Aleister Crowley
Copyright Michael D. Robbins 2005

Astro-Rayological Interpretation & Charts
Quotes
Biography
Images and Physiognomic Interpretation

to Volume 3 Table of Contents

        Aleister Crowley—Magician, Author on the Occult, Ceremonialist

October 12, 1875, Leamington, England. Times variously given; probably after 11:00 PM, LMT, to give a Leo Ascendant. (Source: Eschelman, speculative/rectified)  The following information is found in the AstoDataBank:       

“Jim Eshelman quotes his autobiography, Confessions of Aleister Crowley, in which he gives a time of ‘

11:00 PM to Midnight,’  rectified by Eshelman.  Crowley did, however, publish a chart in Equinox of the Gods that is set for 10:50 PM LMT.  LeGros gave 10:58 PM in AA.  Penfield quotes the chart in Equinox for 10:32 PM i n Mercury Hour Ext., 1/1980.  Steinbrecher rectified to 11:04 PM      

(Ascendant, Leo; Sun conjunct Venus in Libra; Moon in Pisces; Mercury conjunct Jupiter in Scorpio; Saturn in Aquarius; Uranus in Leo probably in the H1; Neptune and Pluto in Taurus)

Crowley was a colorful and notorious figure (Leo Ascendant)  largely responsible for a revival in the interest in “Magick” during the twentieth century. He was a prolific author (Jupiter conjunct Mercury in Scorpio) on magical and kabbalistic subjects, and a practitioner of many magical rites and rituals. His name is associated with the Order of the Golden Dawn, though he was not its founder.    

Crowley was certainly not a “black magician”, nor was he entirely “white”. His Libran Sun sign symbolizes the narrow path he walked between the right and left-hand paths. If anything, he tilted towards selfishness (Leo). His name is also associated with sexuality and profligacy (Sun Libra conjunct Venus). He conceived that “sex” (broadly understood) was the greatest force in cosmos.       

His soul ray may be reasonably assigned as the seventh and his strong and commanding personality was probably ruled by the first ray. His poetic mind was characteristically fourth ray in nature.    

Inherited 30,000 pounds; traveled; exiled from many countries for infamous exploits in black magic, hypnotism, and lechery. Published Equinox of the Gods in more than a dozen volumes; wrote poetry and pornography. Insane, nearly peniless, and alone, dies of cocaine and heroin on December 1, 1947.

Destiny is an absolutely definite and inexorable ruler. Physical ability and moral determination count for nothing. It is impossible to perform the simplest act when the gods say "no." I have no idea how they bring pressure to bear on such occasions; I only know that it is irresistible.

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning.

I was asked to memorise what I did not understand; and, my memory being so good, it refused to be insulted in that manner.

Intolerance is evidence of impotence.

The conscience of the world is so guilty that it always assumes that people who investigate heresies must be heretics; just as if a doctor who studies leprosy must be a leper. Indeed, it is only recently that science has been allowed to study anything without reproach.

The people who have really made history are the martyrs.

The pious pretense that evil does not exist only makes it vague, enormous and menacing.

There is only one really safe, mild, harmless beverage and you can drink as much of that as you like without running the slightest risk, and what you say when you want it is, "Garcon! Un Pernod!"

To the eyes of a god, mankind must appear as a species of bacteria which multiply and become progressively virulent whenever they find themselves in a congenial culture, and whose activity diminishes until they disappear completely as soon as proper measures are taken to sterilize them.

"Saint-Germain was a member of the Paris Chapter of the Knights Templar. He was the Obermohr [supreme magus] of many mystic brotherhoods, where he was worshipped as a superior being. His memory was not forgotten, and by the end of the nineteenth century, hierophants of the secret schools looked upon Saint-Germain with profound gratitude. His influence had helped to open the way for humanism and republicanism (which in this author's opinion is a respectable name for organised crime), movements which "flowered" in the twentieth century.

Gnostic forces were progressing in the ascendancy during t-+he nineteenth century, and into this milieu was Edward Alexander Crowley born; he later took the name Aleister. He was born on 12 October, 1875. According to Kenneth Grant, head of an OTO breakaway sect, the Typhonian Tradition, Crowley first became aware of the existence of spiritual powers in 1898 when he read The Cloud upon the Sanctuary by Karl von Eckartshausen. Crowley was 22 at the time and set out to contact the hidden Order which the book describes. His efforts led to his initiation into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn on 18 November, 1898. He assumed the magical name Perdurabo (I shall endure).

In August, 1903, Crowley married Rose Kelly, his 'scarlet woman,' whom he had met in Paris. They proceeded on an extended honeymoon, and whilst in Sri Lanka, they went trekking through the jungle. Whilst standing on the shores of a lake, Crowley decided to shoot enough furry bats to make himself a waistcoat. One bat landed on Rose, and Crowley had some trouble detaching its claws. That night, Crowley was awakened by the noise of a squealing bat. He then saw Rose, completely naked, clinging with her arms and legs to the wooden frame that supported the mosquito net. As he pulled her down, she bit and spat and squealed, and she had to be shaken into wakefulness. Crowley noted that it was the finest case of obsession that he had ever had the "good fortune" to observe.

When Rose later discovered she was pregnant, they decided to return home to England. En-route they went to Cairo, where they took a flat. (Incidentally, Rose went on to have a daughter who was named Night my Athatour Hecate Sappho Jesabel Lilith, and who died in tragic circumstances. Rose died an alcoholic).

In Cairo, Crowley proceeded to dress in Persian garb, pretending to be an oriental prince, Chioi Khan (being Hebrew for the Beast). Crowley's mother, a strict Plymouth Brethren, had believed her son to be the beast ( number 666 ( of Revelation 13:18.

In Cairo, Crowley attempted a series of invocations to summon up elementals or demons. Rose sank into a curious state of mind in which she kept repeating: "You have offended Horus." It was Rose who in fact introduced Crowley to the elemental, Aiwass. Through Rose, Aiwass told Crowley that he was to go into his workroom at precisely midday on 8, 9 and 10 April, 1904 and write down what he heard for the next hour. The message began: "Had! the manifestation of Nuit." And thus The Book of the Law came into existence. It is also known as "Liber AL vel Legis" (meaning 'divinely revealed Book of the Law') or Liber AL for short. Whilst The Book of the Law was received in 1904, it would not be published until 1913, just nine months before the 'Balkan War' (later to be called World War One).

