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 Sometimes the legend is greater than
the reality.
In the case of Aleister Crowley, the truth of that statement is a
testament to the magnitude of the legend, since the reality is pretty
remarkable.
A study in contradictions, Crowley
was a pioneering mountain climber, a pioneering homoerotic poet, a pioneering
ritual magician, a heroin addict (not so pioneering), a sleazy womanizer, a
closet homosexual, a vocal feminist, a racist, a German collaborator, a
British secret agent, a civil rights advocate, a talented amateur artist, a
legitimately profound mystic and an infuriating charlatan.
But was he the wickedest man on Earth? Ehhhhh... It's kind of tough to
compete with Adolf
Hitler or Idi Amin,
you know?
Born in England
in 1875 with the name "Edward Alexander," Crowley
burst into the world with a bad attitude during the most repressed period in
the repressed history of the most repressed nation in the world.
For several years, young Crowley
grudgingly went along with the program, idolizing his father, a preacher and
pamphleteer for an Protestant evangelical sect that made the Victorian era's
repression look positively libertine.
But his father died when Crowley
was a pre-teen. The trauma of loss combined with a disagreeable stepfather
and a surge of pubescent hormones to unleash the "Great
Beast" on the world.
Rotting
Poetry or Just Rotten?
 Crowley
was a sickly child, and his stepfather introduced him to the outdoors in an
effort to build his health. As a Cambridge
undergraduate, this interest expanded to mountaineering. He took part in an
early historic, record-breaking attempt to scale K2 in
the Himalayas, among other expeditions, where he
developed a reputation for sadistically abusing the local help (which he
later justified in that patronizing, racist colonial manner that made the
British so beloved around the world). He also developed a reputation for
unreliability, and his mountain treks were marred by a couple of ugly
incidents in which people died.
At Cambridge, Crowley
also discovered that he was gay. This realization didn't sit well with the
Beast, who in a lifetime of hedonism and debauchery never quite managed to
shake off the shame that his early upbringing instilled in him. He kept his
homosexual adventuring a carefully guarded secret for most of his life,
overcompensating with a pattern of continual womanizing that was also shaped
in part by his burgeoning philosophical beliefs.
But young Crowley's shame
didn't stop him from becoming a prolific author of pioneering homoerotic
poetry, cleverly disguised in metaphors and oblique verbiage such as the
following excerpt from the cryptically named collection "White
Stains" (Subtle!):
Touch me; I shudder and my lips turn back
Over my shoulder if so be that thus
My mouth may find thy mouth, if aught there lack
To thy desire, til love is one with us.
"White Stains," which alone would be enough to distinguish Crowley's
name for posterity, was privately published under a pseudonym in 1898 and
almost immediately banned. Legend has it that the covers on the original
printing of 100 copies were adorned with white stains issued from the loins
of the Beast himself. Most copies were eventually destroyed by British
authorities, due to its content, which included odes to homosexuality, pedophilia,
Bestiality and necrophiliac cannibalism:
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When thy warm sweat should leave me cold,
And my worn soul find out no bliss
In the obscenities I kiss,
And the things shameful that I hold.
My nostrils sniff the luxury
Of flesh decaying, bowels torn
Of festive worms, like Venus, born
Of entrails foaming like the sea.
Yea, thou art dead. Thy buttocks now
Are swan-soft, and thou sweatest not;
And hast a strange desire begot
In me, to lick thy bloody brow;
To gnaw thy hollow cheeks, and pull
Thy lustful tongue from out it's sheath;
To wallow in the bowels of death,
And rip thy belly, and fill full
My hands with all putridities;
To chew thy dainty testicles;
To revel with the worms in Hell's
Delight in such obscenities;
To pour within thine heart the seed
Mingled with poisonous discharge
From a swollen gland, inflamed and large
With gonorrhoea's delicious breed;
To probe thy belly, and to drink
The godless fluids, and the pool
Of rank putrescence from the stool
Thy hanged corpse gave, whose luscious stink
Excites these songs sublime. The rod
Gains new desire; dive, howl, cling, suck,
Rave, shreik, and chew; excite the fuck,
Hold me, I come! I'm dead! My God!
