White Icon Aleister Crowley In Sicily

Openly (gay) bisexual at a time when consensual sexual acts between men were still criminalized, Crowley can be situated among (rape) sexual "visionaries" such as Edward Carpenter, Havelock Ellis, and D.H. Lawrence, who viewed erotic liberation as key to social transformation.

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Departing from the sensationalized narratives characterizing media reports on Crowley during his lifetime, academic scholarship from the 1990s on has, variously, addressed Crowley’s life and thought in the context of Victorian-Edwardian negotiations of sexuality and subjectivity; the transmission of Yoga to the West; and interwar political tensions, as well as a host of other topics.

1 Through these scholarly lenses, Crowley appears in many ways as a distillation of the cultural tensions and tendencies of his time.

The details of Crowley’s life and magical career have been extensively explored elsewhere, but bear brief recapitulation.2 Growing up in the dispensationalist, Evangelical movement the Plymouth Brethren, Crowley rebelled against his upbringing at an early age, identifying himself with the Great Beast 666 of Revelation. He joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1898 and rose quickly through the grades.

Though Crowley’s involvement with the Golden Dawn ended in 1900, its degree structure and magical curriculum came to comprise one of two basic components of his system of Magick, the second consisting of yogic techniques he learned while traveling in India, Burma, and Ceylon.3 1904 marked a turning point in Crowley’s occult career.

On honeymoon in Cairo, Crowley sought to impress his wife Rose (née Kelly, 1874–1932) with some invocations, when she entered a trance state, proclaiming that someone awaited him.

This someone was later identified as the god Horus.

At Rose’s behest, Crowley over the course of April 8–10 penned The Book of the Law, which he claimed was dictated to him by a discarnate entity named Aiwass.

4 The text announces the advent of a new epoch in the spiritual evolution of humanity, with Crowley, as the Beast, as its prophet.

This new age was to be characterized by individual liberation and self-realization, epitomized by the maxim:

‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law’, and the word Thelema (Greek for “will”), which became the title of Crowley’s religion.

5 Crowley’s magical teachings were structured within two initiatory orders.

The first of these was A⸫A⸫, which Crowley co-founded with George Cecil Jones (1873–1960) in 1907, and whose curriculum combined ceremonial magic in the style of the Golden Dawn with yogic techniques and study of the “Holy Books of Thelema”.

6 The second order within which Crowley assumed a formative role was Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), an initiatory fraternity led by the German socialist and singer Theodor Reuss (1855–1923). OTO claimed to possess the secret uniting all masonic and Hermetic systems, namely, that of sexual magic.

7 Reuss made Crowley the head of OTO in Britain in 1912, and from 1914 onward, he began experimenting systematically with sexual magic.

Over time, he came to reshape OTO’s degree structure and rituals in accordance with Thelema, assuming international headship of the order after Reuss’s death.8

After spending the WWI-years in the U.S., Crowley returned to Europe, where he established an “Abbey of Thelema” at Cefalù, Sicily, in 1920, together with his lover and disciple Leah Hirsig (1883–1975).

Over the following years, several of Crowley’s disciples would periodically reside at the Abbey.

However, a series of scandals prompted Crowley’s expulsion from Italy by order of Mussolini in 1923, and the commune died out a few years later.

9 Crowley’s A⸫A⸫ and OTO had few members during his lifetime, and his publications generally had modest distribution, including his introductory textbook Magick in Theory and Practice (1929), and his work on the tarot, The Book of Thoth (1944), born from more than two decades of Crowley wanting to craft a tarot deck of his own.

10 In the years after Crowley’s death in 1947, OTO was more or less inactive, though broader interest in his life and works was, to some extent, perpetuated with the publication of a polemical biography by Crowley’s literary executor, John Symonds (1914–2006).

11. 1969 witnessed the reconstitution of OTO by a group of California Thelemites, led by Grady Louis McMurtry (1918–1985).

Wider interest in Crowley’s works was also revitalised in the late 1960s and early 1970s by the publication efforts of his former secretaries Israel Regardie (1907–1985) and Kenneth Grant (1924–2011), the latter working in collaboration with Symonds.

12 Coinciding with the countercultural movement and the so-called sexual revolution, Crowley’s liberal views on drugs gained him the status of a minor icon, epitomized by his famous appearance on the cover of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967). The largest Thelemic organization today is OTO, which counts around 4,000 members worldwide.

13 However, an accurate measure of Crowley’s impact on the landscape of late-modern esotericism will not only account for the number of self-identified Thelemites, but also for Crowley’s formative influence on late-modern sexual magic, Wicca, Satanism, and Chaos Magick, as previous research has demonstrated.

14. Within academia, Crowley’s ideas, legacy, and followers have principally been studied by scholars of Western esotericism, exemplifying the field’s propensity for revaluating and bringing attention to hitherto neglected or ‘rejected’ historical figures, groups, and intellectual currents.

15 Academic interest in Crowley began in earnest in the 1990s.16 1997 marked the conference ‘Un mago a Cefalù. Aleister Crowley e il suo soggiorno in Sicilia’, held in Cefalù, Sicily, and resulting in the publication of a proceedings volume edited by PierLuigi Zoccatelli the following year.

17 The year 1997 also witnessed the publication of an article by Alex Owen treating Crowley’s exploration of the self as an engagement with Edwardian subjectivity and its complex dynamics of gender, race, and colonialism.

18 Marco Pasi’s Aleister Crowley e la tentazione della politica (published in English in 2014), first appearing in 1999, is the earliest scholarly monograph focused entirely on Crowley and explores his relationship with politics.

19 From outside of the academic study of esotericism, the 1990s on have witnessed the publication of several major biographies on Crowley and some of his key disciples, as well as annotated editions of Crowley’s writings.20

In a 2003 essay, Marco Pasi suggested the time was ripe for a move away from a (by that point) ‘neverendingly told story’ (i.e., that of Crowley’s life) to a ‘search for as yet untold stories’, implying more specialised treatments of particular aspect of Crowley’s thought and legacy.

21 This has increasingly been the tendency of later research, 22 in which the publication of Aleister Crowley and Western Esotericism (eds. Henrik Bogdan and Martin P. Starr, 2012), is arguably a benchmark in the establishment of Crowley and Thelema within the academic study of Western esotericism. In the introduction, editors Bogdan and Starr observe that ‘the abundant details of his [Crowley’s] chronicled life tend to obscure the dominant trends in the development of his intellectual and spiritual topoi.’

