Who was Aleister Crowley, really?

In issue #25 of James Tynion IV and Martin Simmonds’ Department of Truth, the leader of the eponymous organization, Lee Harvey Oswald, explains how a select few throughout history have figured out the truth about people’s beliefs actually manifesting in reality, a central concept to the series. One of the individuals Oswald mentions by name is Aleister Crowley, who was once called “the Wickedest Man in the World” by the British press.

Image Comics

Image Comics

That’s a lot to take in, and it’s almost all true. Crowley was a poet, a painter, an accomplished mountain climber, as well as the founder of a new religious movement, Thelema. He was also a pampered wastrel, a blustering egomaniac, and a drug addict who callously exploited his friends and followers for his own personal gain.

Edward Alexander Crowley was born in 1875 in the town of Leamington, Warwickshire, to an affluent, upper middle-class family (he later changed his name to “Aleister”). Crowley was well-educated, and although he attended Trinity College, Cambridge, he never graduated. Crowley set several world records as a mountain climber, in 1902 making history as part of an expedition to ascend the K2 Mountain range before he succumbed to influenza, malaria, and snow blindness. In 1905, he led an expedition to scale the 8,000-meter peak of Kanchenjunga. After an avalanche and tensions over his leadership, Crowley abandoned the other members and absconded with their remaining money to Darjeeling.

The battle of Blythe Road

Harboring a lifelong disdain of Christianity, along with a flair for the dramatic, Crowley was deeply fascinated by the occult. It was on New Year’s Eve of 1897, while on holiday in Stockholm, that Crowley’s life was forever changed, pointing him down his magical path. He wrote in his autobiographical Confessions:

“I was awakened to the knowledge that I possessed a magical means of becoming conscious of and satisfying a part of my nature which had up to that moment concealed itself from me. It was experience of horror and pain, combined with a certain ghostly terror, yet at the same time, it was the key to the purest and holiest spiritual ecstasy that exists.”

Biographers have long speculated that Crowley’s spiritual awakening was, in fact, his first homosexual experience. Crowley was himself openly bisexual, and for him sex would become an essential component of his magical practice. In 1898, Crowley was initiated into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, an occult fraternity which counted among its members the famous poet William Butler Yeats, and the author of Dracula, Bram Stoker.

As would be the case throughout his life, Crowley made enemies within the Golden Dawn, who were disdainful not only of his blatant bisexuality, but also his ego and sense of entitlement. When the Golden Dawn’s London lodge refused to grant him the rank of Adeptus Minor, Crowley retreated to the Paris lodge, and was personally granted the rank by the head of the Golden Dawn, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers. This action in effect split the Golden Dawn into two rival factions warring for control over the order.

In a move to consolidate his control over the order, Mathers sent Crowley back to London to steal “magical” scrolls from the London lodge’s Vault of the Adepts. According to Yeats biographer Richard Ellman, as Crowley attempted to ascend the stairs of the lodge, he became embroiled in a magical duel against Yeats and others, both sides locked in a stalemate shouting incantations at one another. Finally, the “Battle of Blythe Road,” as it came to be known, ended when Crowley was either magically defeated and hauled off by the police, or, as Ellman puts it, “When Crowley came within range the forces of good struck out with their feet and kicked him downstairs.”

“The wickedest man in the world”

Never one to admit defeat, Crowley traveled the world and became an adept practitioner of Rája Yoga and Theravada Buddhism. In 1903, he returned to his home in Boleskine, Scotland, and married his first wife, Rose Kelly. While on honeymoon in Egypt, Crowley was inspired to write what would become the holy book of Thelema, Liber AL vel Legis, or “The Book of the Law.” Crowley was to be the prophet of the new religion, and his wife’s role (later to be filled by a procession of lovers) was to be that of the Scarlet Woman, or the Whore of Babylon, a personification of female sexuality from the Bible.

Crowley struggled to fund his lavish lifestyle and growing drug addiction as his inheritance ran out. In 1907, he founded his own magical order, the A∴A∴, and two years later began printing a biannual periodical for it, The Equinox. In 1912, Crowley published The Book of Lies, what biographer Lawrence Sutin called “his greatest success in merging his talents as poet, scholar, and magus.” The same year, Crowley was appointed the leader of another fraternal order, the Ordo Templi Orientist (O.T.O.), dues of which combined with donations from A∴A∴ members helped keep him from complete bankruptcy.

By 1920, Crowley had the idea for a religious community of Thelemites, and he managed to convince several friends and followers to join him in founding a commune in Cefalù, Sicily. The “Abbey of Thelema,” as it came to be known, was the perfect place for Crowley and his acolytes to worship the Sun, ingest copious amounts of mind-altering substances, and engage in sadomasochistic orgies in the name of spiritual enlightenment.

Three years later, Crowley’s dream came to an end when one of the members of the Abbey, Raoul Loveday, drank from a local stream and contracted a fatal liver infection. Loveday’s wife, Betty May, returned to London and began spreading lurid rumors about the Abbey, and told the British tabloids Crowley was responsible for her husband’s death. The British paper John Bull called Crowley “the wickedest man in the world,” an epithet that became central to his legend. The international interest in the Abbey, and potential inquiries into the nature of Loveday’s death, led Benito Mussolini’s fascist Italian government to deport Crowley, leaving the Abbey abandoned.

“V for Victory”

After being banned from Italy, Crowley continued traveling and writing, but by 1935 he was completely bankrupt. For the duration of his life, Crowley largely subsisted on dues from the O.T.O and the substantial donations from Jack Parsons, American rocket engineer and one of the founders of America’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories (JPL). This arrangement came to an end after Parsons was scammed out of $10,000 by L. Ron Hubbard, the future founder of Scientology, and later accidentally blew himself up mixing explosive chemicals within his home.

As England and Europe inched closer to war, Crowley briefly dreamed of converting Adolf Hitler to Thelema and incorporating his beliefs into Nazism; however, by England’s declaration of war in 1939, Crowley became a passionate supporter of the British cause. Crowley bragged that he had suggested to Churchill the “V for victory” hand gesture, and offered his services (whatever they might have been) to the Naval Intelligence Department, who did not take Crowley up on the offer.

Suffering from asthma he was unable to treat due to wartime blockade, Crowley fell deeper and deeper into heroin addiction. Crowley’s health continued to deteriorate until, on December 1, 1947, he died at his residence in Netherwood, Hastings. Crowley was cremated, his ashes sent overseas to Karl Germer, the German/American head of the U.S. branch of the O.T.O., and buried in Germer’s garden in Hampton, New Jersey.

Although his life may have come to an ignominious end, Crowley has captured the imagination of the public long after his death. He’s long exerted a powerful influence on pop culture, from his inclusion on the cover of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album and his motto, “Do what thou wilt,” appearing on the cover of Led Zeppelin III, to Zeppelin’s guitarist Jimmy Page buying Crowley’s Boleskine house in 1971, and Ozzy Osbourne writing the song “Mr. Crowley” about the Great Beast.

Crowley has also appeared in comic books. He’s an enemy of John Constantine, he’s been referenced in Batman: Arkham Asylum, From Hell, Requiem Vampire Knight, The Immortal Hulk, and of course, The Department of Truth.