Aleister Crowley: Blowhard Narcissist?

When we say stuff you should know, we're not saying like, why don't you already know this? Stuff? You should know this. We're saying, this is so interesting. We we want to share this with you. We think you should know this, so we want to tell you about it. That's the purpose of the title of the episode of the podcast. We should call it in this tone, exactly, here's something you should know. Guy's okay, it's trying to get that out of the way. I love that. Do you feel

like there's been confusion. I feel like it's been confusion for thirteen years among some people. I think some people are actually offended by it, Like who these guys think they are telling me what I should know, didn't you think of Yeah? And it was apparently imperfect because you know, I had an alternate title back then, what was yours? Do you have something you should know? Guys, I'm going to try and do my best to couch my disdain

for today's topic. Well, I think you already missed that mission. Uh. It's about Alistair and there's a lot of just you know, someone like him was very divisive. You could go to any uh internet board and read a little bit about this dude and you will still see so much divisiveness. Uh. And there's a lot of conflicting information, including right before we recorded recorded I said something about Crowley and he

said I heard it was Crowley. Yeah, So like, uh, but I just you know, I'm gonna go ahead and get this out of the way. We'll we'll do an overview of this guy. But I found him to be above all narcissistic, one of the most self aggrandizing, misogynistic, manipulating users of others who didn't really have anything interesting to say or add to the good of human kind. Wow, in my opinion, and yet this was your pick. What made you decide to want to do one on on

Mr Crowley. Crowley, I didn't know anything that much about him, so now I do, and now I can have my own informed opinion. But if you go on these message boards, you'll find people that say what I said. We'll find people that say the man was pure evil and you know, blah blah blah of that train. I don't think he was. I think he was. Uh. And then other people who

are like, he's my hero. Yeah. I think in the people who uh he is he is a hero too, are also not so like disillusion that they're like, no, he was great in every way. They're like, he was misunderstood. And he also was often his own worst enemy is usually how they kind of defended. Because it doesn't matter whether he was a hero to you, the most evil person in the world. He was frequently called the most wicked man in the world or just a total a

hole who didn't contribute anything. Um, he was a jerk, everyone can. Everyone agrees. That's the one thing everyone agrees on, that he was a total jerk. Well, I think that's where the narcissism is something that really triggers me in particular, So that just kept popping up over and over, and I just kept saying, who does this guy think he is? You must have had a really hard time during the narcissist epic epidemic of the two thousand odds. What was that?

Don't you remember? It was like a whole psychology moving through this para psychologist basically tried to make their career by trying to prove that there was an entire generation of narcissists that have been raised and now every the world was about to be ruined, and general was right, but it was, you know, pop psychology. What generation was it?

I guess millennials is what they were who they were talking about, which is kind of mean because that was at the time everybody's picking on millennials for just about everything. And then these two come in and we're like, yeah, and get this, they're also narcissists. I don't know about that, but I think in Crowley Crowley's case, uh, there's a

narcissistem that's sisum, that's uh a narcissiystem. Actually I said it right, This kind of off the charts, like there's a self importance that it self importance really bugs me too. So intertwined someone who really thinks they have a lot to say. Uh. I mean, you can tell by how much this guy wrote, like overwriting, I have so much to say, write fifty books and like read any of this stuff and it's just like kill me. Okay, So all right, so I'm gonna park all that to the

side and beat totally neutral from here on. Now. Well, I don't think you have to be, but I do think we should explain why this guy would even be worth a podcast episode. Then, um, part of let's just say who he is first, because everyone who doesn't know Ozzy Osbourne is like, who even is this jerk? Okay, So even if you don't even if you're not familiar with Ozzy Osbourne, which stop this podcast right now and go familiarize yourself with the body of work of Ozzy Osbourne.

Start with come Back, and then go back to the Black Sabbath, right Um, Like, even if you're not familiar with that, you probably have seen a picture of Alistair Crowley. The picture the basically the picture where he looks like he's doing the Olan Mills pose, like Hey, I'm just hanging out around the barnyard feeling good right now, but he's actually performing a magic ritual oppose um a form

