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He is the archetypal “Satanic black magician.” Or at least that is what the Western mainstream media to this day call Crowley. Well, maybe they will just dub him an “infamous occultist,” but only when they are feeling a tad less sensationalist. “Occultism” itself is a thoroughly modern and Western concept. The term was not coined until the 16th century of the Christian era, when Henry Cornelius Agrippa wrote his Three Books of Occult Philosophy. After all, the idea of “occult knowledge” did not make much sense at a time when practically all knowledge was occult, or “hidden” from the average man, who, until the invention of the printing press, remained wholly illiterate.

The guilds jealously guarded the secrets of their particular trade, yes, but even more so, the clergy held a monopoly over the sacred words of the Scripture, then available solely in the Latin translation of St. Jerome, decipherable only to the learned (clerks or clerics), whether read or spoken. Hoc est corpus (meum), in the ears of the priesthood the words of Christ at the Last Supper, became the prototypical magic words spoken by common tricksters and mischievous children. “Religion is magic, sanctioned by authority” is one of the more famous maxims of the Abbé Constant, otherwise known by his Hebrew nom de plume Éliphas Lévi. This 19th-century Parisian seminary graduate was incidentally the first person in history to call himself (or anyone else) un occultiste.

When Simon Magus asked Simon Peter for “this power, that on whomsoever I lay my hands, he may received the Holy Ghost,” to the shock of the itinerant magician the Apostle refused, exclaiming “thy heart is not right in the sight of God.” From that day on, the hitherto commonplace performance of miracles was to be the exclusive domain of the baptized and ordained churchmen. In the West, that is—in the East, the fakirs and holy men continued to be interchangeable and take students from all walks of life.

“Esoteric Buddhism” remained a contradiction in terms until popularized (first) in the West (and ultimately also in the East) by Helena Blavatsky and her Theosophical Society, established in the year of Crowley’s birth (and Lévi’s death) 1875. The fifty volumes of The Sacred Books of the East did not even begin to be issued by the Oxford University Press until four years after that. In fact, the first Buddhist mission to the West was only undertaken three decades hence by one of Crowley’s closest friends and mentors, Golden Dawn (and Theosophical Society) alumnus Allan Bennett, then known as Bhikkhu Ānanda Metteyya.

When Crowley claimed (and promised) higher spiritual attainment than that offered by any other system of enlightenment, he was addressing the Western, English-speaking, predominantly either Protestant or Roman Catholic, general audience of his time. Theosis had always been an end goal of the Eastern Orthodox, from whom the French neo-Gnostics ultimately received their ecclesiastical bona fides (tenuous as they were¹), and around the same period, Bennett was actively pursuing Buddhahood in the Southeast Asian Theravāda tradition.

Crowley’s competition was not New Agers, yoga studios, Transcendental Meditation, Wiccan covens, or even Theistic Satanism—none of these now ubiquitous movements had even been conceived yet. The Buddhist Society of Great Britain and Ireland, led in part by Bennett, was founded the same year as Crowley’s A∴ A∴, the Anthroposophical Society not until after Crowley had already joined the O.T.O. and Rudolf Steiner had already received a charter for the Antient and Primitive Rite of Freemasonry in Austria from its then head Theodor Reuss.

Crowley has been permanently branded by the media with the stigma of an “egomaniac,” ostensibly because he proclaimed himself to be none other than the dreaded Beast of Revelation. Except he never technically did—it was merely a persistent nickname given to the young, misbehaving Alick by his deeply religious mother, and by the time the papers got wind of the story, Uncle Al had long renounced the religion of his youth. As a boy, he might have not been “content to just believe in a personal devil and serve him,” but “wanted to get hold of him personally and become his chief of staff”; yet as a grown man, he was a dues-paying member of the Rationalist Press Association and an “intellectual Buddhist,” who as such did not believe in God and much less in Satan.

Even if one of Crowley’s countless literary aliases was “The Master Therion” (θηρίον being the Greek for a “little beast”), a few people even knew that he and Crowley were the same person, until it was spelled out in the Introduction to Magick in Theory and Practice (published as late as 1929). “My Grade as a Magus of A∴ A∴, my office as the Logos of the Aeon, the Prophet chosen to proclaim the Law which will determine the destinies of this planet for an epoch, singles me out in a sense, puts me in a class which contains only seven other names in the whole of human history. No possible personal attainment could have done this.” In fact, Crowley honestly believed he had attained higher illumination than any person ever before—at least while in the physical body.

