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Do You Believe In Magick: Aleister Crowley
Send J. Harvey a text! (Try to be nice, but I get it, everyone's a little cranky sometimes...)
Aleister Crowley bore the title of "The Wickedest Man in the World." You be the judge.
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And supposedly that was Aleister Crowley. Hello! I’m your host J. Harvey and I’m goddamned delighted to be back with you for another episode of Wicked Gay. You might have noticed that I dispensed with the usual scene of the crime drama with the open, but this one’s going to run a little long so I thought I'd get right to it. . I heard that. Did someone groan when I said a little long? Look - it will help you pass the time darning socks or doing your taxes or driving somewhere or whatever. Actually maybe not driving, another person told me that I have a soothing voice. Like I’m Delilah’s Quiet Storm. I don't want to be responsible for you dozing and crashing into a tunnel wall or something.
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Second thing, I’ve got a lot to get to so I’ll make this fast. HBO Max, or just Max - that’s silly - Last Call: When A Serial Killer Stalked Queer New York. Four-part true crime series. Remember the first episode of Wicked Gay’s last season, maybe ep. 31, That’s not a loaf of bread - Richard Rogers. Okay, so Last Call is about that case. It’s VERY well done, a little long maybe, but its an awesome visual companion to the Wicked Gay episode if you want to know what everyone looked like, learn more about them, get the vibe of the times, etc.. Awesome interviews with activists from the time and it's especially cool cuz each episode focuses on the victim, and their story as opposed to four episodes of Richard. So check it out.
Okay, so just a touch of magic in a world obsessed with science. Name the movie. NOW A WARNING? Oh, she’s so good. Aleister Crowley’s mother nicknamed her son "The Beast" and it wasn’t cuz he was good at football. Crowley was a bisexual magician, occultist, philosopher, author, religious figurehead, poet, painter, novelist, and mountaineer. This man SCOURED the globe, literally crisscrossed it, this episode is going to be like Crowley’s demonic travelogue. He collected bits and pieces of different world religions and philosophies, while building and promoting, and writing the text for his own supposedly magic one which allowed him to invoke gods and angels, and enabled spell casting.. He was definitely one to live life to the fullest, he was kind of the original rock star, sex drugs, and blood sacrifice instead of rock 'n roll. So He was busy. He eventually gained the moniker of The Wickedest Man In The World. Yes, that's such a good title I used a music cue. But was he? Let’s find out.
This is Episode 43, Do you believe in Magick?: Aleister Crowley
My sources for this episode are Wikipedia, Youtube, Britannica, and Atlas Obscura. Ok, so for this episode you’re gonna have to learn a little bit about ceremonial magic up front. Many of the people in this episode styled themselves as magicians. And this is Magick spelled with a k. The spelling Crowley used and supposedly coined although that looks like a boast/lie.
This magick isn’t Tinkerbell tapping you with a wand, or an overly made-up magician’s assistant disappearing from a box. This is ceremonial magick. What the demonic invocation IS ceremonial magick? Well,
Ceremonial magic or magick was defined by Crowley as the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will. Crowley saw magic as the essential method for a person to reach a true understanding of the self and to act according to one's true will. So, his version was a mix of philosophy, self-actualization, supposedly ancient rituals and rites to invoke spirits, demons, angels, and gods, and a healthy dose of bullshit. Btw, Aleister and Co. referred to those summoning demon spells as invocations or “workings”.
Crowley even started his own ceremonial magic religion around all of this called Thelema, with him as the high priest. It should be pointed out that every one of these cats really believed they were on to something with this magick thing. More importantly, It seems that magic to Crowley allowed him the freedom to live as he pleased. His religion Thelema, magicks, and philosophy revolved around one creed - Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole of The Law. It meant to seek out and find your own path in life, your own true will. And do basically whatever you want to get there. And boy did he.
I should point out that in the early 20th century, in the UK, especially among the rich and aristocratic, the ceremonial or ritual magic stuff, seances, spells, and talismans, were a big fad. TikTok wasn’t a thing, getting together in your drawing room with your other rich friends to pretend to be Satanists was considered fun. This was the world that Crowley would walk in, often inspire, and become one of its most associated figures.
And like I said, in this episode, I’m going follow Crowley around the world. Hold on to your blood sacrifice, the guy got around.
Aleister Crowley was born Edward Alexander Crowley, on October 12, 1875, in Royal Leamington Spa which is a town in Central England. Eddie Crowley came equipped with a silver spoon in his mouth (and probably a 666 on his scalp.
Crowley’s dad was an engineer but he was also involved in a very successful brewery operation which allowed him to retire before his son was born. Crowley's mother famously did not get along with her son, and yes, she eventually literally nicknamed him The Beast. So imagine what that kid was like. Crowley's parents belonged to the evangelical Christian order called the Plymouth Brethren, a religious movement that was pretty rigid about the Bible. Their religious devotion had a pretty intense effect on him, making him question and detest Christianity and he sparked a lifelong fascination with other religions of the world. His dad actually became a preacher he was so into it, and Crowley was educated in Christian schools, including one prep school in which he considered the Reverend dude running it to be a “sadist”
Even though he and Mom weren't pals, he loved his dad, who died when he was 11 of tongue cancer. Ouch. Of his dad, Crowley described him as my hero and my friend. Upon his death, he inherited a third of his wealth and began acting up in school, which increased th enmity between him and his npw widowd mom. And when I say act up, I mean he became increasingly skeptical regarding Christianity, pointing out inconsistencies in the Bible to his religious teachers, and went against the Christian morality of his upbringing by smoking, masturbating, and having sex with prostitutes from whom he contracted gonorrhea. High school kids were advanced back then.