I think is what they were called. Uh, everybody's seen that picture, right, I think so, I mean you probably a lot of people have probably seen it. Didn't know

that's who that was even, right? And even if you haven't seen that picture and you still haven't heard of Alistair Crowley, if you're a Beatles fan, if you are a fan of new age stuff, Uh, if you like crystals, if you buy people candles with their birthday horoscope on them because you think it's actually going to influence their year, you can thank Alistair Crowley because he was basically the center point for all of that stuff coming about in

the West, the idea of occultism, mysticism um, spirituality outside of Christianity, Judaism, and even islam um. That the fact that it's present in Europe and America today is almost exclusively through his efforts and work. Yeah, I mean, I will say this, The only reason he's noteworthy is because he did what he did when he did it. Uh. In the eighties, if you would turn on Jerry Springer on on any day, you would see eight Alistair Crowley

sitting on stage. But this guy was doing it, you know, very early on in the nineteen hundreds throughout the early twentieth century when that kind of stuff, like that's why he got so much press was because he was doing things that you dare not speak of it at a time when people weren't doing these things, or at least out loud. Even today still people are like, this guy was really over the top and bounds in a lot of ways. Like you said, there's some people in the

message boards who still are like he was evil. They're still scared of him. Uh. And this guy has been dead for sixties seventy years, and even when he was alive, he really wasn't all that menacing. I mean, um, like he tried to be. But if you just stopped and we're like, what are you doing and really kind of took yourself out of his his little realm, you might even laugh at him. Depending on the situation. Yeah, I

know you would, all right. So let's I guess start at the beginning and what kind of breeze through his childhood, which was formative for sure. Uh. He was born in eighteen seventy five in England. Uh, he's he's a british

Man and he was born into a wealthy family. His family were Brewers, they brewed ale and but we're very, very religious, and this was a big, big deal because they were members of a of a religious group called a Christian group called the Brethren, which was sort of just Christianity on steroids as far as uh, you know, saying things like sex was bad and sinning was bad, uh, to the point where it reversed him. It had the opposite effect. Yeah, not only was like sex bad, like

that's bread and butter Christian stuff. This was like, um, like you didn't sign the lease I saw, or you didn't like take out life insurance because it suggested that you didn't have full faith that Jesus was about to come back any day now, like you didn't plan for the future. You also didn't take medicine and that ended up killing his father, Alistair Crowley's father Um, who developed cancer and that apparently was a treatable condition at the time,

which kind of surprised me. Although they were probably just gonna cut his tongue out, that was it, But rather where they really is that what they were gonna do? I mean when they say cancer of the tongue and surgery, than what else could it mean? Okay, sure, so Um, the Brethren that of which he was a member, apparently they were an equal egalitarian group. They all kind of got together and like, we don't think you should do that. We think that it kind of shows a lack of

faith in Jesus. And he was like, Okay, I'm just gonna roll the dice and see what happens. And he died. Um. And that apparently really soured Alistair Crowley on Christianity because he really looked up to his father one. But I think he also really fully bought like the Brethren as well. Um, and this was a huge like jarring um crash into a wall. Yeah, you know, it left him with a lot of money when he would become an adult, I think. Uh,

and the Grabster helped us out with this one. I think he said it was about two million bucks in today's money, so a lot of money, but as we will see, certainly not enough to last a lifetime even back then, at least the way he burned through it. Definitely, it's amazing it lasted as long as it did. Really. Yeah, it made me wonder how much drugs cost back then, because he bought a lot of them. Yeah, but he could just go down to the local chemist or you know,

um pharmacy and buy him over the counter. So they were relatively cheap, I guess I would guess. So, yeah, alright, chemist doesn't try to tax you. Yeah, everyone knows pharmaceuticals are super cheap. Uh. So he was left with his mom, who you know, by all accounts, they didn't have the

best relationship. Um. She was also super religious. I think ed dug up in one biography that he sort of treated her as if she were the help uh in one of the servants, and she in fact referred to him as the Beast, which was from the Book of Revelations, in a name that he would later I think he

kind of keep on using for himself. Yeah, And I saw that she was I saw both that she was jokingly calling him that in a way but also just chiding him for his bad behavior, or that she was a very, very pious person, and that she would not have called him the Beast unless she was like genuinely disgrace and and um abhorred by his behavior, you know what I mean, Like she she wouldn't have used that lightly. So I'm not sure I'm gonna go with that. The

second interpretation because it's it's scarier. Uh. So then he eventually makes his way to Cambridge in he didn't graduate, but this was where he really kind of started getting interested in two things that would define the rest of

his life. Uh, the occult and sex. Yeah, for sure, that's where his his life Countries is typical going to college stuff, you know, sort of um, and and he was also he got into some other stuff that we don't have to get into it much, but he he was a mass or not like a grand master, but he was a really good chess player for a while then the grand master from what I saw, like if he had pursued it, yeah, yeah, like he was considering a profession like of chess. But he also was a

noteworthy mountaineer. Um. He was in the party that attempted the first British attempt on K two. Ever it was unsuccessful, but they ended up breaking a record of of living at twenty thousand feet longer than anybody else. Like, he

was a serious mountaineer for a very long time. But as he just kind of got a little older, and especially as he got a little further into like magic and sex in particular, he just kind of lost as much interest, like those were his life's passions, and all of a sudden he's like, I think I'd rather have sex of every single kind I can possibly think of

than than climb a mountain. And he still climbed some mountains, and there were some huge issues that came out of that pursuit and at times, but um, like you said, more than anything, he directed his life towards magic and sex. He says, I think I'd rather climb sexual mountains sexual right, Um, well, should we take a break already? I think we should. Okay, Well, then you just answered your own question. You begged the question in the best sense of that term. All right,