Thought the A∴ A∴ was technically a continuation of the Golden Dawn, which borrowed its degree structure from earlier “Rosicrucian” organizations, most of its teachings, especially at the higher levels, originated in Eastern systems of attainment, as did the guru-shishya tradition it adopted. Crowley may have used Judaeo-Christian religious iconography for dramatic effect, but when it came to describing and analyzing the actual methods, Western terminology was simply not fit for the task. And once Crowley discovered “Sex Magick” through Reuss’ O.T.O.—apparently transmitted to the Order by two Hindu Tantrikas and an Arab Sufi—he gradually gave up traditional ceremonial magic altogether.

Nor is Crowley’s dictum “Do What Thou Wilt” without antecedent in the East. Even though it is usually only traced back to St. Augustine and Rabelais, the entire first part of the Bhagavad-Gītā is about one’s true purpose and the futility of attempting to dodge it. Indeed, the pan-Indian concept of dharma translates into “law” in quite a similar fashion as Crowley speaks of the Law of Thelema. The Vedic ātmavān, literally “a man with a self,” comes very close to how Crowley sees the Grade of Ipsissimus: “The Vedas mainly deal with the subject of the three modes of material nature. Rise above these modes, O Arjuna. Be transcendental to all of them. Be free from all dualities and from all anxieties for gain and safety, and be established in the Self.” (BG 2.45)

Crowley notoriously claimed to be the reincarnation of such Western notables as the above-mentioned Éliphas Lévi and the Borgia Pope, Alexander VI, but he also less famously traced one of his past lives to China in the figure of the Taoist Sage Gé Xuán (or Ko Yuen). Just as he put forth his translation of Le Clef des Grands Mystères of Lévi as his own Adeptus Exemptus thesis, his poetic paraphrase of Legge’s translation of Qingjing Jing of Ge Xuan was subtitled The Classic of Purity “first written down by me KO YUEN in the Episode of the Dynasty of Wu and now made into a Rime by me Aleister Crowley.”

Thanks to “Dr.” Israel Regardie, a Studio City chiropractor and a Golden Dawn revivalist, Crowley is mostly associated with the quasi-Judaic Qabalah of 777, but his teacher actually considered The Book of Thoth, or “A Short Essay on the Tarot of the Egyptians,” as his principal Qabalistic work. In fact, one of his proudest achievements was the reconciliation of Eastern and Western systems by incorporating the I Ching (or Yi King) into the Qabalistic tree of life: “All these correspondences of the Yi King are to be studied in that book (S.B.E. vol. XVI) and reference is here made to the text when important passages are too long to be conveniently quoted.”

Regardie, as a Neo-Reichian therapist and Crowley biographer, is also partly responsible for the popular notion that Crowley somehow subscribed to the so-called psychological theory of magic. Crowley famously prefaced his 1904 publication of Mathers’ translation of The Goetia with an introductory essay called “The Initiated Interpretation of Ceremonial Magic,” where he asserts, among other things, that the goetic spirits “are portions of the human brain.” These sorts of statements, as he explains in a secret instruction of the IX° of the O.T.O., were a bunch of nonsense written to throw “dust in the eyes of the profane.”

For good measure, he also added on the reverse title page a magical square from Abra-Melin whose purpose was to “negate magic,” apparently with the intent “to prevent improper use of the book.” So rather than it being pure malice or playful mischief or even the need to “guard the secrets,” it is entirely possible that the greatest sorcerer of his time simply did not think it a “good idea” for ordinary people to be dabbling in rituals of this type. Many of his writings, especially those aimed at general audiences, are replete with “blinds” such as these. Meanwhile, his Handbook of Geomancy expressly declares to be “printed for the information of scholars and the instruction of seekers,” and thus “certain formulae have been introduced into it, and omissions made, to baffle any one who seeks to prostitute it to idle curiosity or to fraud.”

