Aleister Crowley: Prophet of the New Age

Aleister Crowley
Prophet of the New Age

By David Benton

If modern Paganism owes its existence to any one man, that man is surely Aleister Crowley. Mystic, poet, mountaineer extraordinaire, show business entrepreneur, drug addict, saint and sinner- he dedicated his life to redefining human spirituality and died in obscurity, vilified by a society that simply did not understand him.

Crowley was born to Plymouth Brethren parents in Leamington on the 12th October 1875. He seems to have been close to his father but disliked his mother intensely, calling her "a narrow-minded bigot of the worse sort." His fundamentalist upbringing gave him a life-long loathing of Christianity. After an unhappy childhood and the death of his father Crowley attended Cambridge University where he quickly became bored with academia and devoted himself to climbing, women, and occultism. His magical studies soon led him to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, being initiated on November 18th 1898.

Crowley was naturally good at ritual magic and progressed through the Golden Dawn's Outer Order very rapidly. He decided to perform an extremely hazardous operation known as the Abra-melin sequence and to this end rented a house on the shores of Loch Ness called Boleskine. As he was nearing the end of his preparations word came that the Golden Dawn was in crisis and Crowley dropped everything to go to the aid of the Order's Head, SL MacGregor Mathers. Back in London the Golden Dawn collapsed like a house of cards. Crowley then spent the next five or six years travelling the world: climbing mountains, shooting big game and studying Yoga in India. He soon saw the equivalence of Eastern and Western spiritual traditions and was able to penetrate below the religious dogma and understand the underlying psychodynamics of mystical experience. This is one of his greatest contributions to modern mystical thought.

In 1903 Crowley married Rose Kelley, sister of the painter Gerald Kelley. This was the prelude to the event that would change Crowley's life forever. In March 1904 the Crowleys were in Cairo when Rose began acting very strangely. She claimed to have a message for her husband from the Hidden Masters and told him to invoke Horus. On a visit to the Boulak Museum she identified an obscure stele as the image of Horus. This stele was catalogued as number 666 and is now known as the Stele of Revealing.

At first Crowley did not believe a word of all this but performed the ritual on 20th March in order to humour his wife. The results were beyond all expectations. Horus appeared and informed Crowley that a new spiritual age was dawning, the Aeon of Horus, and that Crowley had been chosen as the prophet of the New Age. Crowley demanded proof of this, and on April 8th, 9th, and 10th such proof was forthcoming. One these three days Crowley received the Book of the Law by dictation from a supernatural entity who called itself Aiwass. The book is the founding of the document of Thelema.

Crowley's reaction to all this was perhaps predictable. First he wrote to Mathers telling him what had happened. Mathers ignored him. Then Crowley abandoned his magical practises and devoted himself to a disastrous expedition to Kanchengjunga. Then in 1906 Crowley successfully completed the Abra-melin work he had begun so many years before. He was now a genuine Adept. For the next few years he published many different works, both poetical and mystical in character, all of which were ignored by the world at large. Meanwhile Rose was becoming increasingly alcoholic, putting their marriage under tremendous strain. Eventually they would divorce.

In 1909 Crowley established a new magical order, the A.A., and began to publish a twice yearly periodical called "The Equinox". Its eleven issues would include a complete system of magical and mystical attainment as well as much material plagiarised from the Golden Dawn system, and poetry, drama, and fiction. No other occult journal has ever surpassed the quality and range of the articles contained in these pages.

While in Mexico during 1900 Crowley had scryed into the lowest two Enochian Aethyrs. He now decided to complete the sequence so in November 1909 he went to Algeria with his student Victor Neuberg. They spent a month in the Sahara desert, Crowley scrying the Aethyrs while Neuberg recorded his visions. On his return to England Crowley arranged the public performance of a sequence of planetary rituals that he had hand-written, called the Rites of Eleusis. This brought him to the attention of the tabloid press and in particular a paper called John Bull. This paper launched a campaign of hatred against Crowley which was to follow him beyond the grave.

In the Autumn of 1911 Crowley met his next 'Scarlet Woman', Mary d'Este Sturges. On November 21st she began acting strangely, claiming to be in contact with a Hidden Master known as Abuldiz. After a few weeks of contact Crowley was told to travel to Italy, which he and Mary did. Mary saw a villa in her dream; when the couple passed an identical villa being renovated in Naples Crowley decided to rent it. This was where Crowley began to write his magnum opus, one of the greatest books on Ceremonial Magick ever published - Book 4.

In 1913 Crowley was appointed Head of the English-speaking branch of the OTO (Ordo Templi Orientis.) It was also in 1913 that Crowley embarked on a short-lived career in theatrical management. He founded a troupe called the 'Ragged Ragtime Girls', who he described as "three... dipsomaniacs, four nymphomaniacs (and) two hysterically prudish..." After a disastrous tour to Moscow the girls sank into oblivion.

1914 saw Crowley heading to America to avoid the First World War. He earned a living writing ludicrously overblown propaganda for Die Vaterland, a pro-German magazine, and could never understand why his fellow Englishmen didn't see the joke. This episode severely damaged Crowley's reputation at home. In 1916 Crowley formally claimed the Grade of Magus. During the summer of 1918 Crowley conducted a Great Magical Retirement on an island in the Hudson river. He received a series of visions which revealed to him his previous incarnations.

After the war Crowley could not return to Britain so he went to Sicily with his current Scarlet Woman, Leah Hirzig, and their children. Together they founded an Abbey of Thelema at Cefalu, where Book 4 was finally finished. After a series of scandals, including the death if Raoul Loveday from entritis, Mussolini expelled Crowley and his disciples.

Crowley spent the next twenty years of his life writing, trying to publish Book 4, and suing the tabloid press. He had contracted emphysema on his climbing expeditions, and suffered from acute asthma and bronchitis for the rest of his life. A doctor prescribed heroin and cocaine to aid his respiration, but the resulting drug addiction increasingly took his toll. Towards the end of his life Crowley collaborated with Lady Frieda Harris on his final monument- the Thoth deck, and Tarot deck imbued with his philosophy and one of the best decks available for magical use.

Crowley died in 1947, but his influence on subsequent generations has been massive. Gerald Gardner and Alex Sanders both drew on Crowley's legacy when they developed modern Wicca, and most modern occult Orders rely on Crowley to some extent. Thelemic Orders are flourishing, particularly the OTO and its offshoots. At present there is a lively debate on the future direction of Thelemic magick, with at least three different strands diverging from each other. Crowley's place in British history is finally being recognised. The battle against intolerance still has a long way to go, but with Horus' help we shall prevail!