We're gonna take a little break here. I'm gonna collect myself and we'll talk more about sex magic right after this. I think before we talk about sex magic, can we talk a little bit about his poetry. Sure? Um, he was a writer, and like we said, he wrote up to about fifty books, and some of these were collected and published just from stuff he had written along the way after his death. But he felt like he had a lot to say to the world. Wrote a lot

of erotic poetry. The first collection was called White Stains, under the pseudonym Archibald Bishop. I don't have to work too hard to figure out what that means. I mean, it's so juvenile, it's hilarious a lot. Did you ever read did you read any of his poetry? No? I mean I saw like clips and snippets of it, and just just from reading so much stuff about how how not great it was, I was like, I'm not reading this.

I'm not gonna read it. In fact, I can't read it on the air because it's a family friendly show. All of them start there once was a man from Nantucket. Uh, there once was a narcissist from Nantucket. But there's a poem I would encourage our readers of age to go look up. And if you're not of age, don't do it. If you're listening with your kid right now, distract him briefly. But it's a poem called Celia Farts c E l I A P H A r T S no no f A r T s uh. And it's just a

great example. And I'm sure he had more, you know, I guess legitimate poetry than this. But reading Celia Farts really soured me on what I felt like he thought he had to say to the world. Well, yeah, that's the thing. I think one of the things is is like it'd be I see what you're saying. It's a little bit um wow. Uh yeah, yeah I did. There's a Pinterest post that has it. It's like the first thing that comes up, so you don't even have to

really click in anywhere. But but I think one of the things that's so off putting about him is he's like a Victorian, maybe an Edwardian, a Regency era, but he's like of that era. He's using words like farts and like it just keeps getting worse than that poem, and it's just like so it's just so like crude today, Like if somebody published that stuff today, you'd be like, this is crude and lowbrow. But somebody from the era doing it makes it exponentially worse for some reason. And

I think that that is exactly what he was into. Yeah, well, he certainly loved to push buttons. Uh. He rejected Christianity so forcefully that he decided, not only am I not into it, but I want to be the opposite of it. I think that the only problem with sin are the hang ups that people put on it and that to be truly happy, you should just send sin sin and I'm really good at it. And so that's what I'm gonna do with my life. Yeah, and that this is

what he did. And he did um he, like I said, like any basically any sex act you can think of. I did not see any accusations of bestiality, which really surprised me. Did oh you did? Okay? Did did you get the impression that he actually did that, because I again would be surprised if he hadn't you know, met a donkey or two in his time? Saw that I saw And we'll get to this his time when he was living in his slum commune in Italy. Things got really weird there. And of course I don't think we

even said why. There's a lot of conflicting information he You can never tell when he was being straight or writing the truth, and you can never tell when someone had when he had made an enemy and they were writing something not true to make him look even worse. It's really hard to parse out the truth. But I did see stuff about uh, not him committing a sexual act with an animal, but forcing a woman uh to with a goat. Okay, And that I mean That's the

thing is it is plausible. And the reason why is because he really did have a lot of sways, right, he added a lot. He had enough sway over his acolytes, gearing like his peak that he could have gotten something like that accomplished, if he'd really set his mind to it. It's entirely possible. It did happen. He was into some really freaky stuff, but like you said, you can't really tell what was made up by his enemies. And he

had almost nothing but enemies. He had people who just had just met him and were under a spell, and enemies which were people who had known him for longer than a couple of years. That was basically his his world. Like he didn't have friends necessarily, actually not even necessarily. He didn't have friends. He had people who were under a spell or had had just come out from under

a spell. Yeah, And that I think that's one of the things too, that really helped to reinforce how I feel about him, is that, um, well, first of all, anyone who doesn't have old friends, you got to investigate that a little further, I think. But sure things happen in life, but in his case, I think the fact that he was. I think had he given the opportunity, he would have started a massive money making religion allah

l Ron Hubbard. But it's seems like he could never attract more than a handful of people at a time. And I think that's for a reason, Yes, personality based reason. I think the proof is in the pudding. He set out to create a huge, massive religion that would change the world. That was his goal, as we see, and just it didn't happen. And he also died um without money even though he had money, despite you know, like actually trying to perform magic rictuals to attract money. So like, yeah,