He ended up going to live with a tutor who got him into the sport of mountaineering, which he came to love and he started climbing those peaks, including some of the Alps.
Crowley fully rejected his family’s fundamental teachings when he finished his formative I guess you'd call them high school years. and went off to Trinity College at the University of Cambridge where he was first a philosophy major and then switched to Lit. In truth, He mainly focused on mountain climbing and writing poetry, some of it pornographic. His non-porn poetry began appearing in student publications and was quite popular. Throughout his life, Crowley was a prolific writer, poet, and painter. It seemed like something of his was always getting published. I’ll mention some of his more famous works here and there but not all of them cuz’ he was PROLIFIC.
Trinity was where he adopted the name Alester, which he felt was cooler than Edward I guess. Here’s what he had to say about it:
For many years I had loathed being called Alick (remember he was Edward Alexander), partly because of the unpleasant sound and sight of the word, partly because it was the name by which my mother called me. Edward did not seem to suit me and the diminutives Ted or Ned were even less appropriate. Alexander was too long and Sandy suggested tow hair and freckles. I had read in some book or other that the most favorable name for becoming famous was one consisting of a dactyl (one long syllable followed by two short syllables) followed by a spondee (two long syllables), as at the end of a hexameter: like Jeremy Taylor. Aleister Crowley fulfilled these conditions and Aleister is the Gaelic form of Alexander. To adopt it would satisfy my romantic ideals.
And there ya have it. Around this time, In a story vaguely reminiscent of the plot of Alias (remember Jennifer Garner as Felicity the Spy?) Crowley was supposedly headhunted into a British intelligence agency at this point. MI6? Rumor has it that he was a spy all his life. That’s a helluva cover - 007 as ritual magician demon worshipper
This was also around the time when Aleister and his dactyl and spondee discovered boys.
SO Crowley always said he had had his first significant mystical experience while on holiday in Stockholm in December 1896. His biographers believe that this was the result of Crowley's first same-sex sexual experience, which enabled him to recognize his bisexuality. So basically doing it with a dude was so good that it made him believe in magic. And Aleister eventually realized he was bisexual.
At school, he continued to maintain a vigorous sex life with women—largely with hookers, from one of whom he caught syphilis and this was after the gonorrhea in high school. But he began getting with guys too. As you can guess this was illegal and would be in the UK until not too long ago. But the lawlessness of blowing dudes obviously appealed to Alesiter’s already rebellious spirit.
Alester also had his first and I think only serious relationship with a man In October of 1897. Herbert Charles Pollitt, president of the Cambridge University Footlights Dramatic Club was his name, and they got pretty serious.. They eventually broke up because Herb didn't share Crowley's increasing interest in Western esotericism, a break-up that Crowley would regret for many years. Thats sad. Btw Western Esotericism, think of it as his interest in religions that were opposite Christianity, I guess you could say.
So Crowley didn't set out to become a mystic magician despite his interests. He actually thought he wanted to be a diplomat of some sort. In 1897, he traveled to Saint Petersburg, Russia, saying that he was trying to learn Russian for his future diplomatic career there. Also in October of 1897, the same month he and Herb broke up. a brief illness triggered thoughts of his own mortality and what he referred to as "the futility of all human endeavor", Anyway Crowley abandoned all thoughts of a diplomatic career in favor of pursuing an interest in the occult.
The following year, he began reading every occult book he could get his hands on. He also wrote a book of dirty poetry called White Stains. Chortle. That one he had published abroad so he would;t get in trouble with the British authorities. In July 1898, he left Cambrdige, sans degree, despite having excelled there grades-wise.
In 1898, Crowley joined a group called the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. They figure heavily in the beginning of his story. A little bit about them - The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn also known as just the Golden Dawn was a secret society devoted to the study and practice of occult Hermeticism and metaphysics during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Hermeticism, so I was a complete neophyte to this shit as I’m guessing you are despite my love for horror and the macabre and the mystic. Hermeticism is a belief system that is a mixture of religion and philosophy. It is said to have been started by Hermes Trismegistus, who was thought to be a combination of the Egyptian god Thoth and the Greek god Hermes
Known as a magical order, the Golden Dawn was active in Great Britain and focused its practices on theurgy, the art or technique of compelling or persuading a god or beneficent or supernatural power to do or refrain from doing something. The Dawn became known as the largest single influence on 20th-century Western occultism.
So Crowley joined the the Golden Dawn, where he was reportedly trained in ceremonial magic by Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers who was one of the founders.
Crowley was initiated on 18 November 1898 by Sam Bathers and took the magical motto and name "Frater Perdurabo", which he interpreted as "I shall endure to the end". Btw, the official getup fo the Golden Dawn was big flowy robes topped off with a headpiece that looked super Egyptian. It was very theatrical and flashy.
Crowley took a flat in London and invited a senior Golden Dawn member named Allan Bennett, to live with him as his personal magical tutor. Bennett taught Crowley more about ceremonial magic and introduced the ritual use of drugs to him. Crowley would eventually become an unrepentant addict, and would proudly refer to himself as a “drug fiend.”
In November 1899, Crowley purchased Boleskine House in Foyers on the shore of Loch Ness in Scotland. This was the property he’d be most associated with, and allegedly cursed.