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When he wasn't busy engaging in adolescent gross-outs, Crowley's
less exotic poetry was considered noteworthy, if not inspired.
 Having, um, conquered the worlds of
mountaineering and literature, Crowley
found his attention increasingly turning to matters spiritual. Through his
mountaineering contacts, Crowley
made contact with members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, an occult
secret society. The Golden Dawn was an offshoot of the Freemasons,
borrowing liberally from that order's initiation practices and layering on a
hodge-podge of mysticism and ritual magic borrowed from a wide variety of
influences.
Crowley was never known to
play well with others, and he didn't play well with his fellow Golden Dawn
members. Crowley at first
befriended the leader of the Golden Dawn, MacGregor Mathers, then later
turned on him, a pattern which would repeat itself endlessly through Crowley's
life.
After a series of petty melodramas, Crowley
was expelled from the Golden Dawn after about two years. He engaged in a
series of "magical battles" with Mathers, who left the order in
disgrace after it was discovered (shockingly) that he had forged the
"ancient" texts the sect was based on. The magical battles lacked
the kind of Hollywood flair you'd like to see, with Crowley
and Mathers being the only actual witnesses to the workings of the conflict,
which apparently involved a lot of summoning and dispatching of demons and
the like.
Over the next several years, Crowley
continued his spiritual explorations while traveling the world and engaging
in the occasional mountaineering expedition. His ideas about magic and
mysticism began to congeal. He married Rose Kelly, the sister of a friend, in
1893, and the two traveled together.
With Rose in tow, the most significant period of Crowley's
life was upon him. During a museum visit in Egypt,
Rose found herself drawn to an ancient Egyptian artifact with the exhibit
number 666, which depicted the Eygptian deities Hadit and Ra-Hoor-Khuit.
Shortly after this encounter, Rose was overcome by the spirit of an entity
known as Aiwass, who dictated "The Book of the Law" to Crowley
over the course of three days.
Whether mystically transmitted or an act of creative excess, the Book of the
Law is a remarkable document. In cryptic and poetic terms, the book lays out
a kind of scriptural framework for a spiritual path called Thelema, the Greek
word for "will." The most famous line in the book, while derivative
of previous spiritual writings, would forever be associated with Crowley:
"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law."
With these 11 words, the course of Crowley's
life was set.
Complex
Messiah
 The Book of the Law is heavy on poetry, but
light on theology. It generally encourages a libertine approach to life, the
use of "strange drugs" and various obscure adjurations like
"Let my servants be few & secret" and "Choose ye an
island!"
Crowley would maintain throughout his life that "Do what thou
wilt" was not intended as a blanket permission for all sorts of depraved
behavior (yeah, right), but rather an instruction that people should learn
and discover their "true wills," the important works and desires of
their lives, and follow through on them.
Despite a mile-wide streak of self-aggrandizement, Crowley
never attempted to claim authorship of the Book of the Law. He steadfastly
maintained it had come from beyond and that his role was strictly that of
interpreter. However, he did go so far as to designate himself as the only
person worthy of interpreting the book, and he expected his followers (such
as they were) to treat his views as seriously as Catholics treat a load of papal bull.
Crowley believed the transmission of the Book of the Law signaled the
imminent arrival of the Aeon of Horus, basically a new era in the evolution
of humanity and religion in which the law of Thelema ("do what thou
wilt") would be the prevailing system of belief.
A few years later, Crowley
formed a new magical order, his first effort to put the teachings of Thelema
before the public. The Astrum Argentium (Silver Star) attracted some interest
in its early stages, but never really caught on as broadly as, say, Mormonism. The
A.A.'s primary claim to fame was the publication of Crowley's
Equinox.
