![]() Its members believed they could use sex magic to engineer the incarnation of highly-evolved beings - an idea which would appear in later fantasy fiction, including Frank Herbert’s Dune.Īs we saw in the previous chapter, in the petri dish of the late 19th and early 20th century ‘occulture’, all sorts of radical ideas grew and cross-fertilized - socialism, fascism, vegetarianism, anti-vivisection and anti-vax activism, psychical research, occultism and eugenics, to name but a few. It looks at occult eugenics in the practices and books of members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a very influential occult society of the late 19th century. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album between the Indian guru Sri Yukteswar and the Hollywood star Mae West.This is the latest chapter in my project to explore ‘spiritual eugenics’. He was taken up by the counter culture of the 1960s and can be seen on the cover of the Beatles' Sgt. There are still groups who call themselves Thelemites still those who use his tarot cards and read his books. The wickedest man in the world?ĭuring the Thelema Abbey scandal, one newspaper referred to Crowley as ‘the wickedest man in the world.’ He would have denied this, claiming that his work was truly good because it freed men from earthly rules and opened up truly spiritual experiences.īut there can be no doubt that he also enjoyed his notoriety, and his fame only increased after death. He fathered several children, most of them illegitimately, and was still in demand as a medium and a magus to the end, designing a new sequence of tarot cards and commentating on it at some length in his Book of Thoth of 1944. Drugs and deathĪlthough impoverished, disgraced, and a near-skeletal heroin addict, Crowley never lacked followers. Crowley was expelled from Sicily, the Abbey closed, and the group dispersed. The British press and the Italian fascist government were equally appalled. In 1923 an Englishman died in mysterious circumstances after a ritual during which he was said to have consumed the blood of a cat. Here he pursued spiritual enlightenment, declaring himself Ipssissimus – beyond the Gods – in 1921. In 1920, he moved to Sicily, where he established the Abbey of Thelema as the headquarters for his new religion. It laid out the key principle of life, as Crowley saw it: the pursuit of each individual’s will, unconstrained by popular opinion, law, or conventional ethics. The Law of Thelema – a word taken from the Greek for Will – was, he claimed, dictated to him by an ancient Egyptian spirit. In the first two decades of the twentieth century, he wrote a series of tracts outlining his philosophy. Travel and enlightenmentĪ brilliant climber, big game hunter, and inveterate traveller, Crowley explored Mexico, India, Egypt, America, and much more besides. He took many lovers – both male and female – and practised a form of sex magic. His sexual preoccupations were equally various. Gradually he evolved his own set of beliefs which drew on Oriental, ancient Egyptian, and an assortment of other traditions. He published poetry, including a volume of verse described by one critic as ‘the most disgusting piece of erotica in the English language.’ He also became involved in secretive groups like the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Sex and magicĬrowley’s interests combined the erotic and the esoteric. After Malvern School and Tonbridge College, he read Natural Sciences at Trinity College, Cambridge. On a visit to Sweden, he experienced a life-changing vision which persuaded him of his spiritual vocation, a calling which he marked by changing his name to Aleister. ![]() The son of a devout Christian couple, Edward Alexander Crowley was born in Leamington Spa in 1875.
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