Aleister Crowley

Aleister Crowley, born Edward Alexander Crowley in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, lived from 12 October 1875 to 1 December 1947. He was an English occultist, ceremonial magician, poet, novelist, mountaineer, and painter. Rejecting the Plymouth Brethren faith of his parents, he studied at Trinity College at the University of Cambridge, focusing on poetry and mountaineering while allegedly being recruited into British intelligence. His esoteric training advanced when he joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1898 under Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers and Allan Bennett, followed by travels for mountaineering and the study of Hindu and Buddhist practices.

In 1904, while honeymooning in Cairo, Egypt, with his wife Rose Edith Kelly, Crowley recorded The Book of the Law. He stated that a supernatural entity named Aiwass dictated this sacred text, which served as the foundation for the religion of Thelema. The text announced the Æon of Horus and instructed followers to practice ceremonial magic to align with their True Will, summarizing the philosophy with the maxim "Do what thou wilt". To propagate these ideas, he co-founded the esoteric order A∴A∴ with George Cecil Jones in 1907 and later joined the Ordo Templi Orientis in 1912, eventually leading its British branch and expanding Thelemite groups internationally.

Crowley's life involved extensive travels and public controversies. During the First World War in the United States, he engaged in painting and outwardly campaigned for the German war effort while biographers later indicated he was secretly assisting British intelligence. In 1920, he founded the Abbey of Thelema, a religious commune in Cefalù, Sicily. Due to his libertine lifestyle and denunciations in the British press, the Italian government evicted him from the commune in 1923, after which he split his time between France, Germany, and England until his death.

Throughout his life, Crowley attracted widespread notoriety as a drug user, bisexual, and individualist social critic, while publishing numerous works including the Libri of Thelema. Readers of esoteric books encounter his name because he remains a highly influential figure in western esotericism and the counterculture of the 1960s. He is recognized as the founder and prophet of Thelema who guided humanity into the Æon of Horus, remaining the subject of continuous academic studies and biographies.