ALEISTER CROWLEY 1875-1947 Misunderstood and even feared during his lifetime, Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) channelled his brilliance into the black arts, believing that he was the greatest of the world's magicians, brought back to life. Aleister Crowley was perhaps the most controversial and misunderstood personality to figure in the new era of modern day witchcraft. Crowley was a powerful magician, poet, prophet and famed occultist. He was also a one-time witch, though most of the elders of the craft would discredit him the title. Mr. Crowley was a self-proclaimed drug and sex "fiend," a mostly self-published author of books on the occult and magick. a poet and mountaineer, and a leader of a group called Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) whose tenets are detailed in one of his many writings, The Book of the Law. The latter contains his version of the Law of Thelema, which Crowley claims he channeled for a "praeterhuman intelligence" called Aiwass. Thelema is now considered a religion. He lived in a society that could little understand him or appreciated his latent genius. His writings so shocked the peoples of his era that he was robbed of the praise that it merited, and as a poet he never received the recognition he deserved. Crowley was popularly known as "the Great Beast" or by the media "The Wickedest Man in the World", because of his fascination to sex magic and degradation, drug-taking and hedonism. Crowley's famous motto was "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law". He used blood and sex in rituals to obtain energy and achieve mystical insight. One of his disciples died apparently from drinking the blood of a cat. "... Worship me with fire and blood; worship me with swords and with spears..." (from The Book of the Law by Aleister Crowley, 1938) Aleister Crowley was born Edward Alexander Crowley in Leamington, Warwickshire on October 12th, 1875. In his autobiography Crowley claimed he was "remarkable from the moment of his birth. He bore on his body the three most important distinguishing marks of a Buddha. He was tongue-tied, and on the second day of his incarnation a surgeon cut the fraenum linguae. He had also the characteristic membrane, which necessitated an operation for phimosis three lustres later. Lastly, he had upon the center of his heart four hairs curling from left to right in the exact form of a Swastika." (from The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, 1929-30) Crowley's parents belonged to a strict Puritan sect known as the 'Plymouth' Brethren of 'Closed'. "Crowley's problem, of course, was that he was born in the midst of the Victorian age, into a family of Plymouth Brothers who regarded sex as horribly sinful," Colin Wilson wrote later. "He spent the rest of his life violently reacting against this view, and preaching - and practicing - the gospel of total sexual freedom." The Protestant group had its origin in Ireland. They regarded Christmas as a pagan rite, believed that the Pope is Anti-Christ, and that the rituals of the Church of England are essentially hellish in nature. After his father died Crowley abandoned all aspects of Christianity and considered his mother a 'religious bigot'. On the other hand, she called him 'The Beast' known from the Apocalypse of St John, the last book of the New Testament. Crowley partially accepted the identification and claimed that his advent had been prophesied in the Apocalypse. The avoid sharing the same first name with his father, Crowley changed Edward to Aleister. His first cat Crowley killed at the age of 11, and much later rumours linked him with infanticide and cannibalism. But above all, Crowley discovered the pleasures of sex, which horrified his mother and uncle. In 1892 he went to public school in Malvern, had homosexual experiences, and transferred to Tonbridge, where he caught gonorrhea. After the death of his father, Crowley inherited the family fortune and went on to be educated at Trinity College Cambridge. There he wrote and studied poetry. He loved the out-doors life and was a capable mountain climber, in pursuit of which he attempted some of the highest peaks in the Himalayas. In 1898 he published his first book of poetry called "Aceldama, A Place to Bury Strangers In", a philosophical poem by a 'Gentleman of the University of Cambridge' in 1898'. In the preface he describes how God and Satan had fought for his soul and states: “God conquered – and now I have only one doubt left – which of the twain was God”? It was while he was at Trinity that Crowley became interested in the occult and with his roommate Allan Bennett, they began to study whatever they could. Crowley soon discovered that he was excited by descriptions of torture and blood. He liked to fantasize about being degraded and abused by a 'Scarlet Women', one who was dominant, wicked and independent. He joined in 1898 The Hermetic order of the Golden Dawn, which had also poet W.B. Yeats as its member. Other illustrious names included Algernon Blackwood, the creator of the occult detective John Silence, and Arthur Machen. Its ceremonies were strongly influenced by cabalism and spiritualism. During the next few years Crowley became a member of the group's inner conclave, but after quarrels of the control of the group, he was expelled from it. He founded his own less prominent order, the A A or Argentium Astrum. The Golden Dawn, which was a white magical order, became divided and never regained its formed popularity. Crowley accused later that Yeats had used black magic against him, but he managed to defeat the spell. There was one side effect - Crowley lost his mistress Althea Gyles to Leonard Smithers, a publisher, who was specialized in pornography. In 1899 Crowley is reported to have become a member of one of “Old George Pickingill’s” hereditary covens situated in the New Forrest, although apparently he was not welcome for long (see 'Old George Pickingill'). It is alleged that he obtained his 'Second Degree' before being dismissed due to his contemptuous attitude toward women, failure to attend rituals with regularity, his personal ego and sexual perversion (Crowley had a bias toward homosexuality and the bizarre, shocking during his time even amongst witches). The priestess of his coven later described him as “a dirty-minded, evilly-disposed and vicious little monster!” As well as being dismissed and outcaste by the New Forrest witches, all was not well within the Golden Dawn. By this time Crowley had moved out of Trinity Collage without earning his degree, and taken a flat in Chancery Lane, London. There he renamed himself 'Count Vladimir' and began to pursue his occult studies on a full-time basis. Crowley had a natural aptitude