According to Crowley, " 'The Law of Thelema' [ie, Liber AL], revealed in Cairo in 1904, has come to replace the outworn creeds, the local codes; to help the peoples of the world march on to a new era of peace and happiness." Thus Crowley becomes a medium and 'false prophet' within the context of James 4:5: "They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world's viewpoint; and the world listens to them."

Crowley preached the New Aeon of Horus, the "new era of peace and happiness," but the path to this "new era" would necessarily be bathed in blood. A moment's reflection on the course of the twentieth century confirms that the revolutionary and violent prophecies contained within The Book of the Law have been fulfilled, and there are other events yet to occur.

Forerunner to Crowley
Crowley did not just appear out-of-the-blue. The groundwork had been laid for millennia, for his creed is Gnosticism. Essentially, a Gnostic is one who seeks illumination, and sets out to become a divine being; basically, an alchemical transmutation of evil into good achieved through the exercise of one's own will. Christians believe that this transmutation can only occur through the grace of God as may be extended to an individual; no amount of self-will can achieve this transmutation of one's spirit.

Gnostic leaders are spiritualist mediums who take counsel and direction from spirits or "Invisible Masters." The ideals of Gnostics are utopian, and the ends justify the means. Crowley was a Gnostic master, as was a forerunner of his, Adam Weishaupt. Many readers have more than likely 'completed' Conspiracy Theory 101, and are familiar with Herr Weishaupt. For those who may not know of him, some background follows.

Weishaupt was born in Catholic-dominated southern Germany on 6 February, 1748. He was Jesuit-educated and attained a very influential university position. In accordance with the "needs of his period" (Kenneth Grant), he reawakened the Order of the Illuminati. Weishaupt's occult activities culminated in the French Revolution, and this spark ruptured the course of history.

Shortly after the French Revolution, the Marquis de Luchet said, "This society [Illuminati] aims at governing the world. Its object is universal domination." He called the Illuminati "a subterranean fire smouldering eternally and breaking forth periodically in violent and devastating explosions."

Weishaupt wrote the following to a fellow Illuminatus: "We must consider how we can begin to work under another form. If only the aim is achieved, it does not matter under what cover it takes place, and cover is always necessary. For in concealment lies a great part of our strength. For this reason we must cover ourselves with the name of another society. The lodges that are under Freemasonry are in the meantime the most suitable cloak for our high purpose, because the world is already accustomed to expect nothing great from them which merits attention. As in the spiritual Orders of the Roman Church, religion was, alas! only a pretence, so must our Order also in a nobler way try to conceal itself behind a learned society or something of the kind."

On 26 December, 1993, no less an organ of the fourth estate, "The Economist" published the following under the heading, "The Good Network Guide": "Beyond all these networks lies the mother of all networks, the Order of the Illuminati, known to some as the True Rulers of the World. Its age will remain uncertain until the story of the last days of Atlantis is better known. Though this secret body has hovered unseen over all history, its most public flowering was in the Enlightenment. Adam Weishaupt, a former Jesuit ( who provided much of the inspiration for Shelley's Frankenstein ( revealed its purpose and system of mutual surveillance to the world on May 1st 1776. Since then the order has taken a keen interest in another newborn of that year. It is significant that many American presidents have been Illuminati; and the Illuminati symbol of the eye in the pyramid still graces the dollar bill.

"The conspiracy is immense and terrifying, stretching from Hassan-i-Sabbah, 11th-century Assassin, to Ian Fleming (who caricatured the order as "SPECTRE"). It is the network of those who run networks. Given its power, you should assume that anyone writing about the order must be either lying or part of a conspiracy to confound you. In wondering about the Illuminati, merely remember this. You have never arrived." (Note the motto of the Assassins: "Nothing is true. Everything is permitted").

Angelo Roncalli who was to become Pope John XXIII, and who convened Vatican 2, is reputed to have been a member of the Illuminati. The Illuminist eye in the pyramid was used on his papal cross. He is also reputed to have met with Crowley. It was Vatican 2 which led to the Catholic church seizing the world-wide ecumenical agenda and which authorised the idolatrous elevation of Mary to goddess status.

After the French Revolution, the Order of the Illuminati disappeared. In 1904, an Austrian Adept named Karl Kellner repeated Weishaupt's feat, and re-established the Illuminati through a sect known as Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO). Crowley took over leadership of OTO in 1922. The spirit guides of the Gnostics had clearly directed that the Illuminati once again step into the public realm but, in this instance, through OTO.

The Book of the Law
Crowley is not an aberration. He is part of an historical process which has yet to reach its climax. The ruling spirits of this world relayed the primary plank of their program to Crowley, and this is contained in The Book of the Law. For human beings, the real struggle is not against each other, but against the evil cosmic powers which govern this dark age. Crowley was their medium, but on several occasions as he wrote down The Book of the Law, Aiwass chastised Crowley for being concerned about what he was writing.

As part of my own spiritual journey as a Christian, I eventually found myself looking into Crowley. It took sometime before I recognised that The Book of the Law was such an important work. I am not writing this article to make the facts fit in with my world-view. What I found is that The Book of the Law has been fulfilled to a large degree, and that its contents tie in strongly with the Revelation. Just as Jesus sent his angel to reveal future events to John, so did Satan send a spirit being, Aiwass, to Crowley. Both works are eschatological (the doctrine of last or final things).

The Book of the Law says that the god of war and vengeance, Ra-Hoor-Khu-It (Horus), is now positioned on his seat of power. His human incarnation will occur, and he will be in the form of a child, the False Prophet or Antichrist. He is the offspring of the union of Hadit (Satan) and Nuit (Babylon). This union and its "fruit" is referred to in Revelation chapter 13. The Book of the Law tells us that Satan is the coiled serpent, and he is about to spring. Christians will be put to death. Through war and chaos, the goddess (Nuit/Babylon) will be placed in a position to be worshipped, and her offspring, the child, will be mightier than all the kings of the earth, although one of these rich "kings" will finance him.

There are three underlying principles in The Book of the Law for Thelemites (Thelema is Greek for determination through choice; inclination to desire, pleasure, will) to live by:

1.Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.
2.Love is the law, love under will.
3.Every man and every woman is a star.

