Famous or Infamous? — Aleister Crowley

"The Wickedest Man in the World"??

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) relished scandal. Poet, mountaineer, magician, and self-declared prophet, he was hailed as a genius by some and damned as a monster by many more. He signed his letters “The Beast 666” and laughed at the outrage it caused.

Eyewitness Whispers

Crowley grew up in a strict Plymouth Brethren household, where pleasure was branded sin. By his teens, he had turned against it with venom. Classmates remembered a brilliant but vicious boy who shocked for sport.

In the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, he clashed bitterly with peers. Poet W.B. Yeats dismissed him as “unscrupulous and vicious,” while others feared his ambition and intensity.

On a 1905 Himalayan expedition, survivors accused him of refusing to aid dying climbers, preferring to smoke opium in his tent. The tale hardened his image as heartless. Even admirers admitted his arrogance. One disciple sighed, “Crowley made you feel he had stood at the edge of the world, and you had only peeked through a keyhole.”

The Prophet of Thelema

In 1904, lodged in a Cairo hotel, Crowley claimed to hear the voice of a spirit named Aiwass dictating The Book of the Law. Its shock line rang through Edwardian society:

“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Love is the law, love under will.”

He proclaimed himself prophet of a new Aeon — the Aeon of Horus — marked by personal freedom and the exaltation of the True Will. To critics, it was license for debauchery; to followers, liberation. Crowley leaned into the villainy, writing, “I wanted to get hold of [the devil] personally and become his chief of staff.”

Scandal and the Abbey of Thelema

In 1920, Crowley founded the Abbey of Thelema in Cefalù, Sicily. Disciples lived communally, practiced sex magic, and experimented with drugs beneath walls painted with occult frescoes. A British visitor later called it a “satanic hellhole.” When follower Raoul Loveday died after drinking tainted water during a ritual, Mussolini expelled Crowley from Italy. The tabloids feasted, cementing his title as “the wickedest man in the world.”

The Wicca Connection

Gerald Gardner — later dubbed the father of modern Wicca — was reportedly initiated into a branch of Crowley’s O.T.O. in the 1940s. Letters and accounts suggest they met at least once, with Gardner calling Crowley a mentor. Some historians argue Gardner borrowed ritual language and structure from Crowley while forging Wicca; others insist Wicca’s roots are broader and older. The question lingers: did the Beast 666 leave fingerprints on modern witchcraft?

The Amalantrah Working and UFOs

In 1918 New York, Crowley conducted the Amalantrah Working, rituals meant to open a portal to other intelligences. He sketched a being he named Lam — bald, wide-eyed, with an enlarged head — a figure later compared to modern “grey” aliens.

Occultists speculate these workings may have “thinned the veil.” The thread grows stranger in the 1940s when Jack Parsons — rocket pioneer, O.T.O. leader, and Crowley disciple — performed the Babalon Working with L. Ron Hubbard in California. Soon after, the great wave of UFO reports (Kenneth Arnold’s “flying saucers,” Roswell) surged — in 1947, the year Crowley died. Coincidence, or consequence?

Decline and Death

By the 1930s, Crowley was bankrupt and addicted to heroin, yet still attracting devotees. He died in 1947 in a Hastings boarding house. One witness claimed his final words were, “I am perplexed.”

Symbols & Associations

Color: Scarlet — passion, danger, ritual fire.
Symbol: The unicursal hexagram — Crowley’s emblem of unity “as above, so below.”
Motto: Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.