Aleister Crowley-A Rare Beast

Mash channel tells the story of the most famous satanist of the XX century, the British poet and magician Aleister Crowley.

The beast 666 was named by his own mother-for his rebellious nature and refusal to learn the Bible. A God-fearing woman from Victorian England did not yet know what service she was doing to her rebellious son. He became an outstanding poet and artist. He became an esotericist who studied all aspects of the supernatural, from traditional religions to ancient cults and Satanism. He created his own anti-religion. He defied traditional morality, even though he could not completely defeat it. Singers from Ozzy Osbourne to Robbie Williams will dedicate songs to him. And yes, he was happy to sign with the nickname given by his mother. But the main thing is that at the very beginning of the new time, the pragmatic XX century, he showed that there is and always will be a place for magic and adventure.

He was born at the end of the XIX century in a wealthy English family, and died in the middle of the XX century in poverty. Between that and that, he lived a dizzying life as a provocateur, playboy, and hoaxer. He began as a poet-studying English literature at Cambridge helped him get into the right circles, and his inherited fortune helped him not to think about such small things as daily bread and censorship.

However, behind the stanzas describing hard BDSM, many overlooked the main message of his poetry: the proclamation of the beginning of a new time, the era of Aquarius (the Aeon of Horus). A time when a person should live according to their purpose and their true desires — a line to which Crowley remained faithful to the end.

By the way, in 1897, the future magician visited St. Petersburg and even studied Russian-it seems that he wanted to start a diplomatic career there. Some biographers believe that in fact, in Cambridge, he was recruited into the British intelligence service and in He was on a mission in Russia. A worthy occupation for a gentleman of those years.

The sexual adventures of the future great magician frappled all of London. It is said that his first mystical epiphany occurred after the first experience of same-sex love. The scandalous homosexual relationship with the poet Viktor Neuburg shocked the public before the novels of Oscar Wilde. Crowley had a flat in the Fulham Road, where society ladies went in search of special pleasures. It was started by one of his mistresses, Annie Ritgler, who liked to be whipped.

As for drugs, Crowley began experimenting with heroin in the open much earlier than Anna "heroin model property" Teo. Despite the frenzied Victorianism, heroin was then legal — it was prescribed in pharmacies as a painkiller. The poet suffered from severe asthma attacks and, of course, got hooked.

This was not the only substance that the magician indulged in: he left behind a lot of materials-reports on the use of opium, hashish, ether,cocaine, heroin, and many other things. In Paris, the Beast 666 actively experimented with mescaline, simultaneously introducing the writer Theodore Dreiser to this occupation. And in Berlin, according to rumors, and Aldous Huxley, the author of "A new beautiful World", a Nobel laureate and also a lover of substances.

However, unlike According to Anna Teo, Crowley was demanding of himself. As a man who preached the true will, he could not afford addiction: the cult book "The Diary of an Addict", written during this period, documents his difficult struggle with drug addiction. The main character of the novel overcomes addiction to cocaine and heroin with the help of magical practices and awareness of his destiny.

Drug trips, multiple marriages, and countless "Scarlet Wives", the priestesses of Thelema, with whom Crowley engaged in sexual and magical practices — are just the tip of the iceberg. However, all this was intended to serve a single purpose: to gain mystical ecstasy and magical insight.

In the 1920s, in Sicily, Crowley founded the "Abbey of Thelema", a kind of college of his own magical teaching. The name he borrowed from the satirical novel by Francois Rabelais " Gargantua and Pantagruel" (1534), which features a community of the same name. For Rabelais, life in Thelema "was not governed by laws, regulations, or rules, but by their own free will and will." Isn't it cool to turn a holiday of disobedience into a religion?

"Do your will, so let the whole law be," was the main principle of Thelema. Crowley understood the will as the true desire of a person, his purpose and vocation. And everything he does, the way he lives, must necessarily resonate with his true will. And in the search for this "true Will" lies the goal of the search for self-realization. In other words, " Do what you want."

The help of higher forces is not required for this; the person himself needs to "dig out" his true self. And to do this, you need to get rid of unconscious influences, taking them under the control of consciousness. One of the tools for this is y Crowley was "sexual magic" — a special kind of practice aimed at subjugating sexual energy and directing it to the knowledge of oneself and one's Will (just like Freud).

In 1923, all the fans of Thelema were expelled from Sicily by the fascists — even for them, Crowley's magical and sexual experiments were a little too much.

Rumor has it that it is Brother Perdurabo, aka Beast 666, aka Aleister Crowley, became the ideological founder of Wicca-neo-pagan witchcraft, which is still carried away by strange people in stupid hats and with hair of all colors of the rainbow. It is said that the great hoaxer for money prescribed for Gerald Gardner (the official founder of Wicca) the basic rituals. Moreover, how seriously he did all this, it is still not clear.

Together with the artist Frida Harris, Crowley created the iconic Tarot deck, which is enjoying tremendous success in our time — the"Thoth Tarot". And, most importantly, in the twentieth century, Aleister Crowley managed to become a pop figure, a collective image of a magician, "a man who speaks to the dead."

He was featured on the cover of the Beatles album, with songs by David Bowie, Robbie Williams, Ozzy Osbourne, and a couple of dozen other metal bands dedicated to him.

He greatly influenced the American rocket scientist, solid-fuel engine designer and later occultist Jack Parsons — about him, the series "Strange Angel" was recently filmed by CBS. Parsons was killed in the lab by an explosion. It is believed that the rocket man raved about the "fire of Babalon" (the main Thelemite goddess), so the explosion and death from fire are not accidental.

For sure, this is not confirmed, but some researchers find Crowley's ideas in Oscar Wilde in The Portrait of Dorian Gray»:

It is quite possible that the poets communicated through Ada Leverson, a close friend of Wilde and mistress of Crowley, to whom Oscar Wilde gave the nickname Sphinx and about whom he said that he would certainly fall in love with her if she were a man.

During the war, Crowley met Ian Fleming, the future author of the James Bond books. It is said that Fleming suggested that the occultist work for British intelligence and offered, no less, to arouse Hitler's interest in occult practices.

The writer John Fowles quite clearly and vividly displays the image of Crowley in the novel "The Magus", and the novel itself is very similar to Crowley's "Diary of a Drug Addict", although, of course, Fowles does not admit this.

Echoes of his ideas and magical works can be traced to almost all the famous occultists of the XX century: Kenneth Grant, Austin Osman Spare, Gerald Gardner.

Despite his scandalous reputation and satanic aura, Alistair was a man of frenzied charisma, subjugating both men and women. His ideas spread like wildfire, infecting almost everyone who happened to be around in one way or another. Europe, and the Americas.

Although Perdurabo's brother and Beast 666 died in appalling poverty and heroin addiction (at the end of his life, he still went back on heroin, prescribed by doctors), he lived his life in such a way that "it was not excruciatingly painful for the aimlessly lived years."