A curious feature of Gnosticism is that in the early stages of the Gnostic quest, one is driven by terrible despair, and simultaneously, a powerful upsurge of love. In the utopian quest for self-perfection, a 'good' person in the world's eyes is one who is seemingly self-realised and self-reliant. That person develops the will to be the master of his/her world, even though many other persons may lose in the process. To become a selfish 'superman' is the Gnostic goal, and those who are not so capable or who do not share this ideal are meant only to serve and be used. Sin is no longer a restriction on one's will to fulfill the most powerful desires. Nietzsche longed for 'the fair beast' (die blonde Bestie) ( the strong, beautiful beast which shall rule the world, and act in all things according to its will.

W.B. Yeats, the Irish poet and contemporary of Crowley in the Order of the Golden Dawn, wrote about the Gnostic utopia thus: "...an aristocratic civilisation in its most completed form, every detail of life hierarchical, every great man's door crowded at dawn by petitioners, great wealth everywhere in few men's hands, all dependent on a few, up to the Emperor himself, who is a God dependent on a greater God and everywhere, in Court, in the family, an inequality made law."

Satan through Aiwass declares that Christianity is dead, and that Crowley is to be the prophet of the neo-pagan system which would emerge. Moral values and compassion as exercised would be relative to the exigencies of the times. The neo-pagan emergence would birth on an altar of moral enfeeblement and blood sacrifice. The strong of will would take control of the world.

The most dramatic instance of human sacrifice occurred under the Nazis in World War II. The German lyric poet and essayist, Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) prophetically wrote of a time when Germany would go berserk:

"Some day there will awake that fighting folly found among the ancient Germans, the folly that fights neither to kill nor to conquer, but simply to fight. Christianity has ( and that is its fairest merit ( somewhat mitigated that brutal German lust for battle. But it could not destroy it: and once the taming talisman, the Cross, is broken, the savagery of the old battlers will flare up again, the insane Berserk rage of which Nordic bards have so much to say and sing. The talisman is brittle. The day will come when it will pitiably collapse. Then the old stone gods will rise from forgotten rubble and rub the dust of a thousand years from their eyes; and Thor will leap up and with his giant hammer start smashing Gothic cathedrals..."

The gods did indeed awaken. According to Trevor Ravenscroft in "The Spear of Destiny," every year from 1926 to 1942, the Germans sent out parties which contacted Tibetan initiates, the intention being to gain their psychic help and deep alliance with the devilish forces which rule this world. A Tibetan colony was established in Germany in 1929, and the monks were known in Germany as "The Society of Green Men," because of their links with the Green Dragon Society of Japan.

In Berlin, Hitler met regularly with the leader of the Tibetan community who was a very gifted and accurate clairvoyant. Himmler shared Hitler's interest in the occult, and set up the Nazi Occult Bureau. This incorporated into one organisation the Thule group, the Vril Society and the German branch of OTO (Crowley's magical order).

Between 1936 and 1939, Crowley paid a number of visits to Germany. It is known that a woman called Martha Kunzel repeatedly urged on Hitler the wisdom of adopting The Book of the Law as his guide. Hitler rejected this, as he wanted Mein Kampf to be the holy book of Germany. By the time the war had broken out, Crowley had become strongly anti-Hitler, and said that "Britain would knock Hitler for six" (an analogy from cricket: the worst thing a batsman can do to a bowler is hit the ball clear out of the field, and thus score six runs). The German branch of OTO had by the time of the war been banned and most of its members were in concentration camps.

Hermann Rauschning, governor of Danzig, had been very close to Hitler, and recorded many of their conversations which were published in a book called Hitler Speaks. Rauschning openly acknowledged Hitler's obsession with the occult, and found that very often Hitler was paraphrasing or expressing an idea from The Book of the Law ( often word for word.

"I will tell you a secret," Hitler told Rauschning, "I am founding an order. It is from there that the second stage will emerge ( the stage of the Man-God, when Man will be the measure and centre of the world. The Man-God, that splendid being, will be an object of worship. But there are other stages about which I am not permitted to speak."

"Hail! ye twin warriors about the pillars of the world! for your time is nigh at hand" (The Book of the Law 3:71) The "pillars of the world" are the powerful and greedy emotions of people, and the twin warriors are the spirits that would cause the two world wars energised by the compliance and sinfulness of the "pillars of the world." Hitler knew exactly what he was about, and fulfilled his pre-destined role. The cornerstone of Novus Ordo Seclorum was laid.

Jack Parsons and the Babalon Working

By the time World War II came to an atomic end in 1945, the earth had been literally soaked in blood. The warrior god, Horus, had erupted, and the world convulsed in a continuous fit of war and genocide. Verse 3:46 of The Book of the Law had come to pass: "I am the warrior Lord of the Forties: the Eighties cower before me, & are abased. I will bring you victory & joy; I will be at your arms in battle & ye shall delight to slay. Success is your proof; courage is your armour; go on, go on, in my strength; & ye shall turn not back for any!"

Crowley's time on earth came to an end on the evening of 1 December, 1947 when he succumbed to myocardial degeneration and chronic bronchitis. The prankster was dead, long live the prankster!

Crowley had come from an English world which was traditional and very conservative. Throughout his life, he loved to play the prankster. On one such occasion, he walked into a lift and urinated in the corner, and then declared that the lift had become a sacred place. But at heart, he does seem to be very English. The new wave Americans, the bohemian Jack Parsons and the brash L. Ron Hubbard, were not bound by English strictures; they were very much action men.

When Parsons and Hubbard performed the Babalon Working in January, 1946, Crowley was resentful and branded them "louts," even though he had developed the Working and mentored Parsons (in correspondence to Crowley, Parsons used the salutation, "Most Beloved Father"). Crowley was so incensed at the Working being performed that he cabled his US office on 22 May: "Suspect Ron playing confidence trick ( Jack Parsons weak fool ( obvious victim prowling swindlers."

Jack Parsons was a very gifted scientist and chemist, and founded a company which was to become Jet Propulsion Laboratories (JPL), which in its modern day guise has merged with NASA (JPL.NASA). To this day, people at NASA are reputed to refer to JPL as Jack Parsons' Laboratory. He was also an Illuminatus and had deep occult interests, and is reputed to have been a descendent of a Hell-Fire Club founder. When he first encountered Crowley's writings he intuitively understood Thelema. He joined the Los Angeles OTO Lodge in 1939, and rapidly rose to prominence.