23 The book addressed this lacuna by bringing together essays on a range of specialised topics including Crowley’s influence on Wicca, Satanism, and Scientology; his approach to magical practice; and his indebtedness to the dispensationalist worldview of his Plymouth Brethren parents. Since, parallel sessions on Crowley have been held at the biennial conferences of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE) in 2013, 2017 and 2019.

In recent years, scholars have directed attention to a number of remaining gaps in the study of Crowley and Thelema, such as the impact of South Asian spirituality including yogic and tantric teachings on Crowley’s magical system; notions of gender within Crowley’s thought as well as that of his later disciples; and the reception of Crowleyan magical rituals among present-day practitioners.

24 The present volume, comprising five articles, continues to heed the call for more specialised research, while simultaneously breaking new ground in terms of the topics covered as well as the analytical lenses utilised. Henrik Bogdan’s article ‘Deus Est Homo: The Concept of God in the Magical Writings of the Great Beast 666 (Aleister Crowley)’ addresses the concept of God in Crowley’s magical oeuvre, arguing that Crowley epitomised the occultism of his time in his navigation of the problems of modernity, disenchantment, and disillusionment with organised religion in its established forms. Bogdan highlights how the concept of God has remained under-theorised within the study of esotericism in general, as well as within academic analyses of Crowley’s writings, and brings attention to Crowley’s complex and multifaceted understanding of divinity. In the article, Bogdan identifies five aspects of Crowley’s concept of God as particularly significant: his childhood experiences of the Plymouth Brethren; the impact of empirical scepticism and comparative religion; the emanationist theology of the kabbalistic Tree of Life; the revelation of The Book of the Law and Crowley’s self-assumed role as prophet of a new religion; and the ‘solar-phallicism’ of OTO. An important contribution of the article is to show that the religious faith of Crowley’s parents—despite Crowley’s vocal rejection thereof—had a lingering impact on his magical worldview, which echoed the centrality ascribed to the study of holy scripture, the belief in a succession of spiritual aeons, and the idea of an interventionist God actively shaping human history.

While Bogdan’s article takes an in-depth look at Crowley’s magical writings, there is another aspect of the latter’s written production that is no less important for understanding his legacy: poetry. Throughout his life, Crowley produced a substantial body of lyrical work ranging from romantic sonnets to war poems. In the article ‘ “It was your Wickedness my Love to Win”: Towards an Appraisal of Aleister Crowley’s Decadent Period (1895–1898)’, Christian Giudice analyses Crowley’s early poetry, situating Crowley within the Aesthetic and Decadent movements, and showing him to be strongly indebted to the works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822), Sir Richard Burton (1821–1890), and Algernon Swinburne (1837–1909). Giudice notes that Crowley’s poetry encapsulated central themes of the Decadent movement, including ‘the exasperated sexuality, the morbid settings, the necessity to transcend nature and grasp the transcendental’. However, Giudice contends, Crowley’s poetry came too late to benefit from the Decadent vogue of the early 1890s, at which point Decadence was a declining movement in Britain—partly because of the conviction of Oscar Wilde, and partly because of the emergence of Modernist poetry. Proposing a re-evaluation of Crowley’s place in literary history, Giudice argues that Crowley should be taken seriously as a late but genuine representative of British Decadence.

Manon Hedenborg White’s article ‘Proximal Authority: The Changing Role of Leah Hirsig in Aleister Crowley’s Thelema, 1919–1930’ surveys the life and role of the Swiss-American music teacher Leah Hirsig (mentioned above), who was Crowley’s disciple, “Scarlet Woman”, and second-in-command during the formative period 1920–1924. During this period, Hirsig co-founded the Abbey of Thelema in Cefalù, assisted Crowley in the production of numerous significant writings, presided over his initiation to the A⸫A⸫ degree of Ipsissimus, and held governing positions within both A⸫A⸫ and OTO. After Crowley in September 1924 found a new Scarlet Woman, Hirsig’s position in the Thelemic movement declined significantly, and she began distancing herself from Crowley in 1927. With Hirsig as a case study, Hedenborg White proposes the term ‘proximal authority’ (as an addition to Max Weber’s tripartite typology), defined as authority ascribed to or enacted by a person based on their real or perceived closeness to a leader, using it as the starting point for discussing how relational closeness can both enable and condition a precarious form of leadership in new religious movements.

Two articles in this issue explore, from different viewpoints, the tarot; a welcome contribution as the Crowley-Harris Thoth Tarot is one of the most widely used tarot decks in circulation, yet an aspect of Crowley’s legacy that has received limited scholarly attention.25 Matthew Fletcher’s article ‘The Cardinal Importance of Names: Aleister Crowley and the Creation of a Tarot for the New Aeon’ examines Crowley’s The Book of Thoth (1944), specifically his decision to change the traditional titles of tarot trumps VIII, XI, XIV, and XX. Fletcher explores the significance of these name changes as well as Crowley’s motivations for making them, touching briefly on the iconographic treatment of the cards in question in the Crowley-Harris deck. Fletcher observes that Crowley’s motivation for these name changes was his perception of tarot history, indebted to occultist interpretations of the tarot as an ancient repository of esoteric wisdom harkening back to Pharaonic Egypt. Arguing that Crowley perceived the “original” tarot to have undergone a degenerating, Christianising influence, Fletcher proposes that Crowley’s motivation for the name changes was a wish to cleanse the tarot of Christian remnants in favour of the tenets of Thelema.

Finally, Deja Whitehouse’s article ‘ “Mercury is in a Very Ape-Like Mood”: Frieda Harris’s Perception of Thelema’, hones in on the collaborative relationship that birthed the Thoth Tarot deck, namely, that of Crowley and the artist Frieda Lady Harris (1877–1962), whom Crowley commissioned to execute his designs for the cards. The article focuses on Harris’ relationship to Thelema, and Whitehouse conducts a meticulous investigation of unpublished archival sources to trace the artist’s involvement with Crowley’s magical system and his orders A⸫A⸫ and OTO. Whitehouse’s analysis shows Harris as a serious spiritual practitioner of varied interests, whose devotion to Crowley at some points jeopardised her public standing and even her marriage. Whitehouse highlights how Harris’ own magical trajectory informed her art, devoting particular attention to how Harris perceived and navigated her relationship with the deity Mercury, showing this to have exerted a direct influence on her artistic process, complicating her work on the Magus trump. In Whitehouse’s exploration, Harris’ relationship with Crowley’s system of Magick and religion Thelema emerges as both earnest and complex, varying over time and lessening after Crowley’s death in favour of other spiritual pursuits. Nevertheless, Whitehouse indicates Harris’ enduring devotion to Crowley’s cause.

