About Aleister Crowley: English Poet, Mountaineer and Mystic (1875-1947)
Aleister Crowley (;born Edward Alexander Crowley; 12 October 1875 – 1 December 1947) was an English occultist, ritual magician, poet, painter, novelist and mountaineer. He founded the Thelema religion, claiming to be the prophet of Ion entrusted with guiding mankind into Horus in the early 20th century. He was a prolific writer who published widely during his lifetime.
Born into a wealthy family in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, Crowley rejected his parents’ fundamentalist Christian Plymouth Brethren beliefs in order to pursue an interest in Western mysticism. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he concentrated on mountaineering and poetry, and published several articles. Some biographers claim he was recruited to British intelligence here, further suggesting that he was a spy all his life. In 1898 he joined the mysterious Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, where he was trained in ritual magic by Samuel Liddell McGregor Mathers and Alan Bennett. After moving to Boleskine House on Loch Ness in Scotland, he went hiking in Mexico with Oscar Eckenstein and then studied Hindu and Buddhist customs in India.He married Rose Edith Kelly and honeymooned in Cairo, Egypt in 1904, where Crowley claimed to be in contact with a paranormal entity named Aiwas, who offered him Torah, the sacred text on which Thelema was based. Announcing the beginning of the Æon of Horus, Book Declares that its followers should “do what you want” and seek to align with their true will through the practice of magic.
After unsuccessful attempts to climb Kanchenjunga and visits to India and China, Crowley returned to England, where he gained prominence as a prolific writer of poetry, fiction and mystery literature. In 1907 he and George Cecil Jones co-founded an esoteric order, A∴A∴, through which they propagated Thelema. After spending some time in Algeria, he joined another mystical order, the German-based Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), in 1912 as the leader of its British branch, which he reformulated according to his Thelemite beliefs. organize. Through OTO, Thelemite groups are established in the UK, Australia and North America. Crowley spent World War I in the United States, where he began painting and campaigning for Germany’s war effort against Britain, and later revealed that he had infiltrated the pro-German movement to assist British intelligence. In 1920 he founded the Thelema Convent in Cefalu, Sicily, a religious commune where he lived with various followers. His bohemian lifestyle led to condemnation in the British press, and the Italian government expelled him in 1923. For the next 20 years, he divided between France, Germany and England, and continued to promote Thelema until his death.
Crowley gained widespread notoriety during his lifetime as a recreational drug experimenter, bisexual and individualistic social critic. He has been dubbed “the most evil man in the world” by the mass media and has been labelled a Satanist. Crowley remains a highly influential figure in Western mysticism and counterculture, and continues to be seen as the prophet of Thelema. He has been the subject of various biographies and scholarly studies.
early life
Youth: 1875–1894
Crawley was born Edward Alexander Crowley on 12 October 1875 at 30 Clarendon Square, Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire. His father, Edward Crowley (1829-1887), was trained as an engineer, but he took a place in a lucrative family-owned brewing business, and Crowley’s Alton Ayers allowed him Retire before birth. His mother, Emily Bertha Bishop (1848–1917), from a Devon-Somerset family, had a strained relationship with her son. She described him as a “beast,” his intoxicating name. The couple married in November 1874 at the Kensington Registry in London and are evangelical Christians. Crowley’s father was born a Quaker but converted to the Exclusivity Fraternity, a sect of a Christian fundamentalist group known as the Plymouth Brotherhood, which Emily joined at the time of their marriage . Crowley’s father was particularly religious, spending time every day after breakfast as an itinerant missionary for the denomination and reading a chapter from the Bible to his wife and son. Following the death of their youngest daughter in 1880, the Crawleys moved to Red Hill, Surrey, in 1881. At the age of 8, Crowley was sent to HT Habershon’s evangelical Christian boarding school in Hastings and then to Ebor Preparatory School in Cambridge, run by what Crowley believed to be a sadistic Henry Darcy. Opened by Pastor Champney.
In March 1887, when Crowley was 11 years old, his father died of tongue cancer. Crowley described this as a turning point in his life, and he maintained his admiration for his father, calling him “my hero and my friend”. Inheriting a third of his father’s wealth, he began misbehaving at school and was severely punished by Champney; Crowley’s family expelled him from school when he developed proteinuria. He then attended Malvern College and Tonbridge School, both of which he despised and left after a few semesters. He became increasingly suspicious of Christianity, pointed out inconsistencies in the Bible to his religious teachers, and violated the Christian morals he was taught as a child by smoking, masturbating and having sex with gonorrhea-stricken prostitutes. He was sent to Eastbourne to live with a Brethren tutor and to study chemistry at Eastbourne College. Crowley became interested in chess, poetry and mountaineering, and climbed Beach Point in 1894, before visiting the Alps and joining the Scottish Mountaineering Club. The following year he returned to the Bernese Alps to climb the Eiger, Trift, Jungfrau, Mönch and Wetterhorn.