In April, 1945, Parsons was introduced to L. Ron Hubbard. Enter the prankster! Crowley biographer Kenneth Grant refers to Crowley as "a confidence trickster who had wormed his way into the OTO on the pretence of being interested in Magick." Despite the resentment shown to Hubbard by OTO leaders (including Crowley), L. Ron was able to call Crowley "my very good friend" in a 1952 speech. Perhaps this was the prankster talking.

Hubbard's relationship to Parsons is basically similar to Edward Kelley's relationship to Dr. John Dee, the English alchemist and Elizabethan court astrologer. Kelley was also a prankster and scryer (gazer into crystal balls), and Dee fell completely under his spell. Dee wanted to access the crystal ball, but was not gifted in this regard. Kelley became Dee's scryer.

Parsons was also an alchemist, but needed a "magical partner," and Hubbard became that partner. Parsons had written to Crowley: "Although he [Hubbard] has no formal training in Magick, he has an extraordinary amount of experience and understanding in the field. From some of his experiences I deduced that he was in direct touch with some higher intelligence, possibly his Guardian Angel. He describes his Angel as a beautiful winged woman with red hair whom he calls the Empress and who has guided him through his life, and saved him many times..."

The Babalon Working is an invocation ritual developed in conjunction with Crowley. A series of rituals and invocations were undertaken by Parsons commencing on 4 January, 1946. A short time after the process began, Parsons and Hubbard went out into the Mojave Desert for four days. The Babalon Working ritual is outlined in Parsons' book Freedom is a Two-Edged Sword. By 18 January, Parsons announced to Hubbard, "It is done." Parsons had successfully opened an inter-dimensional doorway. He invoked the goddess and paved the way for the present-day passion for drugs, UFOs and divination. Parsons wrote "Liber 49" which he maintained was the fourth and final chapter of The Book of the Law.

According to the woman who embodied the invoked goddess, Marjorie Cameron, and who came to Parsons shortly after the completion of the Babalon Working, Parsons set in motion the second part of a great force which was divided into three. Aleister Crowley began the first, and the third would be the work of the boy child embodiment of Horus, the False Prophet or Antichrist (Revelation 13:18).

Readers familiar with Revelation may wonder if Crowley's Babalon is the same as Babylon of Revelation. The answer is yes. Babalon is the secret name of Nuit, the goddess revealed in chapter one of The Book of the Law. Babylon the goddess is revealed throughout Revelation as the provider of material wealth. The Babalon spelling was adopted because of its qabalistic numerical significance. Kenneth Grant records the attributes of Babalon as being "death-dealing and vampiric."

Jack Parsons wrote in The Book of Babalon (January 4 - March, 4, 1946): I have "been engaged in the study and practise of Magick for seven years, and in the supervision and operation of an occult lodge for four years, having been initiated into the Sanctuary of Gnosis by the Beast 666, Fra. 132 and Fra. Saturnis. At this time I decided upon a Magical operation designed to obtain the assistance of an elemental mate...I decided to use the Enochian Tablets obtained [from spirit guides] by Dr. Dee and Edward Kelley...During the period of January 19 to February 27 [1946] I invoked the Goddess BABALON with the aid of my magical partner [Hubbard], as was proper to one of my grade."

On March 2, 1946, Hubbard had channelled the message: "She [Babalon] is the flame of life, power of darkness, she destroys with a glance, she may take thy soul. She feeds upon the death of men...She shall absorb thee, and thou shalt become a living flame before she incarnates."

Parsons continued with his magickal operations for the remainder of the forties, and in 1949 wrote in The Manifesto of the Antichrist:

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. I, BELARION, ANTICHRIST, in the year 1949 of the rule of the Black Brotherhood called Christianity, do make my Manifesto to all men. And I, THE ANTICHRIST, come among you, saying:

An end to the pretence, and lying hypocrisy of Christianity. An end to the servile virtues, and superstitious restrictions. An end to the slave morality. An end to prudery and shame, to guilt and sin, for these are of the only evil the sun, that is fear. An end to all authority that is not based on courage and manhood, to the authority of lying priests, conniving judges, blackmailing police, and an end to the servile flattery and cajolery of mods (sic - would appear to refer to dilettantes), the coronations of mediocrities, the ascension of dolts. An end to restriction and inhibition, for I, THE ANTICHRIST, am come among you preaching the Word of the BEAST 666, which is, "There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt."

And I, BELARION, ANTICHRIST, do lift up my voice and prophecy, and I say: I shall bring all men to the law of the BEAST 666, and in His law I shall conquer the world. And within seven years of this time, BABALON, THE SCARLET WOMAN HILARION will manifest among ye, and bring this my work to its fruition. An end to conscription, compulsion, regimentation, and the tyranny of false laws. And within nine years a nation shall accept the Law of the BEAST 666 in my name, and that nation will be the first nation of earth. And all who accept me the ANTICHRIST and the law of the BEAST 666, shall be accursed and their joy shall be a thousandfold greater than the false joys of the false saints. And in my name BELARION shall they work miracles, and confound our enemies, and none shall stand before us.

Therefore I, THE ANTICHRIST call upon all the Chosen and elect and upon all men, come forth now in the name of Liberty, that we may end forever the tyranny of the Black Brotherhood.

Witness my hand and seal on this [...] day of [...] 1949, that is the year of BABALON 4066.

Parsons died on 17 June, 1952 in a laboratory explosion as a result of dropping a phial of fulminate of mercury. However, there is suspicion that his death was faked, for without legal precedent, his next of kin (Marjorie Cameron) was not consulted in order to identify the body, nor was she allowed to see him in the ambulance or hospital. Other oddities about his death have been noted.

In 1972, the Parsons Crater was named on the dark side of the moon in honour of Parsons (for services to rocketry). Hubbard went on to become the founder of the Church (sic) of Scientology, and, in 1972, Kenneth Grant wrote that he was "still at large, having grown wealthy and famous by the misuse of the secret knowledge which he had wormed out of Parsons."

Let's Get Philosophical for a Moment

At the heart of The Book of the Law is the instruction: Do what thou wilt. Under "Law," this is a conscious development of one's personal will to power. Nietzsche's message of the superman is that, on the will to power theory, values are mutable. Thus one's own values prevail, rather than conforming to the values of the collective which endeavour to pursue peace and harmony. When the question of basic values is open in society, the essential victory has been won.

