Camp Gagnon - The Macabre Aleister Crowley: The Great Beast 666 and Father of the Occult

Episode Date: June 3, 2025

THE GREAT BEAST! Today, we look at the occult leader, Aleister Crowley, who is also know as the 666 Great Beast. We cover topics like forming The Hermetic Order of The Golden Dawn, that the Book of Law meant, Aleister’s contact with Egyptian God Horus, s*x magic, if Aleister Crowley was a spy and other interesting topics…WELCOME TO CAMP 🏕️Shoutout to our sponsors: Magic Spoon, Odoo and Evil Goods MagicSpoon, use promo-code ' CAMP ' for $5 off! : https://magicspoon.com/campOdoo, for a 14-day free trial to the following link! : Odoo.com/CAMPEvil Goods - Subscribe and save 30% off on beef tallow! : Evilgoods.com/CAMP👕🧢 GET YOUR CAMP DRIP HERE: https://campgoods.co/🏕️ Get Today In History Email Here (Free): https://camp.beehiiv.com/🎟️ 🎫 Comedy Tour Tickets Here: https://markgagnonlive.comTimestamps:0:00 Intro0:51 The Childhood of Aleister Crowley4:18 Studying at Cambridge6:21 Writing White Stains + Forming The Hermetic Order of The Golden Dawn9:52 Contact With Egyptian God Horus + The Book of Law13:15 Sex Magic17:44 Contacting LAM During Amalantrah Working24:17 Weird Scenarios 26:43 Was Aleister Crowley a British Double Spy?28:49 The Abbey of Thelema + Crowley’s Magic Drug Rituals + Accidental Casualty 38:12 Benito Mussolini kicks Aleister from Italy + Crowley’s Drug Addiction + Writing Final Books 40:29 Jack Parsons & L'Ron Hubbard’s Babalon Working + Foundation of Scientology & UFO Culture46:54 Crowley Thelemic Funeral48:06 Aleister Crowley’s Influence Beyond Death

Alistair Crowley, the wickedest man in the world. Imagine you're 11 years old and your own mother looks at you and calls you the beast from the book of Revelation. Not as like a joke, not playing around. She genuinely believes that her son might be the literal Antichrist walking around their home. That's how Edward Alexander Crowley's story begins. And honestly, it explains a lot about what comes next. You may have heard of this guy. You know, you probably heard him in Ozzy Osbourne songs or, you know, rock and roll lore.

But his real story is all the more fascinating. And today we go through everything where he's from, what he believes, and why he is so popular amongst occultists around the world. So sit back, relax, and welcome to camp. What's up, people, and welcome back to camp. My name is Mark Gagnon, and welcome to my tent where every single week we explore the most interesting, fascinating, controversial stories from around the world from all times. as always I'm joined by the very handsome six, five, and bustling muscles. Christos.

How are you, Christos? What's going on? All right, all right. So, let's begin our study of Alistair Crowley. I heard about this guy when I was just a kid. My mom would talk to me about Alistra Crowley and be like, yeah, he was very evil. He's a very evil man. He was a Satanist and he was an occultist and he would do all sorts of evil things.

And I don't really know anything else about him. To be honest, I never really dug into it. It just, like, didn't really affect my life. All I knew as a kid was that he talked to demons that maybe were aliens, which we'll get to in a second. And he was in like some rock and roll songs. And that's basically it. But like I said, the actual details of his life are far more interesting. So let's go back.

October 12th, 1875 in Leamington Spa, England. This guy, Little Edward. I feel like that's how Trump was. I would say it, little Edward, grew up in basically a cult. His parents weren't just Christians. Technically, they'd probably identify as Christians. But they were members of the Plymouth Brethren. Think fire in brimstone.

You're going to go to hell forever and burn for eternity. Cranked up to 11. No dancing, no movies, no theater, no plays, no novels, no fun, basically. His father, old Edward Sr., was a traveling preacher who spent his days warning people about damnation. The family, you know, they basically just like lived and breathed this apocalyptic Christianity, the kind where you're constantly waiting for the world to end at any given moment, and kind of secretly hoping that it happens soon.