About this dwelling, The house is allegedly built atop the ruins of a 10th-century church that burnt to the ground during a service, killing all the congregants inside. Crowley bought Boleskine House to seclude himself and perform magic from something called The Book of Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage. It was during this period that Crowley started to become a little infamous for his occultism, both around Scotland and later, the world. Sometime during this period Sam Mathers, co-founder of the Golden Dawn, summoned Crowley to Paris. Legend has it that He left without dispelling the “12 Kings and Dukes of Hell” he had summoned, and many locals blame the house’s unlucky history on evil spirits left behind. Clean up after yourself, Al. Don’t leave your hell kings and dukes just lying around. Conjure up a demon swiffer.
And here’s the evidence of a curse upon that house - First, Crowley’s housekeeper’s two children died mysteriously and abruptly. Crowley also bragged that one employee of the estate who had long abstained from alcohol got drunk and attempted to murder his entire family. After the house had changed hands, it still wasn’t free of dark energy. In 1965, the army major who owned the house committed suicide by shotgun. The next owner, Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, spent very little time at the estate, instead bequeathing it to a friend who didn’t mind the unexplained creaks, groans, and various ghostly apparitions, but was bothered by the Crowley and Page fans who frequently attempted to break into the house and defile the grounds. Later owners dismissed any notions of hauntings or witchcraft at the house, but in 2015, the residents returned from a shopping trip to find the house completely in flames.
Meanwhile,e back at the Golden Dawn, Crowley was rising through the ranks and readied himself to enter the group's inner circle called Second Order. Unfortunately for Al, he wasn't exactly celebrated within the groups. His open bisexuality and libertine lifestyle had gained him a bad reputation, and he had developed feuds with some of the members, including W. B. Yeats. Yes, that Yeats, the poet. Slouching towards Bethleham, the whole deal. A follower on TikTok (wickedgaypod, follow me, Im told I'm amusing and I have a really big melon you can marvel at) tells me that Crowley once kicked Yeats down the stairs at Golden Dawn headquarters. Catfight!
So the Golden Dawn's London lodge refused to initiate him into this Second Order thing, so he went and visited the founders Sam Mathers in Paris, who personally admitted him into that level. This caused A schism between founder Mathers and the London members of the Golden Dawn, who were unhappy with his autocratic rule. Acting under Mathers' orders, Crowley—with the help of his then mistress and fellow initiate Elaine Simpson (possibly the first of his Scarlet Women, I’ll get to that grouping in a few) attempted to seize the Vault of the Adepts, a temple space at in West Kensington, from the London lodge members. A coup!
So the story goes that W. B. Yeats was holding a meeting, and was attacked by an “astral siege” from none other than Aleister Crowley. Crowley, wearing a black Osiris mask and a kilt, and Ms. Simpson burst into the temple, casting spells and brandishing daggers. They intended to take the temple for Mathers’, but were unsuccessful. This might have been the night Al kicked Yeats down the stairs.
This incident went to trial. When the case was taken to court, the judge ruled in favor of the London lodge, as they had paid for the space's rent, leaving both Crowley and Sam Mathers isolated from the group.
In 1900, he went to Mexico via the US, settling in Mexico City and starting a relationship with a local woman. As I’ve mentioned before, Crowley considered sex to be diving, literally, so he was super-promiscuous in addition to being super fickle. He was sort of like a chaos magician fuckboy. He later claimed he became a Freemason in Mexico, which really, and also wow he was a real joiner He also climbed several Mexican mountains, one of which he had to flee due it erupting. He climbed with a man named Oscar Eckenstein who fun fact, invented the crampon. that's the foot thing you embed in the ice so you don’t fall off the icy mountain while climbing.
After Mexico, he headed to San Francisco and then Hawai.. On the ship to Hawaii, he had a brief affair with a married woman named Mary Alice Rogers; saying he had fallen in love with her, he wrote a series of poems about the romance, published as Alice: An Adultery. No word on Mary Alice’s reaction to having her adultery exposed in print.
My head is spinning from this guy, from there he went to Japan and Hong Kong and then ended up touring India where he decided to study Hindu and Buddhist practices.
He ended up in Paris in November 1902, and became a fixture of the Parisian arts scene. Whilst there, Crowley wrote a series of poems on the work of an acquaintance, the famed sculptor Auguste Rodin. He also hung out with famed writer Somerset Maugham, who after briefly meeting Crowley later used him as a model for the character of Oliver Haddo in his novel The Magician. He returned to Boleskine House in April 1903. In August, Crowley he wed painter Gerald Kelly's sister Rose Edith Kelly in a "marriage of convenience" to prevent her from entering an arranged marriage; the marriage appalled the Kelly family and damaged his friendship with Gerald.
Rose was the first of what Crowley would come to call his Scarlet Women. The Scarlet Woman, aka Great Mother or Mother of Abominations) is a goddess found in Thelema, she;s also known as Babalon. To Crowley, she represented the female sexual impulse and liberated women. Crowley’s Scarlet Women would be his muse of the moment, there was a whole lineup of these gals and Rose was the official first one. I guess the lady who tried to help him storm the Golden Dawn’s temple didn’t qualify.
Then he was off on a honeymoon to Cairo in February 1904. The marriage became more than convenient during this trip, and Crowley fell in love with Rose. It’s like a Meg Ryan romcom except people end up drinking cat blood. Claiming to be a prince and princess, the Crowleys rented an apartment in which Crowley set up a temple room and began invoking ancient Egyptian deities while studying Islamic mysticism as one does on their honeymoon Actually, that’s a lie, on my honeymoon my husband and I got into a HELLACIOUS fight at the rental car place, I cried driving song the sunset strip we made up had a fantastic two weeks. Travel can be stressful.
According to Crowley's later account, Rose showed herself to be attuned to this magic stuff, and would regularly become delirious and go into trances and at some point tell him "They are waiting for you."
