Aleister Crowley

Edward Alexander Crowley was born in Leamington Spa in 1875. He studied at Malvern and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he changed his name to Aleister. He was a lyrical and dramatic poet with several dozen books to his credit, including a collaboration with Auguste Rodin. He is anthologized in The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse.

Crowley was by nature an eclectic spirit, and gained a reputation as a poet, novelist, journalist, climber, explorer, chess player, graphic designer, drug experimenter, prankster, lover of women, beloved of men, yogi, magician, prophet, pioneer in the struggle for freedom, human rights activist, philosopher and artist. He has been compared to Sir Richard Burton, and today Crowley is perhaps best known as the author of the most influential occult manuals of the 20th century, and as the first Englishman to have founded a religion - Thelema - which is now a recognized faith throughout the world.

Crowley was the enfant terrible of the Edwardian avant-garde of London and Paris. Witty and theatrical, and an early advocate of the aesthetic and inspirational virtues of drugs, sex, music and dance, he gravitated to communities in cultural exile: New York during the First World War, the Lost Generation of Paris in the Twenty and the decadent Berlin of Christopher Isherwood's Mr. Norris in the Thirties. To those who crossed paths with him, Crowley was unforgettable. He appears in countless memoirs, and was used as a model for characters in novels ranging from Somerset Maugham's The Magician to the villain in Ian Fleming's Casino Royale.

It has now been rediscovered and reinterpreted so many times—by The Beatles, hippies, punks, and "industrial culture"—that it has become a recurring symbol of counter-cultural rebellion. The London Sunday Times listed him as one of the 1000 proponents of the 20th century. The Beatles included him among "the people we love" on the cover of Sergeant Pepper's album not once but twice, reportedly with the second photograph withdrawn due to Crowley's too-close resemblance to Paul McCartney.
In 1919 Crowley left New York for Cefalù in Sicily, where he began painting landscapes. He transformed his rented villa by painting erotic murals after the example of Paul Gauguin—one of Crowley's heroes, whom he made a saint in his Gnostic Catholic Church. This was Thelema Abbey, an experiment in spiritual monasticism partly inspired by Rabelais. The students practiced the religious philosophy of Thelema (Greek word meaning "will").

Crowley summarized it as “Do what thou wilt shall be all the Law,” with its corollary “Love is the law, love under the will”—both quotes from The Book of the Law. This book is the text on which the religion of Thelema is based, and was dictated to Crowley in Egypt in 1904 by what he called a "non-human intelligence".

Students came to Sicily from all over the world to "find their true will" or their purpose in life. Crowley's training regime involved breaking down all artificial and societal inhibitions in order to liberate the essential self, while simultaneously providing training in yoga, concentration and self-analysis. The Abbey and its guests prospered, but when an Oxford University student died at the Abbey (from drinking the local water against Crowley's advice), the British press attacked Crowley relentlessly. As was later done with DH Lawrence, Home Secretary Joynston Hicks and his spokesman James Douglas of the Sunday Express demonized Crowley. The press depicted him as "The wicked evil man in the world" and "The man we would like to hang". Ironically, this campaign ensured Crowley's lasting fame, as well as an enduring misunderstanding of his life and work. He died in Hastings, England, in 1947.

Crowley has been the subject of numerous biographies, which are extremely inaccurate if not openly hostile on the subject. In recent years, excellent new biographies of serious authors have been published annually, each complementing the others: Lawrence Sutin, Do What Thou Wilt: A Life of Aleister Crowley (2000), Martin Booth, A Magick Life: The Life of
Aleister Crowley (2001) and Richard Kaczynski, Perdurabo: The Life of Aleister Crowley (2002). A balanced assessment of his life and work can also be found in Gerald Suster's entry in Missing Persons, a supplement to the seminal reference work The Dictionary of National Biography, published by Oxford University Press in 1993. The Temple of Solomon the King (published serially in The Equinox) and Crowley's own The Confessions shed useful light on his life and work.

Other biographies and studies are: JFC Fuller, The Star in the West (1907), CR Cammell, Aleister Crowley (1951), John Symonds, The Great Beast (1951) and The Magic of Aleister Crowley (1958) (later merged into The King of the Shadow Realm (1989)), Israel Regardie, The Eye in the Triangle (1970), Francis X. King, The Magical World of Aleister Crowley (1977), Susan Roberts, The Magician of the Golden Dawn (1978), Colin Wilson, Aleister Crowley: The Nature of the Beast (1987) and Gerald Suster, The Legacy of the Beast (1988).

Literary Overview

Crowley contributed to The Eastbourne Gazette (chess columnist), The Occult Review, The Bystander, The Fatherland, The Open Court, Smart Set, Pearson's, The English Review, and the English and American editions of Vanity Fair. He was editorial director of The International: A Review of Two Worlds (1916-1917).