But here's the thing about strict religious households is that they make sluts. Right? I mean, like, everyone that I know that's like just a sexual deviant group and a very repressive religious home, Except myself. I actually come to think of it, I don't even think my, my childhood was that repressed. Like, it wasn't, like,

it was very religious. My mom would take us to church all the time. But, like, there was no repression. Like, we talked about whatever, like, we had fun. Like, when I turned 16, and my dad went to, like, a club and, like, had a good time.

And, you know, the whole family was there. We got a table. You know what I mean? So, like, it wasn't repressed in that, in like, the traditional sense. But it was very religious. But when things are repressed, it gets, you know, haywire, right?

The tide of the leash, the harder they pull as they, as they say. So, young Edward, he started to rebel. And when I mean rebel, I mean like literally the craziest rebellion you can imagine. His father died when he was 11, which only made things worse for young, you know, Alistair Crowley. And by age 14, he was deliberately breaking every religious rule that he could think of.

His mother, Emily, would find him experimenting with what he called impure thoughts and generally acted like you know, the opposite of everything that she had tried to teach him. He'd masturbate while thinking about religious images, curse during prayers, and do basically anything to horrify his, you know, hyper-religious mother. When she called him The Beast, he didn't cry or apologize or do anything. He almost embraced it and wore it like this badge of honor. His mother doubled down on the religious intensity, convinced that Satan was literally like, possessing her kid, and the more she pushed religion, the harder he pushed back.

So by the time he reached his late teens, Edward had decided that Christianity wasn't just wrong, but it was actively harmful. He started calling his mother a brainless bigot to her face and announced that he was changing his name. From now on, he would be Alistair Crowley, spelled with a theatrical E.I because it looked more mysterious and kelm. It was his first real act of self-creation, right, turning himself into someone completely different from the, you know, brethren boy that his parents tried to, you know, raise him to be. So by 1895, Alastair headed to Trinity College in Cambridge, ostensibly to study philosophy, but Cambridge in the 1890s was where young men went to discover themselves. And Crowley got in all sorts of shit. He dove head first in poetry, writing about, graphic sexuality and blasphemy and everything that his mother would have just hated.

And he even explored his sexuality not only with women, but with men too, which could actually get you thrown into prison in Victorian England. But more importantly, he discovered the occult. It started with books. Crowley was always a big reader. And once he got his hands on works about magic and mysticism, esoteric philosophy, he couldn't stop. He devoured everything from medieval grim wars to contemporary works on spiritualism. He read about ancient Egyptian mysteries, Hindu tantra, even Buddhist meditation techniques. And this wasn't just academic curiosity. Crowley genuinely believed that hidden knowledge existed and he was determined to find it. So at Cambridge, he also realized that he had a gift, not just for writing but for making jaws drop. I mean,

this boy was a full-time jaw-dropper. He wrote a collection of erotic poems called White Stains that was so explicit, no mainstream publisher would touch it, literally. We're talking about detailed descriptions of literally every sexual act imaginable, mixed with religious blasphemy and, you know, all sorts of debauchery. And the poems weren't just dirty. They were spiritually dirty, treated,

Sex, you know, treating sex is like this sacred act that could connect you to the divine. Basically, you know, what we'll get into later is, you know, sex magic. He had to publish it privately and anonymously, but it circulated underground and established his reputation as someone willing to cross all the lines. So, by 1898, Crowley had left Cambridge without a degree, but was something a little more valuable. A mission. A clear sense of purpose. He saw religion as fake, morality as a cage, and normal life as dull. But what he really wanted was this truth, the spiritual truth, the kind that he thought, you know, Christianity had buried under guilt and rules.

And that's when he discovered the hermetic order of the Golden Dawn. This was a secret society that promised to teach genuine magical techniques. If you, you know, watched our episode on Secret Societies, you probably remember these guys. founded in 1888, the Golden Dawn was where London's occult elite gathered to study ceremonial magic. But not just that, alchemy, mysticism. Members included poets like W.B. Yeats, authors like Arthur Mackin, and other, you know, various intellectuals who believed that ancient wisdom could be rediscovered through study and ritual practice. So Crowley joined in 1898, just 10 years after it had formed, and he threw himself into the work. But if you thought this was just some regular old cult, you'd be wrong.