On 18 March, she explained that "they" were the god Horus, and on 20 March she proclaimed that "the Equinox of the Gods has come". She led him to a nearby museum, where she showed him a seventh-century artifact which; Crowley thought it important that the exhibit's number was 666, the Number of the Beast in Christian belief, and in later years termed the artifact the "Stele of Revealing. A stele by the way or stela is an upright stone slab with an inscription on it.
Then on 8 April, he heard a disembodied voice claiming to be that of Aiwass, the messenger of Horus, oCrowley said that he wrote down everything the voice told him over the course of the next three days, and titled it Liber AL vel Legis or The Book of the Law. This book and its philosophy would become the bible to a new religion called Thelema. The book proclaimed that humanity was entering a new age and that Crowley would serve as its prophet. It stated that a supreme moral law was to be introduced in this age, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law," and that people should learn to live in tune with their Will.
Crowley said that at the time he had been unsure what to do with The Book of the Law. Often resenting it, he said that he ignored the instructions that the text commanded him to perform, which included taking the Stele of Revealing from the museum, fortifying his own island, and translating the book into all the world's languages. According to his account, he instead sent typescripts of the work to several occultists he knew, putting the manuscript away and ignoring it. If the dude had ripped off a museum and then taken over his own island there would be even more heavy-metal songs about him. And there are quite a few here in the modern age.
But eventually, Crowley started promoting Thelema and continued to circle the globe.
Crowley returned to Britain and divided his time between England and Boleskine House in Scotland. He came to believe that Sam Mathers had begun using magic against him, and the relationship between the two broke down. In July 1905, Rose gave birth to Crowley's first child, a daughter named Lilith, with Crowley writing the pornographic Snowdrops from a Curate's Garden to entertain his recuperating wife. I know plenty of my friends who have given birth have told me that nothing helps you recover from an emergency C-section quite like a dirty poem.
Crowley said See ya to Rose and Lilith and went off to be part of the 1905 Kanchenjunga expedition which was a Himalayan mountaineering expedition that aimed to climb to the summit of Kanchenjunga, which is the third highest mountain in the world. Unfortunately, Jamchenjunga wouldn't be conquered until 1955. So the expedition was doomed.. Crowley was one of the leaders of this expedition but his arrogant behavior toward his fellow climbers and supposedly brutal treatment of the Indian porters they had with them, who were barefoot by the way, caused the group to mutiny his bounty. And some of the climbers left the camp that they were at to descend to one below them. And tragedy struck.
There was a fall that set off an avalanche and three of the barefoot porters as well as one of the climbers were killed.. Back at Crowley’s camp above, they could hear screams from help and one of the other expedition leaders descended to help. Aleister stayed in his tent. He didn’t just stay in his tent, he fired up the lantern and wrote a letter to a local newspaper stating that he had advised against the descent and that "a mountain 'accident' of this sort was quote “one of the things for which I have no sympathy whatever". Wow - dickus. The next day he descended alone, passed the site of the accident without pausing nor speaking to the remaining survivors on the scene, and left on his own to Darjeeling, a town in India’s West Bengal state. Oh, and he absconded with the remainder of the expedition’s funds. One of the backers, who was also part of the climb would later get some of his money back after he threatened to make some of Crowley's pornographic poetry public. So, as you’re learning do what thou wilt can also translate to be an asshole.
Oh, I should be fair and mention that Crowley also reportedly contracted malaria, the flu, and snow blindness, so I might have been bitchy too. Oh despite claims that Crowley DID warn them before they went down the mountain, he was widely considered to be responsible for the deaths.
Okay, so past the mountain massacre, he decided to go big game hunting in India and wrote a homoerotic novel called The Scented Garden, Having money is great. Crowley met up with Rose and Lilith in Calcutta before being forced to leave India after non-lethally shooting two men who tried to mug him. Crowley and his family decided to tour Southern China, and he smoked opium throughout the journey while working on an invocation meant to summon his holy guardian angel. I'm sure the opium helped.
Rose and Lilith left for Europe, and Crowley headed to Shanghai to meet old friend Elaine Simpson, the lady who helped him storm the temple. She was fascinated by The Book of the Law; together they performed rituals in an attempt to contact Aiwass. Crowley then sailed to Japan and Canada, before continuing to New York City, where he unsuccessfully solicited support for a second expedition up Kanchenjunga.
Upon arrival back in Britain, there was sad news Crowley learned that his daughter Lilith had died of typhoid, something he later blamed on Rose's increasing alcoholism. Under emotional distress, his health began to suffer, and he underwent a series of surgical operations. He began cheating on Rose on the regular and began short-lived romances with an actress and an author, while Rose gave birth to Crowley's second daughter, Lola Zaza, in February 1907
Crowley began doing a lot of hash, and I don't mean corned beef, and he attained what he said was a union with a Godhead. saying it was a turning point in his life. He also wrote some more chapters for the Book of the Law, saying that the entity that first visited him on his Egyptian honeymoon dropped by to give him inspiration.
But his inheritance was running out. Trying to earn money, he was hired by the Earl of Tankerville to help protect him from witchcraft; Crowley realized the Earl’s paranoia was because of the huge amounts of cocaine that was going up his nose, So Crowley took him on holiday to France and Morocco to recuperate. Also to earn money, In 1907, he also began taking in paying students, whom he instructed in occult and magical practice. He met a man named Victor Neuburg, in February, who became his sexual partner and closest disciple, Victor and Crowley allegedly experimented with BDSM to the point where it wasnt experimenting anymore. Once is experimenting, Twice is making sure, and three times is a habit. Do what thou wilt, but as I’ve urged before, use a safe word and make sure it’s audible past a gag. Don’t ask.