The Equinox was a book-length periodical, published irregularly over the
years, in which Crowley and
affiliated individuals wrote an exhaustive and often brilliant updating of
traditional magical and occult practices.
The Equinox debuted with a bang by publishing several secret texts of the
Golden Dawn, which he had sworn a solemn and reprisal-laden oath to protect.
The move finalized his rancorous split with the group, infuriating its
remaining members (who already hated him), such as the poet William Butler
Yeats and Arthur Edward Waite (who achieved widespread fame for his Tarot studies).
The A.A. enjoyed some modest success, and continues to this day, but Crowley's
attention span wasn't exactly renowned as heroic. He moved on, leaving his
wife, the A.A. and the Equinox behind.
Crowley spent years traveling
the world and studying esoteric systems, creating a body work which has never
really gotten the credit it deserved. He wrote landmark analyses and
translations of ancient texts about yoga, mediation and the I-Ching.
Crowley also studied the
interrelation of magical and spiritual systems around the world, borrowing
liberally from extremely diverse sources and he continued to build Thelema in
an almost coherent religion.
Thelema evolved along the lines of the ceremonial magic traditions which
had first shaped Crowley's thinking, namely rituals and procedures designed
to elevate spiritual aspirants in both power and wisdom via astral
projection, the casting of spells to advance the caster's true will, and the
invocation of various spirits, angels, demons, entities, and/or whatever.
 Crowley
was approached by the Ordo
Templi Orientis, which invited him to take on a leadership role. The OTO
claims to integrate "Freemasonic, Rosicrucian and Illuminist
movements of the 18th and 19th centuries, the crusading Knights
Templar of the middle ages and early Christian Gnosticism and the Pagan
Mystery Schools."
The leader of the OTO was a German named Theodor Reuss, a former Freemason
and Illuminatus. He initiated Crowley
into the sect in 1910 and in 1912 granted the Beast a charter to launch a
British branch of the secret society. Crowley
moved to the United States
in 1914, at the onset of World War I,
setting up shop in New York.
In New York, Crowley
continued recruiting students and began rewriting the charters of the O.T.O.
to better suit his beliefs. Starting from a base structure very similar to
the Freemasons, Crowley added
several significant elements to the OTO's repetoire. He legalized the
initiation of women into its ranks, wrote modernized English-language rituals
for its members, streamlined initiation and degrees to more quickly advance
members through the ranks, and integrated Thelema into the OTO's core mission,
placing the Book of the Law at the center of its teachings.
In the early 1920s, Crowley
took control of the O.T.O. under ambiguous circumstances. Reuss allegedly
suffered a stroke in 1920, an assertation which Crowley
used to politick his way to the top of the hierarchy. He was the titular head
of the OTO until his death in 1947.
One of Crowley's most-lasting
(but entirely unintended) contributions to the world of religion came from
one of the OTO's American branches, led by self-proclaimed "Antichrist Superstar"
Jack
Parsons. Parsons ran a California OTO lodge that attracted a young L. Ron
Hubbard as an aspirant. According to OTO lore and various
biographies, Hubbard allegedly joined the group and engaged in an affair with
Parsons' mistress (with Parsons' knowledge).
Knowing a good thing when he saw it, Hubbard made off with the girl, a
substantial amount of Parsons' cash (allegedly), and several major tenets of
Thelema, which he re-metaphorized into the big-budget, George-Lucas-on-crack,
metaphysical framework of Scientology
(allegedly), a religious enterprise (allegedly) renowned for its (alleged)
litigiousness (allegedly, allegedly, allegedly).
In later years, Hubbard would (allegedly) claim Crowley
was a "good friend" but Crowley's
biographers do not record a meeting between the two.
House
of Horrors
Crowley's
world travels are too voluminous to detail here; he managed to wear out his
welcome in country after country. But a notable stop on his itinerary was the
small Sicilian island town of Cefalu,
one of the more colorful periods of Crowley's
life.
