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Aleister Crowley

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Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) was an English poet, painter, occultist, magician, and mountaineer. Born into wealth, he rejected his family’s Christian beliefs and developed a passion for Western esotericism. At Trinity College, Cambridge, Crowley gained a reputation as a poet whose work appeared in such publications as The Granta and Cambridge Magazine. An avid mountaineer, he made the first unguided ascent of the Mönch in the Swiss Alps. Around this time, he first began identifying as bisexual and carried on relationships with prostitutes, which led to his contracting syphilis. In 1897, he briefly dated fellow student Herbert Charles Pollitt, whose unease with Crowley’s esotericism would lead to their breakup. The following year, Crowley joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a secret occult society to which many of the era’s leading artists belonged, including Bram Stoker, W. B. Yeats, Arthur Machen, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Between 1900 and 1903, he traveled to Mexico, India, Japan, and Paris. In these formative years, Crowley studied Hinduism, wrote the poems that would form The Sword of Song (1904), attempted to climb K2, and became acquainted with such artists as Auguste Rodin and W. Somerset Maugham. A 1904 trip to Egypt inspired him to develop Thelema, a philosophical and religious group he would lead for the remainder of his life. He would claim that The Book of the Law (1909), his most important literary work and the central sacred text of Thelema, was delivered to him personally in Cairo by the entity Aiwass. During the First World War, Crowley allegedly worked as a double agent for the British intelligence services while pretending to support the pro-German movement in the United States. The last decades of his life were spent largely in exile due to persecution in the press and by the states of Britain and Italy for his bohemian lifestyle and open bisexuality.

Aleister Crowley Books

The Lesser Key of Solomon book cover

The Lesser Key of Solomon

S.L. MacGregor Mathers
Diary of a Drug Fiend book cover

Diary of a Drug Fiend

Aleister Crowley
Diary of a Drug Fiend book cover

Diary of a Drug Fiend

Aleister Crowley
The Drug Essays book cover

The Drug Essays

Aleister Crowley
The Practice of Enochian Magick book cover

The Practice of Enochian Magick

Aleister Crowley
The Diary of a Drug Fiend book cover

The Diary of a Drug Fiend

Aleister Crowley
The Three Magical Books of Solomon book cover

The Three Magical Books of Solomon

Aleister Crowley
Book of the Law and The Book of Lies book cover

Book of the Law and The Book of Lies

Crowley, Aleister
The Greater and Lesser Keys of Solomon the King book cover

The Greater and Lesser Keys of Solomon the King

Aleister Crowley
The Lesser Key of Solomon book cover

The Lesser Key of Solomon

Aleister Crowley
The Book of the Law book cover

The Book of the Law

Aleister Crowley
Jephthah book cover

Jephthah

Aleister Crowley
The Fatal Force book cover

The Fatal Force

Aleister Crowley
The Writings of the Great Beast - Some Short Stories by Aleister Crowley (Fantasy and Horror Classics) book cover

The Writings of the Great Beast - Some Short Stories by Aleister Crowley (Fantasy and Horror Classics)

Aleister Crowley
The Weiser Book of Horror and the Occult book cover

The Weiser Book of Horror and the Occult

Lon Milo DuQuette
The Diary of a Drug Fiend book cover

The Diary of a Drug Fiend

Aleister Crowley
The Diary of a Drug Fiend (Barnes & Noble Digital Library) book cover

The Diary of a Drug Fiend (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

Aleister Crowley
The Diary of a Drug Fiend book cover

The Diary of a Drug Fiend

Aleister Crowley
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