for magic and advanced quickly through the ranks of the Golden Dawn, but the London lodge leaders considered him unsuitable for advancement into the second order. Crowley went to Paris in 1899 to see 'S.L. MacGregor Mathers', the then head of the Order and insisted that he be initiated into the second Order. Mathers at the time was experiencing growing dissension to his absolute rule from London, and sensed in Crowley an ally. To the consternation of the London lodge he readily agreed to Crowley's request and initiated him into the second order. His Wives & Mistresses In 1903 he married Rose Kelly, his first wife, but had still a ring of mistresses. In 1909 he divorced from Rose, who suffered from alcoholism, and started a relationship with the poet Victor Neuberg. In 1912 he joined the Ordo Templi Orientis - the Order of Eastern Templars, usually referred as O.T.O. First he had been contacted by its German leader, who believed that he had revealed its secret sex rituals. Crowley served as the head of its British section, and took the name Baphomet, an anti-Christian deity. In 1913 he began his first serious experiments in sexual magic, which arose his interest in the use of homosexual acts as magical methods. The sexual magic of the Ordo Templi Orientis was introduced into North America by Crowley's disciple C.S. Jones. A number of the members of O.T.O. have been Crowleyan. From 1915 to 1919 Crowley lived in the United States, where he published anti-British propaganda. A new woman in Crowley's life, Leah Hirsig, bore him a child, Poupée, whose death was a deep blow to him. It has been claimed, that Crowley served during these years as a British spy, gathering information on the German intelligence network and on Irish Republican activity. In the 1920s Crowley moved to a hillside villa in Sicily. Crowley hoped the Cefalu villa 'Abbaye de Theleme', would be a world centre for the study of the occult and sexual magic. From Leah Hirsig he found an ideal partner and called her vagina as "the Hirsig patent vacuum-pump". Once a he-goat was induced to copulate with her. In 1921 he was consecrated a god by his followers. After the mysterious death of one of his magical brothers, a 23-year-old Oxford undergraduate Raoul Loveday, Crowley was expelled from Sicily by Mussolini or the Italian authorities. Loveday died when he killed a cat and drank its blood. The dead man's wife, Betty May, informed on Crowley's degraded activities, and the English papers were full of stories of his scandalous activities, ritual sacrifices etc. In 1929 Crowley married his second wife, Maria Ferrari de Miramar, and earned his living mostly by publishing obscure writings. Crowley's later years were shadowed by poor health, drug addiction, and desperation for money. He had a talisman, called Segelah, which was intended "for finding a great treasure." Segelah was smeared with dried semen and menstrual blood. When British printers refused to print his works, he had them produced in Paris. Soon he was also deported from France. He had started very early to experiment with psychedelic drugs to find a substance which would "unlock the girders of the soul". During WWII, Ian Fleming suggested using Crowley as an interrogator of the Nazi leader Rudolf Hess, who landed unexpectedly in 1941 in Scotland and was fascinated by the occult. At the time of his meetings with Gerald Gardner, Crowley was a feeble old man living in retirement at a private hotel in Hastings, barely kept alive by the use of drugs. It was here that he passed from this world into the next on the 1st December 1947. His final act was to curse the doctor who refused to give him more heroin. Unrepentant and unbowed he left this world with a final snub at the society that had so misunderstood him and was cremated in Brighton. Parts of the Mass of the 'Gnostic Catholic Church' were read aloud at his funeral. (According to some rumors the doctor died within twenty-four hours after the magician.) Crowley's ashes were sent to followers in the United States. After his death several unpublished writings have been released, including The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, his autobiography, a self-portrait of the man, who also gained reputation as a mountaineer. Most of all, he tried to achieve the supremacy in the occult world, not only based on the knowledge of magic (or 'magick' as he preferred to call it), but also in personal revelations. "Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in Conformity with Will," Crowley wrote. The final 'k' in his unusual spelling had a dual significance: it distinguished his system from other varieties of occult magic and referred to the Greek word kteis - it had come to mean in the ancient times the female organs in their entirety - labia, clitoris, vagina and uterus. Crucial was his vision in Egypt in 1904, when according to Crowley's own account, his spiritual alter ego Aiwass or Aiwaz dictated the what became known as The Book of the Law, actually a poem in three short chapters. Eventually he believed that this being was his "Holy Guardian Angel" and should be identified with the Christian Devil, Satan. "... To worship me take wine and strange drugs... and be drunk thereof! They shall not harm ye at all... Be strong, O man! Lust, enjoy all things of sense ands rapture; fear not that God shall deny thee for this." (from The Book of the Law) Crowley claimed that mankind has lived through two great aeons: that of Isis, the prehistoric age of the dominance of Woman, and that of Osiris, the age of the dominance of the male principle and of the great religions. The present aeon was the commencement of that of Horus and self-will. The third age would be a New Age of Youth, based on union of female and male energies. Thus sex was central to Crowley's magical practice, both in heterosexual and homosexual forms. In many ways Aleister Crowley was not a well-liked man, but he influenced and had an effect on the build up to the new era of modern witchcraft. His knowledge of witchcraft and magick was profound and without question, and he has passed on that knowledge through his books. In today’s more liberal society more and more of Crowley’s books are being reprinted as we begin to appreciate his strange genius. Indeed some of his books have now gained classical status. These include: Gnostic Mass and The Book of Law (New York: Samuel Weiser, 1977) from which portions of the well known “Charge of the Goddess” were written by Doreen Valiente. Other books include: Magick in Theory and Practice, 777 And Other Qabalistic Writing and The Book of Thoth to mention just a few. Most of this was taken from this article and pieced with other information found along the internet and books.