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The Wickedest Man in the World
A few moments before noon on April 10th 1904, Aleister Crowley was
likely looking at his pocketwatch with impatience. Perhaps he was
pacing, as others reported he was fond of doing. He would have been
inside and secluded. Away from his newlywed wife and any other
disturbance.
Likely, 29 year-old Aleister wore some sort of
ritual garb. It would seem that he was waiting for a very important
appointment. And in a way, he was. Aleister was waiting for a voice in
his head to begin speaking. It had already spoken to him several times
before, beginning on March 20th and over the past couple days was
dictating apparently important information for him to transcribe.
Always popping up at precisely noon.
The timing was no
mystery. This voice belonged to an angel of the Egyptian god Horus who,
among other things, was an avatar of the Sun. High Noon was that god’s
favorite hour and being that Aleister happened to be standing in Cairo,
it was high noon Egypt time. Rather apt timing for an Egyptian god
wanting to convey a message that would herald in an entirely new era.
Aleister would have listened very carefully to the voice in his head as
it articulated seemingly incomprehensible verbiage.
Little
did he know at the time, he was writing his life’s philosophy and the
rules for what would become a thorn in the side of sensible Victorian
society.
Aleister was no stranger to gods, Egyptian or
otherwise. Nor was he out of touch with the paranormal. Already an
accomplished occultist, Aleister worked his way through several
mystical societies before setting off on his own. He was also becoming
accustomed to spiritual revelations. Just a year prior he worked out a
scientific approach to Buddhism and three years prior he reached a form
of yogic enlightenment. In fact, his entire mystical journey began from
having an erotic encounter with an altogether different god at 21 years
old
This time was different though. Aleister was given
something he couldn’t quite understand and much of it he was explicitly
instructed by Horus to not decipher at all. More profoundly, however,
Horus was appointing Aleister as a prophet for this new age. He would
be the head of the church, so to speak, for this transforming and
extremely important spiritual law. Everything from the spring of 1904
on would be different. Aleister Crowley would be famous.
Or . . . infamous, as it were.
The Wickedest Man in the World was born to an extremely religious
English household in the fall of 1875. Reared in an era of extreme
religious conservatism, young Edward Alexander Crowley was born to a
wealthy and retired engineer and preacher for the Exclusive Bretheren,
an evangelical Christian sect. It is difficult to pinpoint exactly when
young Crowley rejected conservative religion, but perhaps it started on
February 29 when he was only five years old.
A five hour-old
deceased infant was introduced to him as sister. In his young mind he
couldn’t understand the rationale for causing such emotional trauma.
The experience did nothing but to show him how futile any effort would
be to accommodate a dead sister. Consequently, any reaction to death at
all seemed futile in his mind all the way to the time of his own death
67 years later.
His father died when he was 12. Later he
would say that he only attended his father’s funeral because it was
about him. However, it is likely his mother had something to do with
it. In any case, young Crowley lost someone he was very close to. Was
it this moment in his life that he turned from the highly religious
upbringing? Did he begin to see the failure of religion’s attempt to
satisfy the problem of death?
It seems a direct cause when
one looks at how his behavior changed dramatically from the
conservative to the skeptical. The harsher his mother was the more
skeptical he became. At the worst moments she called him “the Beast”
referencing the Antichrist himself. When a mother and only parent
chastises an adolescent as being Satan-incarnate, does that contribute
to straying from orthodoxy?
Perhaps all of these things made
Edward Alexander Crowley who he was. Certainly we are all the sum total
of our experiences, but even still there was something more interesting
about this youth, who in a Victorian era seemed to be the only one
upset that the finer things in life were considered sinful. In an era
60 years before sex, drugs, and rock and roll – young Crowley was
trying to pick up the metaphorical guitar and hop on a tour bus. The
tour bus, in his case, brought him to Trinity College in Cambridge. Not
quite the proper arena for a budding rock star.
