Page 50 - All About History - Issue 72-18

Black magic

a h exameter: like Jeremy Taylor. ‘Aleister another regular, if rebellious, young man –
Cro afterwards, he was a keen devotee of the mystical
owley’ fulfilled these conditions and Aleister
is the Gaelic form of Alexander. To adopt it world. It’s thought that he enjoyed a homosexual

ould satisfy my romantic ideals.”
wo liaison while on holiday in Sweden, although
In line with his new identity, Crowley this was never confirmed. Whatever the case,
developed new interests – chess and
d Crowley returned a changed man, apparently
mountaineering among them, both of which
m comfortable with being bisexual at a time when
Crowley’s best-known work, The Book heindulgedafterbeginningadegreein this was generally deemed abhorrent. He then
h
of the Law, which contains many of
struck up a relationship with Herbert Charles
p
philosophy at Trinity College, Cambridge.
his early philosophical thoughts
He also wrote poetry for student
Footlights Dramatic Club, and the two men
newspapers such as The Granta and Pollitt, the president of the Cambridge University
n
Cannta were a couple for two years, eventually
ntab, switching his degree to
Ca
glish literature.
Eng breaking up when Crowley’s
I In 1896,attheageof21,he interest in Western esotericism
The
dured another paradigm
end became all-consuming.
Kanchenjunga
cha The final opportunity for
ange. Before this point
owley had been just
Cro climb was conquered Crowley to pursue a ‘normal’
in 1955, fifty years career came and went in
after Crowley’s 1897 when he travelled to
unsuccessful Russia in the employ of the
British Secret Service, which
attempt
had attempted to enlist him as
a spy. However, a spate of illness
deterred Crowley from the idea of
working for a living – no doubt helped by
the fact that he was a man of independent means
– and he resolved to pursue his obsession with
the occult, now a huge driving passion for him.

In 1898 he abandoned his university studies, not
Crowley bothering to sit his final exams, even though his
with his wife record indicated that he would probably do well if
Rose and
his second he had chosen to take them.
daughter Lola Where did all this unrest come from? Perhaps
Zaza, pictured
in 1910 Crowley’s desire to be a poet (he published several
poems in 1898, some of them of an erotic nature);
possibly his new interest in alchemy (he had met
a chemist, Julian L Baker, of similar views to his
own); or simply his occult readings.
Two books, AE Waite’s The Book of
Black Magic and of Pacts (1898) and Karl
von Eckartshausen’s The Cloud Upon the
Sanctuary (1896), influenced Crowley profoundly.
Pictured around 1890,
He took an important step into making these
Edward Crowley, as
he was then known, interests concrete by joining an occult society
showed no outward sign
known as the Hermetic Order of the Golden
of the chaos to come
Dawn, which had been founded in 1888. He was
introduced to the Order by George Cecil Jones,
Baker’s brother in-law.
Although Crowley was introduced to two
influential people through the Order – its
leader Samuel Mathers, and a magician named
Allan Bennett, who later shared Crowley’s flat
in Chancery Lane – his connection with the
organisation was rocked by disagreement. While
Bennett taught Crowley about the Goetia (the
summoning of demons), the ritual use of drugs
This 1935 image originally
ran in Picture Post in 1955 The hexagram symbol (in particular hashish, legal to use in Britain until
in an article titled ‘The Man of Thelema is unicursal,
WhoChoseEvil’.Butdidhe? meaning that it can be 1928) and Kabbalah (supposedly ancient Jewish
drawninasingleline
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