In November 1907, Crowley and fellow occultist and Golden Dawn co-founder George Cecil Jones decided to found an occult order to act as a successor to the Dawn, called the A∴A∴. The AA’s mission was dedicated to the advancement of humanity by the perfection of the individual on every plane through a graded series of universal initiations. More sex magic. They had headquarters and a temple in central London, and their rites borrowed from those of the Golden Dawn, but with a Thelema basis.
Crowley was annoyed with Rose's alcoholism, he blamed their daughter’s death on it, and in November 1909 he divorced her on the grounds of his own adultery. Despite being concerned about her drinking, he still let Rose raise their daughter Lola. In fact, they remained friends, and Rose stayed living at Boleskine. Her alcoholism worsened, and she was eventually institutionalized in September 1911. She was eventually released, married a doctor in 1912 and died in 1932. The first of the Scarlet Women.
In November 1909, Crowley and his slave Victor Neuberg or was it the other way around, traveled to Algeria and toured the desert with Crowley reciting the Quran on a daily basis. Following a mountaintop sex magic ritual, Crowley performed an evocation to the demon Choronzon involving a blood sacrifice, which I don't THINK was a human being. But he considered this ritual to be a watershed moment in his career as a world-traveling evil magician.
He goes back to London in January 1910, and learns that Sam Mathers was suing him for publishing Golden Dawn secrets in this new AA’s order newsletter he puts out called The Equinox. The court found in favor of Crowley. The case was widely reported in the press, with Crowley gaining wider fame. Crowley enjoyed this, and played up to the sensationalist stereotype of being a Satanist and an advocate of human sacrifice, despite being neither. Okay, that bit of research told me the Algerian mountain blood sacrifice wasn't a person, whew!
All the publicity from the court case attracted new members to the A∴A. For instance, an Australian violinist named Leila Waddell soon became Crowley's lover. Deciding to expand his teachings to a wider audience, Crowley developed the Rites of Artemis, a public performance of magic and symbolism featuring A∴A∴ members personifying various deities. It was first performed at the A∴A∴ headquarters, with attendees given a fruit punch containing peyote to enhance their experience. Various members of the press attended and reported largely positively on it. Okay, I’m assuming someone told them the punch was dosed prior otherwise I would expect the reviews to be bad.
People, particularly the press were buying Crowley’s Satan act. Or else they realized lurid headlines about black magic and blood sacrifice sold papers. He came under particular criticism from a man with the delightful name of West de Wend Fenton, editor of The Looking Glass newspaper, who called him "one of the most blasphemous and cold-blooded villains of modern times".
Fenton's articles suggested that Crowley and George Cecil Jones were involved in homosexual activity; Crowley did not mind, but Jones unsuccessfully sued for libel. Crowley and Neuburg returned to Algeria for further magical workings.
Next, we’re In 1911, Crowley and that Aussie violinist Leila Waddell holidayed in France, where he wrote a whole bunch of including poems, short stories, plays, and 19 works on magic and mysticism, including the two final Holy Books of Thelema In Paris, he met one Mary Desti, who became his next "Scarlet Woman", with the two undertaking magical workings in St. Moritz; Crowley believed that one of the numerous deities he was into was speaking through her. Based on her statements when in trance, Crowley wrote two more volumes of The Book of Law and it was around this time that he started spelling "magick" with a K to distance his sort of sex drugs blood magic from the stage magic of illusionists so magic with a K was born.
In early 1912, Crowley published something called The Book of Lies, and a German occultist named Theodor Reuss accused him of publishing some of the secrets of his own occult order, the Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), within it. Crowley convinced Reuss that the similarities were coincidental, and the two became friends. Reuss appointed Crowley as head of the O.T.O's British branch, called the Mysteria Mystica Maxima (MMM), ok, now they’re just playing with us, and at a ceremony in Berlin Crowley adopted yet another magical name - Baphomet - and was proclaimed "X° Supreme Rex and Sovereign Grand Master General of Ireland, Iona (a small island in Scotland), and all the Britons". Did the citizens and the people who were already running those places agree with this takeover?
With Reuss' permission, Crowley set about advertising the MMM and re-writing many O.T.O. rituals to be more Thelemic, which proved controversial in the group. Fascinated by the O.T.O.'s emphasis on sex magic, Crowley devised a magical working based on anal sex and incorporated it into the syllabus for those O.T.O. members who had been initiated into the eleventh degree. Ya know that’s asking a lot of people to have to do anal to climb higher in the ranks. Christ, even Scientology doesn't do that to those fools.
In March 1913, Crowley acted as producer for The Ragged Ragtime Girls, a group of female violinists led by Waddell, I guess she was cool with him having two Scarlet Women, and they performed at London's Old Tivoli theatre. They went on to a six-week stint in Moscow, where Crowley had a sadomasochistic relationship with the Hungarian Anny Ringler.
In Moscow, Crowley continued to write plays, poetry, and rituals, including the Gnostic Mass, a Thelemic ritual that became a key part of O.T.O. liturgy. One of his biographers has suggested that Crowley traveled to Moscow on the orders of British intelligence to spy on revolutionary elements in the city.
In January 1914, Crowley and Victor Neuburg (yes he was still on the scene) settled into an apartment in Paris, where together they performed the six-week "Paris Working", a period of intense ritual involving strong drug use in which they invoked the gods Mercury and Jupiter. As part of the ritual, the couple performed acts of sex magic together, at times being joined by a third guy.
