Aleister
Crowley (Edward Alexander Crowley) is one of the most controversial figures in
the archives of modern occultism. Along with the Freudians, Crowley believed that most of humankind’s
ills were caused by inhibition of the sexual impulses. Consequently, much of Crowley’s magick drew its impetus from the release of
psychic energy through sexual activity, including homosexuality and other
practices that earned for Crowley
the distinction of being named one of the most sinister figures of modern
times. In his day, and for some time afterward, the name of Aleister Crowley
was almost synonymous with evil. Crowley’s
own mother, a fundamentalist Christian, dubbed him “The Great Beast 666,” a
diabolical image drawn from the Book of Revelation. In Cairo,
Egypt, in 1904 a being that
called itself “Aiwass” suddenly took possession of Crowley’s wife after she had uttered
something to the effect that “they” wished to communicate with him. At the
time, they were standing before the Stele of Revealing in the CairoMuseum.
There followed three days of dictation by Aiwass to Crowley. The text of this dictation forms The
Book of the Law (1904), which was supposed to herald the coming of the Age
of Horus, the child.
Crowley won the distinction of being the
“wickedest man in the world” while he was conducting an institution he called
the Sacred Abbey of Thelema. Located on the island of Sicily,
the abbey was dedicated to the practice of magic, uninhibited sex accompanied
by liberal use of drugs, and worship of ancient Gnostic deities. Ritual
intercourse, both hetero and homosexual in nature, was the chief form of
worship.
Drawing
upon ancient Gnostic magical texts, Crowley
added to an old Graeco-Egyptian text and performed the rite of Libersamekh,
celebrating sexual release and the passage of the spirit from a lower level
of consciousness to a higher one. Crowley
added his own contributions to the original Gnostic text, some of which were
“High Supernatural Black Magic” and “Intercourse with the Demon.” According to Crowley the ritual was the
one to be employed by the Beast 666 for the attainment of knowledge and
conversation with his holy guardian angel. In The Black Arts (1968) Richard Cavendish comments
on the Liber samekh: “To know the angel and have intercourse with the
demon . . . means to summon up and liberate the forces of the magician’s
unconscious. The performance of the ritual is accompanied by…the mounting frenzy
with which the barbarous names of power are chanted…ending in a climax which is
both physical and psychological and in which the magician’s innermost powers
are unleashed.”
Crowley’s life and career are
illustrations of the two possibilities inherent in experimenting with altered
states of consciousness. Whatever else might be said about him, Crowley was a powerful
magician and a master of the art of ritual. Crowley’s excesses and eventual decline probably
were results of his reliance upon narcotics. His philosophy of life was summed
up in an analysis by journalist Tom Driberg in the days when Crowley was beginning to be called the
wickedest man in the world: “His basic commandment was ‘Do what thou wilt.’
Since his training in serious, formal magick (as he spelt it) was rigorous, he
did not mean by this ‘Follow each casual impulse.’ He meant ‘Discover your own
true will and do it.’ In other words, ‘Know yourself and be yourself.’”
Before
his death Crowley
was rumored to have started a group on the American West Coast that included
the study and practice of alchemy. The deaths of several persons as the results
of mysterious explosions were connected with this practice; but if a Crowley cult ever
existed, it had all but vanished within a few years after his death.