The Golden Dawn taught a complex system of correspondences between colors, numbers, Hebrew letters, astrological symbols, magical operations, all sorts of crazy stuff. And the students progress through grades, learning increasingly advanced techniques for what they called spiritual development. Crowley mastered the material pretty quickly. But he also started pushing boundaries, once again, that made other members uncomfortable. The problem was that Crowley treated magic like an extreme sport, where other Golden Dawn members approached rituals with respect and reverence. Crowley just went full throttle, going crazy and experimenting with drugs during the ceremonies and incorporating sexual elements that horrified the other magicians and all sorts of stuff. And the breaking point came in the 1900, specifically 1900. Crowley had advanced quickly through the Golden Don's grading system,

but when he tried to initiate himself into the highest level without proper authorization, the order's leaders had had enough. And they kicked him out for being too chaotic, too experimental, and frankly, just too weird for the group of, you know, these proper Victorian occultists. But being kicked from the Golden Dawn didn't slow him down. Now he was free to develop his own approach to magic without really anyone telling him what to do. He started traveling and mixing like Eastern philosophies with Western occultism and combinations that no one had ever tried. He studied yoga in India and practiced

Buddhism and learned about Taoism and Taoist alchemy in China. But he wasn't trying to find himself. Crowley was learning techniques building towards something bigger. He also started to experiment seriously with drugs as like a spiritual tool. So at the time, opium, hash, cocaine, mescaline, all of these substances were somewhat prevalent. I mean, I wouldn't say widespread, but you could find them, and it could alter your consciousness in a pretty significant way. And Crowley tried it in combination with magical rituals. He kept detailed reports of these experiments, treating his own mind as a lab for exploring these altered states of consciousness. Decades before psychedelic research actually became respectable. And all of this led to the spring of 19,

when Crowley was in Cairo with his wife, Rose. They were honeymooning, but Crowley, just, you know, being Crowley, he'd also arranged to perform magical rituals in the King's Chamber of the Great Pyramid. At this time, it was much easier to get access to, you know, these giant artifacts. So Rose, who normally showed, you know, little interest in her husband's little, you know, occult hobby, started acting strangely. She began talking about Horace, the ancient Egyptian god, insisting that he was trying to communicate something important. And Crowley was skeptical at first, right?

Rose didn't know anything about Egyptian mythology, but when she led him to a Cairo museum and pointed to a specific Stella numbered 666, which Crowley almost took as like a cosmic joke about his little nickname, that is when he started to. pay attention. Rose told him that Horace wanted him to prepare for a revelation and that he should sit in his hotel room at noon for three consecutive days to receive a message. And what happened next changed everything. April 8th, 9th, and 10th in 1904, Crowley sat in his Cairo hotel room and claimed to receive a dictation from a preternatural intelligence calling itself AWAS. This wasn't a gentle spiritual whisper either. According to Crowley, IWAS spoke in a clear, authoritative voice that seemed to come from just over his left shoulder. The entity dictated exactly 220 verses over three days, creating the text that Crowley would call the book of law.

The book claimed a new spiritual age had begun. The eon of whole. The eon of whole. It would replace Christianity's focus on guilt and self-denial with a new idea, with the central tenet being, do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law, not do whatever you want in a hedonistic sense, but discover your true will and follow it regardless of people, whatever people say. The book proclaimed that every person was like a star, a unique cosmic entity with its own perfect orbit that shouldn't be deflected by others, you know, moral systems. And Crowley spent the rest of his life trying to understand what his spiritual message really meant.

That's when he created a new belief system called Thelma. A Greek word means will. And it was basically a complete religion and philosophy built around the book of law. Unlike Christianity, which teaches people to deny themselves and serve God, Thelma flipped the idea. It told people to figure out who they truly are and then fully live that truth. Instead of treating the body as something sinful, Thelma saw physical life as something holy. And rather than following rules from the outside sources like churches or leaders or pastors or gurus, Thelamites were expected to become their own source of truth and guidance.

So by 1905, Crowley had developed a theory that would have made his Plymouth, brethren, mother die of shock, probably. He believed that sexual climax was the most powerful magical force available to human beings. From his perspective, at the moment of orgasm, you are completely present, your ego dissolves, and you experience something that feels transcendent. For someone convinced that consciousness could be expanded through ritual, this seemed like the obvious place to start experimenting. But this wasn't just about having like a good time and calling it spiritual.