Identifying with the conscious will to power, one wants to set the terms, insisting on the principle, "I will not serve." Satan thought much the same thing: "I will climb to the sky; higher than the stars of God I will set my throne. I will sit in the mount of assembly, on the summit of Zaphon [the abode of the gods]: I will mount the back of a cloud ( I will match the Most High" (Isaiah 14:13,14).

Satan is the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and his lie to humans is to "eat" from him in order to become a divine being. The Book of the Law says that every man and every woman is a star (1:3). The "sovereign power" of thought is a real and actual fact: if I "will" to kick up my foot, so it is done. If I am powerful enough, and I will order the dropping of an atomic bomb on civilians, so it is done. If technology is but a tool of people, then surely it is controlled by will.

Through development of the conscious will, we are in the process of strengthening the ego. As created human beings, the realm of ego consciousness and the spiritual and psychic realm are indissolubly united with the body. As the ego grows stronger, it detaches itself more and more from the body.

In the individual will to power, one's ego detaches from the collective ego. It is a struggle and a creative act. Such an act brings on a sense of loneliness; it also introduces suffering, toil, trouble, evil, sickness and death into a person's life as soon as this separation is perceived by the ego. When Adam and Eve made their decision to will to power rather than will to God's will, God told Adam: "Cursed be the ground because of you; by toil shall you eat of it all the days of your life: Thorns and thistles shall it sprout for you. But your food shall be grasses of the field; By the seat of your brow shall you get bread to eat, until you return to the ground ( for from it you were taken. For dust you are, and to dust you shall return" (Genesis 3:17-19).

To be the outsider or revolutionary is to be isolated and alone. The individual is pitted against the world, and becomes part of a higher, different unity. To become a "star" and will to power is to have knowledge of good and evil and is accounted sin, and one is expelled from paradise. To Gnostics, this feeling of privation becomes the driving force of the world process. The way of salvation lies in heightening consciousness with the will to become 'Sons of God'. Jesus Christ says that such transmutation can only occur if a person is spiritually reborn from above (John 3:3-8) through repentance the regenerative work of the Holy Spirit.

Where does God fit into all this?
The Crowley/Gnostic self-hood process fits in with the prophesied progression of the human race. In this Present Age wherein God's grace to be spiritually reborn has been extended to non-Jews, the majority of people will remain cold of heart and will grow in sin. Paul says people will be self-loving, money-loving, brutal, hateful of good, plus a number of other unpleasant attributes (2 Timothy 3:2-5).

The message of The Book of the Law is eschatological. Revelation is also eschatological. The Present Age will not last much longer, for the Christian heritage is being expunged, and the fig tree (Holy Land) has blossomed. Thelemites believe that this age will be followed by the 2,000 year reign of Horus. Christians say the Present Age will be followed by the 1,000 year reign of Jesus Christ on Earth, to be followed by the last judgement. Thelemites now say "Abrahadabra" (meaning Father-Satan-Father); Christians say "Amen! Come Lord Jesus."

Perhaps Thelemites should take heed to the words of the nineteenth century mage, Eliphas Levi: "To will evil, is to will death. A perverse will is a beginning of suicide."

(1875-1947)
Edward Alexander (Aleister) Crowley [rhymes with "holy"] was born October 12, 1875 in Leamington Spa, England. His parents were members of the Plymouth Brethren, a strict fundamentalist Christian sect. As a result, Aleister grew up with a thorough biblical education and an equally thorough disdain of Christianity.

He attended Trinity College at Cambridge University, leaving just before completing his degree. Shortly thereafter he was introduced to George Cecil Jones, who was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The Golden Dawn was an occult society led by S.L. MacGregor Mathers which taught magick, qabalah, alchemy, tarot, astrology, and other hermetic subjects. It had many notable members (including A.E. Waite, Dion Fortune, and W.B. Yeats), and its influence on the development of modern western occultism was profound.

Crowley was initiated into the Golden Dawn in 1898, and proceeded to climb up rapidly through the grades. But in 1900 the order was shattered by schism, and Crowley left England to travel extensively throughout the East. There he learned and practiced the mental and physical disciplines of yoga, supplementing his knowledge of western-style ritual magick with the methods of Oriental mysticism.

In 1903, Crowley married Rose Kelly, and they went to Egypt on their honeymoon. After returning to Cairo in early 1904, Rose (who until this point had shown no interest or familiarity with the occult) began entering trance states and insisting to her husband that the god Horus was trying to contact him. As a test, Crowley took Rose to the Boulak Museum and asked her to point out Horus to him. She passed several well-known iimages of the god and led Aleister straight to a painted wooden funerary stele from the 26th dynasty, depicting Horus receiving a sacrifice from the deceased, a priest named Ankh-f-n-khonsu. Crowley was especially impressed by the fact that this piece was numbered 666 by the museum, a number with which he had identified since childhood.

The upshot was that he began to listen to Rose, and at her direction, on three successive days beginning April 8, 1904, he entered his chamber at noon and wrote down what he heard dictated from a shadowy presence behind him. The result was the three chapters of verse known as Liber AL vel Legis, or The Book of the Law. This book heralded the dawning of the new aeon of Horus, which would be governed by the Law of Thelema. "Thelema" is a Greek word meaning "will", and the Law of Thelema is often stated as: "Do what thou wilt". As the prophet of this new aeon, Crowley spent the rest of his life working to develop and establish Thelemic philosophy.

In 1906 Crowley rejoined George Cecil Jones in England, where they set about the task of creating a magical order to continue where the Golden Dawn had left off. They called this order the A:.A:. (Astron Argon or Astrum Argentium or Silver Star), and it became the primary vehicle for the transmission of Crowley's mystical and magical training system based on the principles of Thelema.

Then in 1910 Crowley was contacted by Theodore Reuss, the head of an organization based in Germany called the Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.). This group of high-ranking Freemasons claimed to have discovered the supreme secret of practical magick, which was taught in its highest degrees. Apparently Crowley agreed, becoming a member of O.T.O. and eventually taking over as head of the order when Reuss suffered a stroke in 1921. Crowley reformulated the rites of the O.T.O. to conform them to the Law of Thelema, and vested the organization with its main purpose of establishing Thelema in the world. The order also became independent of Freemasonry (although still based on the same patterns) and opened its membership to women and men who were not masons.

died in Hastings, England on December 1, 1947. However, his legacy lives on in the Law of Thelema which he brought to mankind (along with dozens of books and writings on magick and other mystical subjects), and in the orders A:.A:. and O.T.O. which continue to advance the principles of Thelema to this day.