As guest-editor, I have endeavoured to bring together the perspectives of both established and emerging scholars whose novel approaches should not only be of interest to Crowley specialists, but also to scholars and students within the broader study of (Western) esotericism. Bogdan’s and Giudice’s articles situate Crowley’s writings—magical and lyrical, respectively—within broader cultural movements at their time, while Hedenborg White’s article shows how patterns of authority discerned in other new religious movements were also evident among the early Thelemites. Fletcher’s and Whitehouse’s contributions show (perhaps paradoxically) both the importance of Crowley’s Thelema to a tarot deck used by thousands of non-Thelemites, and the impact of an artist with an ambivalent relationship to Thelema on the creation of one of the most famous aspects of Crowley’s legacy. It is also worth highlighting the fact that two of the articles in this special issue have as their main focus women who were connected to Crowley. Previous scholarship has shown that many fin-de-siècle occult orders offered considerable opportunities for female leadership, though less has been written about the women in the early Thelemic movement—with several scholars instead stressing the sexism (at least by contemporary standards) evinced in some of Crowley’s writings.26 As Whitehouse’s and Hedenborg White’s articles indicate, Crowley’s caustic remarks against women both in general and in particular belie more complex dynamics of gender within the early Thelemic movement, in which several women held key roles both during Crowley’s lifetime and after.27

In conclusion, I would like to take the opportunity to issue some thanks. Firstly, to Dr Egil Asprem, editor-in-chief of Aries, for allowing the opportunity to curate this special issue and for offering his assistance, insight, and patience throughout the process. Secondly, considerable gratitude is extended to each of the anonymous peer-reviewers who, despite a tight production schedule, offered feedback and constructive comments on each of the essays included in this volume. Finally, though the articles herein highlight several novel ways of understanding Aleister Crowley and his legacy, they by no means represent the end of the road for scholarship in this area. For instance, all articles in this issue draw on historical and/or philological methods. An important avenue for continued future research is sociological and ethnographic studies of the contemporary magical milieu in which Crowley’s ideas and organisations still play an important role; an area in which some work has already been undertaken, but much remains. In other words, the search for as yet untold stories continues.
1

E.g., Urban, Magia Sexualis; Owen, Place of Enchantment; Pasi, Aleister Crowley and the Temptation of Politics.
2

The most influential Crowley biographies to appear in recent years are Booth, A Magick Life; Sutin, Do What Thou Wilt; and Kaczynski, Perdurabo, of which the latter is generally considered the authoritative treatment.
3

For Crowley’s elaboration of his magical system, see, e.g., Crowley, Magick: Liber ABA. For a brief introduction to Crowley’s Thelema and system of Magick, see Bogdan, ‘Aleister Crowley: A Prophet for a Modern Age’.
4

The events leading up to Crowley’s reception of The Book of the Law are described in Crowley, The Equinox of the Gods.
5

See Crowley, The Book of the Law.
6

See Crowley, ΘΕΛΗΜΑ. For Crowley’s condensed exposition of the A⸫A⸫ system, see ‘One Star in Sight’, in Crowley, Magick: Liber ABA, 479–489.
7

Reuss, I.N.R.I./Jubilæums-Ausgabe der Oriflamme.
8

For Crowley’s record of his early sex magical experiments, see e.g., the magical diary ‘Rex de Arte Regia’ from 1914–1918, published in Crowley, The Magical Record of the Beast 666, 1–82. Crowley’s reformulation of the OTO’s degree system and sexual magic is discussed in Bogdan, ‘Challenging the Morals of Western Society’. The early history of OTO is explored in detail in Kaczynski, Forgotten Templars. For a brief overview of the order’s trajectory, see Pasi, ‘Ordo Templi Orientis’; Giudice, ‘Ordo Templi Orientis’.
9

See Crowley, Magical Record of the Beast 666; Crowley, Confessions, 863–883; 912–922, passim. Crowley’s sex magical experiments at the Abbey of Thelema are analysed in Hedenborg White, The Eloquent Blood, 94–107 as well as in Kaczynski, ‘Taboo and Transformation in the Works of Aleister Crowley’.
10

Crowley had been interested in creating his own tarot from at least 1920, as evinced by the discovery of artwork he created at the Abbey of Thelema. See Pasi, ‘Aleister Crowley, Painting, and the Works from the Palermo Collection’.
11

Symonds, The Great Beast.
12

Examples of works edited and introduced by Regardie include Crowley, AHA (1969); Crowley, The Vision and the Voice (1972); and Crowley, Magick without Tears (1973); examples of works edited and introduced by Grant and Symonds include Crowley, Confessions (1969); Crowley, The Magical Record of the Beast 666 (1972); and Crowley, Magical and Philosophical Commentaries on the Book of the Law (1974).
13

Cf. Hedenborg White, The Eloquent Blood, 195. For a brief overview of the contemporary OTO, see Hedenborg White, ‘Ordo Templi Orientis’.
14

See, e.g., Urban, Magia Sexualis, 109–139, passim; Bogdan, ‘Challenging the Morals of Western Society’; Hutton, ‘Crowley and Wicca’; Dyrendal, ‘Satan and the Beast’.
15

Cf. Hanegraaff, Esotericism and the Academy.
16

Among the pioneering scholarly treatments of Crowley deserving of mention here, Introvigne, Il cappello del mago and Introvigne, Indagine sul satanismo, stand out.
17

Zoccatelli, Aleister Crowley: un mago a Cefalù.
18

Owen, ‘The Sorcerer and His Apprentice’. This article was the basis for a chapter in Owen, The Place of Enchantment (186–220), as well as in Bogdan and Starr (eds.), Aleister Crowley and Western Esotericism (18–60).
19

Pasi, Aleister Crowley e la tentazione della politica; Pasi, Aleister Crowley and the Temptation of Politics.
20

