(No) Blue Plaque Trail:

Aleister Crowley

It’s not surprising that this infamous man has no blue plaque to mark his association with the town, but for our Halloween issue, and the 60th anniversary of his death here in Hastings, he seems an appropriate subject.

Born in 1875 in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, Crowley was an occultist, philosopher, writer and mystic, as well as a talented chess player and mountaineer. Gifted (or cursed) with an exceptional mind, the ends to which he used it, the beliefs he held and his unconventional hedonistic lifestyle brought him great notoriety and, eventually, a sad end. If Crowley had lived today he would be considered a member of the counter-culture, but in Edwardian times that concept didn’t exist and he was regarded as dangerously anti-social. The press famously dubbed him ‘the wickedest man in the world’ – a reputation that amused him and which he encouraged, but made his later life difficult.

Crowley grew up in a wealthy and zealously religious household under the influence of his father, a fanatical preacher of a puritanical Christian sect, who died when his son was just 11 years old. This seems to have been a turning point in Crowley’s life, after which his rebellious behaviour, denial of the Christian faith and the concept of sin drove his mother to dub him ‘The Beast’ – an epithet that Crowley would later use by choice. After a public school education he went to Trinity College, Cambridge where he neglected his studies in favour of mystic, occultist and magical texts and began to conceive of himself as destined for greatness and fame, not bound by the laws of lesser men. He became involved in an occultist movement, The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (whose members included a number of prominent men and women of the day) and travelled widely, immersing himself in the occult while studying Buddhist teachings, practicing yoga and meditation with the aim of contacting his ‘higher self’ or ‘guardian angel’ through magic rituals.

In 1904, during a trip to Cairo, Crowley claimed he finally made contact with his higher self, a being named Aiwass, who told him that a new magical age had dawned, that Crowley would be its prophet, and dictated to him a Gnostic text The Book of the Law, which Crowley wrote down. This text became the foundation of the philosophical, mystical and religious system that Crowley devised and called Thelema, central to which was the tenet ‘Do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the law’. Often taken as an incitement to indulge every whim, its true meaning within Crowley’s philosophical system is that each individual should find and fulfil their full potential and true destiny under their own free will. Magic was defined as any intentional act that moved an individual toward that particular goal, no matter how mundane, rather than the attempt to create miraculous happenings.

Crowley spent the rest of his life exploring and writing on the subject of Thelema. Waiting out the First World War in America, he was courted but eventually rejected by British intelligence, and responded by producing anti-British propaganda to help the Germans. In 1920, an outcast in Britain, he moved to Sicily to establish the notorious ‘Abbey of Thelema’. Its inhabitants, Crowley’s followers, were supposed to dedicate themselves to discovering and manifesting their own true will, but by this time Crowley was hopelessly addicted to both heroin and cocaine and the abbey was reportedly little more than a squalid hovel where unsanitary conditions led to the death of one of his followers, Raoul Loveday, after drinking bad water. Loveday’s wife returned to England and sold her story to The Sunday Express. In the kind of ‘tabloid frenzy’ we are familiar with today, the papers were soon full of reports of black magic rituals and scandalous acts supposedly taking place there. Crowley was expelled from Sicily in 1923 and returned to England.

Vilified by society, the notoriety he once courted became a great hindrance and he struggled to find publishers for his works. He was declared bankrupt after unsuccessfully suing the writer of a book that referred to him as a ‘black magician’ and in the years that followed his penniless existence and chronic heroin addiction took its toll as Crowley became increasingly isolated and out of touch with reality. In 1947, at the age of 72, he died of a respiratory infection while living alone in a Hastings boarding house. At his request he was given no memorial and his ashes were scattered in the wind.

Reading the contradictory mass of truth, lies and sensationalized fiction that has been written about Crowley, it’s difficult to come to a satisfying conclusion about him: an evil degenerate monster, spoiled rich boy rebelling against a repressive upbringing by playing a role, or gifted man striving misguidedly to achieve his own perfection and encouraging others to do the same? It seems likely each has some truth.