Aleister Crowley - The Great Beast 666

Aleister Crowley may be one of the most interesting men who ever lived. He proclaimed himself a magician, scholar, writer and even an undercover spy. He was known as “The Great Beast 666,” because some even believe he was the Antichrist narrated in the Book of Revelation. Others believe that he was a genius and a visionary, and that the world would not be the same if it were not for his teachings. Today we are going to talk about the life of this legendary figure, and you yourself can decide if he really was “The Most Evil Man in the World.” How the Boy Became a Beast In 1875, Edward Alexander Crowley was born in Warwickshire, England, to two extremely religious parents.

His grandfather had a successful distillery, and yet his father never wanted to spend any of the money because he believed that drunkenness was a sin. Instead, he became a preacher and passionately evangelized the teachings of a fundamentalist Christian group called The Plymouth Brethren. They taught young Edward to live life as simply as possible and that men only existed to serve God. Any form of excess; Whether spending money, dressing in nice clothes, or eating more than was absolutely necessary was considered a sin, and the temptation to indulge in anything was considered the work of the Devil. When he was very young, Edward admired his father and wanted to become a preacher like him.

He obeyed all his parents' demands and, instead of going out to play with other children, he studied the Bible. This did not make him very popular at school and the other children bullied him mercilessly. His father died of tongue cancer when he was only 11 years old and he was left in the care of his enthusiastic mother. Living in such harsh conditions on a daily basis made Edward seriously ill. Doctors said he was so weak that he would die within a few months if changes were not made. Fortunately, his uncle intervened and suggested that perhaps the boy needed to live in the country.

Edward moved in with his uncle and began climbing mountains and running in the woods, where he breathed fresh air. His uncle allowed him to have fun, which was a concept that had been completely foreign to him until that moment. He even took him to pubs and let him drink while underage, and paid a prostitute so he could lose his virginity at 15. After all, the doctors said he might die soon, so his uncle wanted him to experiment. all the fun possible. he could with the time he had left. His health fully recovered and he was sent back to live with his mother.

But Edward had changed during the time he was away and was in full-blown teenage rebellion. He knew that the Plymouth Brethren were to blame for his sickly childhood and he rejected all of their religious teachings. He no longer wanted to be a preacher and he wanted to have free will to make his own decisions in life. He hated the idea that almost everything that made people happy was considered a “sin.” His mother was surprised that his obedient son had changed so much during his absence and she said that he had become "The Beast" from the Book of Revelation.

After arguing with her, he decided that if he needed to communicate with the Devil in order to live her life by his own rules, so be it. He would become the Beast his mother said he was. One of the first evil things he did was have sex with the maid in her mother's bed, just to spite her. When he found out about her, he fired the maid immediately and the poor girl's reputation was ruined to the point that he could no longer find work. The maid was forced into prostitution and Crowley claimed that she became Jack the Ripper's first victim.

He even said that he knew the Ripper personally and that he was an occultist. Later, he would write of his formative years: “I was in a fight to the death with myself: God and Satan fought for my soul during those three long hours. God won, now I only have one doubt left: which of the two was God? The Awakening When Crowley graduated from high school, he was sent to Cambridge, where he introduced himself to his new classmates as "Aleister Crowley." He joined the chess club and was able to win several competitions. In 1898, when Aleister was 22 years old, he fell in love with a classmate, Herbert Jerome Pollitt.

Very few people at school knew that Herbert had an alter ego, who dressed as a woman in private nightclubs as "Diane de Rougy." Crowley wrote love poems about Herbert and they are filled with anguish over her desire to be with him. Clearly, his bisexuality was an even

great

er motivation for rejecting Christianity. In the eyes of the church, his love for Herbert was considered an abomination. After graduating from college, Aleister inherited the Crowley family fortune and was finally able to do whatever he wanted. He began hiring prostitutes almost every day and bought books on the occult. He wrote dirty poetry and published it abroad under a pseudonym.

When he was in his early 20s, he discovered that he was not alone in his fascination with the occult and the possibility that magic could be real. He joined a group of aspiring magicians called the Order of the Golden Dawn, which had famous members such as the poet William Butler Yeats and Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula. They claimed they had translated ancient Egyptian texts, old grimoires filled with ancient spells and Jewish mysticism from Kabbalah. They believed they could perform real magic, communicate with angels, and know their inner soul. When he showed up at his first meeting of the Order of the Golden Dawn, Crowley was in disguise and introduced himself as "Count Vladimir Svareff".

He was still afraid that his family would find out that he was dabbling in the occult and didn't want to ruin his reputation. However, no one was convinced of his disguise, because he was a baby-faced young man who wore a false mustache and spoke with a terrible Russian accent. Later in his life, Aleister Crowley became a secret agent for the British government during World War I, because he claimed that he had successfully infiltrated a secret society... Technically, that's true, but the outcome of his career spy was probably longer. The Pink Panther lines instead of James Bond.