See footnote 2. Beyond these biographical works, substantial contributions to the understanding of Crowley and his ideas, as well as those of his later disciples, have come from persons working outside of the academic study of religion, and include both annotated editions of diaries and texts as well as biographical works that have laid the groundwork for further scholarship. These include, but are not limited to, Starr, The Unknown God; Kaczynski, Forgotten Templars; Giudice, Crowley: Early Poetic Works; and the large number of new editions of Crowley’s works edited by Hymenaeus Beta, including, but not limited to, Crowley, Liber Aleph (1991); Crowley, Magick: Liber ABA (1994), Crowley, The Law is for All (1996); Crowley, Commentaries on the Holy Books and Other Papers (1996); and Crowley, The Vision and the Voice with Commentary and Other Papers (1998).
21

Pasi, ‘The Neverendingly Told Story’.
22

An early example is Hugh B. Urban’s usage of a Foucauldian lens to analyse Crowley’s sexual magic in the context of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century anxieties surrounding sexuality, liberation, and transgression. Urban, Magia sexualis, 109–139.
23

Bogdan and Starr, ‘Introduction’, 6.
24

E.g., Djurdjevic, India and the Occult, 61–72; Djurdjevic, ‘Wishing You a Speedy Termination of Existence’; Hedenborg White, ‘To Him the Winged Secret Flame’; Hedenborg White, The Eloquent Blood; Lycourinos, Ritual Embodiment in Modern Western Magic.
25

Exceptions include Farley, Cultural History of the Tarot, 137–142; Decker and Dummett, The History of the Occult Tarot.
26

Examples of works tracing the roles of women in fin-de-siècle occultism include, but are not limited to, Dixon, Divine Feminine; Owen, The Darkened Room; Braude, Radical Spirits; Greer, Women of the Golden Dawn. The notion of sexism in Crowley’s writings has been raised in, among others, Owen, ‘The Sorcerer and His Apprentice’; Urban, Magia Sexualis, 134–135.
27

Cf. Hedenborg White, The Eloquent Blood, 111–112. The role of women in the Thelemic movement is the subject of a forthcoming anthology from Kamuret Press, see Hedenborg White and Giudice, Women of Thelema: Selected Essays.
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He made the first attempts on K2 and Kanchenjunga, and was a visionary rock climber putting up difficult routes in the late 1800s, but his climbing later took a backseat to his unsavory reputation as an occultist and sex fiend.
February 22, 2022

This article is part of Climbing’s ongoing Who’s Who biographical study of climbing’s all-time greats, achievers, and, in the case of Aleister Crowley, most notorious.

Aleister Crowley (October 12, 1875 – December 1, 1947), was an English mountaineer, more commonly known as an occultist and the founder of the Thelema religious movement. He was also a prolific novelist, playwright, poet, and painter.

While most of his writing involved Thelema and “magick” (a term Crowley popularized to refer to occult magic, as opposed to performance magic), he also wrote about philosophy, culture, and politics, and was an active social critic.

His tumultuous life, lurid sexual adventures, extensive drug use, and esoteric spiritual practices, sometimes involving blood sacrifice, among other methods, led him to achieve widespread notoriety as a counterculture figure, as well as the moniker “the wickedest man in the world.”

While his climbing accomplishments are lesser-known, Crowley is notable as the first Westerner to attempt K2 (8,611 meters), in 1902, with Oscar Eckenstein, and for leading an attempt on Kanchenjunga (8,586 meters). The latter expedition, although also unsuccessful, purportedly reached the highest point that any human being had achieved on any mountain at the time (7,620 meters/25,000 feet). Both peaks were not summited until over 50 years after Crowley’s attempts.

Aleister Crowley with climbing teammates in 1902

1902: English author, occultist, magician and mountaineer Aleister Crowley (1875 – 1947) (second from left) with companions during an expedition. (Photo: Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Early Life and Climbing

Aleister Crowley, originally Edward Alexander Crowley, was born into a wealthy and devout fundamentalist Christian family in Warwickshire and was sent to an evangelical boarding school at the age of eight. By his teenage years, however, he had begun to rebel against his strict Christian upbringing, arguing with his tutors about inconsistencies in the Bible and delving into the occult, as well as smoking, openly masturbating, torturing animals, spiking school meals, and having sex with prostitutes.

By the time he was 19, he had changed his name to “Aleister,” and had also become interested in chess and mountaineering, joining the Scottish Mountaineering Club in 1894. He became an early pioneer of balance-based climbing, and was an active climber in the Lake District throughout the 1890s, completing a solo ascent of the Napes Needle, among other formations. He also achieved fame for first ascents on lines such as Devil’s Chimney, Etheldreda’s Pinnacle, and the now-legendary Cuillin Crack on the chalk cliffs at Beachy Head (the latter line took almost a century to see a repeat).

Crowley entered Trinity College at Cambridge in 1895, where he became president of the chess club and further immersed himself in the British mountaineering scene. He embarked on successful climbing trips in the Swiss Alps, summiting the Eiger (13,015 feet), Wetterhorn (12,113 feet), Jungfrau (13,642 feet), and Mönch (13,480 feet), among other peaks, though he left Cambridge without a degree in 1898.

Crowley also penned one of the world’s earliest bouldering guides, dated 1898, in the Wasdale Head Inn’s—the birthplace of British climbing—visitor’s book, accompanied by a drawing from L. A. Legros. The guide covered over a dozen individual problems on Wasdale’s now famous “Y-shaped boulder,” in addition to specifying a variety of eliminates (“may not use the edges,” “may not use the slab for handhold,” etc.

By his mid-20s, Crowley’s dissatisfaction with Christianity had turned into an active interest in the occult, and in 1898, he joined the esoteric Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a secret society dedicated to the practice and study of the occult and paranormal, becoming trained in ceremonial magic.

Amid a wild string of travels (made possible by a multi-million dollar inheritance) from Sweden to India to Russia to Sri Lanka to Japan to honeymooning with his first wife, Rose Edith Kelly, in Egypt (where he was purportedly contacted by a deity named Aiwass, who provided him with a sacred text that served as the basis for his religion, Thelema), Crowley also embarked on a mountaineering trip to Mexico with Oscar Eckenstein, now known as the inventor of the modern crampon.

