Aleister Crowley: The Wickedest Man in the World - 2002 Documentary

Famous for his occult writings, founder of the religion of Thelema, which became adopted by the Ordo Templis Orientis (O.T.O.) as well as the magical order Argenteum Astrum, the Order of the Silver Star.

ARTICLE: Documents the Life of the Bizarre Occultist, Poet & Mountaineer
Per­haps no one sin­gle per­son has had such wide­spread influ­ence on the coun­ter­cul­tur­al turns of the 20th cen­tu­ry as Cam­bridge-edu­cat­ed occultist and inven­tor of the reli­gion of Thele­ma, Aleis­ter Crow­ley. And accord­ing to Crow­ley, he isn’t fin­ished yet. “1000 years from now,” Crow­ley once wrote, “the world will be sit­ting in the sun­set of Crowlian­i­ty.” The self-aggran­diz­ing Crow­ley called him­self “the Great Beast 666” and many oth­er tongue-in-cheek apoc­a­lyp­tic titles. The British press dubbed him “The Wickedest Man in the World,” also the title of the above doc­u­men­tary, one of a four-part BBC 4 series on famous­ly sin­is­ter fig­ures called “Mas­ters of Dark­ness.” Crow­ley is per­haps most famous for his dic­tum “Do what thou wilt,” which, tak­en out of its con­text, seems to be a phi­los­o­phy of absolute, unfet­tered lib­er­tin­ism.

It’s no sur­prise that the par­tic­u­lar treat­ment of Crowley’s life above adopts the tabloid descrip­tion of the magi­cian. The documentary—with its omi­nous music and visu­al effects rem­i­nis­cent of Amer­i­can Hor­ror Sto­ry’s jar­ring open­ing cred­its—takes the sen­sa­tion­al­is­tic tone of true crime TV mixed with the dim light­ing and hand-held cam­er­a­work of para­nor­mal, post-Blair Witch enter­tain­ments. And it may indeed take some lib­er­ties with Crow­ley’s biog­ra­phy. When we’re told by the voice-over that Crow­ley was a “black magi­cian, drug fiend, sex addict, and trai­tor to the British peo­ple,” we are not dis­posed to meet a very lik­able char­ac­ter. Crow­ley would not wish to be remem­bered as one any­way. But despite his pro­nounced dis­dain for all social con­ven­tions and pieties, his sto­ry is much more com­pli­cat­ed and inter­est­ing than the card­board cutout vil­lain this descrip­tion sug­gests.

Born Edward Alexan­der Crow­ley in 1875 to wealthy British Ply­mouth Brethren brew­ers, Crow­ley very ear­ly set about replac­ing the reli­gion of his fam­i­ly and his cul­ture with a vari­ety of extreme endeav­ors, from moun­taineer­ing to sex mag­ic and all man­ner of prac­tices derived from a syn­the­sis of East­ern reli­gions and ancient and mod­ern demonolo­gy. The results were mixed. All but the most adept find most of his occult writ­ing incom­pre­hen­si­ble (though it’s laced with wit and some pro­fun­di­ty). His raunchy, hys­ter­i­cal poet­ry is fre­quent­ly amus­ing. Most peo­ple found his over­bear­ing per­son­al­i­ty unbear­able, and he squan­dered his wealth and lived much of life pen­ni­less. But his biog­ra­phy is inar­guably fascinating—creepy but also hero­ic in a Faus­t­ian way—and his pres­ence is near­ly every­where inescapable. Crow­ley trav­eled the world con­duct­ing mag­i­cal rit­u­als, writ­ing text­books on mag­ic (or “Mag­ick” in his par­lance), found­ing eso­teric orders, and inter­act­ing with some of the most sig­nif­i­cant artists and occult thinkers of his time.

As a moun­taineer, Crow­ley co-lead the first British expe­di­tion to K2 in 1902 (the pho­to above shows him dur­ing the trek). As a poet, he pub­lished some of the most scan­dalous verse yet print­ed, under the name George Archibald Bish­op in 1898. Dur­ing his brief sojourn in the occult soci­ety Her­met­ic Order of the Gold­en Dawn, he exert­ed some influ­ence on William But­ler Yeats, if only through their mutu­al antipa­thy (Crow­ley may have inspired the “rough beast” of Yeats’ “The Sec­ond Com­ing”). He’s indi­rect­ly con­nect­ed to the devel­op­ment of the jet propul­sion system—through his Amer­i­can pro­tégée, rock­et sci­en­tist Jack Par­sons—and of Sci­en­tol­ogy, through Par­sons’ part­ner in mag­ic (and lat­er betray­er), L. Ron Hub­bard.

Though accused of betray­ing the British dur­ing the First World War, it appears he actu­al­ly worked as a dou­ble agent, and he had many ties in the British intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty. Crow­ley rubbed elbows with Aldous Hux­ley, Alfred Adler, Roald Dahl, and Ian Flem­ing. After his death in 1947, his life and thought played a role in the work of William S. Bur­roughs, The Bea­t­les, Led Zep­pelin, the Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Ozzy Osbourne, Robert Anton Wil­son, Tim­o­thy Leary, Gen­e­sis P‑Orridge, and count­less oth­ers. Crow­ley pops up in Hem­ing­way’s A Mov­able Feast and he has inspired a num­ber of lit­er­ary char­ac­ters, in for exam­ple Som­er­set Maugham’s The Magi­cian and Christo­pher Isherwood’s A Vis­it to Anselm Oakes.

So who was Aleis­ter Crow­ley? A sex­u­al­ly lib­er­at­ed genius, a spoiled, ego­ma­ni­a­cal dilet­tante, a campy char­la­tan, a skep­ti­cal trick­ster, a cru­el and abu­sive manip­u­la­tor, a racist misog­y­nist, a Niet­zschean super­man and “icon of rebel­lion” as the nar­ra­tor of his sto­ry above calls him? Some part of all these, per­haps. A 1915 Van­i­ty Fair pro­file put it well: “a leg­end has been built up around his name. He is a myth. No oth­er man has so many strange tales told of him.”

As with all such noto­ri­ous, larg­er-than-life fig­ures, who Crow­ley was depends on whom you ask. The evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians I was raised among whis­pered his name in hor­ror or pro­nounced it with a sneer as a staunch and par­tic­u­lar­ly insid­i­ous ene­my of the faith. Var­i­ous New Age groups utter his name in rev­er­ence or men­tion it as a mat­ter of course, as physi­cists ref­er­ence New­ton or Ein­stein. In some coun­ter­cul­tur­al cir­cles, Crow­ley is a hip sig­ni­fi­er, like Che Gue­vara, but not much more. Dig into almost any mod­ern occult or neo-pagan sys­tem of thought, from Theos­o­phy to Wic­ca, and you’ll find Crowley’s name and ideas. Whether one’s inter­est in “The Great Beast” is of the pruri­ent vari­ety, as in the inves­ti­ga­tion above, or of a more seri­ous or aca­d­e­m­ic bent, his lega­cy offers a boun­ti­ful plen­ty of bizarre, repul­sive, intrigu­ing, and com­plete­ly absurd vignettes that can beg­gar belief and com­pel one to learn more about the enig­mat­ic, pan-sex­u­al black magi­cian and self-appoint­ed Antichrist.

ARTICLE SOURCE: https://www.openculture.com/2014/03/aleister-crowley-the-wickedest-man-in-the-world.html

VIDEO: https://old.bitchute.com/video/WIarOaoPRlH1/