Aleister Crowley, The Great Beast
Aleister Crowley was born October 12th, 1875 at 36 Clarendon Square, Leamington, Warwickshire, England as Edward Alexander Crowley into a wealthy and religious family at the height of the Victorian era. Crowley despised and rebelled against his family at every turn, even renaming himself 'Aleister' to avoid sharing the same first name as his father, who passed away when Crowley was 11.
Like many naughty young boys, Aleister entertained himself through several activities, notably creating a "homemade firework" with which he nearly killed himself, as well as torturing a cat in several horrible ways to test the "nine lives" theory. He dispensed of his virginity at age 14 with the help of a maid. At 17, he contracted gonorrhea with the help of a street walker.
Crowley went on to attend Cambridge University, where he apparently studied alpine climbing, living in the manner of the privileged aristocracy and having a great deal of sex with both men and women. He also began working in the Diplomatic Service, but as Crowley himself said "the fame of an ambassador rarely outlives a century", and Crowley wished to make a greater imprint on the world.
Having had this epiphany, he began searching for more lasting pursuits and in 1898, at age 23, Crowley began his path of magical enlightenment by joining The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Led by Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers other members included such notables such as William Butler Yeats, Maud Gonne, Constance Wilde, (the wife of Oscar Wilde), Arthur Machen, Moina Bergson, Arthur Edward Waite, Florence Farr, Algernon Blackwood and possibly, though records for their membership are shaky, Sax Rohmer and Bram Stoker.
The Golden Dawn's contribution to the Western Magical Tradition is definitely worth noting, because it was their synthesis of the Kabbalah, alchemy, tarot, astrology, divination, numerology, Masonic symbolism, and ritual magic into one coherent and logical system which led them to influence countless occult organizations to come. Mathers adapted the system of magic outlined by Eliphas Levi, and through Levi, the spiritual ancestry of the Golden Dawn was traced to the Rosicrucian Brotherhood and from there, through the Kabbalah to Ancient Egypt. Mathers' authority was held in part by his link to the "Secret Chiefs", the "true leaders" of the Order, with whom Mathers could communicate with only through metaphysical means.
Adopting the magical name Frater 'Perdurabo', Latin for "I Will Endure", Crowley advanced quickly through the ranks of the Golden Dawn, initially studying under Alan Bennett, who was Mathers' spiritual heir. Bennett left England in 1899 for health reasons, moving to Ceylon, what it now Sri Lanka, where he joined a buddhist monastery. Unfortunately, Crowley, left to his own devices, managed to severely fragment the order through sheer force of personality. In 1900, he completed the studies necessary in order to obtain the rank of Adeptus Minor, however the London controllers of the Order, disapproving of Crowley's homosexual dabblings, refused to advance him. Crowley travelled to Paris, where Mathers himself performed the ceremony, which only served to further outrage the London members.
The ensuing uproar caused several of the London members to resign, and Mathers was eventually expelled from the Order, specifically on the grounds that he had put its authority into jeopardy by revealing his suspicions that the founding documents linking them to an older occult order in Germany had been forged by another member (which they had been). Crowley attempted to obtain possession of the Order's property on behalf of Mathers, interrupting one of their rituals in full Highland regalia, wearing a black hood. As with any serious dispute between occultists, astral attacks ensued. Crowley reported that the rebels directed hostile magic against him as evidenced by the fact that his rubber raincoat burst spontaneously into flames and he found himself in a "furious temper" for no reason, so extreme that horses ran away in fear at the sight of him. In the end, however, it was the police who resolved the matter.
Crowley was expelled from the Golden Dawn, only 2 years after joining, chiefly through the efforts of William Butler Yeats, who reportedly did not approve of Crowley's magical methods.
Crowley, understandably tired of all the fighting, chose to travel the world, visiting Mexico, India, France, Ceylon, where he reunited with Alan Bennett and studied Yoga. He also married Rose Kelly, later revealed to be clairvoyant, travelling with her to Egypt.
In fact it was in Egypt, in March of 1904, that Crowley had the most important experience of his life. Crowley had been trying for several years to contact his Holy Guardian Angel using the methods described in The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage with no success. However it was in Cairo that Crowley finally encountered an entity known as Aiwass, whom Crowley believed was his Holy Guardian Angel.
According to Crowley's own account, while (unsuccessfully) trying to summon sylphs for his wife's amusement, she began to receive a very powerful psychic message from the Ancient Egyptian god Horus.