As told by Frater Robert Anton Wilson; Holy Discordian, OTO Initiate and CAW Water Brother in his Outstanding Masterpiece of Speculative Illumination "Cosmic Trigger." Recalling Crowleymas (October 12) 1974, Brother Wilson hath eloquently stated:
...And then Jacques Vallee arrived.

I had wanted to talk to Doctor Vallee for several months now and I immediately kidnapped him into a room which the other party- goers were not informed about. On the way, we spotted Hymenaeus Alpha (Grady McMurty), Caliph of the Ordo Templi Orientis, and his wife, Phylis.

The Skeptic had heard Jacques Vallee talk at a conference on Science and Spirit, sponsored by the Theosophical Society, earlier in the year. He had taken a new approach to the UFO mystery and was systematically feeding all the reports of extraterrestrial contacts into a giant computer. The computer was programmed to look for various possible repeated patterns. Jacques said that the evidence emerging suggested to him that the UFOs weren't extraterrestrial at all, but that they seemed to be intelligent systems intent on convincing us they were extraterrestrial. [Indeed, even as our Dear Brother Terence McKenna hath said, "We are part of a symbiotic relationship with something which disguises itself as an extraterrestrial invasion so as not to alarm us." -B:.B:.]

Now the Skeptic started pumping Jacques about his evidence that they weren't extraterrestrial. He started to explain that, analyzing the reports chronologically, it appeared that They (whoever or whatever they are) always strive to give the impression that they are something the society they are visiting can understand. In medieval sightings, he said, they called themselves angels; in the great 1902 flap in several states, one of the craft spoke to a West Virginia farmer and said they were an airship invented and flown from Kansas; in 1940s-1950s sightings, they often said they were from Venus; since Venus has been examined and seems incapable of supporting life, they now say they are from another star-system in this galaxy.

"Where do you think they come from?" I asked.
Doctor Vallee gave the Gallic form of the classic scientific Not- Speculating-Beyond-The-Data head-shake. "I can theorize, and theorize, endlessly," he said, "but is it not better to just study the data more deeply and look for clues?"

"You must have some personal hunch," I insisted.
He gave in gracefully. "They relate to space-time in ways for which we have, at present, no concepts," he said. "They cannot explain to us because we are not ready to understand."

I asked Grady McMurty if Aleister Crowley had ever said anything to him implying the extraterrestrial theory which Kenneth Grant, Outer Head of another Ordo Templi Orientis, implies in his accounts of Crowley's contacts with Higher Intelligences.

"Some of the things Aleister said to me," Grady replied carefully, "could be interpreted as hints pointing that way." He went on to quote Crowley's aphorisms about various of the standard entities contacted by Magick. The Abramelin spirits, for instance, need to be watched carefully. "They bite," Aleister explained in his best deadpan am-I-kidding-or-not? style. The Enochian "angels," on the other hand, don't always have to be summoned. "When you're ready, they come for you," Aleister said flatly.

(The Enochian entities were first contacted by Dr. John Dee in the early 17th Century. Dr. Dee, court astrologer to Queen Elizabeth and also an important mathematician, has been controversial from his own time to ours, some writers regarding him as a genius of the first rank and others as a clever lunatic. According to two interesting books, "The World Stage" and "The Rosicrucian Enlightenment," both by a most scrupulous historian, Dr. Francis Yates, Dee was almost certainly a prime mover in the "Illuminati" and "Rosicrucian Brotherhoods" of that time, which played a central role in the birth of modem science. The alleged UFOnaut from Uranus which communicated with the two Naval Intelligence officers gave a name, AFFA, which is a word in the "angelic" language used by the entities Dee contacted. It means Nothing. George Hunt Williamson also got some words in "angelic" from his Space Brothers, remember.)

"The outstanding quality of UFO contactees," Jacques Vallee said at this point, "was incoherence. I now have grave reservations about all physical details they supply," he said.
"They are like people after an auto accident. All they know is that something very serious has happened to them." Only the fact that so many cases involve other witnesses, who see something in the sky before the "contactee" has his/her strange experience, justifies the assumption that what happens is more than "subjective."

"Largely," Doctor Vallee summarized, "they come out of it with a new perspective on humanity. A religious perspective, in general terms. But all the details are contradictory and confusing." He regarded green men, purple giant men, physical craft with windows in them, etc., as falling into the category psychologists call "substitute memory," always provided by the ingenious brain when the actual experience is too shocking to be classified.

I asked how many in the room had experienced the contact of what appeared to be Higher Intelligence. Grady and Phylis McMurty put up their hands, as did two young magicians from the Los Angeles area, and myself. Jacques Vallee, curiously, looked as if he might raise his hand, but then evidently changed his mind and did not. I said I inclined to believe the Higher Intelligences were extraterrestrial, and asked what the others thought.

Grady McMurty -- Caliph of the Ordo Templi Orientis -- said, in effect, that the theory of higher dimensions made more sense to him than the extraterrestrial theory in terms of actual space ships entering our biosphere.

The two Los Angeles magicians agreed.

Aliens & Demons & the Bible Tom, who had been a witch for five years and hadn't raised his hand when asked for contactee testimony, said that the Higher Intelligences are imbedded in our language and numbers, as the Cabalists think, and have no other kind of existence. He added that every time he tried to explain this he saw that people thought he was going schizophrenic and he began to fear that they might be right, so he preferred not to talk about it at all. Tom-who is a computer programmer by profession, a witch only by religion-later added a bit to this, saying that all that exists is information and coding; we only imagine we have bodies and live in space-time dimensions.

Doctor Vallee listened to all this with a bland smile, and did not seem to regard any of us as mad.

(A few days later, in discussion with the former Vacaville prison psychologist, Dr. Wesley Hiler, I asked him what he really thought of Dr. Leary's extraterrestrial contacts. Specifically, since he didn't regard Leary as crazy or hallucinating, what was happening when Leary thought he was receiving extraterrestrial communications? "Every man and woman who reaches the higher levels of spiritual and intellectual development," Dr. Hiler said calmly, "feels the presence of a Higher Intelligence. Our theories are all unproven. Socrates called it his daemon. Others call it gods or angels. Leary calls it extraterrestrial. Maybe it's just another part of our brain, a part we usually don't use. Who knows?")