he his intent was there. But the thing to me, the thing to me that makes him legit in some way, is that he was still performing rituals, still performing magic um to the end, Like he never gave up on it, even though like it didn't bring him the fame and the fortune and it didn't change the world that he wanted, Like he dedicated, truly dedicated his life to that. Yeah, I don't think he was a charlatan. I do think that he bought into this garbage himself, so you know,

he was authentic, definitely. I think that's actually what I was trying to say, So, should we go to Stockholm? Yeah, I think we should go to Stockholm because, um, that is where his one of his first mystical experiences happened, or that's the way he described it at least. Yeah, and it was am I reading this right and that this mystical experience basically was a result of having homosexual intercourse for the first time. Yeah, gay sex, Okay, good

for him. And hey, I want to be clear, I'm not knocking in anyone's kink because he had a lot of them. Not I'm not knocking that at all. What someone does in the bedroom is like, that's fine, and that's great. I support all of that. But I think his self importance of like having to detail and write about it all as a guide book for others. Uh, just it is. It was a real turn off for me. So, um, the reason that he was detailing this stuff and writing

a guide book for others using things like sex. Um. And by the way, once he was like, oh, actually I'm bisexual. Like for the rest of his life he um. He had relationships with men and women, and there was one man in particular, Jerome paul It, that he later said he really regretted breaking off his relationship with because paul It wasn't into the occult. But he wrote that, Um, with paul It, he had achieved ideal intimacy, which the Greeks considered the greatest glory of manhood and the most

precious prize of life. So that's how he described one of his his relationships with a man. Yeah. Um, and that really says a lot for somebody who didn't necessarily consider himself bisexual. I think he more than anything considered himself straight. He just had, like you know, gay sex from time to time when the when it suited him. And sometimes some of those acolytes, like you said, he had no more than a few people around him, sometimes

it was all men. And if you were an acolyte of his, not only were you helping him perform magic rituals, you were helping him perform sex magic too. And um, who knows where that was going to go. But very often, more often than not, it was degrading. He used sexual degradation as a way, like a path, like a magic ritual, but also it was to show power and dominance over

his acolytes as well. Yeah, and for some reason, and again like if you look at the S and M community that it didn't feel like that to me, because if that's your kink, that's fine too. This felt more like a manipulative user of people than any particular sexual kink. Or maybe he was born at a time where I don't know. I mean, he certainly lived in a time where none of this was acceptable. Homosexuality was illegal uh

in England at the time, So I don't know. I'm trying to try to frame it at in the at the time and place and try and be a little bit more understanding what I mean. I from stuff I saw, and like reports from some of his acolytes, he he seemed to like truly get pleasure from this stuff. Oh, I'm sure he did, so, I don't I don't know if it was just like a means to an end, like I think he was really immersed in it personally

as well. I think so. But it seems like every time he was challenged as not the uh that that he was done with someone once he had used them up, including his wife, which you know we'll get to in a minute. But um, just I guess we should quickly mention he did have other career paths he could have taken. We mentioned the chess. Uh, he did go to Russia to um to learn the business of diplomatic services, which is something he chose at Cambridge. But um he none

of this stuff interested in him. I think once he went down the path of the occult and uh, these sexual you know, you know, orgies at times that he would get involved in, he was like, this is it for me? Yeah, I'm living my best life. I'm out there, Jerry, and I'm loving every minute of it. Very nice that

didn't think of Signfeld references. So um, so he he winds up his time at Cambridge and he's basically comes out of it like completely devoted to the occult, even more devoted to sex, figuring out ways to combine those two things. He's still mountaineering from time to time. He's a he considers himself a poet. Um. But he also he continued, he was a poet before he read Celia parts. But he also one of the other things about him I saw it described as he was a magician, and

he considered himself a genuine magician. And he presented himself as a genuine magician, not an illusion. It's not a stage magician, somebody who actually could could bend reality using his will based on rituals and spells and incantations and communicating with people from or beings from other other spiritual planes. Right magic, right, And he apparently was the one who added the K at the end, which was an old, old spelling of magic. But he did that to differentiate

the two, right. But he didn't invent the K, he just brought it back. Yeah, he revised From what I saw. Uh, he was obsessed with books, not only reading. Uh. He had wall to wall books in his apartment. Um. But like I said, writing Uh, ed dug up a scholar that that suggested he might have what's called grandma mania, which is a pathological obsession with writing and to never be satisfied and to just keep writing, starting new things before you're finished, that kind of thing. So that might

be possible, right. Um. So one of the other things that he was really good at was traveling, like he could just go somewhere like he I saw him described as like utterly without inhibition, whether it was with sex um or whether it was like, oh let's go see

how they do things in Burma. Uh. And as when he went from place to place, he picked up things he would feel he would find like the occult and esoteric traditions and religious traditions, even mainstream religious traditions of these places, and would figure out how, you know, certain parts of them fit in with his own his own view of the occult and his own practices with magic

and um. He did that by by just touring the world for long periods of time, which is something people did back then anyway, right, Like you know, if you went to Europe, you stayed there for like two years because it took so long to get there and back. Right. But he even for his time, he was he was a very seasoned traveler. Yeah, And like you said, it's really one of the important facts of his life because what he would end up doing is creating his own uh.

