~Beast of the Apocalypse~
'Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law'
British occultist and magician, who described himself as the 'Beast of the Apocalypse' and was called by the media 'The Wickedest Man in the World'. Crowley both infuriated and fascinated people with his rites of sex magic and blood sacrifice. Despite his excesses some regard him as one of the most brilliant magicians of modern times.
He was born Edward Alexander Crowley in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire. His parents were members of a fundamentalist sect, the Plymouth Brethren, and raised him in an atmosphere of repression and religious bigotry. He rebelled to such an extent that his mother started calling him 'the Beast', after the Antichrist.
Crowley was attracted to the occult at an early age, and was also fascinated by blood, torture, and sexual degradation. He studied at Trinity College at Cambridge but never earned a degree, instead devoting his time to writing poetry and studying occultism. In 1898, he joined the London chapter of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (HOGD) and quickly advanced to the highest grade in the Order.
After leaving Cambridge he named himself Count Vladimir and pursued his occult activities full time in London. Stories of bizarre incidents disseminated, perhaps fueled in part by Crowley's mesmerizing eyes and aura of supernatural power. Some individuals alleged to see a ghostly light surrounding him, which he said was his astral spirit. His flat was said to be permeated by an evil presence, and people who crossed him were said to suffer accidents.
Following his expulsion from the HOGD, Crowley traveled and delved into Eastern mysticism. He lived for a time at Boleskin Manor on the southern shore of Loch Ness in Scotland. He had an enormous sexual appetite, and his animal vitality and raw behavior attracted an unending stream of willing women. In 1903 he married Rose Kelly, the first of two wives, who bore him one child. He had a steady string of mistresses, and also tried fruitlessly to produce a child by magic, the efforts of which he fictionalized in a novel, Moorzchild (1929).
In 1920, while driving through Italy, Crowley had a vision of a hillside villa. He found the place on Sicily, acquired it, and renamed it the Sacred Abbey of the Thelemic Mysteries. Envisioned as a magical colony, the villa served as the site for frequent sexual orgies and magical rites, many attended by his illegitimate children. The behavior led Benito Mussolini to expel Crowley from Italy in May 1923.
Crowley's later years were beset with poor health, drug addiction, and financial problems. He earned a meager living by publishing his writings. Much of his nonfiction is incoherent and jumbled, but continues to have an audience. In 1934, desperate for money, Crowley sued sculptress Nina Hammett for libel in her biography of him, Laughing Torso (1932), in which she stated that Crowley practiced black magic and indulged in human sacrifice. The testimony given at the trial so nauseated the judge and jury that the trial was stopped and the jury found in favor of Hammett.
Aleister Crowley may have died in 1947, but his influence is still very much felt by the magician of the 1990s The CD soundtrack The Beast Speaks sold 8000 copies since its release in 1993, and the paperback edition of Crowley's Confessions was number two in Virgin Megastores top ten books. Don't be fooled into thinking that the magician of the nineties is a slavish follower or member of some mind bending cult. Crowley's watch word was Thelema - which means [free] Will. Those who choose to follow this magical path aim to de-condition themselves, to develop independence of spirit and ultimately to become their very own self. One of the many attractions of Crowley's type of Magick, was this advice to follow one's own way and create your own life style. You don't need a priest or a judge to tell you how to act - work it out for yourself.
As part of the process of developing self knowledge, Crowley advocated the practice of Magick. This he defined as 'the science and art of causing change in conformity with will.' The history of magick is the history of human beings. Many of the things that are now labelled 'culture' began as experiments in ritual and magick viz. drama, music, art, dance, philosophy and poetry etc., etc. Magick has played a role in many key moments of our history, for example during the fourteenth century, it was the philosophy of the Renaissance. In our own time, many modern art movements have been driven by magical ideas, for instance, the first abstract painting was made by the Theosophist Kandinsky. Magick is a valuable and reputable activity to undertake.
Whatever else one can say about it, magick certainly is not a mass activity, neither is it a spectator sport. Magicians are in many localities in a minority of one and have to teach themselves the skills traditionally part of the art viz. trance, divination, invocation and creative imagination. The solitary magician gathers most of his or her information from books and Crowley made a substantial contribution to the vast number of books on the subject. Most of his books are now in print, something like 100 titles. The secondary literature of commentaries and studies, as one might expect after almost 50 years, is very extensive indeed. However there is no need to read everything the master wrote. There are a handful of key texts that should give you a good grounding in the man and his magick.
Sadly, there is still no really objective biography of Crowley. The standard biography is John Symonds' The Great Beast, (lastest edition of which is entitled King of the Shadow Realm) which records all of the salient facts but is very hostile to Crowley's ideas and therefore gives a lively but unbalanced picture. Jean Overton Fuller's Magical Dilemma of Victor Neuburg is slightly more objective and written with much inside information. A modern attempt is Gerald Suster's Legacy of the Beast, which is too short to cover all the facts, and too sycophantic -nevertheless, it is not without value. Gerald Suster also wrote Crowley's entry in Dictionary of National Biography - Missing Persons (OUP 1993) which is also worth a read. Incidentally, 1993 was also the year in which Crowley made it to the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations for the first time with his motto 'Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.'
Several newer biographies have recently appeared, two in particular are worthy of note: Martin Booth, A Magick Life and said by some to be the best of the whole lot: Do What Thou Wilt by Lawrence Sutin for St Martin's Press. The modern generation of Thelemites, admires something in the spirit of Crowley rather than the word. He could be a interesting writer but as is often the case, the present day re-working of his material is often easier to follow and less peppered by some of Crowley's offensive cultural baggage. Writers such as Jan Fries in Visual Magick and Jack Parsons in Freedom is a Two Edged Sword, seem to have a better understanding of the magical philosophy for which Crowley was a conduit. However, you will undoubted want to make your own mind up in this, so apart from biography and if you have the stamina his massive autobiography, the following are Crowley's principle works.
OTO This stands for Ordo Templi Orientis (Order of the Eastern Temple). A magical order, based on eastern eroto-gnostic techniques, some derived from Tantrism. Existed, long before Crowley came on the scene but soon became the principle vehicle for his magical work. Has undergone a big revival over the last ten years. Unfortunately, split into several rival tendencies following the death of Crowley's successor, Karl Germer. In England there are two main groups claiming title to Crowley's mantle: In other parts of Europe and the world, other OTOs exist and can claim priority.
