ALEISTER CROWLEY (1875 - 1947)

Who was Aleister Crowley? Was he the greatest magician in modern times as most recent books on witchcraft and the occult seem to suggest? What is a magician? Crowley called himself ‘The Great Beast’, why was this? and why is his photo on the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s album sleeve?

Edward Alexander Crowley was born in Warwickshire, England to a very wealthy, strict and fanatical Christian family who made their money from the brewery trade. He later changed his name to Aleister for reasons now lost. He was immensely disliked at school for his bullying, lying and cheating, and because of this had to be moved around from school to school and have his own private tutors. He gambled and drank and at one of these schools he caught gonorrhoea which was at about the same time he rebuked the God of the Christians for the devil, which may also have had something to do with his idolised father dying a few years earlier.

Just after his teens he came into his inheritance and became very rich indeed. He travelled around the world and visited places such as Mexico, Hong Kong, America, India and Egypt. Apart from writing poetry Crowley enjoyed mountaineering. He tried to climb the world’s second highest mountain, Chogo-Ri, (Everest was prohibited to Europeans at that time) and failed dismally. Some time later he then tried to climb the third highest, Kanchenjunga, with himself as leader, but was stopped short due to an accident, probably of his own making, where some of the climbers were killed. He made things worse by leaving them on the mountain and he was shunned by the mountaineering fraternity thereafter.

He took pleasure in killing animals. At 14 he ‘killed’ a cat 9 different ways to see if it really did have nine lives. He shot enough bats to make a waistcoat, shot tigers and bears in India and even people, so it was reported. He sacrificed animals and said himself that he regularly sacrificed young boys (but this was unlikely to be true).
Crowley’s greatest love was sex and he spent a lot of money on prostitutes, male and female. He was proud that he practised buggery and fellatio with strange men and he said he gained most of his magical insight whilst being sodomised. He married twice and both his wives became alcoholic and insane. He had many mistresses and girlfriends, some of whom went the same way. He had two daughters who he named Nuit Ma Athanoor Hecate Sappho Jezebel Lilith and Paupée and both died young. Other children that happened to come under his control became chain smokers and voyeurs at five. He was always on the look out for a ‘Scarlet Woman’ and had several; he made at least one of these have sex with animals whilst he ate her excretions. He filed his teeth so he could give special ‘serpent’ or ‘vampire’ love bites. (One woman claimed she received blood poisoning because of this.) He was overweight and wore a wig.

All his life he was completely hooked on heroin and cocaine and ‘sex elixir’ (sperm and vagina secretions mixed by the act of sex) which he supplemented with morphine, chloroform, ether and opium.

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