Crowley, Aleister (1875–1947)
English magician and
occultist. Aleister Crowley was adept at dealing with
spirits, including powerful DEMONs. Flamboyant and
controversial, he practiced outrageous magic of sex,
drugs, and sacrifi ce, yet made signifi cant contributions
to magic.
Life
He was born Edward Alexander Crowley on October 12,
1875, in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire. His father was
a wealthy brewer and a “Darbyite” preacher, a member
of a fundamentalist sect known as the Plymouth Brethren
or Exclusive Brethren. Crowley’s parents raised him
in an atmosphere of repression and religious bigotry. He
rebelled to such an extent that his mother called him
“the Beast” after the Antichrist, a name he delighted
in using later in life, calling himself “the Beast of the
Apocalypse.”
Crowley was drawn to the occult and was fascinated
by BLOOD, torture, and sexual degradation; he liked to
fantasize being degraded by a “Scarlet Woman.” He combined
these interests in a lifestyle that shocked others and
reveled in the attention he drew. He was in his teens when
he adopted the name Aleister.
In 1887, Crowley’s father died and he was sent to a
Darbyite school in Cambridge. His unhappy experiences
there at the hands of a cruel headmaster made him hate
the Darbyites.
Crowley studied for three years at Trinity College at
Cambridge but never earned a degree. He wrote poetry,
engaged in an active bisexual sex life, and pursued his
occult studies—the Great Work—the latter of which was
inspired by The Book of Black Magic and of Pacts by ARTHUR
EDWARD WAITE and The Cloud upon the Sanctuary
by Carl von Eckartshausen. In his fi rst volume of poetry,
published in 1898, Crowley foreshadowed his occult excesses
with his statement that God and Satan had fought
many hours over his soul. He wrote, “God conquered—
now I have only one doubt left—which of the twain was
God?”
Crowley was in his third year at Trinity when he
formally dedicated himself to magick, which he spelled
with a k to “distinguish the science of the Magi from
all its counterfeits.” He also pledged to “rehabilitate” it.
He saw magic as the way of life, a path of self-mastery
achieved with rigorous discipline of the will illumined by
imagination.
After leaving Trinity, Crowley took a fl at in Chancery
Lane, London. He named himself Count Vladimir and
pursued his occult activities full-time. Stories of bizarre
incidents circulated, perhaps fueled in part by Crowley’s
mesmerizing eyes and aura of supernatural power. A
ghostly light reportedly surrounded him, which he said
was his astral spirit. One of his fl at neighbors claimed
to be hurled downstairs by a malevolent force, and visitors
said they experienced dizzy spells while climbing the
stairs or felt an overwhelming evil presence.
In 1898, Crowley went to Zermatt, Switzerland, for
mountain climbing. He met Julian Baker, an English occultist,
who in turn introduced Crowley back in London
to George Cecil Jones, a member of the Hermetic Order
of the Golden Dawn. At Jones’ invitation, Crowley was
initiated into the order on November 18, 1898. He took
the magical motto Frater Perdurabo (I will persevere). He
used other names, among them Mega Therion (the Great
Wild Beast), which he used when he later attained the
rank of Magus.
Crowley was already skilled in magic when he joined
the Golden Dawn, and its First Order bored him. He received
instruction from Allan Bennett, whom he met in
1899, and Samuel Liddell Macgregor Mathers, one of the
founders of the Golden Dawn. Mathers taught Crowley
Abremalin magic from an old manuscript, The Sacred
Magic of Abra-Melin the Mage, which Mathers had trans-
lated. Mathers believed the manuscript was bewitched
and inhabited by an entity. The magic prescribed a rigorous
six-month program conducted in complete withdrawal
from the world, after which the initiate would
make talismans that would draw money, great sexual allure,
and an army of phantom soldiers to serve at his disposal.
Crowley intended to undergo this rite beginning at
Easter 1900 at Boleskin Manor, his house in Scotland.
His plans were disrupted by internal fi ghting in the
Golden Dawn that led to Crowley’s expulsion from the
order in 1900. He retaliated by publishing secret ritual
material.
From 1900 to 1903, Crowley traveled extensively,
visiting the Far East and delving deeper into Eastern
mysticism.
In 1903, he married Rose Kelly, the fi rst of his two
wives. Kelly bore him one child, a daughter, Lola Zaza.
Their honeymoon lasted several months. In 1904, they
were in Cairo, where Crowley was attempting to conjure
sylphs, the elementals of the air. While in Egypt, Crowley
engaged in his most signifi cant entity contact, with Aiwass,
described later. The contact infl uenced his life and
work, to usher in the Aeon of Horus.