Inspired by the results of the Working, Crowley wrote Liber Agapé, a treatise on sex magic. Following the Paris Working, Neuburg began to distance himself from Crowley, resulting in an argument in which Crowley cursed him. Also, word is that Crowley got all anti-Semitic on him so yuck. I mean can you imagine what that six weeks was like? You were probably other-dimensional Even Horizon insane at the end.
By 1914, Crowley was broke, relying largely on donations from A∴A∴ members which was a real televangelist move as well as dues payments made to O.T.O. In May, he transferred ownership of Boleskine House to the MMM for financial reasons, and in July he went mountaineering in the Swiss Alps. During this time the First World War broke out. After recuperating from a bout of phlebitis, Crowley set sail for the United States aboard the RMS Lusitania in October 1914. Luckily before the U-boat famously sank it.
Arriving in New York City, he moved into a hotel and began earning money writing for the American edition of Vanity Fair and undertaking freelance work for an astrologer. In the city, he continued experimenting with sex magic, through the use of masturbation, female prostitutes, and male clients of a Turkish bathhouse; all of these encounters were documented in his diaries.
Saying he was Irish and a supported of Irish independence from Great Britain, Crowley began to publicly represent Germany in the war against Britain. He became involved in New York's pro-German movement, and in January 1915 a German spy George Sylvester Viereck employed him as a writer for his propagandist paper, The Fatherland, which was dedicated to keeping the US neutral in the conflict. This would backfire on Crowley, despite him actually maybe being a spy for the UK and this was all fakery?
sCrowley entered into a relationship with his new Scarlet Woman, Jeanne Robert Foster, with whom he toured the West Coast. Then in rapid succession and despite crying poormouth, he visited Detroit, Seattle, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Los Angeles, San Diego, Tijuana, and the Grand Canyon, before returning to New York. There he befriended Indian philosopher and historian Ananda Coomaraswamy and his wife Alice Richardson; Crowley and Richardson performed sex magic in April 1916, from which she became pregnant and then miscarried. Later that year he took a "magical retirement" to a cabin by Lake Pasquaney owned by the astrologer. There, he did tons of drugs and undertook a ritual after which he gave himself yet another identity - "Master Therion".
In December, he moved to New Orleans, which was his favorite US city, before spending February 1917 with evangelical Christian relatives in Titusville, Florida. Wait, Aleister Crowley had bible thumper relatives in Florida. Florida Man. Returning to New York City, he moved in with artist and A∴A∴ member Leon Engers Kennedy in May and then learned of his mother's death..He then moved to the studio apartment of Roddie Minor, who became his partner and the new Scarlet Woman. Through their rituals, which Crowley called "The Amalantrah Workings", he believed that they were contacted by a preternatural entity named Lam. The relationship soon ended. Do we think that this whole thing, the magic, the rituals, the blood sacrifices, was all a cover for him to get laid? Can you imagine? Apparently, everyone he comes into contact with ends up under him. Could it be?
In 1918, Crowley went on a magical retreat in the wilderness of Esopus Island on the Hudson River. There’s an island on the Hudson? Here, he began painting Thelemic slogans on the riverside cliffs and claimed to have experienced past life memories of figures such as Pope Alexander VI. People would gather to watch this bald guy in a robe painting the rocks from across the Hudson and fans and fellow artists would bring him food. You can actually visit Esopus Island to this day, and won’t my husband LOVE it when I put that on the itinerary for our next NYC trip?
Back in New York City, he moved to Greenwich Village, where he took a woman named Leah Hirsig as his lover and next Scarlet Woman. Leah would be the woman who would come to be heavily associated with Crowley and probably his most famous Scarlet Woman. Eventually, it was back to London in December.
He’s back in London and pretty much broke now, and at this point he came under attack from a British tabloid called John Bull, calling him traitorous scum for aiding the Germans during the war effort. I should point out here that more than a few of Crowley's biographers think he really was an agent for British intelligence, and his seeming to aid the Germans during the war was actually his spying. In fact, it’s been alleged that friends of his who knew that he was an intelligence agent urged him to sue but he declined Because the general public didn't know he was satan bond agent 00666., They really thought he was a devil-worshiping traitor.
So Crowley had asthma and his doctor at the time prescribed not an inhaler full of albuterol to help him out but instead a syringe full of heroin. Yes, Crowley was prescribed heroin to treat his asthma. Unlike the mess of other drugs Crowley experimented with to reach heights of consciousness that would allow gods, goddesses, demons, angels, and devils in, this one got him hooked.
In January 1920, he moved to Paris, renting a house with Leah; they were soon joined in a ménage à trois by a woman named Ninette Shumway, as well as Leah's newborn daughter. Polyamory has been around for ages. Crowley hit upon forming a commune of Thelemites, which he called the Abbey of Thelema. He chose a beautiful coastal village in Sicily called SHEF-A-LOO to set up shop. He rented out a villa as his abbey. This was the beginning of the period that Crowley became most infamous for, a beautiful Italian villa full of what were basically the 1920s version of hippies doing sex magic, raising demons, and doing tons of drugs and sorta kinda going insane a little.
Crowley considered his abbey a school of magick, and gave it an appropriately collegiate motto: “Collegium ad Spiritum Sanctum”—“A College towards the Holy Spirit.” The Cefalù period was one of the most prolific and happy of his life, even as he suffered from drug addiction and had to write the scandalous Diary of a Drug Fiend to finance his community. The growing interest in dark magic and the occult provided him with an ample student body (pun intended).
Oh, and people died.
Moving to the commune with Aleister was Leah, Ninette Shumway, and their children Hansi, Howard, and Poupée. Crowley described the scenario as "perfectly happy ... my idea of heaven." They wore robes, and performed rituals to the sun god Ra at set times during the day,; the rest of the day they were left to follow their own interests.