I guess, I guess you would call it a religion Salima. But Salima was based on all of these travels and everything he picked up. He'd There were a couple of secret society occult societies he joined along the way, uh

and then eventually ran a foul love. One was called the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn UH and one was called the Ordo Temple orientis uh the O T O. And it seems like in both of these groups, and these were you know, years apart, so it wasn't like, I think seven and nine years apart he joined these both times. It seemed like he tried to run the show when he got involved and rewrite their stuff to

suit his needs. And what he was doing though, was was really trying to create his own jam uh and kind of using up these order you know, religious orders along the way. Yeah. And um, I saw just a little side thing real quick, Chuck. I saw that he once had a vampire sicked on him by William Butler Yates, the poet. Yeah, they were there were enemies within the uh what was it called the first one the Golden

the Order of the Golden Dawn. Yeah, and like uh, Yates considered himself a white witch, and he very clearly had decided that, um, that Crowley was a black witch or a black magician, I should say. And um so for for Yates and the other people in the Golden Dawn who were opposed to Crowley, they considered like him dangerous and like he couldn't learn some of these these mysteries because he would unleash the stuff on humanity and

basically start a reign of evil here on earth. So Yates six sicked the vampire on him for like nine nights, all right, he that he just went up a notch in my book? Then who Yates? No? Oh really, because why do you hate Yates even more than you hate Alistair Crowley? No? No, I love Yates, but to have to be able to say that, Hey, you know, one time WB Yates sick the vampire on for nine days. For not days? He just he just earned a little, a little point in the Chuck world. I'm glad we

talked about that. Then, Uh, for a while he lived for a pretty long while. He bought this house on Lochness called the pronounced the bull Skin House or bulls Skin, uh not bull skin. This house became a little more famous in the nineteen seventies when Jimmy Page bought it of led Zeppelin because he was fairly obsessed with Crowley for a while, although by all accounts, Page did not

spend much time there. It was in very bad condition and he kind of took one look at it and was like, somebody should fix his place up, And he assigned a guy to live there and just never really went back. But um, he did live there for a while, and he owned the house for kind of a long time. It was one of it was one of the only places he would stay for any length of time. Basically, yeah, bull Skin reminds me of Archibald Bishop for some reason.

You know, it doesn't sound right like another student then would be dr bull Skin right. One of the ways that he brought people under his influence, to even people who opposed him, was by using his wealth. Um, he wasn't above using drugs. He he was surrounded by people who were using drugs, and some of them had happened

upon like habits, habits like heroin or cocaine habits. He would he would find people who had you know, power or status in some of these orders and would be like, Hey, how about I give you some of that heroine you crave so much, an unlimited supply. How's that sound? Go ahead and initiate me into this inner circle. Um, he would. He would use stuff like that. Like you said, he was one of the greatest manipulators of his age, for sure, But in doing so, what he was doing was he

wasn't just doing it to get power. His ambition wasn't just to become the head of the Golden Dawn or the head of the O t O. He wanted to learn as many secrets as he could, just like when he was traveling in the East, Uh and he was picking up you know, yoga um or he was picking up mysticism from Egypt. Like he wanted to learn their secrets, to figure out the stuff that actually worked. That was his goal. That was his ultimate goal. Okay um. So

I mentioned a wife. In nineteen o three, he married Rose Edith Kelly uh and they were really really really into each other. She was uh got very into what he was into. Uh. They went to Cairo on their honeymoon in nineteen o four and by all accounts, it was a life changing experience where they were both channeling Egyptian gods. And this is where he through channeling Egyptian gods, so says him, Um wrote his big sort of bible called the Book of the Law, which would become the

basis for Thalma. Uh. And he says he was, you know, like I said, channeling uh a being called I was, Oh really yeah, I was. That's how I heard it from everything, okay uh. And so you know this is where he has his He's had awakenings before, but this is where he came up with his dianetics. Basically, yeah, I saw I was continued on like for years and