Crowley had a prodigious sexual appetite and had
numerous mistresses, some of whom he called “Scarlet
Women” and some of whom bore him illegitimate children.
He was fond of giving his women “Serpent Kisses,”
using his sharpened teeth to draw blood. He branded
some of his women and eventually abandoned all of them
to drugs, alcohol, or the streets. Crowley tried unsuccessfully
to beget a “magical child.” He fi ctionalized these efforts
in his novel Moonchild (1929).
Rose descended into alcoholism, and in 1909 she divorced
Crowley on grounds of adultery. From late 1914
to 1919, Crowley lived in the United States, where he
was unsuccessful in rousing much interest in his message
about the Aeon of Horus. He kept a record of his
sexual activities, which he titled Rex de Arte Regia (The
King of the Royal Art). Many of the prostitutes he hired
had no idea that he was actually involving them in sex
magic. He and his Scarlet Woman of the moment, Roddie
Minor, performed sex magic and drug rituals—by then
he was addicted to heroin—for the purpose of communicating
with an entity, perhaps a demon, whom Crowley
called “the wizard Amalantrah,” who existed on the astral
plane.
In 1916, Crowley initiated himself into the rank of
Magus in a bizarre black magic rite in which he crucifi ed
a frog.
In 1918, Crowley met Leah Hirsig, a New York schoolteacher,
who became his most famous Scarlet Woman. He
called her “the Ape of Thoth.” They decided to found the
Abbey of Thelema, a monastic community of men and
women who would promulgate The Book of the Law, perform
magic, and be sexually free.
In 1920, Crowley found an old abbey in Cefalu, Sicily,
which he took over and renamed the Sacred Abbey
of the Thelemic Mysteries. It served as the site for numerous
sexual orgies and magical rites, many attended
by his illegitimate children. Leah bore a daughter, Anne
Leah, who died in childhood. In 1921, Crowley decided
that he had attained the magical rank of Ipsissimus,
equal to God. But in 1923, he was forced out of the abbey
after a scandal involving the death of a follower, Raoul
Loveday.
In 1929, Crowley married his second wife, Maria Ferrari
de Miramar, in Leipzig. Her reputed magical powers
led him to name her the “High Priestess of Voodoo.” They
separated in less than a year when Crowley took up with
a 19-year-old woman. Maria entered a mental institution,
enabling Crowley to divorce her.
Crowley’s later years were plagued by poor health,
drug addiction, and fi nancial trouble. He kept himself
barely afl oat by publishing nonfi ction and fi ction writings.
In 1934, desperate for money, Crowley sued the
sculptress Nina Hammett for libel. Hammett had stated in
her biography, Laughing Torso (1932), that Crowley practiced
black magic and indulged in human sacrifi ce. The
English judge, jury, spectators and press were repulsed by
the testimony in the trial. The judge stated he had “never
heard such dreadful, horrible, blasphemous and abominable
stuff.” The jury stopped the trial and found in favor
of Hammett.
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| AIWASS |
In 1945, Crowley moved to Netherwood, a boarding
house in Hastings, where he lived the last two years of his
life, asthmatic, dissipated, and bored, consuming large
amounts of heroin. He died of cardiac degeneration and
severe bronchitis on December 1, 1947. He was cremated
in Brighton. At his funeral, a Gnostic Mass was performed
and his “Hymn to Pan” was read. His ashes were sent to
followers in the United States.
Numerous editions and collections of Crowley’s writings
have been published. Besides The Book of the Law,
his other most notable work is Magick in Theory and Practice
(1929), considered by many occultists to be a superb
work on ceremonial magic. The Equinox of the Gods (1937)
refl ects The Book of the Law. The Book of Lies features 91
sermons and commentaries on each. The Book of Thoth
(1944) presents his interpretation of the Tarot. The Thoth
Tarot deck, inspired by Crowley, is one of the more popular
decks in modern use.
Crowley’s work continues to inspire people, and Thelemic
organizations exist around the world. He has inspired
artists in various fi elds. Posthumously, Crowley
has perhaps gained more fame and credibility than he
had during his life. He remains controversial to the extreme,
vilifi ed as a “satanic occultist” and praised as a
brilliant magician.
Entity Contacts
Aiwass On March 18, 1904, Rose suddenly began trance
channeling, receiving communications from the astral
plane that the Egyptian god Horus was waiting for Crowley.
The communicating messenger, Aiwass, was an imposing
entity described by Rose as an emissary for the
Egyptian trinity of Horus, Osiris, and Isis.
