Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) made the practice of magic a way of life. Throughout his 72 years, he was known as the most evil man in the world.
1. Edward Alexander Crowley was born in 1875 in Warwickshire, England. The boy came from a well-to-do Christian family. His father, Edward, got rich from the family brewery and died of cancer when his son was 11. His mother, Bertha, had a terrible relationship with the boy and called him «The Beast»
two. In his youth, he changed his name to Aleister. In 1895, he entered Cambridge University, where he studied philosophy. At the time, he had already started research on esotericism. That’s when rumors surfaced that he was a government spy. Until his death, Crowley visited various countries, such as the Soviet Union and Germany, with mysterious goals.
3. At age 20, his main hobbies were: mysticism, writing erotic poetry, playing chess and climbing mountains. He also frequented brothels and used drugs to reach other spiritual planes. The practice of sex for religious purposes would be a constant in Crowley’s life, who was bisexual and adept at «ménage à trois» and sadomasochism.
4. Crowley began participating in an underground organization, The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. It was there, at the age of 23, that he began his career as a mystic. After a falling out with former members, such as the poet William Butler Yeats, he left the group. But the order inspired several practices he would defend.
5. In 1904, he married Rose Edith Kelly. The couple spent their honeymoon in Egypt, where Aleister came into contact with a spirit called Aiwass, who would have dictated the Book of the Law to him between April 8th and 10th. It is in this work that the most famous motto of the magician is found: “Do what you want”
6. The Aiwass entity would be emissary of an Egyptian god called Hoo-paar-kraat – known in Greece as Harocrates, who takes care of mystical secrets and silence. The Book of Law started Thelema, the religion founded by Crowley, which held that the world passed through several aeons, or spiritual phases.
7. According to Thelema, the first aeon was ruled by a woman. The second, by a man. And the third and actual one by a child god – that would be Hoo-paar-kraat. To get in touch with the spiritual world, Crowley practiced black magic, orgies and became addicted to cocaine and heroin. He never made human sacrifices, although he got that fame.
8. The wizard also tried to bring to life the Roman gods Jupiter and Mercury. Again, rituals involved animal blood, drug use, and long periods of sexual activity. Everything was described in detail in his diaries, later published in the form of books. His partners at that time, who lived in Paris, quickly distanced themselves from him.
9. At his home in Scotland, House Boleskine, Crowley tried to contact his guardian angel through a bizarre ritual: he would have to invoke 12 demons and neutralize one by one, over six months of the most complete abstinence. It turns out that the ritual was interrupted in the middle because he had to travel to Paris. Since then, the house has been marked by tragedies, even after it was sold in 1913. Major Edward Grant, owner of the property in the 1960s, committed suicide lying in the bed where Crowley slept. Jimmy Page, guitarist for Led Zeppelin, also owned it, but was afraid to sleep in the place. In 2015, the place mysteriously caught fire and is now in ruins.
The Boleskine House (Disclosure/Reproduction)
10. In 1909, while traveling in Algeria, Crowley invoked 30 demons in a sexual magic ceremony. He would have sacrificed domestic animals to the demon Choronzon, known by the number 333 and for causing frightening hallucinations. At the time, he was studying the Koran and Islam’s connections to magic.
11. In 1920, Aleister founded the Abbey of Thelema in Sicily (Italy). The space was dedicated to the practice of magic. Three years later, a follower of the group, Raoul Loveday, died inside the temple after drinking the blood of a sacrificed cat. At the time, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini expelled Crowley from the country.
12. Crowley was contradictory. To this day, scholars debate whether he was an atheist, monotheist, or polytheist. But it is certain that he flirted with Satanism and wrote about black magic. He called himself the «Beast 666» and his daughter, who died aged 2, was named after several demons: Nuit Ma Ahathoor Hecate Sappho Jezebel Lilith Crowley
13. In the 1920s, the British press gave him the title of «the wickedest man in the world». Despite his fame, he never had many followers and even spent all of the family’s assets. His travels around the world would be financed by the faithful who participated in his esoteric rituals. In 1930, with the help of the poet Fernando Pessoa, Crowley simulated his own death in Portugal. He reappeared weeks later in Berlin
14. Aleister claimed, in his middle age, to have found the elixir of life. “I took it when I was 40,” he wrote. “One day I woke up and realized that I had lost all my maturity.” He even went so far as to say that the effects were so lasting that, at 47, he felt like he was 30.
15. On a trip to New York, he met Ananda Coomaraswamy and Alice Richardson. The three would have contacted the Alamantrah being, a type of alien. In the ritual, Crowley had sex with Alice, who became pregnant and, soon after, would have lost the baby. Despite declaring himself against abortion, this type of act marked Crowley’s life.
Alamantrah (Disclosure/Reproduction)
16. Other experiences, carried out during a period of study of the Tao Te Ching (the basic text of Chinese Taoism), led Aleister to experience past lives. He is believed to have been the Taoist leader Ge Xuan (3rd century), Pope Alexander VI (15th century), occultist Alessandro Cagliostro (18th century), and magician Eliphas Levi (19th century).
17. When the sun rose and set, Crowley conducted rituals to the god Ra. He also performed Gnostic Masses, variations of the Black Mass rituals (read more about them). His followers walked with blades, with which they cut themselves whenever they needed to receive favors from entities from millenary civilizations in Greece, Egypt or Babylon.
18. Aleister died in 1947, poor and with almost no followers. But the way he practiced magic inspired other esotericists, helped to increase the neo-pagan current in the Western world in the 1960s and 1970s, and left its mark on culture, including Brazil. Writer Paulo Coelho and singer Raul Seixas immortalized the hymn to Crowley called “Viva a Sociedade Alternativa”, which preaches: “Do what you want / Because that’s all / Of the law”
What end did it take?
The Thelema religion still exists, just as it did when Crowley was alive: with a lot of noise and few followers. Different gurus claim to be direct disciples of the founder, including Amado Crowley, an alleged bastard son, and Brazilian Marcelo Ramos Motta. Even the founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, said he was influenced by an alleged contact with the magician – who officially had five children, and only one, Anne, is still alive.