years and years. Is basically a guardian angel for him and whatever acolytes he had serving him at the time, Like they would call on I wast for protection sometimes. So he was like a kind of a lifelong guardian for um, for Crowley, at least to Crowley and his his followers. Yeah, yeah, I think so. I mean he talked a lot about guardian angels. UM. He had a two daughters, uh, and then towards the end of his life had a son who has an interesting story that

we should probably do a short stuff on um. But in nineteen o five they had Lilith, who was her first daughter. She died and I saw different things here. She died of typhoid in Burma. But I saw that he had basically kind of abandoned his wife at this point and she couldn't really care for her herself because

of her alcoholism, and he blamed her death on her. Uh. I don't know how true that is, But they would eventually have a second daughter named Lola, Zaza who you found one of the greatest pictures of any human of all time on the internet. It is so cool, man, that kid looks like just a genuinely cool, freaky it girl, you know what I mean. Well, she's wearing a goat, so we should just preface that for people who were triggered by wearing animal hides. And she's wearing more than

a hide, it's a hide and a head. Yeah, yeah, I think that was a good idea yea. Um. But so her sister's name, her full name, sister lilith Um, who proceeded her and died as a baby, was nu eat ma ah ha thor Hectate Sappho Jezebel Lilith Crowley. I'm in hotep. Yeah, just went by Lilith for short, Yes, and she had very sadly a very short life. Yeah yeah,

so I saw that too. That um, even though Crowley had abandoned his wife and infant baby in China and they were making their way back and she died in Burma, that he still blamed He blamed Rose for the baby's death, like like fully took zero responsibility for it. And that was a frequent um uh, like a common thing that happened that he did during his life to like things tragedy, sometimes life ending tragedy would would befall people around him because of him and his decisions, and he just would

not accept responsibility for that kind of stuff. Yeah, one of the reasons he uh was eventually ostracized from the mountaineering community, which um was a pretty small community at the time. UH. He reportedly was on a trip with some people um got into a fight with them while they were on the trip because he wanted to control how it went down, and they he splintered off from them.

There was an avalanche and they were all basically buried and like crying for help, And as the story goes, he was nearby drinking tea and like didn't do anything to help them, and they died. And then the word got out and everyone was like, I don't want to climb with this guy anymore. Yeah. I think he even wrote like an article about the expedition in the Daily Mail and used it to blame everybody but himself for it.

That sounds about right, Yeah, I mean he really was person at all and actually was a bad person in a lot of ways. To Yeah, he had um Rose institutionalized eventually for alcoholism. Um, I don't know. I didn't hear about his son, um, and I don't know what his relationship with was with his daughter Lola. Um, they just kind of fade out of the story and he just kind of continues on, which probably says about everything

you need to know. Yeah, well, let's do a short stuff on his son, because it was there was way more to this story than I could really comprehend for this, But he had a son late late in life who eventually was a part of the I think British military and tried to overthrow the government, who died in the two thousand's. I think he died in two thousand and six. So um, this was like way late in his life.

But yeah, let's let's maybe follow up on that. So you want to take another break and then just come back and hit a few more high points and then talk about his his idea of what magic was. Sure, Okay, We're going to do that, everybody, And don't worry, we will talk about sex magic eventually. Okay, So you said that he ended up joining a second group, the O t O. Prior to that, he tried his hand at

founding his own secret occult group. The A A, which from pretty much every source I saw stood for astrom argentine um, which means silver star, so is the Order of the Silver Star. Basically, Yeah, it's A with a little symbol than A and a little symbol m um. And as as after, the O t O, which was an established group, approached him because apparently he was publishing secrets um of the O t O. But that sued, He did get sued, but from from basically all accounts,

he he really had not exposed their secrets knowingly. He had stumbled upon the stuff stuff himself through his own rituals and practice, and they they found out that he had accidentally done this, that he hadn't he'd figured it out himself, and he said, oh, well, you're immediately like a high ranking O t O official and we're going to initiate you now. Um, because anybody who stumbled on

their secrets themselves just automatically became a member. And so he was very proud of that and happy about that. And of course the O t O kind of went different ways with him because it was Alistair Crowley after all, um, and he started pursuing other stuff too. Yeah, and we should point out to that when he was sued by his rival from the Golden On for publishing secrets. He won that lawsuit, so he he didn't lose it. Um,

But yeah, he pursued other things. There's uh this longstanding story that he uh tried to and he definitely tried to become a spy for Britain during the Wars, but uh, he was always rebuffed unless you believe that he really really was a spy, and he was so on the down low that that information never really came out. Um, but by all accounts, he tried to be a spy during the Wars in England. Always said thank you, but no thank you. Then he went to work for the

