keep, to some degree or another, this practice in their workings and, accordingly, certain workings
cannot be performed until several thousand years from now. It is their system and while they have great
success with it, such slavish devotion to hours, minutes, days, and a multi-axial rotation system of planets
and stars makes the fact that some workings are doomed to failure unless they are performed at 3:02pm
on July 9th, 6356 (for example) sound as if the entire practice of Ceremonial Magick is sheer folly).

Crowley, and the O.T.O., wrote many books, on many and numerous subjects, from Yoga to the
Qabbalah. It is also worth noting that Crowley saw nothing wrong with mixing deities from different
cultures, provided that numerically, under a Qabbalist's numerical system, all of the math worked out to a
zero-sum game. Simon, and those in the inner sanctum, when writing the rituals, rites, invocations,
incantations, conjurations, etc. that became the 'Simonomicon', saw no such need. This is of prime
importance and will be discussed presently.

Simon's Gate rituals discuss the existence of seven so-called Gates, or doorways to higher planes
of consciousness. The book (it is useless to pin all of the blame on Simon himself, as it is impossible to
know with any reasonable degree of certainty whether it was Simon or another of the inner sanctum who
indeed wrote the Gate-related portions) claims that these Gates open to seven zones above the Earth, and
that the Gates were known to the Chaldeans, followers of Greek texts written in the 2nd cent. BC by Julius
the Theurgist. Such followers included, in the modern era, the Golden Dawn, whose membership rolls
included, as a high-ranking member, Aleister Crowley.

It is from this point on that the Gate rituals become mere folly at best, a disastrous affair at worst,
especially if they are performed by one who has not mastered Form. In Ceremonial and/or Ritual
Magick, it is necessary to be highly familiar with the Form, i.e. the practices, symbols, and what we
would term “Do's and Don'ts” of ritual before one ever attempts even one's first ritual; students of
Ceremonial and/or Ritual Magick spend long periods of time learning Form before they dare attempt to
perform a Ritual. Simon, and the inner sanctum, were, in a sense, gambling on the idea that the so-called
'Simonomicon' rituals would be performed by those who knew not from Form. The current thought on
whether or not a practitioner of Ceremonial Magick can succeed without a knowledge of Form is such
that it is best to assume that one can indeed succeed, although one's results would most likely not be
anywhere near as accurate nor as potent as those of one who did know Form.