Aleister Crowley

October 12, 1875 (age 72)

Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, United Kingdom

Crowley met members of the London temple of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a quasi-secret society which had been founded in 1888 and claimed to transmit a species of ancient cabalism. Crowley joined in November 1898 and assumed the magical name of Perdurabo. He soon impressed Samuel Liddell Mathers, one of the order's founders, which disappointed another young initiate, William Butler Yeats, who judged Crowley to be insane. Mathers had revived obscure techniques for evoking one's guardian angel. Crowley, eager to test these operations, secluded himself at Boleskine House, on the shore of Loch Ness, but was distracted by dissension in the Golden Dawn. Superior officials heard rumors of his sexual immorality and, defying Mathers, opposed Crowley's advancement. As Mathers's power declined, Crowley lost interest in the order. For several years Crowley wandered restlessly. In Mexico, in 1900 he was joined by Oscar Eckenstein, an older and more experienced mountain climber, and they explored the local terrain. Eckenstein instructed Crowley in concentration and visualization. Crowley also undertook magical evocations in the style of John Dee, the Elizabethan magus, and his scryer, Edward Kelley, and Crowley now felt that he was the incarnation of Kelley. He resolved to advance independently through the grades of magical attainment prescribed by the Golden Dawn and traveled in Asia and practiced hatha yoga. In 1902 he and Eckenstein undertook the first attempt to scale Chogo Ri (K-2), the world's second-highest peak. Crowley's sporting inclinations also included big-game hunting. In Cairo in April 1904 Crowley's first wife Rose entered involuntary trances and urged her husband to prepare for supernatural communications. Subsequent sessions produced Liber legis ("Book of the law"), which was supposedly dictated to Crowley through the voice of a certain Aiwaz or Aiwass, perhaps the guardian angel whom Crowley had sought. The transmission was inexplicably signed by a pharaonic priest named Ankh-ef-en-khonsu. The document, while laden with enigmas, is clear in announcing the New Aeon: Christianity will yield to another spiritual movement. Crowley was charged with promoting its basic principle, the law of Thelema: "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law." This pronouncement was purportedly relayed from an Egyptian goddess, Nuit. In fact, the injunction had already been given in the famous story by Rabelais (d. 1553), whose monstrous Gargantua founded the abbey of Thélème. In May 1905 Crowley resumed his wanderings. He conducted a Himalayan expedition that proved disastrous for his colleagues, whom he preferred to vilify rather than to help or to mourn. He summoned his wife and daughter to India, then fled the country with them as authorities were inquiring into his fatal shooting of two assailants. He dragged his family across south China but dispatched them homeward, on account of his desire to locate a former mistress. When he returned to Britain, he learned that his daughter had been taken ill and died in Burma, a death he attributed to his wife's negligence. Crowley renewed his occult activities in 1909. He published Liber 777, which revealed the attributes of the tarot as interpreted in the Golden Dawn, and began recruiting for his own esoteric order, the Argenteum Astrum (Silver Star). This incorporated Golden Dawn rituals, some of which appeared in summary in Crowley's new journal, The Equinox. Mathers charged Crowley with plagiarism and petitioned the courts to prevent further publication of his secret teachings, but Crowley prevailed. He and the Golden Dawn were widely parodied, even in the Occult Review, while his Argenteum Astrum continued in secret. One member, before he rose to fame as a military strategist, was Captain John Frederick Charles Fuller, who encouraged occult studies by Charles Stansfeld Jones and by Victor Neuburg, a young poet (later poetry editor of the Sunday Referee). Neuburg and Crowley combined their magical and homosexual pursuits, producing a form of sex magic. Neuburg was a dancer in Crowley's theatrical production of The Rites of Eleusis, which received acclaim from critics. Crowley attracted the attention of Theodor Reuss, frater superior of the Ordo Templi Orientis, a German society that sometimes engaged in sex magic. Reuss visited Crowley and was sufficiently impressed to install him as chief of the English branch of the Ordo Templi Orientis. During the First World War Crowley lived in America. His inheritance had long been exhausted - his travel funds probably came from the Ordo Templi Orientis. He practiced sexual rituals involving a varied list of partners and in New York found employment in writing propaganda for pro-German periodicals. This deeply alienated his countrymen, who did not forgive him, even after the war. In 1920 Crowley moved to Cefalù, in Sicily. There he rented a farmhouse, which he called the abbey of Thelema, and accepted disciples hopeful of advancing the New Aeon. The Sicilian project halted in 1923 when a young Englishman mysteriously died at the abbey. His widow accused Crowley of various crimes and sins, and the British periodical John Bull called him the "wickedest man in the world." The Italian government expelled Crowley and his Thelemites, but Crowley continued to attract students. Theodor Reuss had resigned as head of the Ordo Templi Orientis and Crowley subsequently occupied the office. His associates in this period included Karl Germer, Gerald Yorke, and Israel Regardie, all of whom became influential in occult circles. In Berlin in 1929, Crowley married Maria Teresa Ferrari de Miramar, a Nicaraguan. They soon separated. In England during the depression, Crowley gleaned money through litigation. He sued both a bookseller who erroneously advertised the suppression of Crowley's novel, The Diary of a Drug Fiend, when in fact it had only gone out of print, and the publisher of Nina Hamnett's Laughing Torso, in which she presumed that Crowley had fostered black magic at the abbey of Thelema. Former friends refused to testify on Crowley's behalf. In the latter case, the judge was repelled by reports of Crowley's erotic literature and rituals, and Crowley lost and incurred the court costs. He was penniless. A sympathetic woman offered to have his child, and he accepted. Frieda Harris, the wife of Sir Percy Harris was devoted to Crowley, who named her as an executor of his will. In 1942 she completed watercolors for use in publishing a pack of tarot cards conforming to Crowley's concept. In his tarot, as elsewhere, he merged Western magic with exotic mysticism (such as Gnosticism and tantric Buddhism) and with modern science (such as chemistry and Freudian psychology). He thereby extended the work of Éliphas Lévi, a notable French magus, who had died in 1875, the year of Crowley's birth; Crowley claimed to be Lévi's reincarnation. The Book of Thoth (1944) is Crowley's commentary on his tarot. He did not acknowledge the fact that his tarot's basic structure depended on Golden Dawn teachings. In his waning years, Crowley befriended John Symonds and acceded to the young writer's request that Crowley supply notes for a biography. He designated Symonds and Kenneth Grant, the youngest of his last students, as literary executors, empowered to publish his papers. On December 1, 1947, at Netherwood, a residential hotel in The Ridge, Hastings, Crowley, by this time a chronic heroin addict, died of bronchitis and heart congestion. His remains were cremated at Brighton and reportedly have been lost. Interest in Crowley has reflected waves of curiosity in the occult. The Crowley-Harris tarot is popular, and several occult groups adhere to his law of Thelema. His most readable books on occultism are Book Four (1912), The Book of Lies (1913), and Magick in Theory and Practice (1929). Among sympathizers, he is revered for his peculiar gifts, but others remember his reputation as a social outcast on account of his flagrant nonconformity.