Germans for a little while. And this is where he gets a little confusing. He because he claimed he was trying to write as a writer. He was trying to write stuff about the Germans. It was so preposterous that it would have helped the Allies. But but who knows, Yeah, um, who knows. He is kind of up for debate whether he was actually a secret agent or not. For sure, I don't know. Probably well, I don't know. I guess it could be settled that those things are probably those

documents are still around somewhere if they exist, you know. Um. So he after World War Two, Um, he ended up going back to England. He remember, he traveled the world. He did. He traveled across the Sahara into into Tangier, I think on foot. He traveled from the Pyrenees down to Gibraltar on foot. Um. He did time in Mexico, Japan, India, did a lot of mountain climbing. So he did tons of traveling. But I guess towards the end of his life, as it was winding down a little bit, he he

wanted to be closer to home. He had a lifelong case of bronchitis. UM. So we moved back to England and a doctor prescribed him heroin and uh he right, He's like, oh yeah, well friends. But I don't know if he had successfully kept himself from becoming addicted to it before or not, But this time it got its hooks in him and he spent the last several years

of his life addicted to heroin. Like heavily addicted to heroin UM and ended up dying I believe in nineteen seven, Yes, basically broke in a boarding house yeah, alright, so maybe we should talk, uh, finally about sex magic. Finally, sex magic. I mean you're going to say that I can't proceeding that all that proceeding this is all a big part of it. But I did mention his stay in Italy. Uh,

these were three big years in his life. Is when he lived at a um ed calls it a small estate in Sicily, but it was really a pretty rundown, ramshackle farmhouse down the middle of nowhere. Uh. And this is what he called his church. This is the Abbey of uh Salima. And it was squalid and it was gross, and he had h This is where things he did, the worst of the worst, even by his standards, when

it came to these rituals. And this is where animal sacrifice may or may not have happened, blood ritual may or may not have happened. Ingesting all kinds of human excrement may or may not happen. Um, it was you know, these were the dark days, or I guess, as far as he's concerned, the best days, right, the salad days. Maybe.

So sex magic. I don't want to give sex magic bad name because a lot of people practice sex magic and there's a lot of wide variety of sex magic and even the stuff A lot of the stuff that Alistair Crowley, you know, um performed was just kind of like, oh, that's it, okay, Um, that's that seems fine. It wasn't necessarily degrading or debasing, It didn't necessarily involve sacrifice or

anything like that. They're frequently multiple people involved. Um. But it's like in all of it was in the service of like entering a higher plane, communicating with other beings u um and figuring out, you know, what worked best and what what didn't work um. But what sex magic and sex magic seems to have been pretty much the

basis of all of his rituals. Did you get that impression to like, pretty much all of the magic he did was sex magic to some degree or another, right, Yeah, And that that's one of the sort of issues I have with him, is it seemed like most of it revolved around getting people to do sexual acts they wouldn't

have ordinarily done. Um. So again, the purpose of all of it, as far as he was saying, was to to figure out what else is out there and to basically use magic too to to communicate with higher planes and to get that knowledge and to basically bring it back here on earth to create a more just and equitable society under Thalamic law. Right. That was That's what

his stated point was. That's what his point was. He wrote very detailed graphic manuals that were very precise about every sex act you can think of, Uh, to be you know, part of his Theleamic religion, and he sort of believed that he was onto something with magic being what he thought was the middle ground between science and religion. He thought religion was seemingly thought religion was way too constrictive, uh, and kind of got in between people in and attaining

spiritual enlightenment. Uh. He it seemed like he thought science was too rigid. I would argue that he probably thought science was too caught up in facts and things like that, where he wanted to be a little more loosey goosey with it. And so he thought he sort of had the perfect middle road there with magic with the c K. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. He would use experimentation and trial and error to figure out the best way, the most

effective ritual magic. Right. Uh, it seems that you know, and this is one of those deals where ed even it's out he was sort of a man of his time and his attitudes towards other races. Uh. He did express racist and anti Semitic attitudes at times, um, but maybe no worse than other people did at the time. That doesn't excuse it, obviously, but as far as just

sort of putting him in a time and place. But you know, he also traveled all over the world and experience all different types of cultures, and I don't think did so with disdain, right. Um. We talked also Chuck about um uh Salima and the the law of Salima um, and there's a very famous like passage from it. Well, there's really just kind of three laws for Thalima. But the one that that people um cite most frequently and is actually, I guess inscribed on the vinyl of led

