| Biography: Edward
Alexander (Aleister) Crowley [rhymes with
"holy"] was born October 12, 1875 in Leamington
Spa, England. His parents were members of the Plymouth
Brethren, a strict fundamentalist Christian sect. As a
result, Aleister grew up with a thorough biblical
education and an equally thorough disdain of
Christianity.
He attended Trinity College at Cambridge University,
leaving just before completing his degree. Shortly
thereafter he was introduced to George Cecil Jones, who
was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
The Golden Dawn was an occult society led by S.L.
MacGregor Mathers which taught magick, qabalah, alchemy,
tarot, astrology, and other hermetic subjects. It had
many notable members (including A. E. Waite, Dion
Fortune, and W. B. Yeats), and its influence on the
development of modern western occultism was profound.
Crowley was initiated into the Golden Dawn in 1898, and
proceeded to climb up rapidly through the grades. But in
1900 the order was shattered by schism, and Crowley left
England to travel extensively throughout the East. There
he learned and practiced the mental and physical
disciplines of yoga, supplementing his knowledge of
western-style ritual magick with the methods of Oriental
mysticism.
In 1903, Crowley married Rose Kelly, and they went to
Egypt on their honeymoon. After returning to Cairo in
early 1904, Rose (who until this point had shown no
interest or familiarity with the occult) began entering
trance states and insisting to her husband that the god
Horus was trying to contact him. As a test, Crowley took
Rose to the Boulak Museum and asked her to point out
Horus to him. She passed several well-known images of the
god and led Aleister straight to a painted wooden
funerary stele from the 26th dynasty, depicting Horus
receiving a sacrifice from the deceased, a priest named
Ankh-f-n-khonsu. Crowley was especially impressed by the
fact that this piece was numbered 666 by the museum, a
number with which he had identified since childhood.
The upshot was that he began to listen to Rose, and at
her direction, on three successive days beginning April
8, 1904, he entered his chamber at noon and wrote down
what he heard dictated from a shadowy presence behind
him. The result was the three chapters of verse known as
Liber AL vel Legis, or The Book of the Law. This book
heralded the dawning of the new aeon of Horus, which
would be governed by the Law of Thelema.
"Thelema" is a Greek word meaning
"will", and the Law of Thelema is often stated
as: "Do what thou wilt". As the prophet of this
new aeon, Crowley spent the rest of his life working to
develop and establish Thelemic philosophy.
In 1906 Crowley rejoined George Cecil Jones in England,
where they set about the task of creating a magical order
to continue where the Golden Dawn had left off. They
called this order the A.'. A.'. (Astrum Argentium or
Silver Star), and it became the primary vehicle for the
transmission of Crowley's mystical and magical training
system based on the principles of Thelema.
Then in 1910 Crowley was contacted by Theodore Reuss, the
head of an organization based in Germany called the Ordo
Templi Orientis (O.T.O.). This group of high-ranking
Freemasons claimed to have discovered the supreme secret
of practical magick, which was taught in its highest
degrees. Apparently Crowley agreed, becoming a member of
O.T.O. and eventually taking over as head of the order
when Reuss suffered a stroke in 1921. Crowley
reformulated the rites of the O.T.O. to conform them to
the Law of Thelema, and vested the organization with its
main purpose of establishing Thelema in the world. The
order also became independent of Freemasonry (although
still based on the same patterns) and opened its
membership to women and men who were not masons.
Aleister Crowley died in Hastings, England on December 1,
1947. However, his legacy lives on in the Law of Thelema
which he brought to mankind (along with dozens of books
and writings on magick and other mystical subjects), and
in the orders A.'. A.'. and O.T.O. which continue to
advance the principles of Thelema to this day.
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