Aleister Crowley, 1875-1947, British occultist, mystic, poet, mountain climber, sexual revolutionary, and social critic.
Son of a Plymouth Brethren preacher and heir to a small fortune, Crowley spent most of his adult life seeking out, writing about, and teaching a syncretic form of mysticism. As a young adult, he was involved in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, where he first studied mysticism -- and made enemies of William Butler Yeats and Arthur Edward Waite. Several years later, and after having set mysticism aside for a matter of years, he had a mystical experience whilst on vacation in Cairo, Egypt which led to his founding of the religious philosophy known as Thelema.
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The text Liber AL vel Legis, or The Book of the Law, which Crowley claimed had been dictated to him in Cairo by the spirit Aiwaz or Aiwass, was to form the cornerstone of Thelema. The book's philosophy is highly opaque, apparently calling in places for peaceful (and erotic) discovery of magick, and in other places for violence and war. Portions of it are in numerical cipher, which Crowley claimed inability to decode.
Crowley was notorious in his life -- a frequent target of attacks in the tabloid press, which labeled him "The Wickedest Man in the World" to his evident amusement. The claims made about him by the press range from the realistic if scandalous at the time (that he was an avowed atheist, openly kept mistresses, and had favored the Germans in World War I) to the ridiculous (that he sacrificed hundreds of babies in black magic rituals). At one point, he was expelled from Fascist Italy after having established a sort of magickal commune at Cefalu, Sicily.
Science, Magick, and Sexuality
Crowley claimed to use a scientific method to study what people at the time called "spiritual" experiences, making "The Method of Science, the Aim of Religion" the catchphrase of his magazine The Equinox. By this he meant that mystical experiences should not be taken at face value, but critiqued and experimented with in order to arrive at religious truth. In this he may be considered to foreshadow Dr. Timothy Leary, who at one point sought to apply the same method to psychedelic drug experiences. Yet like Leary's, Crowley's method had many evident failings and has received little "scientific" attention outside the circle of Thelema's practitioners.
Crowley's magical and initiatory system has amongst its innermost reaches a set of teachings on sex magick. He frequently expressed views about sex that were radical for his time, and published numerous poems and tracts combining pagan religious imagery with sexual imagery both heterosexual and homosexual.
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Crowley's Writings
Within the subject of occultism Crowley wrote widely, penning commentaries on the Tarot (The Book of Thoth), yoga (Book Four), the Kabbalah (Sepher Sephiroth), and numerous other subjects. He also wrote a Thelemic "translation" of the Tao Te Ching, based on earlier English translations since he had little or no Chinese. Like the Golden Dawn mystics before him, Crowley evidently sought to comprehend the entire human religious and mystical experience in a single philosophy. Many of his books he published himself, expending the majority of his inheritance disseminating his views. His fiction works, such as the "Simon Iff" detective stories and the mystical novels Diary of a Drug Fiend and Moonchild, have not received significant notice outside of occult circles.
Crowley's other major works include:
Crowley had a particular sense of humour. In his Book Four he includes a chapter purporting to illuminate the mystical significance of Mother Goose nursery rhymes. In a footnote to the chapter he admits that he had made it all up to see how foolishly people would react to it. Again in his autobiographical Confessions (which he termed his "Autohagiography") he relates the story of L. Ron Hubbard and Jack Parsons and their attempt to create a "moonchild" (from Crowley's novel of that name). In Crowley's own words, "Apparently Parsons and Hubbard or somebody is producing a moonchild. I get fairly frantic when I contemplate the idiocy of these louts." Clearly the admiration which Hubbard held for Crowley was not reciprocated.
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Crowley also tried to mint a number of new terms instead of the established ones he felt inadequate. For example he spelled magic "magick" and renamed theurgy "high magic" and thaumaturgy "low magic". Many of his terms are still used by some practitioners.
Crowley remains an popular icon of libertines and those interested in the theory and practice of magic.