After feeling comfortable knowing that The Golden Dawn took privacy very seriously, Crowley admitted his true identity. Unfortunately, he had already gotten off on the wrong foot and some people in the group found it difficult to trust him. Despite this initial deception, Crowley took his teachings very seriously and was able to progress quickly through the lessons. Golden Dawn wanted its new members to be able to get in touch with their inner soul before they were taught real magic. This was achieved through many discussions on philosophy, yoga, meditation and mantras. They wrote their dreams in journals and interpreted what they meant about their inner self.

However, there were some spells that they performed daily, because they truly believed that they could summon angels to their aid. “The Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram” reads like this: “In the Name of God, the God of Israel: let Michael be at my right, Gabriel at my left, Uriel before me, Raphael behind me and above my head. , the presence of God.” Crowley believed so strongly in the supernatural that he claimed these first stages of a magical journey were to contact his "guardian angel." He also spoke openly about his desire to summon demons and ancient gods. He incorporated psychedelic drugs into his routine, because he believed they intensified his spiritual experiences.

This was all really worrying for the rest of The Golden Dawn. Many of them were teetotal aristocrats who felt their ideas were radical, if not downright terrifying. The members did not want Crowley to rise through the ranks of the society, because he was clearly interested in black magic and they believed that he would use his powers for evil. There was a strict rule that no one could pay each other to teach them magic, but he managed to convince one of the members to teach him higher levels of spells in exchange for free hire. In his books, Aleister Crowley casually mentions meeting his roommate while he was levitating, as if this were totally normal among Golden Dawn members.

In 1899, when he was only 24 years old, Aleister Crowley bought a mansion on the shores of Loch Ness in Scotland called Boleskine House just so he could perform a spell called The Ceremony of Abramelin. However, nothing actually happened. He never saw angels or demons, no matter how hard he tried. Apparently, he got tired of doing this ritual every day without seeing any results, so he walked away to do something else. Rumors spread that since he was unable to finish the ceremony, this opened the gates of hell. Years later, Jimmy Page, Led Zeppelin's lead guitarist, bought Crowley's Loch Ness home.

He claimed that the house was truly haunted by Crowley's demons. Talking to the Gods Aleister Crowley's first wife was a woman named Rose Edith Kelly. When they met, she was a young widow who was engaged to the man her parents chose for her. Crowley convinced her to run away with him, after only knowing each other for a day to prevent her from entering into the arranged marriage. They escaped together on an impromptu honeymoon to Egypt. Crowley took Rose to a dark cave and began reciting the spells for her. He was reading a book called Goeta: The Lesser Key of Solomon in an attempt to summon the Egyptian god Horus.

He continued singing to her, when Rose's head suddenly fell back. She claimed that at that moment she had a vision and heard the voice of Horus. Crowley was frustrated with Rose, assuming she was playing a prank on him. He had been studying the occult and trying to summon demons and gods for years, and they never appeared to him in any vision. So he couldn't believe that Rose could summon Horus when she didn't even try. But she continued to insist that she really saw something in the caves and that the gods had been angry with him until that moment because of his arrogance.

Still not believing her, Aleister took her to one of the museums and asked her to point out the god she saw. Rose walked to the correct image of Horus, in exhibit number 666. After seeing the proof, they ran back to her apartment in Cairo so they could talk about the visions in private. Rose said that Horus had given her instructions on how to communicate with spirits. She gave Aleister a specific ritual to perform. When she finished, she heard a whisper over her shoulder from the voice of her guardian angel, Aiwass. The angel ordered him to write down all the information over the course of three days and publish it in a text called The Book of the Law.

His most famous quote was: "Do whatever you will, it will be the entirety of the law." Basically, do what you want with your own life. Crowley was delighted with this revelation and, when he returned to England, he told all his friends in Golden Dawn about the voices he and Rose heard in Egypt. Many were reluctant to believe him, and some were angry, believing that he had been tricked into communicating with a demon, rather than a guardian angel. At this point, they still refused to allow Crowley to graduate to the next level of the secret society, so he visited the leader of the Paris chapter of Golden Dawn, MacGregor Mathers.

He explained the situation in London and Mathers seemed to agree that Crowley deserved to go to the next level. When he returned to London with his Mathers certificate in hand, the other members still did not accept him. So, he snuck into the clubhouse and changed the locks. The next day, he laughed at the men who couldn't get in. Not surprisingly, he was officially kicked out of The Golden Dawn after this. A year later, in 1905, Aleister Crowley took a group of friends to climb Kanchenjunga, one of the largest and most treacherous mountains in the world. They reached 25,000 feet, but one of the men on the expedition, a photographer named Jules Jacot-Guillarmod, was angry at how Crowley treated all the other crew members and wanted to take charge of the expedition.