Aleister Crowley Edit Profile

also known as Edward Alexander Crowley

author occultist

Background

Edward Alexander Crowley was born on October 12, 1875, in Warwickshire, United Kingdom, the elder child of Emily Bertha (née Bishop) and Edward Crowley.

Education

At the age of twenty Crowley went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, to study for the natural sciences tripos, and in his leisure time excelled at chess and at mountaineering.

In October 1897 a fevered vision convinced him that all human endeavors are ephemeral, with one exception - the magical tradition. He dedicated himself to esoteric studies and sought initiation by genuine magi.

Poetry greatly attracted him, and it was probably Shelley's "Alastor, or, The Spirit of Solitude" that inspired Crowley to call himself Aleister, a deliberate repudiation of his given name. The spelling reflects a Gaelic form in keeping with the Celtic revival then popular. Crowley came into his inheritance, which he spent extravagantly. He issued deluxe volumes of his own poetry, beginning with Aceldama (1898), which sparked the admiration of Gerald Festus Kelly, also at Trinity but destined for knighthood and the presidency of the Royal Academy.

Crowley left Cambridge without having earned a degree.

Career

Crowley met members of the London temple of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a quasi-secret society which had been founded in 1888 and claimed to transmit a species of ancient cabalism. Crowley joined in November 1898 and assumed the magical name of Perdurabo. He soon impressed Samuel Liddell Mathers, one of the order's founders, which disappointed another young initiate, William Butler Yeats, who judged Crowley to be insane. Mathers had revived obscure techniques for evoking one's guardian angel. Crowley, eager to test these operations, secluded himself at Boleskine House, on the shore of Loch Ness, but was distracted by dissension in the Golden Dawn. Superior officials heard rumors of his sexual immorality and, defying Mathers, opposed Crowley's advancement. As Mathers's power declined, Crowley lost interest in the order.

