Aleister Crowley: Magick, Rock and Roll, and the Wickedest Man in the World

Keeping on with Halloween weirdness, this week’s book of the week is Aleister Crowley: Magick, Rock and Roll, and the Wickedest Man in the World by Gary Lachman.

So, this book was mostly a biography of Crowley, but it’s also a critique. This story is told by someone who studied Crowley, first his works, which Lachman studied as an acolyte in the late 70’s through the 80’s, and then the man himself, researching Crowley’s biography and history. Then he wove the two stories together, and included a final chapter on how Crowley was essentially revitalized posthumously first by a biography by John Symonds and then by the countercultural revolution of the 60s and 70s.

Starting at the beginning. Aleister Crowley was born Edward Alexander Crowley on October 12, 1875, in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England. His parents were Edward Crowley and Emily Bertha Crowley, nee Bishop. Edward Crowley and by descent Edward Alexander, were inheritors of Crowley’s Alton Ales, a very successful brewery business in the late 19th century; however, Crowley Sr’s passion was his church, the Plymouth Brethren, which were a fundamentalist Christian church who believed in the literal bible. And Crowley Sr was a preacher for the church, using the family Ale Houses as a pulpit from which to preach. Not that the patrons minded. Crowley Sr was quite popular, and Crowley Jr was his miniature incarnate. Weird right? The man who would grow up to become the wickedest Man in the World grew up a preacher kid and seemed set to follow in his father’s footsteps.

Most people assume that Crowley rebelled against the restriction of the church he grew up in, which might be logical to believe right? A lot of people who grow up fundamentalist rebel as adults and become something else entirely. But as Lachman points out, Crowley grew up quite rich and wasn’t actually denied anything. While his family was quite Christian in their religious beliefs, they also spoiled Crowley, granting his every whim. The more likely explanation for his rebellion was the death of his father. When Crowley was 11, his father, who he adored, contracted cancer of the tongue. He died soon after, unable to preach the word of God, who he loved. And from that moment, Crowley embraced the darkness. I think his rebellion had less to do with his religious upbringing than the sudden and cruel loss of his father. I think the manner of his father’s death struck him as capricious and cruel, and what kind of loving God would visit that on his loyal follower? If God could do that, then Crowley would reject God, and embrace Satan.

And he spent the rest of his life a confirmed hedonist and libertine, coining the phrase which would become his lifelong motto, Do what thou Willst….the and it harm none was later added by wiccans, probably to distance themselves from Crowley. He was not a nice man.  

Crowley and his mother relocated to London and his uncle on his mother’s side, Tom Bishop, became Crowley’s legal guardian, enrolling him in school in London, where Crowley discovered the joys of masturbation….yep, there is A LOT of sex in this book. Not explicit, more clinical in explanation. But there kind of has to be, in a book about the man who invented sex magick.

Crowley also discovered a passion for mountain climbing, and he was very good at this, climbing some of the hardest mountains in the day. Not all the way to the peak, but still managing to set impressive records between 1895 and like 1915 when he stopped climbing, records that would not be broken, I believe, until the 1950’s.

In 1895 he adopted the name Aleister, preferring that over Edward Alexander, to the end of his life, and in 1896, on his 21st birthday, he came into his inheritance, an amount of 40,000 pounds sterling, which in 2022 dollars would be about $5 million. $5 million does not last a lifetime when one does not work and does nothing to grow one’s fortune, like investing, and only spends, spends, spends. This is also why most people who win the lottery are back at work within five years.

By 1898 Crowley had self-published several of his works and was initiated into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. This, incidentally, began a lifelong habit of destruction. Not his, of course. But rather everyone and everything he came in to contact with tended to fall to literal shit, and the Order of the Golden Dawn did not survive Crowley’s inclusion in the Order, collapsing in 1903, well before Crowley could complete his learning. But while he was there, he rubbed elbows with such occult thought leaders as William Butler Yeats, Arthur Machen, William Wescott, Florence Farr… None of whom seemed to like Crowley.

During this time, Crowley also began reading Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis, and became immersed in Sado-Masochism, enjoying both the giving the receiving of pain, but preferring receiving. This reception would result in Crowley becoming bi-sexual, enjoying sex with women, and preferring to be the woman himself, and sometimes even coercing his partner to “humiliate” him i.e. forcing his male partners to the act. Now, not all his partners were willing or even liked gay sex, but they did want to learn from Crowley, and this was considered part of his teaching, so they would participate, in order to learn.

In 1903 he married for the first time, the sister of Gerald Kelly, Rose Edith Kelly. She got into a little bit of a scandal after agreeing to marry two men then refusing to marry either one of them. Crowley showed up with Kelly and while Kelly was calming down their parents, Crowley talked Rose into marrying him. They were married for 6 years and during that time, Crowley developed quite a bit of his beliefs, starting with Thelema, the belief that will is primary, his concept of do what thou willst, was dictated to him while he was on his honeymoon by his guiding spirit Aiwass. During this time, he also wrote the Book of the Law, using his new spouse as his Scarlet Woman, an exceptionally loose woman, as inspiration…he was inspired by sex. Within a year Rose was pregnant and they returned from Egypt to Europe, where Rose gave birth to their first child, a daughter, Nuit Ma Ahathoor Hecate Sappho Jezebel Lilith. I told you he was a sadist, right?