Crowley considered Aiwass to be his Holy Guardian Angel,
or divine Higher Self, acting as intermediary for higher
beings such as the Secret Chiefs, superhuman adepts of the
Golden Dawn. Occultists have debated whether Aiwass was
an entity in its own right, or part of Crowley himself. For
Crowley, the Holy Guardian Angel was a discrete entity and
not a dissociated part of his own personality. Crowley originally
spelled the entity’s name Aiwaz, then later changed
the spelling to Aiwass for numerological reasons.
Crowley envisioned Aiwass as a male entity, and one
distinctly different and more unfathomable than other
entities he had encountered. Answers to questions posed
by Crowley indicated that Aiwass was
. . . a Being whose mind was so different from mine that
we failed to converse. All my wife obtained from Him
was to command me to do things magically absurd. He
would not play my game: I must play His.
On April 7, 1904, Aiwass commanded that the drawing
room of the Cairo apartment leased by the Crowleys
had to be turned into a temple. Aiwass ordered Crowley
to enter the temple precisely at noon on the next three
days, and to write down exactly what he heard for precisely
one hour.
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| THELEMA |
Crowley followed the instructions. Inside the “temple,”
he sat alone at a table facing the southern wall. From
behind him he heard the voice of Aiwass, which Crowley
described as “a rich tenor or baritone . . . deep timbre,
musical and expressive, its tones solemn, voluptuous,
tender, fi erce, or aught else as suited the moods of the
message.” The voice was “the Speech in the Silence,” he
said. Later he called Aiwass “the minister of Hoor-Paar-
Kraat,” or “the Lord of Silence,” an aspect of Horus that
was the equivalent of the Greek Harpocrates.
During the dictation, Crowley did not see a visual apparition
of Aiwass, though he did have a mental impression
of the entity. Aiwass had
. . . a body of “fi ne matter” or astral matter, transparent
as a veil of gauze or a cloud of incense-smoke. He
seemed to be a tall, dark man in his thirties, well-knit,
active and strong, with the face of a savage king, and
eyes veiled lest their gaze should destroy what they saw.
Further, Aiwass seemed dressed in the garb of an Assyrian
or Persian.
Crowley took Aiwass’ dictation for three hours on
April 8–10, scribbling in longhand to keep pace with the
voice. The sessions lasted exactly one hour each. The 65
pages of handwritten material composed the Liber Legis,
or The Book of the Law, which Crowley saw as the herald
of the New Aeon or a new religion. Each chapter carried
the voice of an Egyptian deity: Nut, the goddess of the
heavens, and two aspects of Horus, Ha-Kadit, a solar aspect,
and Ra-Hoor-Kuit, or “Horus of the Two Horizons.”
For years, Crowley remained in awe of Aiwass. In The
Equinox of the Gods, he acknowledged that he never fully
understood the nature of Aiwass. He alternately called
the entity “a God or Demon or Devil,” a praeterhuman
intelligence, a minister or messenger of other gods, his
own Guardian Angel, and his own subconscious (the last
he rejected in favor of the Holy Guardian Angel). Crowley
also said he was permitted from time to time to see Aiwass
in a physical appearance, inhabiting a human body,
as much a material man as Crowley was himself.
C. S. Jones, who ran the Vancouver, British Columbia,
lodge of the Ordo Templi Orientis, said he underwent
a series of magical initiations that revealed to him
that Aiwass was in truth an evil demon and the enemy
of humanity. Others considered Jones to have become
mad.
The Book of the Law became Crowley’s most important
work. Central to it is the Law of Thelema: “Do what thou
wilt shall be the whole of the Law.” The law has been misinterpreted
to mean doing as one pleases. According to
Crowley, it means that one does what one must and nothing
else. Perfect magic is the complete and total alignment
of the will with universal will, or cosmic forces. When
one surrenders to that alignment, one becomes a perfect
channel for the fl ow of cosmic forces.
Besides the Law of Thelema, the book holds that every
person is sovereign and shall be self-fulfi lled in the Aeon.
“Every man and every woman is a star,” it states. However,
the Aeon of Horus would be preceded by an era of
great violence, aggression, and fi re.
Aiwass told Crowley that he had been selected by the
“Secret Chiefs,” the master adepts behind the Golden
Dawn, to be the prophet for the coming Aeon of Horus,
the third great age of humanity. Crowley genuinely believed
that the Aeon of Horus would spread around the
world as a new religion—Crowleyanity—and replace all
other religions. The Book of the Law remained a focus of
Crowley’s life for the rest of his years.