The expedition was marred by arguments between Crowley and the others, who thought it was reckless. They eventually mutinied against Crowley's control, and the other climbers returned down the mountain as nightfall approached despite Crowley's warnings that it was too dangerous. Pache and several porters subsequently died in an accident, something for which the mountaineering community widely blamed Crowley. It was claimed that Crowley sat inside his tent and tried to summon a demon. At that same moment, an avalanche came down from the mountain. They screamed for help, but Crowley ignored them and left them for dead. He later wrote that he had no sympathy for the unfortunate accident, even though many of the men miraculously survived.

Crowley follows his own path Aleister Crowley's marriage to Rose fell apart after the death of his first daughter when she was only 2 years old. Although they had a second daughter together named Lola Zaza, it was clear that they were no longer in love and Rose fell into a deep depression. They divorced her in 1909 on the basis of her own adultery, and just two years later, he had to commit her to an asylum for having neurological damage due to her alcoholism. This tended to be a trend, because most people who evenattempts to have a personal relationship with Crowley ended with their lives completely ruined.

It's a bit of a "chicken or the egg" scenario: Did his belief in the occult attract mentally unstable people into his life, or was his evil enough to drive anyone crazy? Crowley wasn't very interested in being a father, so he left his daughter in the care of boarding schools and nannies. He started his own cult called Thelema, where he taught The Book of the Law as if it were his Bible. He founded a commune in a village in Italy which he called The Abbey of Thelema. Everyone who lived there was encouraged to do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted.

They used drugs, had orgies together and the children ran around the premises naked. One of the rooms in the villa was called The Nightmare Room, where Crowley painted terrifying pictures on the walls. He encouraged his followers to take LSD and look at the terrifying images until they completely lost their fear of anything. The neighbors were shocked, and to this day, locals say the place is haunted by a curse. It is rumored that the rituals became increasingly intense, to the point that they even participated in bestiality and animal sacrifices. One of Aleister's lovers, a woman named Leah, suffered a nervous breakdown after this and went straight to the British press after claiming that one of her followers died after drinking a cat's blood.

Italian authorities entered to force the group to leave the house and prohibited them from returning. The Abbey of Thelema remains abandoned to this day and people believe it to be haunted. Aleister Crowley visited the United States to spread Thelema and inspired several people to practice the occult as well, including rocket scientist Jack Parsons and Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. He taught them to perform “sexual magic,” which was the belief that at the moment of orgasm, the universe could hear their intentions. Unfortunately for Crowley, all the drugs and sex caught up with him. He became a heroin addict and lost an enormous amount of weight.

In the 1930s, a journalist called Aleister Crowley a “black magician.” After years of running sects and purchasing property around the world, his inheritance had finally run out. He lived alone in a boarding house, doing everything he could to get his fix and stay alive. He decided to sue the journalist for defamation, even though in his own books he had called himself a magician and “The Beast.” He lost the case, of course, and had to endure public humiliation. Many people never saw him again in London, so they spread a rumor that he died of a drug overdose, alone in his boarding house.

They felt this would be a fitting end for such an evil man. But in reality, fate gave him a second chance at life. A young woman named Deirdre MacLellan approached Aleister Crowley after he finished the trial. She said that she had read all of his books, that she was a big fan of his work and that she wanted to have his child. Now, this level of admiration was creepy enough to make most celebrities run in the opposite direction, but Aleister Crowley was so desperate that he agreed to go home with the stranger. McClellan helped him quit drugs and she stayed with him through the worst of the withdrawal.

After he regained his health, they had a son together, who was named Aleister Ataturk Crowley. Little Aleister was Crowley's pride and joy, and he felt a lot of regret for the way he acted in his youth. After living his entire life trying to prove that people should be as selfish as possible, he finally realized that his true happiness and satisfaction came from his family. They lived in a house in Cornwall, where they spent summers on the beach. According to Deidre McClellan, Aleister Crowley fell into a coma just before he died. The sky lit up with a cacophony of thunder, as the gods came to claim his soul.

He died in 1947, aged 72. He actually died of chronic bronchitis aggravated by pleurisy and myocardial degeneration. His funeral was held at a Brighton crematorium and attended by about a dozen people, and extracts from the Gnostic Mass, The Book of the Law and the "Hymn to Bread" were read by Louis Wilkinson. The funeral generated controversy and tabloids called it a Black Mass. Years after his death, artists and musicians around the world began reading Aleister's Crowley work, and it also inspired them to live their lives the way they wanted. Hippies based their “free love” movement on his teachings, and even John Lennon considered him a hero, placing him on the cover of Pepper's Sgt.

The Lonely Hearts Club. His motto of "Do What Thou Wilt" was inscribed on the vinyl of Led Zeppelin's album Led Zeppelin III. David Bowie referenced Crowley in the lyrics of his song "Quicksand." His life was full of scandalous claims and without his attempts to shake up proper Victorian society, the world we live in today may not have been the same without Aleister Crowley.