Although he
considered his three years at Cambridge fruitful ones, he was in direct
opposition of everything the philosophy of the Moral Sciences subject
and so went for English Literature instead. He described the Church of
England as “tyrannical” and “hypocritical”. Maintaining his religious
heritage – at least openly, Crowley also refused to subscribe to the
Victorian moral norm. As it would reveal later, Crowley wanted nothing
to do with any moral norm at all.
Crowley considered
December of 1896 his most pivotal year. It was in that time he had
sexual relations with a god. That would certainly have been enough to
make Victorians gasp with horror but it was a homoerotic experience to
boot. He was not shy or secretive about his bisexual sex life and as
time went on it became integrated into his very philosophy. If his
sexual behavior in 1895 and 1896 weren’t enough, the sudden transferal
into the occult and mystical communities earned him the title “wicked”
by most moralists of the day.
It was about this time he
decided to call himself Aleister Crowley, because the etymology
promoted the act of being famous. Doubtfully his fame had little to do
with a name, but there was something a little more wicked-sounding
about Aleister over say… Edward. In any case, Crowley hated his name
and it marked a new Crowley. One who valued mysticism and the occult
over his upbringing and education. It was the mark of a person who
changed his fundamental life pursuit.
Aleister wasn’t the
only one in Victorian England opting into mystical studies over
conventional ones. There was quite a surge of mystical and occult
organizations taking hold of both England and the United States. One of
the more prominent ones was Crowley’s first conquest, the Hermetic
Order of the Golden Dawn. The Golden Dawn was a society devoted to the
hermetic teachings of the Egyptian Mystery Schools and developed a
hefty system of magic and ritual based upon the Jewish Kabbalah and
other mystical influences. Spearheaded by the influential Samuel
Mathers, Aleister and orthodoxrejectionists like him were the perfect
fit for the growing order that splintered off originally from an
Eastern-leaning Theosophical Society.
Aleister made a
reputation for himself in the occultist circle. Already a prolific
writer he wasted no time in bashing his contemporaries as being “dull”
or uninspired. He ungraciously took teachings from Mathers and the
Golden Dawn only to later reject them and much of their systems as
being inferior. The Golden Dawn had its own share of problems and after
a controversy surrounding their fraudulent origins the group underwent
a schism and Crowley ultimately left leaving few, if any, friends
behind.
Aleister’s life thus far was certainly wicked. At
least, from the point of view of most Europeans and Americans. Though
he did nothing that none of the others in the mystical circles did.
They all distanced themselves from orthodoxy, questioned cultural
morality, and to a certain degree boozed and chased skirts. It was the
mystics of the Victorian era that kept things loosened up and perhaps
had a hand in promoting a more secular and less puritan point of view
among mainstream society. Crowley was no different than most of his
friends and enemies, but on that fateful day in 1904 that would change.
Wickedness would take on a whole new meaning and go into depths
otherwise unheard of by the buttoned-up Victorians. Wickedness would
become a way of life. A way of being. A set of rules. And Aleister
Crowley, the Beast, would spend every waking moment rubbing England’s
face in it.
Horus came to Aleister in the Spring of 1904
with a mission. The world was in an old “aeon” at that time and it was
time for a new one to take place. Before that moment, the Aeon belonged
to Osiris who, according to mythology, was dead. Therefore that
particular period of time, ranging from the Medieval days up into the
modern era was surrounding paternal concepts of a self-sacrificing god.
In this spiritual “formula”, a man was worshipped who had surmounted
death. Before Osiris was Isis, who’s ancient society was spiritually
matriarchal and consistent with the natural worship of pagans. But at
the turn of the century it was time for a different focus altogether.
Gone were the easy-going days of Isis and the self-deprecating ways of
Osiris. Gone were the nurturing days and the worship of death. Now it
was time for self-actualization and the spirituality of the individual.
Horus told Crowley that the modern Aeon would be completely about true
will. It was self-realization and personal growth. The message was
dictated loudly and clearly (as a voice in Aleister’s head) as the Book
of the Law: the manu scri pt that begat Aleister’s notorious religion
Thelema.
It took three hours to write. Each day at noon on
April 8th, 9th, and 10th the angel of Horus, called Aiwass, told
Crowley everything he needed to know about thriving in the new Aeon.