Skeptical of his wife's sudden clairvoyancy, Crowley demanded answers to a series of questions from her, of which she had no possible prior knowledge. Upon answering all things correctly, he took her to a museum, and after passing several images of Horus (which the still skeptical Crowley reports, he "noted with silent glee"), she pointed across the room to a stele which could not be clearly seen from where they stood. When they examined the stele (now referred to as the Stele of Revealing, it was painted with the image of Horus, and to Crowley's further conviction, it was labelled as item number 666 in the museum catalog.
Crowley had himself adopted 666 as his personal moniker in rebellion to his religious upbringing many years before. After invoking Horus, Crowley made his fateful breakthrough. For three days Crowley took dictation from the entity identifying itself as Aiwass, the resulting text, Liber AL vel Legis, became what is now known as The Book of the Law.
This book was to become the central core of Crowley's philosophy. Crowley was named the Prophet of a New Aeon which would end the Age of Osiris and usher in the Age of Horus, a signal that a new era had begun for mankind, and that the old religions were to be swept aside.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The 3 key philosophical ideas outlined in the book are:
Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law
Love Is The Law, Love Under Will
Every Man And Every Woman Is A Star
Interpretation of what "Do What Thou Wilt..." in contemporary times seems to have deteriorated into "do whatever you want...", however it seems clear that the meaning was more along the lines of 'doing that which your higher self dictates'. The higher self, or "Will" is present in all of enlightened people. In order to follow your "Will", one must know oneself. And self knowledge is the central basis of most successful philosophies.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After the encounter with Aiwass, in typical grandiose fashion, Mathers received a letter announcing that the Equinox of the Gods had come, and that Crowley had forged a new link with the Secret Chiefs, thus making him the supreme magical authority. This naturally resulted in a magical duel, which Crowley seems to have eventually won.
According to Crowley, Mathers reportedly sent one of his followers, a vampire, to him. She appeared to him in the guise of a "young woman of bewitching beauty", but was able to defeat her, and she was "transformed into hag of sixty, bent and decrepit". Mathers then sent a "current of evil" which struck Crowley's bloodhounds dead and caused his servants to fall ill. Crowley retaliated by summoning up the forces of the demon Beelzebub and his 49 attendant fiends. Following this effort, Mathers' magical assaults on Crowley ceased. Years later, when Mathers passed away of influenza, many felt that Crowley had murdered him with magic.
It is not clear why shortly after his encounter with Aiwass and his battle with Mathers, Crowley seems to have lost interest in things magical for several years. In 1905, he was part of an ill-fated expedition to climb a Himalayan mountain peak, in which several members of the party died. He spent several years travelling through China, Canada and the United States, with and without his wife and child. It was not until his return from the United States that he found out that his daughter Lola Zaza had died from typhus in Rangoon, India.
In 1907, Crowley formed the Argenteum Astrum, the Order of the Silver Star, a magical organization centered around his re-discovered Book of the Law manuscript. In 1909 he began publishing the Equinox, a biannual publication arriving on the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, the official organ of the A:. A:., the majority of the writing contributed by Crowley himself.
In 1909, Crowley divorced his wife, on the grounds of her alcoholism. The divorce enabled Crowley to indulge in his passions for magick, drugs, and women unchecked by the constraints of married life.
It might be interesting to note at this point that Crowley believed himself to be the reincarnation of the occultist Eliphas Levi who died the same year that Crowley was born. He had also determined that his past lives had included Count Cagliostro, an 18th century occultist, founder of 'Egyptian Rite Masonry', Alexander VI, the notorious Borgia Pope, and Edward Kelley (who along with John Dee were the Elizabethan court magicians who invented, err, deciphered Enochian, the language of the angels.)
In 1910, Crowley was contacted by the head of a German magical order known as the Ordo Templi Orientis, often referred to as the OTO, (alternately translated as either "the Order of the Templars of the East" and "the Order of the Temple of the Orient" in a variety of sources.) The OTO accused Crowley of having published the secret of their IXth degree. Crowley was mystified until a conversation revealed that a passage he published led the OTO to assume that Crowley was involved in sex magick which they used in their rituals. He join the order shortly thereafter, and in 1912, became the head of the English speaking branch of the Order.
In 1916, while living near Bristol, New Hampshire Crowley promoted himself to the rank of Magus through a ceremony of his own devising. According to Richard Cavendish, in History of Magic and The Powers of Evil in Western Religion, Magic, and Folk Belief (both currently out of print), this involved baptizing a toad as Jesus of Nazareth, then crucifying it. I've been chided by several acquaintances who are involved with the OTO for citing this "utter fabrication".