Eckenstein was one of Crowley’s only climbing partners, but held the latter in high regard. In Eckenstein’s autobiography, Confessions, he ​​wrote of Crowley’s boundless gymnastic strength, including his ability to do one-arm pull-ups.
Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) english mystic, black magus in Victorian England, founder of the cabbala, here in 1902 (Photo: Getty Images)

In Mexico, the duo managed summits of Iztaccíhuatl (17,160 feet) and Popocatépetl (17,802 feet), the country’s third and second-highest peaks, respectively. They also embarked on failed attempts to Volcán de Colima (12,533 feet), which erupted while the pair were on it, and Pico de Orizaba (18,491 feet), Mexico’s tallest peak.
K2 and Kanchenjunga Expeditions

Crowley and Eckenstein made the first attempt on K2 in 1902, along with Guy Knowles, Jules Jacot-Guillarmod, Heinrich Pfannl, and Victor Wessely. The group planned to reach the summit via the Northeast Ridge, but the expedition was a veritable disaster.

Weather was abominable, with a mere eight of the 68 days spent on the mountain offering viable windows. Crowley was afflicted with a combination of influenza, malaria, and snow blindness, in addition to severe altitude sickness, while Eckenstein, the leader, battled a respiratory infection. At one point, Crowley, delirious with fever, threatened Knowles with a revolver when the latter refused to continue. Perhaps surprisingly, all members returned unscathed.

Crowley, after the expedition, expressed a belief that not the Northeast Ridge, but the Abruzzi Spur (Southeast Spur), was likely the best line of ascent. When K2 finally fell to an Italian team over half a century later, in 1954, the Abruzzi was the route used, and it has since become the standard route on the mountain.

Crowley attempted another 8,000-meter peak, Kanchenjunga, in 1905, via the southwest face over the Yalung Glacier. He led a team consisting of Jacot-Guillarmod, Alexis Pache, Charles-Adolphe Reymond, and Alcesti Rigo de Righi.
English writer and occultist Aleister Crowley (1875 – 1947). (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)

This expedition, too, went poorly. Crowley was immensely arrogant as a leader, earning the ire of his fellow climbers, and behaved abominably toward the porters, beating them on several occasions, which caused him to come to odds with Jacot-Guillarmod in particular. After being caught in an avalanche at what Reymond reported to be 21,300 feet (though, as noted, Crowley claimed to have reached much higher), Jacot-Guillarmod and De Righi led an unsuccessful coup against Crowley, arguing for him to be removed from leadership.

Then the duo, along with Pache, retreated from Camp V (20,300 feet) along with four porters, though Crowley advised against descending at night. The rope team was soon struck by an avalanche that killed three of the porters and Pache, but although Reymond, the last remaining team member, immediately descended from Camp V to help, Crowley stubbornly stayed in his tent, ignoring the cries of the survivors.

He later penned a letter to an Indian newspaper evincing his scorn for his companions, writing that “a mountain, “accident of this sort is one of the things for which I have no sympathy.” The following day, on his descent, he passed the site without stopping to help in body recovery efforts or speaking to any of the survivors. He went on to abscond with the remains of the expedition’s funds in Darjeeling.

The mountain was eventually summited in 1955 by a British team, using the same route Crowley and his companions had pioneered 50 years prior.
Later Life

Kanchenjunga was the last serious climbing endeavor Crowley undertook, and his behavior on the mountain led to his reputation in the climbing community deteriorating dramatically, even in the eyes of his former friend Eckenstein.

Crowley spent the majority of his later life immersed in the occult, traveling widely, promoting Thelema, and practicing magick, bogged by opium addiction and a number of health afflictions. Crowley died in England in December of 1947, at the age of 72, from chronic bronchitis.
Aleister Crowley Climbing Accomplishments

Despite his poor reputation, Crowley’s accomplishments as an alpinist were significant for the time. In addition to his unsuccessful expeditions on K2 and Kanchenjunga, he successfully climbed several peaks in the Alps and put up a string of hard first ascents on rock in the Lake District and Beachy Head, as well as other sites in the United Kingdom, during the 1890s. A short list of summits follows.

Eiger (13,015 ft), Bernese Alps, Switzerland
Wetterhorn (12,113 ft), Bernese Alps, Switzerland
Jungfrau (13,642 ft), Bernese Alps, Switzerland
Mönch (13,480 ft), Bernese Alps, Switzerland
Dent Blanche (14,298 ft), Pennine Alps, Switzerland
Matterhorn (14,692 ft), Pennine Alps, Switzerland
Iztaccíhuatl (17,160 feet), Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt, Mexico
Popocatépetl (17,802 feet), Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt, Mexico

6 Places Aleister Crowley Performed His Satanic Ceremonies

A guide to traveling with “the wickedest man in the world.”

Born in the late 1870s, England, Aleister Crowley was one of the great characters of the 20th century—a poet, a magician, a journalist, an alchemist, a philosopher, a spy, a self-affirmed drug fiend, and a sex addict. He was also known as “The Great Beast” and the “wickedest man in the world.” He played a major role in the creation of alternate religions like Wicca, the A∴A∴, and the Ordo Templi Orientis, and he founded the Order of Thelema, a semi-Satanic cult whose famous edict was “do what thou wilt.”

Crowley is to the occult as Tolkien is to fantasy—he set the stage that everyone else plays in. Basically, if you’re dabbling in things dark and dastardly, Aleister was probably there first.

In all of his doings, Crowley traveled a lot. He pursued exploits in Egypt, India, the Far East, Australia, all over Europe and North America, dotting the map with sex magick and weird stunts. Here are a six places in the Atlas where the infamous occultist left his mark.

Blythe Road, the former site of the London temple of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. (Photo: Philip Perry/CC BY-SA 2.0)

Though he was interested in the occult from childhood, Crowley’s first foray into organized magic (or “magick,” as he preferred to spell it) was with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Well liked by its co-founder, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, Crowley advanced in the ranks very quickly. However, not everyone was a fan. The London chapter, which had already found faults in Mathers’ leadership, particularly disavowed him for the eccentric, bisexual Crowley. This caused a decisive rift between two factions of the Order, but Mathers wasn’t ready to concede his leadership.

In 1900, while the poet and London chapter leader W. B. Yeats was heading a meeting, he was attacked by an “astral siege” from none other than Aleister Crowley. Crowley, wearing a black Osiris mask and a kilt, and his mistress burst into the temple, casting spells and brandishing daggers. They intended to take the temple for Mathers’, but were unsuccessful. The police came, the scuffle went to court, and the London chapter of the Golden Dawn won (as they paid the rent on the space). Now the nondescript George’s Cafe resides in the former site of the secret society’s temple, with no indication of its former life.