Cambridge University: 1895–1898
In October 1895, Crowley began a three-year course at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied philosophy. With the approval of his personal tutor, he switched to English literature, which was not part of the course offered at the time. Crowley spent much of his college pastime, becoming president of the chess club and practicing for two hours a day. He briefly considered a career as a chess player. Crowley also loved literature and poetry, especially the works of Richard Francis Burton and Percy Byshe Shelley.Many of his own poems have appeared in student publications such as Granta, cambridge magazineand cantabHe continued mountaineering, taking annual vacations to the Alps from 1894 to 1898, often climbing with his friend Oscar Eckenstein, and making the first ascent of Monk in 1897 without a guide. These feats earned him recognition in the alpine climbing community.
I’ve hated being called Alick for years, partly because the word sounds and sight unpleasant, and partly because it was my mother’s name. Edward didn’t seem to fit me, and Ted Jr. or Ned even less. Alexander is too long, and Sandy recommends keeping the hair and freckles.I’ve read in some book or other that the names most conducive to being famous are made up of a dactyl and a spondee, like at the end of a hexameter: e.g. Jeremy Taylor. Aleister Crowley satisfies these conditions, Aleister is the Gaelic form of Alexander. Adopting it would satisfy my romantic ideals.
Aleister Crowley, on his name change.
Crowley had his first major mystical experience while vacationing in Stockholm in December 1896. Several biographers, including Lawrence Soutine, Richard Kaczynski and Tobias Chutton, believe it was the result of Crowley’s first same-sex experience, which allowed him to identify out his bisexuality. In Cambridge, Crowley maintained an active sex life with women—mostly with female prostitutes, one of whom he contracted syphilis from—but he ended up engaging in same-sex activities, even though they were illegal. In October 1897, Crowley met Herbert Charles Politt, president of the Footlight Drama Club at Cambridge University, and the two began dating. They parted ways because Pollitt didn’t share Crowley’s growing interest in Western occultism, and Crowley would regret the breakup for years.
In 1897, Crowley traveled to St. Petersburg, Russia, and later claimed that he was trying to learn Russian as he was considering a future diplomatic career there. Biographers Richard Spencer and Tobias Chutton believe Crowley did so as an intelligence agent hired by the British Secret Service, speculating that he was drafted while in Cambridge.
In October 1897, a brief illness sparked thoughts of death and “the futility of all human effort”, and Crowley abandoned all thought of a diplomatic career in favor of the occult. In March 1898 he was awarded AE Waite’s Book of Black Magic and Contractthen Carl von Eckarthausen’s cloud over the sanctuary, to promote his mystical interests. Crowley privately published 100 copies of his poems in 1898 Aceldama: a place to bury strangers, but this was not particularly successful.In the same year, he published a series of other poems, including white stain, a decadent collection of erotic poetry printed abroad, lest its publication be banned by British authorities. In July 1898, he left Cambridge, and although he won a “First Class” in the 1897 exam, and had been “Second Class” until then, he did not receive any degree at all.
Golden Dawn: 1898-99
Crowley in Golden Dawn costume
In August 1898, Crowley met the chemist Julian L. Baker in Zermatt, Switzerland, and the two began to discuss their mutual interest in alchemy. Back in London, Baker introduced Crowley to George Cecil Jones, Baker’s brother-in-law and a member of the mysterious society known as the Order of Hermes of the Golden Dawn, which was formed in 1888. Crowley was inducted into the Outer Order On November 18, 1898, the group’s leader, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, presided over the Golden Dawn. The ceremony took place at the Temple of Isis-Ulania at the Golden Dawn at Mark Mason Hall in London, where Crowley took the magical motto and named it “Frater Perdurabo”, which he explained as “I will follow through” . Biographers Richard Spencer and Tobias Chutton suggested that Crowley should join the Knights under the command of the British Secret Service to monitor the activities of Mathers known as Carlist.
Crowley moved into his own luxury apartment at 67-69 Chancery Lane and soon invited a senior Golden Dawn…
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