Zeppelin's third album, appropriately called led Zeppelin three. Um, it's uh, it's do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. Yes, And if there's ever been a string of words more right for misinterpretation, it is that one. Yeah. I think a lot of people say he's basically saying, uh, there are no consequences, just do whatever you want and uh, which is um. And we should point out he he

was never a Satanist. He was called that at times, and I think when people think of Alistair Crowley, probably because of Azzi and Um, people think he was a Satanist, but he never was. And he kind of used that a little bit to get some attention, but he was never into Satanism. Um. But the reason I mentioned that is uh to do with that quote, like apparently he did not mean it that way, like you can just do whatever you want as long as you're making yourself

happy and uh, go not with God, but go with yourself. Well, what I saw was that he's saying do without wilt, meaning like your purpose in life is the purpose in life, like figuring out what your purposes and applying your full self to it. Is Is it that that's the whole of the law. That's that's what that that meant to him? Um. He also said the law love is the law love under will, meaning like to to find love and to

be a loving person under like. Secondary to the idea that figuring out what your purpose in life is um. So then loving loving your purpose and learning to love by carrying out your purpose. And then um thou hast no right, but do thy will, which means just you really should be doing those first two. Yeah, so um,

those that that was like the law of Thalima. But like like you're saying, like he's frequently considered a Satanist even though he never was, and like the people are like he didn't have any regard for consequences and he kind of didn't. But that's not really what that Thalie mc law was saying. So he was very much misinterpreted and reinterpreted, um, and that especially started I think he died. He was very very no notorious while he was alive, um,

but when he died, not many people showed up. The papers covered it. But then that was seven. He just kind of, um fell out of public consciousness from what I understand, until nineteen sixties seven when he made a surprise cameo on the cover of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album. Yes, the very famous album cover with a which was a collage of many many famous people

and Alistair Crowley was right in there. Apparently John Lennon um enjoyed his writings, as did Jimmy Page and Timothy Leary and you know his influence was was pretty great in what would end up being sort of the the hippie uh experimental drug culture of the nineteen sixties. Uh. They would invoke Alister Crowley's name here and there for sure. Uh. So, you know, for someone who UH would probably not be a blip on the radar today, Uh, he had a

lot of lasting influence and still does. And the apparently also the New Age movement that really started to blossom in the eighties and has been kind of revived today. Seventies and eighties, I should say, UH found his roots in the fifties, and those people were directly influenced by Crowley. Crowley's followers. UM. So he was very much the father of the modern New Age movement and all of its

preoccupation with occultism and mysticism. And you mentioned um the you mentioned how had he had he had a chance to be like al Ron Hubbard, he would have grabbed it. And I agree with you, I think he would have. But there's apparently a story that even the scientologists confirmed, but they they interpreted it differently, UM, that l Ron Hubbard was actually UH an acolyte, a follower of um

of Alistair Crowley's immediate air. So like who they founded the agap A Lodge, and Ron Hubbard was there performing magic with another guy, Jack Parsons, who founded the Jet Propulsion Lab, who was a big time Crowley acolyte um. And the scientologists say l Ron Hubbard was there trying

to destroy this this church from the inside. But a lot of people say no, this is actually where all round Hubbard started to get his ideas for scientology, and and that's where it grew from, was from Crowley's influence. You could draw some parallels, that's for sure. Yeah, one or two. So that's it. How do you feel like, did you take a bath? Yeah? I'm with you. I kind of do too. Um, okay, well we made it

through Alistair Crowley everybody. And since Chuck said he needs to take a bath and I agree, it's time for a listener mail. I'm gonna call this repping at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. This is from Evan

and Kaylee. Evan Weaver from Harrisonburg, Virginia sophomore James Madison University and his girlfriend Kaylee Wagner went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and he says this on our way there, we re listened to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame podcast to build the anticipation once there, and when we finished looking through all the exhibits, we found ourselves at a station where we could design custom

band logos and print stickers. Kaylee and I decided to make some of these stickers based on our favorite band names from the podcast. Awesome uh. They print two copies of the sticker, one to take home, another two place on the walls of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Needless to say, if you ever visit there and find stickers with the band names Worm, Burden and Itch Scratch Cycle, that's awesome. You know who put them there? Yeah, Evan and Kayley. That is huge. We need to get this

to be a thing that Evan and Kayley started. Every visitor needs to do this. Attention stuff you should know listeners, including the New Twins. If you ever go to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, will you follow in Evan and Kayley's footsteps for us? It would be awesome. Yeah. Our goal is to one day take over the real band names. There so many stuff you should know, faith, that would be wonderful. See, that's a great exhibit that's way better than you know. Jimmy Pages mailbox from bowl

Skin House behind plexiglass. You know. Oh, I so wish that was there. It maybe it maybe that's where I got my post. So thanks a lot, Evan and Kaylee, not just for the email, but for starting what we can only hope is a Stuff you Should Know tradition to last for years and years and years. Uh. And if you want to be like Evan and Kaylee and start a new tradition, or even if you just want to get in touch and say hi, you can email us too at stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.

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