“Do what thou wilt”: because the central principle of a worldview, it could not sound like a lot, however at the least there are at all times a fantastic many people prepared and caning to listen to it. So discovered Aleister Crowley, the early twentieth-century Occultist now remembered not only for his unconventional religious practices, but additionally for his knack for gathering cults round himself. It was in Liber AL vel Legis, or The Ebook of the Legislation, the central textual content of his religion Thelema, that he instructed his followers to behave directly on their very own wishes, ideally with the help of some ritualistic black magazineick.
You may study extra in regards to the life and purfits that eventually acquired Crowley dubbed “the wickedest man on the planet” from the Hochelaga video above. After living most of his youngsterhood underneath a Biblical-fundamalestalist preacher father, who died when Crowley was eleven, he was despatched away to various boarding colleges, then turned troublemaker. At Cambridge, the place he went to review English literature, he fell for the Romantics, then for the occult. After leaving without his diploma, however with a considerready inheritance, he loved the freedom to travel the world, climbing mountains and trying to master the darkish arts — to not malestion taking medication and having affairs.
As he went from counattempt to counstrive, Crowley never met an historic religion he mightn’t adapt to his personal ends. However no gods made as a lot of an influence on him as these of historic Egypt, specifically Hoor-paar-kraat, or Harpocrates within the Greek; Crowley claimed to have been contacted by the voice of Hoor-paar-kraat’s messenger Aiwass, from whom he took the dictation that turned Liber AL vel Legis. Styling himself as an Egyptian prophet, he preached a technique for humanity to push via to a post-Christian age: “Whatever you are feeling like doing, go and do it, regardmuch less of popular opinion or conventional ethicality.” In any case, it appeared to work for Crowley himself, although the work of a notorious occultist certainly isn’t for eachphysique.
Nor might even the world’s wickedest man stick with it forever: “Eventually all of the traveling, drug-taking, and libertinism had caught up with Crowley.” His inheritance dried up, and his addictions worsened. However he didn’t surrender on Thelema, even going as far as to establish a commune in Sicily. Alas, the “responsibility-free life-style” advocated by the religion quickly drove its headquarters to chaotic dilapidation. However only a couple of a long time after his dying in England in 1947, Crowley’s glowering visage popped up once more, on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Membership Band. He turned the subject of pop-music reference not simply by the Beatles, but additionally David Bowie, Iron Maiden, and the late Ozzy Osbourne. “Genius? Insane? Imaginative and prescientary? Fraud? Freethinker? Cult chief?” We would grant Aleister Crowley all these titles, and that of professionalto-rock star in addition to.
Related content:
Aleister Crowley: The Wickedest Man within the World Documents the Lifetime of the Weird Occultist, Poet & Mountaineer
Aleister Crowley Reads Occult Poetry within the Solely Identified Reportings of His Voice (1920)
The Thoth Tarot Deck Designed by Famed Occultist Aleister Crowley
The Surreal Paintings of the Occult Magician, Author & Mountaineer, Aleister Crowley
How Aleister Crowley, the Infamous Occultist, Led the First Try and Attain the Summit of K2 (1902)
Based mostly in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His initiatives embrace the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the ebook The Statemuch less Metropolis: a Stroll via Twenty first-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on the social webwork formerly generally known as Twitter at @colinmarshall.