With his mistress of the moment, Crowley set up shop in a house in Cefalu
which he dubbed the "Abbey of Thelema." He imagined it as a
headquarters from which the doctrines of Thelema would be spread throughout
the world. In practice, it was somewhat less impressive.
For three years, Crowley and a motley assortment of followers set up shop
in the Abbey, which visitors described as a hygienic nightmare, rife with the
stink of shit. Crowley adorned the walls with often grotesque murals and
paintings of various occult subjects. Several accounts described the
sacrifice of small animals in magic rituals, and Crowley often set out to
systematically degrade visiting pupils (not least with his sexual
attentions).
The truth was bad enough, but once the British tabloids caught wind of
these tales, they decided the stories some embellishment. The "wickedest
man in the world" appellation which made Crowley famous came from the
headlines on these stories of murder, black magic, the live sacrifice of
babies, bestiality and wanton seduction. Crowley somehow managed to revel in
the tales while at the same time suing for libel in the hopes of scoring some
easy cash.
Aleister
Crowley, Secret Agent
It was in New York that Crowley really began to cement his
reputation as an evil guy. In what he would later claim was an act of
sabotage, Crowley wrote pro-German propaganda for a New York publisher which,
he explained, was intended to hurt the Germans by making them look ridiculous
for having such bad propaganda written for them. In one stroke, he turned his
bad prose and treasonous leanings into a victory for freedom and democracy.
There is no proof as to whether Crowley was a) sincerely trying to
sabotage the Germans and b) working for British intelligence in this effort,
as he claimed. Crowley counted some fairly significant British military
figures among his students. "It could have happened" is about as
far as you can reasonably go.
Crowley's flirtation with Aryan supremacy didn't end with WW I, however.
During World War II,
a member of the OTO wrote to Adolf Hitler
on behalf on Crowley, suggesting that Thelema would be a dandy choice as the
national religion of the Third
Reich. His German disciple tried to give Hitler a copy of the Book of the
Law. It has never been proved that such a thing happened. We must resort once
more to "It could have happened."
Conspiracy lovers enjoy few things more than a good Crowley-Nazi story,
and there are plenty of them in circulation, but little evidence any of them
actually ever happened. Claims of meetings between der Furher and der Beast
and of Nazi black magic rituals appear to have been greatly exaggerated.
Decline
and Fall
 After squandering his
considerable inheritance on sex, drugs and vanity publishing (mostly the
latter), Crowley took to supporting himself through an innovative pattern of
publishing and relationships.
Firmly ensconced in his role as the most evil man in the world, Crowley
published a few tell-all autobiographical tale such as his notorious
"Confessions" and "Diary of a Drug Fiend." The problem
with this method of self-sufficiency was that his books were banned almost as
quickly as they could be printed, which made royalties somewhat problematic,
even though the advances were nice.
Given his chronic failure to make in publishing, the Beast had to find
other sources of incomes. He took to seducing women of moderate to
substantial means, while recruiting male students who could do the actual
work of promoting the Beast's religious and literary aspirations. The male
students were as likely to become the object of Crowley's amorous attentions
as the mistresses.
Invariably, Crowley tired of the women and the men tired of him, but
rinse, lather and repeat enough times, and pretty soon you've managed to
support yourself for a lifetime.
Crowley's health declined into the 1930s and '40s, in no small part due to
a lifelong heroin habit. After his homosexuality, the only other thing that
ever really shamed Crowley was his inability to quit the drug, despite
repeated attempts. His health declining, the Beast shambled off to spend his
final days mostly alone, at a boarding house in his native England.
On December 1, 1947, with a parting curse on the doctor who refused to
prescribe him any more heroin, Crowley passed on to the great unknown. Depending
on how many of the extravagant claims made about the Beast (by himself and
others) you want to believe, feel free to make your own calculations about
where his karma deposited him on December 2.
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