The manu scri pt was written in the drawing room of an apartment in
Cairo, Egypt. And it was, inconveniently, dictated to him during his
honeymoon with newlywed Rose. One could cast him an evil eye for
interrupting his honeymoon with messages from Horus, but it was Rose
that convinced him to do it in an apparent mystical state. This was
unusual for her, because she knew or cared nothing about mysticism or
Horus yet had an uncanny knowledge when Horus came to them. Aleister
sat at his desk and wrote down Aiwass’ words verbatim. It was perhaps
difficult to interpret and not until Crowley did so in his commentary,
could one take an objective stance on the meaning of the text. But
through it all two concepts resonated as the principles of Thelema and
consequently the wickedness of Aleister Crowley:
1. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
2. Love is the law, love under will.
The first precept, often completely misinterpreted, was the core
philosophy of Thelema which was the literal transliterat ion of the
Greek word for “will”. Aleister asserted that unless mankind was
behaving according to his “true will”, that is, the natural path laid
out for him, than he was doomed. Thus, those bound by the arbitrary
shackles of Victorian England were relics of another Aeon fading into
futility. Aleister was very clear in that “doing one’s will” was not
just doing “whatever the hell one wanted to do”, but rather complying
what one’s spiritual and divine purpose.
The second
principle was not as touchy-feely as perhaps it sounded. Crowley’s
meaning behind “Love is the law” is a reference to an ultimate union
with divinity. When everyone is theoretically behaving according to
their actual True Will than none can contradict one another and there
is harmony/love.
How truly wicked this must have sounded to
stuffy, top-hatted Victorians. Do what you want is the law?? The
mystical and philosophical complexities of Thelema would certainly have
been lost on them. Perhaps Crowley could have convinced the critics
otherwise, but instead he chose a different way of handling things. In
many ways Crowley reveled in the critics appalling opinion of him and
his work. He wrote shocking and distasteful publications referencing
cannibalism, human sacrifice and other horrid acts, He was also very
public and lewd with his practice of sex magick. A public racist,
sexist and womanizer as well as openly homosexual in a time when it was
very taboo it seemed that he deliberately pressed every button in the
world around him to get a rise out of his contemporaries. Looking back
at his work and at the same time dissecting his philosophy one could
say he was purposely being wicked out of amusement. Or perhaps to
promote radical change in a completely restrictive and socially
tyrannical world.
Aleister Crowley was a lot of things.
Master chess player. Accomplished mountaineer. Prolific writer.
Novelist. Philosopher, Mystic. He single-handedly created a thorough
and effective system of ritual and magick still used by mystical orders
today. He was a social critic, sexual revolutionary, and cultural
pioneer. Crowley upset and redesigned the secretive and stuffy mystical
culture and placed it into a mainstream in a shocking and disturbing
way. He dismantled orthodoxy with sadistic humor and open
offensiveness. Was he wicked? By Victorian definition most definitely.
Exploring this fascinating man’s life one sees a great deal of
wickedness. But perhaps behind that curtain is a triumph of truth. His
movements were calculated, inspired and part of a life-long process.
How else could one so adequately express social revolution in such a
closed world? Reveling in public wickedness was a tool for Crowley, not
a reality. He used public opinion to craft his design. The more wicked
he became the more attention he received and the more his system grew.
Aleister Crowley didn’t eat children. He did not worship Satan. He
didn’t summon demons or curse his critics. He was a mystic and
philosopher with a dark sense of humor and an extreme method designed
to penetrate an extreme world. He was, in many ways, an asshole. His
treatment and opinion on women, Jews, and blacks were reprehensible.
His brutal treatment on colleagues and contemporaries created life-long
conflict. His outlandish methods destroyed much of the credibility in
the growing field of mysticism. Behind the wicked exterior was a
brilliant interior, but a human one. Aleister Crowley’s legacy is
notorious and for a man who worked so hard at being wicked, infamy is
an apt place for that legacy.
The Wickedest Man in the World by Mark Havenner is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License
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