Aleister Crowley: The Wickedest Man In The World
“I had read in some book or other that the most favorable name for becoming famous was one consisting of a dactyl followed by a spondee, as at the end of a hexameter: like Jeremy Taylor. Aleister Crowley fulfilled these conditions and Aleister is the Gaelic form of Alexander. To adopt it would satisfy my romantic ideals.”
I think it is quite telling of his character that the two reasons he changed his name were to aquire fame and because he couldn't stand the name his mum called him. Also at the age of 20, the newly named Aleister attended Trinity College in Cambridge. Here he found himself to be really good at chess and have a keen interest in mountaineering. Then, his life began to lean more towards the magical when in 1897 he briefly fell ill with a fever through which he realised that human pursuits were short lasting and that only the magical tradition was constant.
Aleister was also fond of poetry and wrote a number of works which he used his inheritance to publish. This wealth also allowed for his extensive travels around the world. He left Cambridge without a degree in 1898 and, during November of the same year, he became forever entangled with the London temple of the Hermetic order of the Golden Dawn. The Golden Dawn was a quasi-secret society founded ten years earlier in 1888. Crowley assumed the name Perdurabo, which means 'I will endure', while within the order. He also impressed one of the founders, Samuel Liddell Mathers. Another member, William Butler Yeats, was not so pleased with Crowley and judged him to be insane.
Mathers, as one of the founders of the order, worked to revive obscure methods of evoking your guardian angel. As Crowley wanted to try this, during 1899 he secluded himself at Boleskine House, which sits beside Loch Ness. However, despite impressing one founder, other high members of the Golden Dawn were not at all pleased with Crowley's lifestyle. They had heard about his bisexuality, and once Crowley started to defy Mathers the Golden Dawn prevented him from advancing through the ranks. Crowley then left the Golden Dawn and travelled to Mexico.
Extensive travels
During 1900, Crowley was joined in Mexico by Oscar Eckenstein, an experienced mountain climber. During their time together, Eckenstein taught Crowley about concentration and visualisation. Even after leaving the Golden Dawn, Crowley still wanted to advance through their grades of magical attainment and so attempted to do this on his own. He undertook magical evocation in the style of John Dee and Edward Kelly, the two men who 'discovered' Enochian: the language of the angels.
Next Crowley travelled to Asia where he practiced raja yoga, a Hindu meditation tradition. He also practiced hatha yoga. Then, in 1902, Crowley and Eckenstein undertook the first attempt to scale Chogo Ri, also known as K-2, the world's second highest peak. In November of the same year, Crowley went back to Europe and met Gerald Kelly in Paris, who then introduced him to her widowed sister Rose Edith Skerrett; the woman who would become his first wife. At first it was a marriage of convenience as Rose was set for an arranged marriage, but then they both fell in love for real. They married in 1903, and in 1904 ventured to Cairo. In April of that year, Rose had involuntary trances and urged Crowley to prepare for supernatural communications.
It is here that Crowley wrote the 'Liber Legis', also known as the 'Book of The Law', which was allegedly dictated to him by the voice of Aiwaz, or Aiwass, the personal messenger of the Egyptian god Horus. It was also signed by the pharaonic priest Ankh-f-n-khonsu, someone who Crowley later claimed to be the reincarnation of. The Book of The Law served as a new piece of religious scripture which announced a new aeon and that Christianity would yield to a new spiritual movement. Crowley's job was to act as a prophet and preach it's basic principle which came to be known as the law of Thelema: 'Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law'. Apparently this was relayed to him by the Egyptian goddess Nuit.
Rose then gave birth to a daughter called Lilith at Boleskine, and in the May of 1905 Crowley resumed his travels. He went on a Himalayan expedition to climb Kanchenjunga, the world's third highest peak. During this expedition, an avalanche occured which killed four of his colleagues. It's said that he neither helped them when he heard their cries for help, or mourned them afterwards, as he had previously advised them not to take their planned route. He brought his wife and daughter to India, and then he ventured across South China, before finally returning to Britain. His daughter died of typhoid in 1906 while in Burma. He blamed Rose by saying she was negligent, even though Lilith had died from an illness. Rose had become an alcoholic, and after giving birth to two more daughters, and then divorcing Crowley in 1909, Rose was committed to an institution in 1911.