Crowley insisted that he never understood all of what
was dictated. However, the style is comparable to that of
some of his other writings, suggesting that the material
may have originated in his subconscious. The promised
self-fulfi llment seemed to elude him. Throughout his life,
Crowley believed he had the ability to manifest whatever
he desired, including large sums of money, but after
squandering his inheritance he was never able to do so.
Vampire demons After returning home to Scotland,
Crowley informed the Golden Dawn that he was its new
head, but he received no reply. He then determined that
Mathers had launched a psychic attack against him, and
he responded by summoning BEELZEBUB and his demons
to attack in retaliation.
Mathers had prepared himself for six months with
magical procedures and rites in order to create a vampiric
thought-form demon by channeling the power of Mars,
the planet of war and aggression. Mathers entered a trance
state and concentrated his will into the psychic vampire,
which rose up from his solar plexus. He ordered it to attack
Crowley. However, he committed a grievous error
in doing the sending himself. In magic, apprentices are
often used to do the sending, for if anything goes amiss
and the magic boomerangs back, it will be the apprentice
who suffers and not the master magician.
Crowley, who was of superior magical skill, took the
thought-form, made it nastier, and sent it back to attack
Mathers. This warfare supposedly went on for years and
was chronicled by journalists around the world.
Mathers’ health declined as the attacks continued.
When Mathers died in 1918, his widow, Moina, blamed
his death on Crowley’s psychic vampirism.
Prior to his death, Mathers once described the awful
nature of the thought-form vampire demon:
Only the upper portions of its body were visible when it
would appear. Obviously female, it had narrow breasts
protruding through some kind of dark raiment. Below
the waist nothing existed. The curious eyes were deepsocketed,
and glowed faintly with an intense coralcolored
luminosity. The head was fl at, set low between
white, blubbery shoulders, as though it were cut off just
below those fearful “eyes.” Like tiny useless fl ippers, the
arms seemed almost vestigial. They were like unformed
limbs, still in the foetal stage.
But the thing didn’t need arms. Its terrifying weapon
was an extraordinarily long, coated gray tongue. Tubelike
and hollow, it bore a small orbicular hole at its tip,
and that lascivious tongue kept darting snake-like in
and out of a circular, lipless mouth. Always trying to
catch me off guard it would suddenly strike at me, like a
greedy missile, attempting to suck out my auric vitality.
Perhaps the being’s most terrifying feature was
its absolutely loathsome habit of trying to cuddle up
like a purring cat, rubbing its half-materialized form
against me, all the while alert, hoping to fi nd a gap in
my defenses. And when it was sometimes successful—I
was not always prepared nor strong enough to maintain
the magical barriers—it would pierce my aura with that
wicked tongue right down to my naked skin, causing
a most painful sensation. This was followed by a total
enervation of my body and spirit for a week or more. A
listless, dread experience.
Individuals who knew Crowley believed him to be
quite capable of creating such a demon.
Choronzon In 1909, after his divorce from Rose, Crowley
began a homosexual relationship with the poet Victor
Neuberg, who became his assistant in magic. Their
most famous workings together took place in 1909 in
the desert south of Algiers, when they performed a harrowing
conjuration of the demonic Dweller of the Abyss,
CHORONZON. Crowley was inspired to incorporate sex
into the ritual, and he became convinced of the power of
sex magic. By 1912, he was involved with the Ordo Templi
Orientis sex magic occult order, and in 1922 he was
invited to head the organization in Britain. He took the
magical name BAPHOMET.
Lam In 1918, the same year that Mathers died, Crowley
conducted a sex magic ritual called the Almalantrah,
with Roddie Minor, known as Soror Ahitha. The working
created a portal in the spaces between stars, through
which the entity Lam was able to enter the known physical
universe. Since then, other entities are believed to
enter through this widening portal, and to be the basis
for numerous contact experiences with UFOs and
extraterrestrials.
One of the revelations of the working was the symbolism
of the egg. Crowley and Soror Ahitha were told, “It’s
all in the egg.”
Crowley believed Lam to be the soul of a dead Tibetan
lama from Leng, between China and Tibet. Lam is Tibetan
for “Way” or “Path,” which Crowley said had the numerical
value of 71, or “No Thing,” a gateway to the Void and
a link between the star systems of Sirius and Andromeda.
Lam was to fulfi ll the work initiated by Aiwass.
Crowley drew a portrait of Lam and said that gazing
on the portrait enables one to make contact with the entity.
Some consider Lam to be a demon and the portal to
be one accessed by other demons.
See BLACK MASS; SIX-SIX-SIX.