Since everybody in the room at this point had either had the required experience, or was willing to speculate about it and study it objectively rather than merely banishing it with the label "hallucination," I went into my rap about the parallels between Leary and Wilhelm Reich. "The attempt to destroy both Dr. Reich and Dr. Leary reached its most intense peak right after they reported their extraterrestrial contacts," I said. "I keep having very weird theories about what that means..."

Grady McMurty nodded vigorously. "That's the $64,000 question," he said emphatically. "For years I've been asking Phylis and everybody else I know: why does the gnosis always get busted? Every single time the energy is raised and large-scale group illuminations are occurring, the local branch of the Inquisition kills it dead. Why, why, why?"
Nobody had any very conclusive ideas.

"I'll tell you what I think," Grady said. "There's war in Heaven. The Higher Intelligences, whoever they are, aren't all playing on the same team. Some of them are trying to encourage our evolution to higher levels, and some of them want to keep us stuck just where we are."

According to Grady, some occult lodges are working with those nonhuman intelligences who want to accelerate human evolution, but some of the others are working with the intelligences who wish to keep us near an animal level of awareness.

This is a standard idea in occult circles and it can safely be stated, without exaggeration, that every "school" or "lodge of adepts that exists is regarded, by some of the others, as belonging to the Black Brotherhood of the evil path. Grady's own Ordo Templi Orientis, indeed, has been accused of this more often than have most other occult lodges. I have personally maintained my good cheer and staved off paranoia, while moving among various occult groups as student or participant, by always adhering rigidly to the standard Anglo-Saxon legal maxim that every accused person must be regarded as innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. This obviously spares me a lot of worry, but the more guarded approach is very well argued by Isaac Bonewitz, the author of Real Magick. "Paranoid magicians outlive the others," Isaac says.

Somehow the conversation drifted away from Grady's concept of "war in Heaven." Several times, Grady tried to steer us back there, but each time we wandered on to a different subject. Tom said later that he felt a presence in the room deliberately pushing us away from that topic...

Dr. H. -- the psychiatrist whose bad acid-trip had started the Crowleymas party off so jumpily for me -- dropped by the next day, to thank me for "talking him down" from his anxiety attack.

He also, it soon appeared, wanted to tell me about his accelerating experiences with magick. It had started over two years earlier, after an intensive seminar at Esalen. Dr. H. suddenly found that he could see "auras." (The aura of the human body, known to shamans and witches since time immemorial, has been repeatedly rediscovered by scientists, most of whom were thereupon denounced as "cranks." Franz Anton Mesmer called it "animal magnetism," in the 16th century. In the 19th, Baron Reichenbach called it "OD." In the 1920s, Gurvich named it "the mytogenic ray." Wilhelm Reich rediscovered it in the 1930s, called it "orgone energy," and was destroyed by AMA bigots who charged that he was hallucinating it. Kirlian photography has now demonstrated beyond all doubt that this aura exists.) Dr. H. soon found, further, that he could use the aura as a diagnostic tool in analyzing new patients. This experience, Leary's books, and a lecture by me on Crowley's magick, led him to further experiments.

On a beach in Sonoma County, after taking LSD the day before and programming an opening of the self to higher beings or energies, Dr. H. (no longer under the direct influence of the drug) had an experience with Something from the sky. "It wasn't exactly a Higher Intelligence," he said carefully, "or, at least, I didn't receive that aspect of it, if it was Higher Intelligence. To me, it was just energy. Terrible energy. My chest was sore for hours afterward. I thought it would kill me, but I was absolutely ecstatic and egoless at the peak of it. If the chest-pain weren't so intense, it would have been a totally positive experience."

(MacGregor Mathers, Outer Head of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and the first occult teacher of such worthies as Aleister Crowley, poet William Butler Yeats and novelist Arthur Machen, once recorded a meeting with the Secret Chiefs. These ambiguous entities, known in several schools of occult training, are variously believed to be discarnate spirits of the great Magi of the past, living Magi who can teleport themselves about as easily as you or I telephone a friend, "angels" in the traditional sense, or merely "beings we cannot understand."

In any case, Mathers noted that the meeting, although pleasant, left him feeling as if he'd been "struck by lightning" and he also suffered chest pains and extreme difficulty in breathing. Dr. Israel Regardie has also noted that Alan Bennett, who was Crowley's chief teacher for many years, developed asthma, a chest disease. Crowley developed asthma himself as his contacts with the Secret Chiefs occurred more often; and Regardie finally "caught" asthma for several years after studying with Crowley, a condition which was only cured when he went through the bioenergetic therapy of Wilhelm Reich.) [As an interesting synchronistic aside here, Brother Whitley Strieber, the alleged Space Alien Abductee and prolific author on such topics, also suffers from quite a touch of asthma. Coincidence...? -B:.B:.]

Aleister Crowley (October 12, 1875–December 1, 1947) was a British occultist, mystic, poet, mountain climber, sexual revolutionary, and social critic.

Born Edward Alexander Crowley in Leamington, Warwickshire, England, he was the son of a Plymouth Brethren preacher and heir to a small fortune. Crowley spent most of his adult life seeking out, writing about, and teaching a syncretic form of mysticism.

As a young adult, he had been involved in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, where he first studied mysticism—and made enemies of William Butler Yeats and Arthur Edward Waite. His friend and former Golden Dawn associate Allan Bennett introduced him to the ideas of Buddhism, which would be a continuing influence. In October 1901, after practicing raja yoga for some time, he claimed to reach a state he called dhyana. (See Crowley on egolessness.) 1902 saw him writing the essay Berashith (the first word of Genesis), in which he gave meditation (or restraint of the mind to a single object) as the means of attaining his goal. The essay describes ceremonial magic as a means of training the will, and of constantly directing one's thoughts to a given object through the trappings of the ritual. In his 1903 essay, Science and Buddhism, Crowley urged an empirical approach to Buddhist teachings. In 1904, he alleged that he had a mystical experience on April 8, 9 and 10 that year whilst on vacation in Cairo, Egypt which led to his founding of the religious philosophy known as Thelema.