Things weren’t as great as he made them out to be. Other members brought their kids to the Abbey, too to live and word is that they played all day, there wasn't much education, and they witnessed some of the sex magic. Dogs and cats roamed the place and no one picked up after them or cleaned at all so things aren't healthy. Crowley would occasionally leave the Abbey to go to Palermo, where he would rent boys and buy supplies and drugs, most notably heroin. He was a full-blown junkie by this point, and his addiction was dominating his life. Oh, and he was also still using cocaine, which was eroding the inside of his nose.
As the Abbey, the common room was dedicated to ritual practices and depicted a scarlet “magick” circle marked with the sign of the major Thelemic deities. Of particular interest in the Abbey to Satanic interior decorators, so like Joanna Gaines, was Crowley’s bedroom. It was called the room of nightmares, and on the walls were a variety of erotic murals and frescos of the creatures he claimed to commune with on a nightly basis: demons, night terrors, goblins – all of them painted rather amateurishly by Crowley in one of his drug-induced fits of ecstasy. This private room was used for specific night initiations involving psychoactive drugs which gave terrifying cinematic life to this Bosch-like vision of hellish debauchery. So yes, he’d dose initiates with a hallucinogen and give them a terror ride with his demonic presence in the room of nightmares.
Leah’s daughter died in October of 1920, and then Ninette had another baby. Despite all of this, new followers continued to show up due to Crowley’s numerous correspondences with friends vfellow magicians, and Thelemties. around the world. A film star named Jane Wolfe arrived in July 1920, where she was initiated into the A∴A∴ (that was still a thing) and became Crowley's secretary. Another man named Cecil Frederick Russell joined but he often complained to Crowley about the same-sex sexual magic that he was required to perform and left after a year. Yeah, um, some of the sex magic doesn’t exactly sound consensual and maybe a little coerced. Maybe. You’re canceled Crowley!
In February of 1922, Crowley returned to Paris for a retreat in an unsuccessful attempt to kick his heroin addiction. He then went to London in search of money, where he published articles in The English Review and kinda sorta used his substance issue as fuel. criticizing the Dangerous Drugs Act of 1920 and wrote a novel, Diary of a Drug Fiend, completed in July. On publication, it received mixed reviews; he was lambasted by the Sunday Express, which called for its burning and used its influence to prevent further reprints. People really didn't like him.
Meanwhile, back at Thelema Land, the end was near. A young Thelemite named Raoul Loveday and his wife Betty May moved into the Abbey. Raoul was a total Aleister fanboy, but Betty May? Not so much. Betty May hated Crowley and she was not into the Satan hippie catshit lifestyle. She later claimed that Raoul was made to drink the blood of a sacrificed feline and that everyone was required to cut themselves with razors every time they used the word “I”. She would have good reason to hate the commune. Raoul drank from a polluted stream and developed a liver infection that killed him in February 1923. His now widow Betty May returned to London and told her story to the press.
That’s when the tabloid John Bull proclaimed Crowley to be “the Wickedest Man in the world.” As well as a man they’d like to hang. Crowley thought he was being slandered, but didn't have legal fees to sue. So John Bull kept typographically shitting on him, and the stories spread throughout Europe and over to the US. Italy’s then Mussoloni-led fascist government got wind of what was going on at the Abbey and, being unamused by drugs and homosexuality, they deported Crowley, and the Abbey was over. The local villagers whitewashed all the fucked up murals, and it was abandoned. It is still there to this day, you can walk around it.
Crowley and Leah went to Tunisia, where, dogged by his bad health, he tried unsuccessfully to give up heroin again, and began writing what he termed his "autohagiography", The Confessions of Aleister Crowley. They were joined by a Thelemite named Norman Mudd, who became Crowley's public relations consultant.
Employing a local boy, Mohammad ben Brahim, as his servant, Crowley went with him on a retreat to Nefta in Tunisia, where they performed sex magic together. In January of 1924, Crowley traveled to Nice, France, where he underwent a series of operations to fix his cocaine nose job. He took on an American follower, Dorothy Olsen. Crowley took Olsen back to Tunisia for a magical retreat in Nefta. In March she became pregnant, and Leah was called to take care of her. Scarlet Woman, meet Scarlet Woman. Dorothy unfortunately miscarried, and Crowley took her back to France. Leah Hirsig finally distanced herself from Crowley, probs because he asked her to help birth to his other girlfriend’s baby. Crowley later denounced her.
Then came a struggle for OTO leadership in Germany. Crowley had his supporters but others didn't and the OTO split Moving to Paris, he broke up with Olsen in 1926, Then went through a large number of lovers over the following years, with whom he experimented in sex magic. Throughout, he was dogged by poor health, largely caused by his heroin and cocaine addictions.
In December 1928 Crowley met a Nicaraguan named Maria Teresa Sanchez, his latest red babe. He got deported from France (this guy has been thrown out of more European companies than I’ve been thrown out of high school reunions, don't ask), France didn’t like that he was a wicked magician who practiced blood sacrifice, Al wanted new Scarlet Woman Maria to join him in London, so he married her in August 1929.
I’m not sure who kept publishing him because he didn't sell tons of copies of his work and the reviews were usually vicious due to his infamy. But they did keep publishing him and the first book in his proposed six-volume autobiography came out that year. Six volumes! Well, he did travel a lot. And got a lot done. Unfortunately, the publisher closed in November 1930, before the whole set could make it out.