Crowley approached sex magic with the same systematic intensity he brought to everything else. He started to, you know, incorporate bodily fluids like, you know, semen and vaginal secretions and blood, all into his magical rituals, believing that these contained concentrated life force that could power these supernatural operations. It's also worth mentioning when I say magic, I'm not talking about like stage magic or like card tricks. I'm talking about people that claim to actually have magical abilities, often spelled ending in CK. This is the type of magic that Crowley was interested, not trickery, but truly these types of rituals that would try to bring some type of supernatural force. And he would

perform these elaborate ceremonies where sexual acts became offerings to these Egyptian gods, with every climax, you know, carefully directed towards these magical goals. And his lovers weren't just partners. They became what he called scarlet women, named after the whore of Babylon from, you know, Revelation. In Crowley's theology, these women embody divine chaos and creative destruction. They were goddesses incarnate. Having sex with them was literally communing with the sacred feminine. Rose, his wife, the first scarlet woman.

But Crowley being Crowley, of course, monogamy wasn't going to contain his spiritual ambitions for a long time. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because you own a small business, or maybe you work for a small business, and I am about to make your life so much easier. Let's say hypothetically, you own a little furniture business, right? And you're struggling to keep track of the raw materials, the production schedule, invoicing clients, all that stuff. Well, that's why I want to tell you about Odo, okay? Because with Odo, it's an all-in-one business platform that streamlines every, everything. Now you have inventory management, you have manufacturing, you have accounting apps that

will make everything so simple. So now if you have a small business, you can monitor the inventory in real time, schedule production calls more effectively, and you can send invoices automatically all from one platform. Plus, you get a customized CRM to track sales leads and follow up with potential clients boosting your closing rates. Back in the day, you'd probably have to get, you know, some, you know, Ivy League operator, business person that's able to make everything happen for you. But now with Odu, it cuts it all out. And I'm sure you're thinking, okay, if this is going to make my life easier, give me more free time to spend with my friends, family, and playing softball, and make me more money. It must be crazy expensive. This is the good news. Listeners of this program are going to get a 14-day

free trial. That's right. You get two weeks with Odu completely for free when you go to Odu.com slash camp. That's right. Odu.com, use the promo code camp, and you will get four. 14 days for free. Just to try it out. See if you like it. If it's not for you, you don't need it, all right? But O-Doo is going to make your life so much easier. Everything you need, all in one place, save time, make more money.

Let's get back to the show. Each Scarlet Woman brought different energies to his magical work. There was Lila Waddell, a violinist who could improvise music during rituals and helped with Crowley's poems. Mary Desti, who helped him decode the numerical mysteries hidden in the book of law. and Jeannie Robert Foster, a journalist who actually documented their experiments. And these weren't random hookups. Crowley genuinely believed that each woman was chosen by these supernatural forces to help him unlock these levels of reality.

Now, remember, the sex wasn't separate from the magic. It was the magic. Crowley would design these elaborate ceremonies where, you know, these sexual positions corresponded with different planets and their influence and the timing of climate. max aligned with the astrological events and every fluid was collected and used in these follow-up rituals. It was this whole thing, right? He kept these detailed diaries regarding, you know, basically everything that happened and basically everything that happened, you know, spiritually and physically because he believed that the two were inseparable. So by 1912, Crowley's experiments caught the attention of Theodore Rousse, the head of the German occult organization called the Ordo.

Templi Orientis, also known as OTO. Bruce had heard rumors about Crowley's sex magic techniques and was convinced that he had independently rediscovered ancient secrets that the OTO claimed to preserve. He initiated Crowley into the order and eventually made him the head of the British branch. And this was perfect for Crowley, a group he could take over and mold to fit his own ideas. the OTO had started out kind of like a, like a, almost like a mystical or like a more mystical version of Freemasonry, full of these, you know, rituals and ranks you had to move through. But once Crowley was in charge, he pushed it way further. He rewrote the rituals to include real sex acts, treating them as these tools for magic. What used to be symbolic ceremonies became actual physical rituals meant to create real power. And at the top of Crowley's version of the OTO, things got even more intense. He introduced what he called the Supreme Secret, a specific sexual technique that,

according to him, could create powerful magical energy and lead to these even greater supernatural results. And this wasn't just talk. He gave detailed instructions on how to use, you know, masturbation, oral sex, intercourse, and all, you know, different forms of sexual activity as actual principles. as actual prayer or like spiritual practice. And it wasn't optional. Members were expected to try these methods and report back what happened. Crowley believed that he was bringing back something ancient that Christianity tried to get rid of.

