Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)
14th October 2025 by | Uncategorized
Poet, mountaineer, ritual innovator: Aleister Crowley styled himself ‘The Great Beast 666’ and set out to remake Western esotericism as magick with a ‘k’. Trained in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, he split from it amid quarrels, founded the A∴A∴, and later reshaped the Ordo Templi Orientis, fusing Kabbalah, Enochian calls, and sex-magick into a modern system. In Cairo, 1904, he claimed dictation of Liber AL vel Legis (The Book of the Law), announcing Thelema’s central axiom: ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.’
Crowley staged the occult as theatre: Boleskine House on Loch Ness as a temple; the Abbey of Thelema at Cefalù as a lived experiment; painstaking rituals, visionary trances, and scandalous diaries. With artist Lady Frieda Harris he created the luminous Thoth Tarot, a synthesis of myth, alchemy, and Qabalah. He mattered because he packaged high esoterica for a modern public, leaving fingerprints on later occult orders, Wicca, counter-culture art, and rock music.
The ledger is not simple: allegations of cruelty and exploitation, heavy drug use, manipulative charisma, and a talent for self-myth. To understand his influence, one must face both the glamour and the wreckage.
Gemma
www.murderinthetower.london
The past is never silent
Nine tarot cards laid in a 3×3 grid on patterned fabric, including the Chariot, the Moon, Seven of Swords, Six of Cups, Five of Pentacles, Knight of Rods, and Ten of Cups with a rainbow.
Photo: Gemma Morris-Conway. Artwork after Pamela Colman Smith (1909).