Who was Aleister Crowley

�

�

Q.� Hmm. Nice sort of chap.

A.� By all accounts he was charming, even though he once announced: 'I want blasphemy, murder, rape, revolution.' In a poem he wrote: 'I rave; and I rape and I rip and I rend'. Crowley lived by the creed: 'Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.' He also claimed he could commune with the Devil in drug-induced traces.

�

Q.� Brief biography

A.� He was born Alexander Edward Crowley in Leamington Spa, England, on 12 October, 1875, into a family of Plymouth Brethren, a strict Christian sect. He was educated as Trinity College, Cambridge, where he emulated the 'dandy' style of Oscar Wilde and began to indulge his love of morbid poetry and sexual experimentation. Crowley had his first mystical experience in 1896. He wrote of it: 'I was awakened to the knowledge that I possessed a magical means of becoming conscious of and satisfying a part of my nature which had up to that moment concealed itself from me. It was an experience of horror and pain, combined with a certain ghostly terror, yet at the same time it was the key to the purest and holiest spiritual ecstasy that exists.'

�

Q.� So how did he get further involved

A.� In 1898 he was initiated into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn - a group practising magick. They spelled it with a k. The next year he bought Boleskine House on the shores of Loch Ness in Scotland. Then he travelled through Mexico, Ceylon, India and Burma before starting a publishing house called the Society for the Propagation of Religious Truth. In 1903 he married Rose Kelly.

�

Q.� And he continued publishing

A.� Yes - dozens of books, including Gargoyles, 777, The Gnostic Mass, The Book of Lies and Diary of a Drug Fiend. By this time, tabloid newspapers had heard about his dissolute ways and he was regularly exposed. In 1923 Mussolini expelled him from Sicily. Six years later he was chucked out of France.

�

Q.� What about this Ordo Templi Orientis cult

A.� This cult - Order of the Eastern Temple - was based on eastern eroto-gnostic techniques and existed long before Crowley. He took it over and it has split into rival groups since his death.

�

Q.� Isn't there some rock music connection

A.� Yes. Jimmy Page, the Led Zeppelin guitarist, owns a large collection of Crowley memorabilia and bought Crowley's mansion, Boleskine House. Crowley's face is also one of many on the album cover of the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

�

Q.� And what happened to Crowley

A.� He was made bankrupt in 1935. He married twice - both wives went insane. Five mistresses committed suicide. Crowley retired to Hastings in 1945 and died in 1947. Some students of the occult believe the South Coast town, which is now plagued with paedophiles, has been cursed ever since. Crowley's huge funeral in Brighton included readings from magick works and caused outrage among local politicians. Brighton Council said of the Last Ritual on Crowley: 'We shall take all necessary steps to prevent such an incident occurring again.'

�

Q.� To sum up

A.� One critic says of Crowley: 'His reputation had been that of a man who worshipped Satan, but it was more accurately said that he worshipped no-one except himself.'

�

To ask a question about History & Myths, click here

Steve Cunningham