Conversely, Crowley often advertises his Orders by adding statements such as its “practical use and the method of avoiding these pitfalls will be shown to approved students by special authority from V.V.V.V.V. or his delegates.” Or the ubiquitous “the reader may study the Symbolism of the [So-and-so] Degree in the O.T.O.” or “its full symbolism is only available to Initiates of the [So-and-so] degree of the O.T.O.” or “This is a doctrine only appreciable in its fulness by members of the [This-or-that body] of the [so-and-so] degree of the O.T.O.” or “These, as initiates of the [So-and-so] Degree of O.T.O. are aware, mean more than appears.”

Crowley was particularly aghast at the Spiritualism, mediumship, and seances en vogue during his time, writing that it “is not particularly easy to get the spirit of a dead man, because the human soul, being divine, is not amenable to the control of other human souls; and it is further not legitimate or desirable to do it. But what can be done is to pick up the astral remains of the dead man from the Akasha and to build them up into a concrete mind. This operation, again, is not particularly profitable. The only legitimate work in this line is to get into touch with the really high intelligences, such as we call for convenience Gods, Archangels, and the like. These can give real information as to what is most necessary for our progress.”

On the other hand, Crowley was quite fond of Mme. Blavatsky, so fond in fact that he recognized her as a Magister Templi of the A∴ A∴. However, he took a considerably dimmer view of her successors, going so far at one point as to try to take over the Theosophical Society, even though he had never been a member in the first place. The notion of ascended masters of the Great White Brotherhood guiding the destiny of the planet was a Theosophical one, as was the prophecy of the new Aquarian Age of enlightenment. Even the Westernized interpretation of the terms “left-hand path” and “right-hand path” derive from Blavatsky, rather than from the Tantric vāmācāra and dakṣiṇācāra traditions themselves.

Likewise, Crowley appears to have shared the Theosophical view of siddhis or paranormal abilities as a distraction on the path to illumination. In his Eight Lectures on Yoga, he writes “as the Yogi advances, magic powers (Siddhi the teachers call them) are offered to the aspirant; if he accepts the least of these—or the greatest—he is lost.” Yet, Crowley also warns of The Dangers of Mysticism: “Hundreds of mystics shut themselves up completely and for ever. Not only is their wealth-producing capacity lost to society, but so is their love and good-will, and worst of all, so is their example and precept. Christ, at the height of his career, found time to wash the feet of his disciples; any Master who does not do this on every plane is a Black Brother.

“The Hindus honour no man who becomes ‘Sannyasi’ (nearly our ‘hermit’) until he has faithfully fulfilled all his duties as a man and a citizen. Celibacy is immoral, and the celibate shirks one of the greatest difficulties of the Path. Beware of all those who shirk the lower difficulties: it’s a good bet that they shirk the higher difficulties too.” But Crowley goes even further: “It is critics who deny poetry, people without capacity for Ecstasy and Will who call Mysticism moonshine and Magick delusion. It is manless old cats, geldings, and psychopaths, who pretend to detest Love, and persecute Free Women and Free Men.”

“We of Thelema think it vitally aright to let a man take opium. He may destroy his physical vehicle thereby, but he may produce another Kubla Khan. It is his own responsibility.” Is it any wonder then that Crowley became so popular among the Sex, Drugs, and Rock ’n’ Roll crowd of the 1960s and ’70s? Yet Crowley also railed against Feminism and deemed Patriarchy the best basis for government. In fact, he intended “to make occult science as systematic and scientific as chemistry; to rescue it from the ill repute which, thanks both to the ignorant and dishonest quacks that have prostituted its name, and to the fanatical and narrow-minded enthusiasts that have turned it into a fetish, has made it an object of aversion to those very minds whose enthusiasm and integrity make them most in need of its benefits, and most fit to obtain them.”

It was “a public of more or less normal people” whom Crowley sought to recruit. “We do not want any more drifting ‘occultists.’ You want the great political leaders, great industrialists and people of that sort.” He wished the O.T.O. to “be put forward as a complete solution of the social problem not merely as an occult society. That is as far as the general public is concerned; keep the occult side of it for people who are already interested in the subject.” In fact, “to investigate the solutions indicated by The Book of the Law, and to utilize them to remedy existing difficulties, the appeal is only to technicians. Bankers, architects, engineers, biologists, chemists, doctors, must combine their knowledge and apply it to the discovery of the general practical formula of the Law of Thelema.”

1 In all mainline Churches, it takes three bishops to make a bishop, so even if the first Gnostic bishops were legitimate, none of the subsequent ones “consecrated” by them alone were.