For several years Crowley wandered restlessly. In Mexico, in 1900 he was joined by Oscar Eckenstein, an older and more experienced mountain climber, and they explored the local terrain. Eckenstein instructed Crowley in concentration and visualization. Crowley also undertook magical evocations in the style of John Dee, the Elizabethan magus, and his scryer, Edward Kelley, and Crowley now felt that he was the incarnation of Kelley. He resolved to advance independently through the grades of magical attainment prescribed by the Golden Dawn and traveled in Asia and practiced hatha yoga. In 1902 he and Eckenstein undertook the first attempt to scale Chogo Ri (K-2), the world's second-highest peak. Crowley's sporting inclinations also included big-game hunting.

In Cairo in April 1904 Crowley's first wife Rose entered involuntary trances and urged her husband to prepare for supernatural communications. Subsequent sessions produced Liber legis ("Book of the law"), which was supposedly dictated to Crowley through the voice of a certain Aiwaz or Aiwass, perhaps the guardian angel whom Crowley had sought. The transmission was inexplicably signed by a pharaonic priest named Ankh-ef-en-khonsu. The document, while laden with enigmas, is clear in announcing the New Aeon: Christianity will yield to another spiritual movement. Crowley was charged with promoting its basic principle, the law of Thelema: "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law." This pronouncement was purportedly relayed from an Egyptian goddess, Nuit. In fact, the injunction had already been given in the famous story by Rabelais (d. 1553), whose monstrous Gargantua founded the abbey of Thélème.

In May 1905 Crowley resumed his wanderings. He conducted a Himalayan expedition that proved disastrous for his colleagues, whom he preferred to vilify rather than to help or to mourn. He summoned his wife and daughter to India, then fled the country with them as authorities were inquiring into his fatal shooting of two assailants. He dragged his family across south China but dispatched them homeward, on account of his desire to locate a former mistress. When he returned to Britain, he learned that his daughter had been taken ill and died in Burma, a death he attributed to his wife's negligence.

Crowley renewed his occult activities in 1909. He published Liber 777, which revealed the attributes of the tarot as interpreted in the Golden Dawn, and began recruiting for his own esoteric order, the Argenteum Astrum (Silver Star). This incorporated Golden Dawn rituals, some of which appeared in summary in Crowley's new journal, The Equinox. Mathers charged Crowley with plagiarism and petitioned the courts to prevent further publication of his secret teachings, but Crowley prevailed. He and the Golden Dawn were widely parodied, even in the Occult Review, while his Argenteum Astrum continued in secret. One member, before he rose to fame as a military strategist, was Captain John Frederick Charles Fuller, who encouraged occult studies by Charles Stansfeld Jones and by Victor Neuburg, a young poet (later poetry editor of the Sunday Referee). Neuburg and Crowley combined their magical and homosexual pursuits, producing a form of sex magic. Neuburg was a dancer in Crowley's theatrical production of The Rites of Eleusis, which received acclaim from critics. Crowley attracted the attention of Theodor Reuss, frater superior of the Ordo Templi Orientis, a German society that sometimes engaged in sex magic. Reuss visited Crowley and was sufficiently impressed to install him as chief of the English branch of the Ordo Templi Orientis.

During the First World War Crowley lived in America. His inheritance had long been exhausted - his travel funds probably came from the Ordo Templi Orientis. He practiced sexual rituals involving a varied list of partners and in New York found employment in writing propaganda for pro-German periodicals. This deeply alienated his countrymen, who did not forgive him, even after the war.

In 1920 Crowley moved to Cefalù, in Sicily. There he rented a farmhouse, which he called the abbey of Thelema, and accepted disciples hopeful of advancing the New Aeon. The Sicilian project halted in 1923 when a young Englishman mysteriously died at the abbey. His widow accused Crowley of various crimes and sins, and the British periodical John Bull called him the "wickedest man in the world." The Italian government expelled Crowley and his Thelemites, but Crowley continued to attract students. Theodor Reuss had resigned as head of the Ordo Templi Orientis and Crowley subsequently occupied the office. His associates in this period included Karl Germer, Gerald Yorke, and Israel Regardie, all of whom became influential in occult circles. In Berlin in 1929, Crowley married Maria Teresa Ferrari de Miramar, a Nicaraguan. They soon separated.

In England during the depression, Crowley gleaned money through litigation. He sued both a bookseller who erroneously advertised the suppression of Crowley's novel, The Diary of a Drug Fiend, when in fact it had only gone out of print, and the publisher of Nina Hamnett's Laughing Torso, in which she presumed that Crowley had fostered black magic at the abbey of Thelema. Former friends refused to testify on Crowley's behalf. In the latter case, the judge was repelled by reports of Crowley's erotic literature and rituals, and Crowley lost and incurred the court costs. He was penniless. A sympathetic woman offered to have his child, and he accepted.