Crowley waited out the first World War in the United States, publishing a fair amount of Anti-British propaganda. He later claimed that the writing done supporting the German side was done satirically, however this did little to improve his already festering public image.
After the war, Crowley had a daughter, Poupee, with Leah Hirsig (AKA The Scarlet Woman), and in 1920 he set up the notorious Abbey of Thelema in Sicily.
The Abbey, however, was an "unsanitary hovel". Crowley's addiction to both heroin and cocaine raged out of control. The Abbey was the setting for Diary of a Drug Fiend, Crowley's hopeful novel about a couple struggling to free themselves of their drug addiction. Sadly, the truth was much more grim. Poupee died there, while Crowley was travelling between London, Paris and the Abbey. It was when one of the Crowley's undergraduates Raoul Loveday died from drinking impure water, that the Abbey's fate was finally sealed. Loveday's wife Betty May went back to England and sold her story to the London tabloid newspaper The Sunday Express.
The papers were filled with reports of black magic rituals and other scandalous acts allegedly performed at the Abbey. These reports came during the same time as the rise of the Mussolini regime and Crowley was quickly expelled from Sicily in 1923.
In 1925 he was elected World Head of the O.T.O., and 1929 saw the publication of his seminal work Magick: In Theory and in Practice.
In 1955, Kenneth Anger shot the documentary Thelema Abbey at the Abbey, which had been exorcised after Crowley's departure, painstakingly exposing the whitewashed walls to reveal paintings and other physical evidence of Crowley's occult activities.
After his expulsion from Italy, Crowley's life took a turn for the worse. His reputation as "The Wickedest Man In The World" was now more than ever playing against him. Unable to find a reliable publisher for his writing, or for that matter, a reliable place of residence, he spent the remaining years as a wanderer, still addicted to heroin, desperately in need of both disciples and money.
Aleister Crowley died December 1st, 1947 at age 72. His last words are often reported to be "I am perplexed", though since he died alone, this is patently false.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The man who put the 'k' in Magick
There seems to be some confusion as to Crowley's spelling of the word magic. According to Cavendish, the addition of the letter 'k' by Crowley represented the sexual aspects of his magical studies, the letter 'k' being the first letter of kteis which is the Greek word for female genitalia. However I have been told that reasons for the spelling change were purely numerological by a member of the OTO. Either reason seems likely and acceptable. What is not acceptable is the profusion of words mispelled in some sort of pseudo-appropriation of the power of the word magick. I have noticed several writers freely using the word 'magickian', which I am willing to tolerate. A reprehensible abuse of this is certainly 'astrologickal' which I believe was repeatedly used in a book published by Llewellyn.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thelema
Thelema is Greek for "The Will". Crowley used the word Thelema to represent his most important concept, the statement "Do As Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law". Crowley's entire religion, (Crowleyanity as it sometimes referred to by some cynical authors) liberally mixes elements of Christianity, Gnosticism and the Masons into its magickal rituals. It's hard to conceive how mildly Crowley and his followers would have been received if they were judged according to our contemporary standards. Thelemites, those who follow the laws of Thelema, often greet one another with the shorthand "93", which is the numerical value of the phrase "Love Is The Law, Love Under Will", the proper response to the "Do As Thou Wilt..." phrase.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subcultural Relevance
Aleister Crowley may seem, to the uninitiated, like an unmitigated egomaniac, a charlatan, a mad man, or worse. It can be argued, even by occultists, that this was indeed the case. However as occultist, Crowley remains unparalleled. How many contemporary practitioners can actually claim to have manifested a lasting change on the world. After all, changing the world around you is what magic is all about, and Aleister Crowley did it better than anyone. To say that Crowley was ahead of his time would be an understatement. Aside from the glamour of his "wickedness" which will always have a certain appeal, his greatest gift was perhaps his ability to reshape the theory of magic from a modern psychological standpoint, refashioning it into a tool for the New Aeon, a contribution that has yet to be matched or exceeded.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Other Sources for Aleister Crowley
It is my will to visit:
The University of Texas, as part of their 20th century manuscript archives in the Harry Ransom Center, has the largest single collection of original Crowley manuscripts, letters, and related documents in the world. All that is required to examine any documents in these collections is a valid state or government issued ID. http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/research/fa/crowley_aleister.html
Probably one of the best sites I've found on Crowley. Tons of links to electronic versions of Crowley's work as well as other websites... http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/1896/crowpage.html
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/1800/stele.htm Another valuable online resource, has the Book of the Law available online.