Birth of a new religion
Crowley resumed his occult practices in 1909 and begun recruiting for his own order, which he called the Argenteum Astrum. This translated to the Silver Star. His order included the Golden Dawn's rituals, some of which he even wrote about in his journal titled 'The Equinox'. Mathers, one founder of the Golden Dawn who had been impressed by Crowley, didn't approve of this at all as Crowley was openly sharing their secrets. Mathers took Crowley to court claiming that what Crowley was doing was plagiarism, however Crowley won. Crowley then met Victor Newbury, a young poet, and the two combined magical and homosexual pursuits to produce a form of sex magic.
During the first World War, Crowley lived in America where he practiced sex rituals and wrote for a pro-German newspaper called 'The Fatherland'. In 1920, he moved to Cefalu, in Sicily, where he rented a farmhouse. He called it the abbey of Thelemaxand used it as his church to gather followers and advance the new aeon. However, this only lasted a few years as in 1923 the Italian government, led by Mussolini, expelled Crowley and his Thelemites following the mysterious death of a young Englishman at the abbey. Crowley was then accused of various crimes and sins, including allegedly consuming the blood of a cat. Newspapers called him the 'wickedest man in the world' and a 'master of darkness'. It must have been extreme if Mussolini, the man who would later ally Italy with Hitler's Nazi Germany, banned Crowled from the country.
Crowley journeyed to Berlin in 1929 and married a Nicaraguan called Maria Teresa Ferrari De Mirador, but they were soon divorced. Crowely moved back to England during the 1930's. Aleister Crowley died at the age of 72 on the 1st of December 1947 as a penniless heroin addict in Hastings. He died of chronic bronchitis and heart congestion. The only other thing of note about Crowley was that with Mathers, he assisted in the translation of the 'Ars Goeta', also known as the Lesser Key of Solomon. This grimoire is one of the two best known, with the other being the 'Clavicula Salomonis' aka the Key of Solomon. These grimoires detail black magic rituals and list the names of demons along with their sigils. Ones listed which you may have heard of in horror media are 'Asmodeus', 'Valac', and 'Astaroth'.
As mentioned earlier, Aleister Crowley has been featured in pop culture. His image appears on the cover of the Beatles' 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' album, his motto 'do what thou wilt' is on Led Zeppelin's 'Led Zeppelin III' vinyl, David Bowie references him in the lyrics to 'Quicksand', and Ozzy Osbourne has a whole song called 'Mr. Crowley'. The led Zeppelin guitarist, Jimmy Page, even bought Boleskine House in 1970. Aleister Crowley has also been portrayed in the fictional DC TV series 'Pennyworth', which is about Batman's butler Alfred, plus a prominent demonic character in the CW TV series 'Supernatural' is named Crowley and has connections to Scotland, a likely nod to the 'wickedest man in the world'.
My thoughts
As mentioned earlier, I'm sure you've got to be a special kind of twisted to be banned from a country which is being run by someone who would ally with Adolf Hitler. However, before researching Crowley for this post I did expect to find more of a trail of sacrifices than what I've written about. I expected far more deaths than a cat, a man in Sicily, and four mountain climbers; and only one of those was down to a potential ritualistic sacrifice. Part of me wonders if Aleister Crowley truly was evil, and displayed such tendencies beyond killing the cat in his youth, or if the world around him labelled him as evil due to his bisexuality and will to do as he pleased in the world. Yes, it's psychopathic to kill your pet cat and to leave your colleagues to die in an avalanche, but these aren't why the world called him evil.
Now, there could be stuff I've not found out and don't know. People may not want to write about the nastier things Crowley may have done, but, I've looked through a number of websites, some of which go very in depth with his life, and none mention any further deaths. This leads me to wonder if he was predominantly hated and marked as evil because of his bisexuality. I'm going to see if I can find out more regarding why people thought he was evil, for instance I know there is possibly an incident which happened in Carn Cottage, Cornwall, but none of my used sources have mentioned this. I will definitely do a follow up post regarding the cottage, and if I find anything more sinister about Crowley's history then I will do another post detailing that. For this post, I have to say he does seem to have shown psychopathic or sociopathic traits, but aside from that he just seemed like someone that wanted to live his life as he pleased. You could argue he was insane due to the religion he created, but every religion more-or-less started with one man saying he heard the voice of God.
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