Aleister Crowley Biography and List of Works

English writer and occult figure, popularly known as "the Great Beast" or "The Wickedest Man in the World", by the media because of his fascination for sex magic and degradation, drug taking and hedonism. Crowley's famous motto was 'Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law.Love is the law.Love under will.

Crowley was born in Leamington, Warwickshire. His parents belonged to a strict Puritan sect known as the Plymouth Brethren. After his father died Crowley abandoned all aspects of Christianity and considered his mother a 'religious bigot'. On the other hand, she called him 'The Beast'. It was said that Crowley killed his first cat at the age of 11, and later rumours linked him with infanticide and cannibalism.

Inheriting his father's brewing fortune, Crowley studied at Trinity College at Cambridge, devoting his time to poetry and occultism.In 1898 he joined The Hermetic order of the Golden Dawn, which also counted poet W.B. Yeats as its member.

During the next few years Crowley became a member of the group's inner conclave, but after quarrels concerning the control of the group, he was expelled from it. He claimed to have experienced a vision in Egypt, prophesying a new era for humanity. He led a group of followers to Sicily, established 'black magic temples' in Italy and England, and wrote numerous books. Crowley's early works include many volumes of poetry and books with mythological or mystical themes, among them Songs of the Spirit (1898), Aceldama (1989), The Soul of Osiris (1901), Tannhäuser (1902), The God-Eater (1903),and Oracles (1905). In 1903 he married Rose Kelly, his first wife, but still had a ring of mistresses, and in 1909 he started a relationship with the poet Victor Neuberg.

From 1915 to 1919 Crowley lived in the United States, and in the 1920s he moved to a hillside villa in Sicily. Crowley hoped the Cefalu villa 'Abbaye de Theleme', would be a world centre for the study of the occult. In 1921 he was consecrated a god by his followers. After the mysterious death of one of his magical brothers, a 23-year-old Oxford undergraduate Raoul Loveday, he was soon expelled by Mussolini or the Italian authorities. Loveday died when he killed a cat and drank its blood. The dead man's wife, Betty May, informed on Crowley's degraded activities.

Crowley's later years were shadowed by poor health, drug addiction, and desperation for money. In 1929 he married his second wife, Maria Ferrari de Miramar, and earned his living mostly by publishing obscure writings. Crowley spent his last years in a boarding house in Hastings, addicted to heroin and alcohol. His final act was to curse the doctor who refused to give him more heroin. He died on December 1, 1947, and was cremated in Brighton. (According to some rumours' the doctor died within twenty-four hours after the magician.) Crowley's ashes were sent to followers in the United States.

As a writer Crowley was prolific. His novels, The Diary of a Drug Fiend (1922) and Moonchild (1929), are partly based on his personal life and egomaniac hallucinations. Moonchild is a roman à clef, in which two societies of rival magicians quarrel over an experiment to incarnate a supernatural being. Among his most famous occult writings are The Book of Lies (1913), Magick in Theory and Practice (1929), and Book of Law (1938).

After his death several unpublished writings have been released, including The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, his autobiography, a self-portrait of the man, who also gained a reputation as a mountaineer. Most of all, he tried to achieve supremacy in the occult world, not only based on the knowledge of magic (or 'magick' as he preferred to call it), but also in personal revelations.

Crucial was his vision in Egypt in 1904, when according to Crowley's own account, his spiritual alter ego Aiwass dictated what became known as The Book of the Law. Crowley claimed that mankind has lived through two great aeons: that of Isis, the prehistoric age of the dominance of Woman, and that of Osiris, the age of the dominance of the male principle and of the great religions. The present aeon was the commencement of that of Horus and self-will. The third age would be a New Age of Youth, based on union of female and male energies. Thus sex was central to Crowley's magical practice, both in heterosexual and homosexual forms.

Crowley claimed to be reincarnation of the French occultist known as Eliphas Lévi. One of Crowley's most notorious projects - a conjuration of Pan employing his Oscar Wilde -style 'Hymn to Pan' - was lifted from Edgar Jepson's thriller No. 19 (1910). According to Kenneth Grant, his magical theories correspond very closely with the schema of H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos.

Eliphas Lévi (1810-75, original name Alphonse-Louis Constant) a Paris shoemaker's son, expelled from the church for heresy, who worked as a journalist. Lévi was a key figure in the occult revival of the 19th-century. He wrote widely on Qabalah and Tarot. Among his works are Dogma and Ritual of High Magic (1856) and The History of Magic. - see also: Umberto Eco and Foucault's Pendulum, Arthur Conan Doyle, whose interest in magic was far from the rational thinking of his best-known fictional character, Sherlock Holmes.- W. Somerset Maugham's novel The Magician depicts the lightly disguised character of Crowley. - The author can also be found from the novels of Dennis Wheatley and Colin Wilson. - note: after rock star Jimmy Page started collecting Crowley's writings, they have become hard to obtain.

For further reading: Magic of My Youth by A. Calder-Marshall (1951); Aleister Crowley by C.R. Cammell (1951, rev. ed. 1969); The Great Beast by J. Symonds (1952); The Romantic Agony by M. Praz (1956); Magic Aleister Crowley by J. Symonds (1958); Aleister Crowley: A Memoir of 666 by A. Burnett-Rae (1971); The Legend of Aleister Crowley by P.R. Stephenson (1983); The Legacy of the Beast by J. Symonds (1988); The King of the Shadow Realm by J. Symonds (1988); Aleister Crowley by C. Wilson (1989)

NOTE: The American avant-garde filmmaker Kenneth Anger is known to be supporter of Aleister Crowley's occult theories. Anger's most famous film is Scorpio Rising (1964). Much of the works have been done in Europe, mainly in France, but abandoned during production and never exhibited. Among his other films are Fireworks (1947), Invocation of my Demon Brother (1969), Rabbit's Moon (1971), Lucifer Rising (1973, rev. edition 1980). Books: Hollywood Babylon (first published in France in 1958), Hollywood Babylon II (1984).

ACELDAMA, (1898)