The text Liber AL vel Legis, or The Book of the Law, which Crowley claimed had been dictated to him in Cairo by the voice (or intelligence) Aiwaz or Aiwass, was to form the cornerstone of Thelema. The book's philosophy is highly opaque, apparently calling in places for peaceful (and erotic) discovery of "magick," and in other places for violence and war. Portions of it are in numerical cipher, which Crowley claimed inability to decode.

In May 1905, he was approached by Dr Jules Jacot-Guillarmod (1868 - 1925) to accompany him on an expedition to Kanchenjunga. Guillarmod was left to organise the personnel while Crowley left to get things ready in Darjeeling. On 31 July Guillarmod joined Crowley in Darjeeling, bringing with him two countrymen, Charles-Adolphe Reymond and Alexis Pache. Meawhile Crowley had recruited a local man Alcesti C. Rigo de Righi to act as Transport Manager. The team left Darjeeling on the 8 August 1905 and used the Singalila Ridge approach to Kangchenjunga. At Chabanjong they ran into the rear of the 135 coolies who had been sent ahead on 24 and 25 July, who were carrying food rations for the team.

Crowley was notorious in his life—a frequent target of attacks in the tabloid press, which labeled him "The Wickedest Man in the World" to his evident amusement. The claims made about him by the press range from the realistic (if scandalous at the time)—that he was an avowed atheist, openly kept mistresses, and had favored the Germans in World War I—to the apparently ridiculous (that he sacrificed hundreds of babies in black magic rituals). At one point, he was expelled from Fascist Italy after having established a sort of commune the organization of which was based on his personal philosophies, the Abby of Thelema, at Cefalu, Sicily.
Thelema

The religious or mystical system which Crowley founded, into which most of his nonfiction writings fall, he named Thelema. The word is the ancient Greek ?e??µa, "will", from the verb e?e??, ethelô, meaning "to will" or "to wish." Thelema combines a radical form of philosophical libertarianism, akin in some ways to Nietzsche, with a mystical initiatory system derived in part from the Golden Dawn.

Chief among the precepts of Thelema is the sovereignty of the individual will: "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law" is, as it were, the system's first commandment. Crowley's idea of will, however, is not simply the individual's desires or wishes, but also incorporates a sense of the person's destiny or greater purpose: what he termed the "Magick Will." Much of the initiatory system of Thelema is focused on discovering one's true will, true purpose, or higher self.

The second commandment of Thelema is "Love is the law, love under will"—and Crowley's meaning of "Love" is as complex as that of "Will". It is frequently sexual: Crowley's system, like elements of the Golden Dawn before him, sees the dichotomy and tension between the male and female as fundamental to existence, and sexual "magick" and metaphor form a significant part of Thelemic ritual.

Thelema draws on numerous older sources, and like many other new religious movements of its time combines "Western" and "Eastern" traditions. Its chief Western influences include the Golden Dawn, Kabbalah, and elements of Freemasonry; Eastern influences include aspects of yoga, Taoism, and Tantra.

The word Thelema finds its origins in the Bible, but was first brought into common usage by Rabelais, who wrote of the Abbey of Theleme, and had the motto "Fay ce que vouldras" or "Do what you will." This theme echoed St. Augustine's "Love and do what you will" and was a part of the emerging philosophy of humanism. Others who adopted this idea was Sir Francis Dashwood and the Monks of Medmenham (a.k.a The Hellfire Club) and Sir Walter Besant and James Rice in their novel "The Monks of Thelema." (1878)

Science, Magick, and Sexuality
Crowley claimed to use a scientific method to study what people at the time called "spiritual" experiences, making "The Method of Science, the Aim of Religion" the catchphrase of his magazine The Equinox. By this he meant that mystical experiences should not be taken at face value, but critiqued and experimented with in order to arrive at their underlying religious meaning. In this he may be considered to foreshadow Dr. Timothy Leary, who at one point sought to apply the same method to psychedelic drug experiences. Yet like Leary's, Crowley's method fell short of objectivity and has received little "scientific" attention outside the circle of Thelema's practitioners.

Crowley's magical and initiatory system has amongst its innermost reaches a set of teachings on sex "magick." He frequently expressed views about sex that were radical for his time, and published numerous poems and tracts combining pagan religious themes with sexual imagery both heterosexual and homosexual.

Sex Magick is the use of the sex act—or the energies, passions or arousal states it evokes—as a point upon which to focus the will or magical desire for effects in the non-sexual world. In this, Crowley was inspired by Paschal Beverly Randolph, an American author writing in the 1870s who wrote (in his book "Eulis!") of using the "nuptive moment" (orgasm) as the time to make a "prayer" for events to occur. While Randoplh was interested in both the male and female partners, Crowley's version of sex magick was a male-centered activity and the female partner played a passive role.

In 1934 Crowley was declared bankrupt after losing a court case in which he sued the artist Nina Hamnett for calling him a Black Magician in her 1932 book, Laughing Torso. The evidence against him must have been overwhelming, and it is difficult to see why he ever took the case to court. In addressing the jury, Mr. Justice Swift said: "I have been over forty years engaged in the administration of the law in one capacity or another. I thought that I knew of every conceivable form of wickedness. I thought that everything which was vicious and bad had been produced at one time or another before me. I have learnt in this case that we can always learn something more if we live long enough. I have never heard such dreadful, horrible, blasphemous and abominable stuff as that which has been produced by the man (Crowley) who describes himself to you as the greatest living poet."

Writings
Within the subject of occultism Crowley wrote widely, penning commentaries on the Tarot (The Book of Thoth), yoga (Book Four), the Kabbalah (Sepher Sephiroth), and numerous other subjects. He also wrote a Thelemic "translation" of the Tao Te Ching, based on earlier English translations since he had little or no Chinese. Like the Golden Dawn mystics before him, Crowley evidently sought to comprehend the entire human religious and mystical experience in a single philosophy. Many of his books he published himself, expending the majority of his inheritance disseminating his views. Many of his fiction works, such as the "Simon Iff" detective stories and Moonchild have not received significant notice outside of occult circles. However his fictional work "Diary of a Drug Fiend" has received acclaim from those involved in the field of substance abuse rehabilitation.

Crowley also tried to mint a number of new terms instead of the established ones he felt inadequate. For example he spelled magic "magick" and renamed theurgy "high magick" and thaumaturgy "low magick". Many of his terms are still used by some practitioners.

Crowley remains a popular icon of libertines and those interested in the theory and practice of magic.