And with that, Crowley dove headfirst into living the thelemic lifestyle, caring very little for his reputation or for rumors that spread about him, jaunting off around the globe, spending twenty years climbing mountains, and studying magick, creating a lot of it as he went, clothing himself with the image of worldly magician. He literally traveled the globe, burning through his inherited fortune, ultimately ending up at Cefalu, living in an abandoned abbey there which he christened the Abbey of Thelema, with his latest scarlet woman, Leah, and his other girlfriend Ninette, having children with each of them. I think ultimately in his lifetime he had five children.  Of the women in his life, at least three ended up alcoholics, including his first and third wives. Leah went through a stint too but ultimately managed to get herself cleaned up.

Crowley himself devolved into drug and alcohol addiction, writing the book he is probably most well-known for, Diary of a Drug Fiend, which was published, but not widely read in his day.  Given the authors own infamy at the time, many booksellers refused to even carry it. In 1923 he was ejected from Italy by Mussolini who did not want someone so infamous and cult like living in his country.

He bounced around from France, to Tunisia, to Germany, to England, living off the graces of friends and other benefactors, finally landing in Hastings England where he died on December 1, 1947

Now, obviously this is a short…SHORT…version of the 346-page book. The entire story was Crowley’s history interwoven with his magical beliefs and workings, rounded out with the late 20th early 21st century impact he has had on culture.

And while the work was written from the perspective of a Crowley-ite, and I am certainly faithful in my own way, reading between the lines, Crowley comes across as an extreme narcissist and sociopath. He lived his life as a hedonist and a libertine, I’m frankly surprised he didn’t claim to be a reincarnation of the Marquis de Sade.

Let’s break that down a little. Narcissism is a self-centered personality style characterized as having an excessive interest in one's physical appearance or image and an excessive preoccupation with one's own needs, often at the expense of others.

What Are the Traits Of A Sociopath?

What are considered sociopathic traits or sociopathic traits? Here are some of the potential signs and traits of a person with antisocial personality disorder:

A lack of empathy for others

Little to no genuine remorse

The manipulation of other people

Lying and deceit

A sense of superiority over others

Little to no regard for right or wrong

The belief that rules do not apply to them.

Getting into legal trouble or a little regard for the law

A lack of responsibility or engaging in irresponsible behaviors

Aggression or hostility

The exploitation of other people

Substance use

Like all of that comes from the DSM V, and frankly, reading through this book, every single one of these traits was very evident in Crowley’s life. Every. Single. One.

He cared very little for his either of his wives or any of the women he engaged with, seeing them as little more than receptacles for his seed. He showed no remorse ever for anything he did and excelled at manipulating people, lying and deceiving them to get his way. He had an unparalleled sense of superiority, part of his beef with the Golden Dawn was his belief that they were not recognizing his greatness fast enough. He had no regard for right or wrong and believed the rules did not apply to him. He was evicted from several countries for his actions and magick and unquestionably engaged in irresponsible behaviors, spending every penny he ever had or was given. He was aggressive towards anyone who questioned him and exploited anyone who ever tried to help him. And substance use…hello, Diary of a Drug Fiend was autobiographical.

A hedonist is a person who is devoted to the pursuit of pleasure : someone who practices hedonism. And a libertine is a person devoid of most moral principles, a sense of responsibility, or sexual restraints, which they see as unnecessary or undesirable, and is especially someone who ignores or even spurns accepted morals and forms of behavior observed by the larger society. Libertinism is described as an extreme form of hedonism.

Crowley was not a good man, but then he never claimed to be. He was a sociopath who lived his best life and truly embraced the do as thou willst mindset. And it later inspired a generation of artists and musicians. He did write books, but I have frankly found them unreadable. His most known contribution is probably the Book of Thoth tarot, for which he partnered with Lady Frieda Harris to do the actual artwork, as Crowley himself was not much of an artist. He had pretentions to be, but that was, in his opinion, just another way in which his genius went unrecognized. Unfortunately, when the artwork for Book of Thoth was ready for display, attaching his name to it got the show shut down at the gallery. Such is the price of infamy.

I do not like Aleister Crowley. I think this book was well written and well researched, but even as a libertarian, who pretty much believes the do what you will, non-aggression principle, I dislike this man. He may or may not have been a magickal genius, he was unquestionably a sociopath. He destroyed everything and everyone he touched and died a pauper. The only reason we know who he is beyond tabloid reprints from the 19th century is the biography written by John Symonds, who pulled Crowley out of ignominy just before Crowley’s death. Contributions to counterculture or not, Crowley is someone who SHOULD have died in ignominy. But sadly, being a shit human being is, more often than not, a way to guarantee immortality. Of a sort.

This book was originally reviewed on YouTube on October 16, 2022, but is now available on Rumble and PodBean.