In April 1930, Crowley moved to a country he hadn’t scandalized yet, Germany. He moved to Berlin and took Hanni Jaegar as his next Scarlet Woman, the other one didn't even get a chance to grow to hate him. Their relationship was troubled. In September he went to Lisbon, and supposedly annoyed by Hanni, he faked his own successful suicide with the help of a poet friend. He did this at the Boca do Inferno rock formation aka the mouth of hell, no that isn’t me being a twat that;s what it’s nicknamed. Just one of those things, faking your death.
Crowley’s poet friend handed his suicide note to newspapers, helpfully explaining the magical symbols and translating the mangled Portuguese to police and media alike.
As for the supposed deceased, he went back to Berlin, where he reappeared three weeks later at the opening of his latest art exhibition. Surprise, I’m a stunt queen. Despite his paintings not really selling, it turns out he was a better painter than a writer - the critics loved his German Expressionism-type work. Guess what he did in August of 1931? Her name was Bertha Busch, not kidding, and red temporarily became her favorite color. I said temporarily because they were all temporary, and also because Aleister and Berth were reportedly violent with each other. Meanwhile, when he wasn’t seeing red, see what I did there, he was sleeping with men and women all over the city. What’s that term - disaster bisexual? I almost called this episode Disaster Bisexual: Aleister Crowley but it kinda buried the lede. There are rumors he was spying again, this time on German communists.
Crowley left Busch, and returned to London where he took one Pearl Brooksmith as his new Scarlet Woman. Ok, this is going to sound shallow, but was it the potential hookup with Satan or the Egyptian God of Death or a demon, and they thought it would give them eternal life or something that was the draw, cuz; who are these women, and he wasn’t too much to look at it, plus his nose was falling off due to coke and he was hooked on smack. Must have had a dick as long as Catholic Mass.
Speaking of noses, he had more nasal surgery in 1932, and he began taking speaking engagements for cash. As a way to get some operating funds, he started filing libel cases against people. Some of which he won. Despite these small victories, he was forced in February 1935 to declare bankruptcy. During the hearing, it was revealed that Crowley had been spending three times his income for several years.
Is your head still attached? It hasn’t whirled off? There’s more. Crowley met one Deidre Patricia Doherty, I’m not sure if she’d qualify as a Scarlet Woman or not but she did offer to bear Crowley’s child, who was born in May 1937. Named Randall Gair, Crowley nicknamed him Aleister Atatürk. Randall died in a car accident in 2002 at the age of 65.
Crowley was now living largely off contributions supplied by the O.T.O.'s Agape Lodge in California, led by a rocket scientist and man of mystery named John Whiteside "Jack" Parsons. Seriously, if he was queer, he’d be his own Wicked Gay episode. Crowley was intrigued by the rise of Nazism in Germany, there was an oh oh statement, and was led to believe that Hitler might convert to Thelema. If only. Less horrifying genocide, more ridiculous sex magick I always say. He was divested of this notion upon learning that the Nazis abolished the German O.T.O. Crowley then decreed Hitler was a black magician. Probably.
When WW2 began, Crowley wrote to the Naval Intelligence Division offering his services, but they declined. Guess they didn’t know about his spy record. He associated with a variety of figures in Britain's intelligence community at the time, including writers Dennis Wheatley (who wrote occult novels), Roald Dahl (WILLY WONKA WAS A SPY), and Ian Fleming (that makes sense), and always claimed to have been behind the "V for Victory" sign first used by the BBC and against 1980s lizard aliens from space,; this has never been proven.
In 1940, his asthma got bad, and with his German-produced medication unavailable due to the war, he began using heroin again, which he had finally kicked but once again became addicted. He kept writing books, poetry, and Thelema screeds.
On 1 December 1947, Crowley died of chronic bronchitis aggravated by pleurisy and myocardial degeneration, aged 72. His last words were supposedly “I am perplexed. Satan get out.” NOW you reject Satan. Someone started worrying about getting into heaven at too late of a date.
His funeral was held at a Brighton crematorium; despite his infamy and scores of ex-girlfriends, only about a dozen people attended,. The tabloids ran stories claiming it was a Black Mass. Crowley was cremated; and his ashes were sent to a German-American businessman who was the head of the US chapter of the OTO, who buried them in his garden in Hampton, New Jersey. Damn, the most famous occultist on Earth, the wickedest man in the world, buried near the Jersey Turnpike, that’s an ignominious end.
Crowley went on to become a larger-than-life figure in pop culture circles, usually when we talk about the occult, satan worship, British eccentrics, and so on. David Bowie immortalized him in the song Quicksand, and heavy metal loved his ass. The most famous heavy metal song about him being Mr. Crowely by Ozzy, but bands like Iron Maiden, Ministry, the firmly canceled Marilyn Manson, and a ton of death metal bands all wrote songs about or namechecked him in songs, too.
Well, that’s the Aleister Crowley story. Know what would be sorta cool? If Christopher Nolan did a Crowley bio-pic. Oppenheimer worked despite the length and the nuke being underwhelming. That might be a sick movie, with the sex magic, the drugs, and the demons! Come to think of it, probably literally sick.
Thanks for joining me this evening. You can follow wickedgaypod on most of the social media, but honestly, I’m kind of focused on TikTok and Instagram now because they’re the most fun. Also, I actually have some followers on TikTok. Wicked Gay’s theme song is by Gino and the Goons, you can find them on Facebook and Spotify, with additional music by JB and cover art by Paul Chapman. They were recently on the same cruise together! Audio engineering by the other Mr. Harvey. Please rate and review Wicked Gay on your favorite podcast app, and think about signing up for the Patreon, I’m about to put a bonus episode up on there. Here’s a hint to tantalize - movie star dildo. Fun!
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