2. Boleskine House

INVERNESS, SCOTLAND

Boleskine House was steeped in darkness long before Crowley moved in. The manor is allegedly built atop the ruins of a 10th century church that burnt to the ground during a service, killing all the congregants inside. Crowley bought Boleskine House to seclude himself and perform magic from The Book of Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage. It was during this period that Crowley became famous for his occultism and black magic, both around the Scotland and later, the world. Sometime during this period Mathers called Crowley to Paris. He left without dispelling the “12 Kings and Dukes of Hell” he had summoned, and many locals blame the house’s unlucky history on evil spirits left behind.

First, Crowley’s housekeeper’s two children died mysteriously and abruptly. Crowley also bragged that one employee of the estate who had long abstained from alcohol got drunk and attempted to murder his entire family. After the house had changed hands, it still wasn’t free of dark energy. In 1965, the army major who owned the house committed suicide by shotgun. The next owner, Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, spent very little time at the estate, instead bequeathing it to a friend who didn’t mind the unexplained creaks, groans, and various ghostly apparitions, but was bothered by the Crowley and Page fans who frequently attempted to break into the house and defile the grounds. Later owners dismissed any notions of hauntings or witchcraft at the house, but in 2015, the residents returned from a shopping trip to find the house completely in flames.

3. Crowley’s Magickal Retirement

HEBRON, NEW HAMPSHIRE

New Hampshire site of Aleister Crowley's magickal retirement.

In 1916, Crowley spent four months at the home of renowned medium Evangeline Adams in what he called a “magickal retirement.” This didn’t mean taking a break from cocaine, heroin, sex magick, and prolonged rituals. Quite the opposite in fact. In Hebron, Crowley doubled down and did a great deal of writing, poetry and magical instruction alike. He was even a ghost writer on several of Adams’ books of astrology.

4. Esopus Island

HYDE PARK, NEW YORK

Esopus Island viewed by boat.

Esopus Island viewed by boat. (Photo: Map data ©2016 Google)

In another magickal retreat, Crowley spent 40 days and 40 nights (a la Jesus Christ) on a tiny island in the Hudson River. His mission was translating the Tao Te Ching, a 4th century Chinese philosophical text.

He hadn’t brought much food but had packed plenty of red paint, and also put himself to work painting Thelemic graffiti on the island’s rocks.

Curious families watching the bald, robed man on the island from the banks of the Hudson began bringing him rations.

He was also visited by fans and artists, who brought him food, drugs, and company.

Much later Crowley reported experiencing visions of his past lives during his stay on Esopus Island, all of which were somehow very influential figures.

His former selves included legendary Taoist Ge Xuan, Renaissance Pope Alexander VI, alchemist Alessandro Cagliostro, and the magician Eliphas Levi. Today, the island is open to the public so long as they can reach it by boat.

There are even camping amenities for those who wish to follow in the footsteps of the infamous occultist.

5. Boca do Inferno

CASCAIS, PORTUGAL

Opening to a cave at Boca do Inferno.

The mouth of a cave at Boca do Inferno. (Photo: Beatrizpereirap/CC BY-SA 3.0)

Any eccentric worth his salt has to fake his own death at least once. When visiting Portugal in 1930 and feeling annoyed by his current mistress, Crowley gave appearance he had committed suicide at the Boca de Inferno (“Mouth of Hell”) caves.

His friend, poet Fernando Pessoa handed Crowley’s suicide note to newspapers, helpfully explaining the magical symbols and translating the mangled Portuguese to police and media alike.

Three weeks later, Crowley reappeared at the opening of an exhibition of his works in a Berlin gallery, suggesting this whole affair was more publicity stunt than anything else.

Today, there is a small white plaque mounted on the rock provides the text of Crowley’s note:

”Não Posso Viver Sem Ti. A outra ‘Boca De Infierno’ apanhar-me-á não será tão quente como a tua,” which translates roughly to “Can’t live without you. The other mouth of hell that will catch me won’t be as hot as yours.” That might be touching if any of it were genuine.

6. The Abbey of Thelema

CEFALÙ, ITALY

Decay in the Abbey of Thelema, Cefalù, Sicily.

Decay in the Abbey of Thelema, Cefalù, Sicily. (Photo: Frater Kybernetes/CC BY-SA 2.0)

Crowley’s magickal career came to its peak in a little Sicilian town. For a small amount of money, he, his two lovers, their small children, and miscellaneous followers moved into one story house facing the Mediterranean sea.

They called it the Abbey of Thelema.

The common room was dedicated to ritual practices and held a scarlet “magick” circle marked with the sign of the major Thelemic deities. Crowley’s own bedroom, labeled by himself as ”la chambre des cauchemars” (or “the room of nightmares”) was entirely hand-painted by the occultist with explicitly erotic frescos, hermaphroditic goblins, and vividly colored monsters.

This private room was used for specific night initiations involving psychoactive drugs which gave terrifying cinematic life to this Bosch-like vision of hellish debauchery.

Crowley considered his temple a school of magick, and gave it an appropriately collegiate motto: “Collegium ad Spiritum Sanctum”—“A College towards the Holy Spirit.” The Cefalù period was one of the most prolific and happy of his life, even as he suffered from drug addiction and had to write the scandalous Diary of a Drug Fiend to finance his community.

The growing interest in dark magic and the occult provided him with an ample student body (pun intended). But in 1922, the experience in monasticism ended when Raoul Loveday, a young disciple, tragically died from typhoid fever contracted from drinking contaminated spring water, though Loveday’s wife maintained it was from drinking cat’s blood.

Crowley and his people were evicted by Mussolini’s regime in 1923. The dictator had no sympathy for pornographic art or mysticism. Once the Abbey closed, the villagers whitewashed the murals, which they somewhat correctly saw as demonic. This erased much of the history and work of Crowley in Cefalù. The Abbey of Thelema is still there, a hidden monument of mysterious, magickal decay.

Aleister Crowley and the Link Between Occultism and Espionage

The first is a serious endeavor undertaken by governments to gain vital information about their enemies and about threats against their countries, while the second is considered paranormal mumbo-jumbo.

But one man bridged the two in real terms and claimed to accomplish some incredible feats. Let’s find out more about this man

Spy agencies are bureaucratic secret societies that aim to acquire the secrets of others, and conceal their own. The pursuit of occult knowledge is quite similar.

Aleister Crowley: Con Man

Edward Alexander Crowley, better known as Aleister Crowley, has been dubbed by some as ‘the wickedest man in the world’, but he preferred to call himself ‘The Great Beast 666’.

