14. The “Magick” Man
Aleister Crowley (1875 – 1947) was an English writer and occultist who claimed to be a magician. Not the stage tricks kind of magician, but the warlock, spells and sorcery type. An L. Ron Hubbard type before there was an L. Ron Hubbard, Crowley founded a religion in the early twentieth century, Thelema. He declared himself its prophet, and announced that the new faith’s goal was to guide mankind to a new age. A key principle of Thelema was that the twentieth century would usher in the “Aeon of Horus”, which would overthrow all current codes of morality and ethics. In the new age, people’s “True Will”, which they would discover via magick (how Crowley spelled “magic”), would be all that matters. Crowley summarized the Horus era’s ethics as: “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law“. Crowley’s magick religion included lots of carnal relations with his followers.
He called it “Sexual Magick”, whereby orgasms and bodily secretions were used as components of spells. A main precept was that all adherents should be completely open and uninhibited about intercourse, without social limitations or restraints. Followers should also expose their children to intercourse from infancy, and get them used to seeing all kinds of explicit activity. There’s a word for that, nowadays. In 1920, Crowley and his followers established a religious commune in Sicily, the Abbey of Thelema. It was not long before the perverse and weird goings-on there led to controversy, scandals, and denunciations, that became regular fodder for the British and Italian press. In response to the outcry, Italy’s government finally shut down the commune and evicted everybody in 1923. Crowley then hit the road, and split the final two decades of his life in travels between Britain, France, and Germany, to promote his religion.