Frieda Harris, the wife of Sir Percy Harris was devoted to Crowley, who named her as an executor of his will. In 1942 she completed watercolors for use in publishing a pack of tarot cards conforming to Crowley's concept. In his tarot, as elsewhere, he merged Western magic with exotic mysticism (such as Gnosticism and tantric Buddhism) and with modern science (such as chemistry and Freudian psychology). He thereby extended the work of Éliphas Lévi, a notable French magus, who had died in 1875, the year of Crowley's birth; Crowley claimed to be Lévi's reincarnation. The Book of Thoth (1944) is Crowley's commentary on his tarot. He did not acknowledge the fact that his tarot's basic structure depended on Golden Dawn teachings.

In his waning years, Crowley befriended John Symonds and acceded to the young writer's request that Crowley supply notes for a biography. He designated Symonds and Kenneth Grant, the youngest of his last students, as literary executors, empowered to publish his papers. On December 1, 1947, at Netherwood, a residential hotel in The Ridge, Hastings, Crowley, by this time a chronic heroin addict, died of bronchitis and heart congestion. His remains were cremated at Brighton and reportedly have been lost.

Interest in Crowley has reflected waves of curiosity in the occult. The Crowley-Harris tarot is popular, and several occult groups adhere to his law of Thelema. His most readable books on occultism are Book Four (1912), The Book of Lies (1913), and Magick in Theory and Practice (1929). Among sympathizers, he is revered for his peculiar gifts, but others remember his reputation as a social outcast on account of his flagrant nonconformity.

Achievements

Crowley is perhaps best known today for his occult writings, especially The Book of the Law which laid out the central tenets of Thelema, a religious philosophy he developed. Thelema's often-misunderstood emphasis on the sovereignty of the individual will famously phrased as "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law," was later adopted in various forms by many Wicca, Pagan, and Neo-Pagan groups.

Works

MAGICK in THEORY and PRACTICE MAGICK in THEORY and PRACTICE

The Three Magical Books of Solomon: The Greater and Lesser Keys & The Testament of Solomon The Three Magical Books of Solomon: The Greater and Lesser Keys & The Testament of Solomon

book
- Diary of a Drug Fiend and Other Works by Aleister Crowley
  (A piece of fiction inspired by Crowley's own experience o...)
  1922
- MAGICK in THEORY and PRACTICE
  (This book is considered to be the foremost book on ceremo...)
  1997
- The Book of Lies
  (An admirable collection of Crowley's aphorisms - witty, s...)
  1912
- The Three Magical Books of Solomon: The Greater and Lesser Keys & The Testament of Solomon
  (The Greater and Lesser Keys give a practical guide to the...)
  2017
- Moonchild
  (Moonchild is a novel written by the British occultist Ale...)
  1923

Religion

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 François 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, thelēma 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.

Politics

Aleister Crowley was a leftist.

Membership

Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

1898
Ordo Templi Orientis
A∴A∴

1907

Personality

Crowley was very ambitious, with a desire to be in a highly visible role.

Interests

Mountain climbing, chess, poetry

Connections

In White Stains, Crowley exhibited homosexual sentiments. He was intimate with Herbert Charles Jerome Pollitt, a young stage performer who came to mistrust Crowley's "spiritual" ambition; they separated in 1898.

In 1903 Crowley married Rose Edith Kelly. They had two children, Nuit Ma Ahathoor Hecate Sappho Jezebel Lilith Crowley and Lola Zaza. The couple divorced in 1909.

Later he gave his hand to Leah Hirsig, a prostitute. The couple had a daughter, Anne Leah Poupee Crowley.

Then Crowley married Ninette Fraux which gave birth to Astarte Lulu Panthea Crowley.

On 16 August 1929, Crowley tied the knot with Maria Theresa Ferrari de Miramar. They had a son, Charles Edward d'Arquires.

Father:: Edward Crowley
Mother:: Emily Bertha Crowley
Spouse:: Patricia Doherty MacAlpine
ex-spouse:: Rose Edith Kelly
ex-spouse:: Maria Theresa Ferrari de Miramar
ex-spouse:: Leah Hirsig
ex-spouse:: Ninette Fraux
Son:: Nuit Ma Ahathoor Hecate Sappho Jezebel Lilith Crowley
Daughter:: Lola Zaza Crowley
Daughter:: Anne Leah Poupee Crowley
Daughter:: Astarte Lulu Panthea Crowley
Son:: Charles Edward d'Arquires
Lover:: Herbert Charles Jerome Pollitt
Friend:: John Symonds

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