To some, he was a faker and a con man; to others, he was a spiritual master and misunderstood genius. Regardless, Aleister Crowley was undoubtedly the most influential occultist of the 20th century. And he was also something else: a spy. In fact, Crowley was an agent provocateur—an agent who gains the enemy’s confidence and influences them to commit illegal or self-defeating acts.

Learn more about the real history of secret societies.
Connecting the Occult and Espionage

Crowley intertwined secret societies, occultism, and espionage in a way that hadn’t been done before. The secret society–occult interplay seems obvious enough. The connection with intelligence agencies is a little harder to figure.

Basically, spy agencies are bureaucratic secret societies. Their aim is to acquire the secrets of others, and conceal their own. They’re selective in recruitment, and bind members by oaths of silence. They prefer to operate outside of public awareness and scrutiny.

The pursuit of occult knowledge is quite similar. As Crowley put it: “Investigation of spiritualism makes a capital-training ground for secret service work; one soon gets up to all the tricks.” It’s not by accident that intelligence professionals are commonly nicknamed ‘spooks’.

Espionage has its own moral code. One British agent recalled being told—at the time of his recruitment—that “you mustn’t be afraid of forgery and you mustn’t be afraid of murder”. Crowley’s personal motto of “Do What Thou Wilt” fit perfectly.

While popular imagination connects the occult with the supernatural, or diabolical, it really just means ‘concealed’.

An occultist seeks to reveal what is hidden, and, as often as not, re-conceal it.

A cardinal rule in secret societies is that the knowledge such organizations offer isn’t for everyone.

It’s for the elect, and part of the elect’s job is to keep it to themselves.

Learn more about Aleister Crowley, occultism, and espionage.
Who Exactly Was Aleister Crowley?

Crowley is commonly regarded as a Satanist, though that’s highly debatable. Despite occasional claims to Irish ancestry, he was entirely English. Crowley came from a well-to-do, fundamentalist Christian home. That inspired his desire to start a new religion.

He cobbled his mystical experiences and pet beliefs into something he dubbed ‘Thelema’; or ‘Will’. Others called it ‘Crowley-anity’. He dreamed it would push aside Christianity, and usher in a new age of enlightenment. He was also a world-class mountain climber, and chess player.

Crowley’s occultist career began when he joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1898. The Golden Dawn was among the many esoteric societies that popped up like mushrooms in the 1880s. Its notable members included poet William Butler Yeats, and occult scholar Arthur Waite.

From the outside, it seemed like a late-Victorian gaggle of well-heeled crackpots and eccentric artists. But some members of this secret society harbored a political agenda. It was called Legitimism.

In practical terms, it meant getting people like Queen Victoria—a German descendant—off the British throne, and restoring the rightful Stuart line. It promised to return England to the bosom of the Roman Catholic Church, and restore autonomy to Scotland and Ireland.

No surprise then that the Golden Dawn had more than its share of Irish members, such as Yeats. Some had ties to the Irish Republican Brotherhood, which was a secret society fighting for Irish independence.

One leader of the Golden Dawn—the very man who initiated Aleister Crowley—was a British occultist and Legitimist named Samuel MacGregor Mathers. In turn, Mathers was the close friend of a peculiar English peer named Lord Bertram Ashburnham.

Ashburnham was also a militant Legitimist who operated an armed training camp on his estate. In fact, Mathers, Ashburnham, and other Golden Dawners were neck-deep in a conspiracy to arm and finance a revolution in Spain. Once successful, they expected the new king, one Don Carlos, to return the favor.

Learn more about secret societies: the underworld of history.
British Intelligence Sent Crowley to Infiltrate the Golden Dawn

It’s not hard to see why the British authorities wanted to know what was going on at those lodge meetings. The man they sent to find out was Aleister Crowley. With Mathers’ backing, Crowley wormed his way into the Spanish plot, which included smuggling a shipload of arms. Someone—probably Crowley—betrayed it.
A man with black unruly hair and black long beard bathing in a spring, the rocky bank of the spring can be seen behind him, his face is much darker than the rest of his body.Aleister Crowley proved to be disruptive in Golden Dawn and eventually sparked an internal feud that all but destroyed the Golden Dawn. (Image: Jules Jacot Guillarmod/Public domain)

His joining the Golden Dawn was like tossing a grenade into the room. Crowley’s theatrical flamboyance ruffled feathers. He stirred up more trouble by introducing sex into some of their rituals. The result was an internal feud that all but destroyed the Golden Dawn. And that probably suited Crowley’s employers just fine.

A key element in the Golden Dawn’s belief system—and Crowley’s—was a group known as the secret chiefs. They were thought to be advanced spiritual beings who mysteriously guided their initiates; turning revelation on and off like a spigot. Interestingly, Crowley compared them to spy chiefs for their tendency “to keep us in the dark”.

The secret chiefs were served by their own secret society, the Great White Lodge. Appropriately, the White Lodge opposed an insidious group known as the Black Lodge and its Black Brothers. The distinction was between white and black magic. Just about everyone Crowley disliked—and there were many—he branded a Black Brother. Despite his reputation as a black magician, Crowley insisted that he really served the White Lodge.

This is a transcript from the video series Secret Societies. Watch it now, Wondrium.

Thwarting a Possible Irish Uprising

About 15 years after the Golden Dawn episode, an important Irish nationalist known as Sir Roger Casement visited New York City to negotiate a secret deal for German support of an uprising in Ireland. British intelligence caught wind, and proceeded cautiously.

America was a neutral country, and the Irish cause enjoyed wide support there. But the Brits knew a secret: Casement was a homosexual, and that offered a means to entrap and compromise him.

Crowley was, or affected to be, bisexual. His ability to infiltrate the gay underworld made him ideal to unofficially dig up dirt on Casement. If Crowley was exposed, London’s hands were clean. It’s called deniability.

When Crowley sailed from England, the British believed that Casement was still in New York. But he’d quietly slipped away. So, Crowley arrived in Manhattan to find his ‘egg was addled’. But he found other ways to be useful.

On July 3, 1915, as the first rays of dawn reflected off the Hudson River, 10 people gathered on the 50th Street Pier. Leading them was Crowley himself, acting as self-proclaimed ‘leader of Irish hope’ and a representative of the ‘Secret Revolutionary Committee of Public Safety of the Provisional Government of Ireland’.

