Edward Alexander Crowley was born on 12th October 1875 to wealthy parents in Royal Leamington Spa in Warwickshire.
He was educated at Malvern College, Tonbridge School, Eastbourne College and finally Trinity College, Cambridge where he focused on his passions of mountaineering and poetry and published several volumes.
Life for Crowley was to abandon his parents’ Christian faith and instead to inject himself into Western esotericism. In 1898, he joined the esoteric Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and was trained in ceremonial magic before studying both Hindu and Buddhist practices in India.
On his Egyptian honeymoon in 1904 he claimed contact with an entity―Aiwass―who gave him the sacred Book of the Law which served as the basis for the Thelema religion where he identified as its prophet. During the Great War, which he spent in the United States, he claimed to be working for British Intelligence but by the 1920s he had decamped to pursue a libertine lifestyle in Sicily, and in the ensuing scandals was evicted by the Italian Government.
He divided the following two decades between France, Germany, and England, and the continuing promotion of Thelema.
During his life he gained widespread notoriety for his drug use, his bisexuality, and his alarming views on society. In short, polite society frowned on his ways, his thoughts and his influence but to many others his stance had much of value. Even after death he was a darling for the 60’s counterculture but his influence has since waned.
His literary works were both prolific and covered many topics. In the early part of his career he published many poetry books, even plays, before his darker and more forceful works came to dominate his output.
Aleister Crowley died on 1st December 1947 at Hastings in England. He was 72.
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