A link to alternatives.com, over 2 gigs of free archival material on a variety of subjects, including magick, Crowley, etc. Sources include usenet etc. Look under 'religion' to get into the magick archives.
The official internet site for the Ordo Templi Orientis Indexes all the lodges and oases across the country!
http://www.otohq.org
A huge archive of articles published about Crowley... A great resource! http://www.broon.demon.co.uk/media/crowley.htm
A large selection of links devoted to all things Satanic...Check your soul in at the door. Includes some Crowley stuff. http://www.users.wineasy.se/stefanh/satan.htm
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Aleister Crowley Bibliography (in alphabetical order)
AHA! (Being Liber CCXLII)
Book of the Law
Book 4
The Book of Lies
The Book of Thoth
The Book of Thoth : A Short Essay on the Tarot of the Egyptians Being the Equinox Volume III No. V U.S. Games Systems edition
Commentaries on the Holy Books and Other Papers: The Equinox Volume IV, Number 1
The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: Crowley's autohagiography, and by no means a modest one. Crowley was never one to let something like facts get in the way of an interesting story.
Diary of a Drug Fiend
Eight Lectures On Yoga
The Equinox of the Gods
The Goetia: The Lesser Key of Solomon the King: Clavula Salomonis Regis
The Holy Books of Thelema
The Law Is For All: The Authorized Popular Commentary to The Book of the Law
Little Essays Toward Truth
Magick Without Tears
Moonchild
777 and Other Qabalistic Writings of Aleister Crowley
Tarot Divination
Tao Te Ching : Liber CLXVII : The Equinox: Crowley's take on the Chinese mystical classic.
World's Tragedy
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Related Secondary Texts related to Crowley's Work
Magical Diaries of Aleister Crowley: Tunisia 1923
Aleister Crowley and the Practice of the Magical Diary
Enochian World of Aleister Crowley: Enochian Sex Magick
The Equinox: Volume III, #10
The Heart of the Master and Other Papers
The Pathworkings of Aleister Crowley: A Treasure House of Images
The Magick of Thelema: A Handbook of the Rituals of Aleister Crowley Lon Milo Duquette's useful interpretation of Crowley's magickal methods.
Tarot: Mirror of the Soul: Handbook for the Aleister Crowley Tarot Possibly the best secondary source for people using the Thoth deck.
Biographies of Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley Scrapbook A great collection of essays, photographs, newspaper clippings, et cetera revolving around Crowley's life.
The Eye In the Triangle: An Interpretation of Aleister Crowley A biography by Israel Regardie, for many years Crowley's secretary.
The Legacy of the Beast: The Life, Work and Influence of Aleister Crowley
The Legend of Aleister Crowley
Secondary Source Material on Magic
The Grimoire of Armadel Mathers' translation of this ancient manuscript of ceremonial magic.
The Kabbalah Unveiled S.L. MacGregor Mathers' notable work on the Kabbalah.
The Key of Soloman The King (Clavicula Salomonis) Translated by Mathers, this is a faithful rendering of the Key.
The Tarot: A Short Treatise on Reading Cards Mathers short essay on the history of the tarot, using the Marseilles Deck as its example.
The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage
Women of the Golden Dawn: Rebels and Priestesses
The Golden Dawn Scrapbook: The Rise and Fall of a Magical Order A new (9/97), informative and insightful history of the Golden Dawn.
Complete Golden Dawn System of Magic Edited by Israel Regardie, Crowley's successor, this unveils the many of magical methods adopted by the Golden Dawn.
The One Year Manual Regardie's short work on a 12 month, 12 step program to contact your Holy Guardian Angel.
Crowley's Apprentice: The Life and Ideas of Israel Regardie
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Related Ephemera
Thoth Tarot Deck: US Games Edition (Large Size)
Thoth Tarot Deck: US Games Edition (Small Size)
Thoth Tarot Deck: Samuel Weiser Edition, in my opinion the best edition.
Tarot As Your Companion : A Practical Guide to the Rider-Waite and Crowley Thoth Tarot Decks : Hajo Banzhaf & Elisa Hemmerlein (April 2000)
The Crowley Tarot: The Handbook to the Cards: by Akron
Tarot: Mirror of the Soul: Gerd Ziegler
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
