Aleister Crowley

Crowley, Aleister (1875–1947) British magician Aleister Crowley was an occultist—a person who believes in and studies the influences of supernatural powers—who wrote extensively on the occult. Many of his beliefs and theories relating to the practice of magic remain influential among modern occultists, witches, and sorcerers. For example, Crowley expanded on existing ideas to develop the belief that a magician’s personal will and imagination can be heightened and focused through certain rituals, then used to access and direct natural forces in order to create magic. His many writings on this subject led others to increasingly emphasize the importance of the magician’s will and personal spirituality as opposed to external forces in the casting of spells. Crowley’s books include Magick in Theory and Practice (1929), The Confessions (1930), The Equinox of the Gods (1937), and The Book of Thoth (1944). He published The Book of Thoth with a deck of tarot cards, whose use he explained in his book. Today this deck, which Crowley designed in collaboration with Lady Frieda Harris, remains the most widely used among occultists. Crowley also practiced Satanic rituals in an attempt to summon demons. According to one story, he spent over six months engaged in such pursuits, and during this time period many of the people in his life died, disappeared, or otherwise suffered serious misfortune. In addition, he claimed to have received a lengthy message from the spirit world, which he said had been dictated to him by a spirit named Aiwass. The resulting three-chapter manuscript, which Crowley published as Liber Legis, or The Book of Law, prophesied that a new era would soon ensue, a time when orthodox religions and traditional codes of morality would fall out of favour. Between 1909 and 1920, Crowley was involved with a number of occult societies, and in 1920 he established his own center dedicated to the study and practice of magic. This center, the Abbey of Thelema, is located in Sicily and became the target of heavy criticism after Crowley revealed that he and his followers engaged in Satanic rituals, drug use, and other activities that the Italian public considered abhorrent. As a result, he was forced out of Italy in 1923, whereupon he became the international head of an occult order known as the Ordo Templi Orientis and settled in France. In 1929, after the French government expelled him from France for his occult activities, Crowley abandoned the Ordo Templi Orientis. Shortly thereafter, he became embroiled in a lawsuit against an artist, Nina Hamnett, whom he claimed had libeled him in her memoir, Laughing Torso (1932), by calling him a practitioner of black magic. Not only did Crowley lose the lawsuit in 1934, but when the details of his life became public during the trial, he faced renewed condemnation in the media. Moreover, his legal expenses bankrupted him. Although he continued to lecture, write, and publish books, he never again regained his financial footing. In 1947 Crowley died in poverty in a British boardinghouse. SEE ALSO: occultism; tarot cards