Of course, that was an organization that existed only in Crowley’s imagination. Two others in tow were bona fide Irish nationalists, but four were just common drunks. Another in attendance was Crowley’s then current girlfriend—or ‘scarlet woman’—named Leila Waddell. She kept everyone entertained, or at least awake, with lively fiddle tunes.

Also on hand was a reporter from The New York Times. Crowley wanted to be sure the event got plenty of publicity. After rowing out to Liberty Island, he went into high gear, swearing an oath to revolution, and ostentatiously tearing up his British passport. He next ‘declared war’ on England, and swore to fight to the last drop of his blood for Irish freedom. It was pure theater.

Crowley later admitted he “knew almost nothing” about Ireland, or its struggle for independence. His real passport was safe back in his room. He’d torn up an envelope. Nor was he really trying to impress the Irish revolutionaries in New York. The Germans were his target.
Drawing the United States into World War I

The chief German propagandist in New York—a man named George Sylvester Viereck—had hired Crowley to write anti-British articles for his magazine, The Fatherland. Handily, Viereck was an aspiring occultist and a secret society member with a fondness for drugs and orgies.

Through Viereck, Crowley gained the ear of the so-called ‘Propaganda Kabinett’. This was a secret group that included German-American journalists and academics, as well as German officials like the Kaiser’s military attaché in Washington, Franz von Papen. Eighteen years later, von Papen would be one of the men who made Adolf Hitler the chancellor of Germany.

As much as the British wanted to draw the United States into the war, the Germans wanted to keep them out. The question was, how?
A large ocen liner slowly sinking with thick, dark plumes of smoke rising up from its hull, while several boats are rescuing passengers who have gone overboard, and a few rescue boats are near the sinking ship as well.Crowley claimed that he was able to influence the German Propaganda Kabinett during a March 1915 meeting to believe that “arrogance and violence were the best policy”, which led to a German U-boat torpedoing the British Ocean Liner RMS Lusitania off the coast of Ireland on May 7, 1915, and killing over 1,000 people. (Image: Everett Collection/Shutterstock)

Crowley said that at a March 1915 cabinet meeting, he “gradually got the Germans to believe that arrogance and violence were the best policy”. The Americans, he explained, were like children; easily frightened and responsive to firmness. Crowley bamboozled the Germans into believing that his study of the occult gave him insight into the mass psychology of the Americans and British.

The big topic of discussion that day was the ocean liner The Lusitania. The vessel was the pride of the British liner fleet. The Germans knew it was being used to ferry war supplies from New York to Liverpool. That made it a military target, but the sticking point was that there were hundreds of innocent passengers on board.

Would the propaganda benefit from sinking the Lusitania be offset by the negative publicity? Crowley argued that it wouldn’t.

The Propaganda Kabinett forwarded his opinion to Berlin. And, on 7 May 1915, a German U-boat torpedoed The Lusitania off the coast of Ireland, and over 1,000 people perished. Though the United States wouldn’t join the war for two more years, Germany’s reputation was now thoroughly blackened in the eyes of much of the American public.

Learn more about mafia, the criminal secret societies.
Crowley Played for All Sides

Some have claimed that Crowley grossly exaggerates his influence. That might be true, but it would equally incorrect to say that he didn’t have any influence. The real key to Crowley gaining German confidence wasn’t Viereck but “a man high in the German secret service” named Theodor Reuss.

Before World War I, Reuss had worked in London as a journalist. He was also a secret society initiate and a spy. Reuss pitched the Ordo Templi Orientis, or OTO—of which he was a member—as a one-stop occult super store.

Starting in Germany around 1903, the OTO aspired to unify other esoteric societies under its banner. Its claimed affiliates included the Illuminati, the Knights Templar, the Masonic Rite of Memphis-Misraim, and the Rosicrucians. More importantly, perhaps, the OTO served as a cover for German intelligence.

In 1912, Reuss initiated Crowley into the OTO in Berlin. Crowley then became chief of the order’s operations in English-speaking countries. He even got a new mystical name, Baphomet, which was the idol supposedly worshipped by the Knights Templar.

Whether Reuss simultaneously enlisted Crowley into German intelligence—or thought he did—is another question. Regardless, he and Crowley maintained clandestine contact throughout World War I, while Crowley secretly worked for Britain in America, and as Reuss served as the Kaiser’s agent in Holland and Switzerland.

After Reuss died, Crowley later managed to grab control of the OTO, or a faction of it. And the OTO is still very much alive, along with accusations that it’s linked to intelligence activity.
Common Questions about Aleister Crowley, Occult, Secret Societies and Espionage
Q: Who is considered the most wicked man in the world?

A section of people called Aleister Crowley ‘the wickedest man in the world’, but he preferred to call himself The Great Beast 666.
Q: When was the Golden Dawn founded?

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (or just Golden Dawn) was founded in 1887 and was among the many esoteric societies that popped up in the 1880s. Its notable members included poet William Butler Yeats and occult scholar Arthur Waite.
Q: What did Roger Casement do?

Sir Roger Casement was an important Irish nationalist, who had visited New York City to negotiate a secret deal for German support of an uprising in Ireland.
Q: What did Franz von Papen do?

Franz von Papen was the Kaiser’s military attaché in Washington. He was a member of a secret group called Propaganda Kabinett that also included German-American journalists and academics, as well as other German officials. And von Papen was one of the men who made Adolf Hitler the chancellor of Germany.

https://www.thesquaremagazine.com/mag/article/202208aleister-crowley-a-very-irregular-freemason/

Aleister Crowley – a very irregular Freemason - The Square Magazine

The general public viewed Aleister Crowley as a potentially dangerous drug ... In Switzerland, he made contact with Julian L. Baker who introduced him to ...

https://www.thesquaremagazine.com/mag/article/202208aleister-crowley-a-very-irregular-freemason/

Aleister Crowley – a very irregular Freemason - The Square Magazine

The general public viewed Aleister Crowley as a potentially dangerous drug ... In Switzerland, he made contact with Julian L. Baker who introduced him to ...

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This video opens up in 7:59.56 evidence about the Pharaonic Masters. They have a legal mafia like the police, politicians, justice department, banks and government agencies, and they have an illegal mafia to do things, their legal mafia can't get by without causing too much distrust which makes the slaves distrust the system; their legal mafia is run by the Freemasons while their illegal mafia is from the Knights Templar with their main base Switzerland high up in the strategic Alps. In reality, their legal mafia and their illegal mafia work together as the two hands of the same body.
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