Aleister Crowley
(born October 12, 1875,
Royal Leamington Spa
, England?died December 1, 1947, Hastings) was a British occultist, writer, and mountaineer, who was a practitioner of “
magick” (as he spelled it) and called himself the
Beast 666
. He was denounced in his own time for his
decadent
lifestyle and had few followers, but he became a cult figure after his death.
Crowley’s father was an heir to a brewing fortune who became an evangelist for the
Plymouth Brethren
, a
Nonconformist
religious denomination. The younger Crowley, however, formed an
aversion
to
Christianity
early in life. As a student at
Trinity College
,
University of Cambridge
, he began to use the name Aleister and gained a reputation for skill at
chess
. In 1898 he left the university without taking a degree. His own inheritance left him free to travel widely and to arrange for the publication of his writings. His first book of poetry appeared in 1898, and numerous books followed.
As a mountaineer, Crowley honed his skills on cliffs in Great Britain before taking part in pioneering attempts to climb Earth’s second- and third-highest mountains,
K2
and
Kanchenjunga
. The K2
expedition
of 1902 reached an elevation of 18,600 feet (5,670 metres), while the Kanchenjunga expedition three years later was marred by tragedy when four of Crowley’s fellow climbers were killed in an
avalanche
. It was said that Crowley, who had advised them against taking the fatal route, ignored cries for help from the survivors of the accident.
Like many other religious skeptics of the 19th century, Crowley became interested in
occultism
. In 1898 he joined the
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, an organization derived from the
Rosicrucians
. One of Crowley’s rivals within the London Golden Dawn group was the poet
William Butler Yeats
. On a visit to Egypt in 1904, Crowley reported mystical experiences and wrote
The Book of the Law
, a
prose poem
which he claimed had been dictated to him by a discarnate being called Aiwass. In it he formulated his most famous teaching: “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.” The
sentiment
was not new?the French author
Francois Rabelais
had expressed it more than 300 years earlier in
Gargantua and Pantagruel
?but Crowley made it the basis of a new
religion
he called
Thelema,
thel?ma
being the Greek word for “will.”
The Book of the Law
was accepted as scripture by the Ordo Templi Orientis, a mystical group of German origin. In about 1907 Crowley founded his own order, A∴A∴, using initials that stood for the Latin words for “silver star.” Starting in 1909 he
disseminated
his teachings in the periodical
The Equinox
. His assistant in the early years of this endeavour was
J.F.C. Fuller
, later a well-known military strategist and historian.
During
World War I
Crowley resided in the
United States
, where he contributed to the pro-German newspaper
The Fatherland
. After the war he moved to
Cefalu
, on the Italian island of
Sicily
, where he converted a house into a sanctuary he called the Abbey of Thelema. During this time he wrote
The Diary of a Drug Fiend
(1922), which was published as a novel but was said to have been based on personal experience. The death of a young follower in Sicily, allegedly after participating in sacrilegious rituals, led to denunciations of Crowley in the British popular press as the “wickedest man in the world” and to his expulsion from Italy in 1923. Having exhausted his inheritance on travel and extravagances, Crowley moved back to
England
in the early 1930s. His last notable achievement was the publication of
The Book of Thoth
(1944), in which he interpreted a new
tarot
card deck, called the Thoth, that he had designed in collaboration with the artist Frieda Harris.
Crowley died in poverty and obscurity in an English rooming house in 1947, but after his death he became a figure of fascination in popular
culture
. The
Beatles
put his picture on the
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
album cover.
Led Zeppelin
guitarist
Jimmy Page
purchased a house previously owned by Crowley near
Loch Ness
in Scotland.
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