And he thought the early Christians had purposely buried these ideas of sex magic, which, you know, led to centuries of shame and repression around it. In his view, sex wasn't sinful. It was spiritual. His OTO rituals were meant to fix the divide between body and soul. by making people think that the bedroom was almost like a temple and that every climax was a connection with the divine. But this is not the craziest part.

Crowley's strangest and possibly most important magical experiment came in 1918 during his time in New York. It was called the Amalantra, or the Amalantra working. This was a series of rituals he designed to make contact with non-human intelligence. He did this by using a mix of sex magic, psychedelic states, and ceremonial invocations. Crowley intentionally aimed to open a doorway between these worlds.

And according to him, it worked, where something came through. And that something was Lamb, L-A-M. And the weird part is when Crowley sketched Lamb, based off of what he saw during the rituals, this is what he drew. Now, what's strange about this image on the screen is that it kind of resembles like a gray, what people would describe like an alien as.

But what's interesting is that this was done in 1918. The earliest depictions of the grays that we sort of know come post-World War II. They come really with the abduction of Benny and Barney Hill. And that that is really when this idea of like these, you know, big-headed, you know, big-eyed, alien things really comes into the fold. And so the idea that he would draw this in 1918 stands out as, you know, a pretty strange, a strange way to describe this non-human intelligence that he spoke with.

So again, you can see this oversized head, you know, you got these strange sort of eyes, this small mouth and nose. And again, this was 1918 decades before Roswell, you know, Betty and, Barney Hill in the 1960s, before aliens or E.T. or Spielberg, any of these people actually put these ideas into the cultural zeitgeist. And Crowley didn't call Lamb an alien, right? He called it a preternatural intelligence, his words, something that existed outside of normal reality, acting as a gatekeeper between dimensions. Maybe even, you know, when people take DMT and they go into a different place they see machine elves.

There's a thing you often hear people describe. These little like gobblingy type creatures. Maybe they look like that as well. Who knows? So he, again, calls Lamb, this sort of gatekeeper that exists between, you know, these dimensions. It's the same way he described, Iwas, the being that he encountered in Cairo that actually gave him the, you know, the book of law. So according to his journals, Lamb communicated telepathically and gave him,

cryptic messages, you know, about consciousness, time, and the structure of reality itself, Crowley believed that Lamb stood at the threshold between worlds and that by engaging with you, you could reach even stranger entities. So fast forward to modern times. Some UFO researchers think that this was the start of it all. The first documented contact with whatever's been abducting people, showing up on radars, going through bedroom windows, sucking up cows. The idea idea that Crowley, through his experiment, opened a portal that was never fully closed. Even Crowley seemed to think that he had tapped into something major. He created a group called the Cult of Lamb to continue the work and spent years trying to chart what he called the

tunnels of set, invisible routes between dimensions that beings like, you know, Lamb could travel. Now, was Lamb an alien, a demon, just a figment of, you know, Crowley's drug-fueled imagination. No one knows, but the image he left behind and the sort of strange parallels to the modern abduction stories that we hear may get one of the most haunting chapters in occult history. So by 1918, Crowley had pushed magic further than pretty much anyone before him. He wasn't just messing around with spells. He built an entire belief system around sexual freedom, you know, contacting other entities, breaking through the limits of consciousness. He had gone from just, you know, being some rebellious poet with a grudge against,

you know, his upbringing to being a legit magical practitioner mapping out ideas that wouldn't hit mainstream psychology or, you know, spiritual circles for decades. And at this point, he had followers all over the world, experimenting with the same stuff, trying to reach the same places. Whether people thought he was a genius or, you know, a crazy person, Crowley was exploring territory that no one else dared to touch. But Crowley wasn't just turning heads in the occult world. Other people were starting to notice, too. His pro-German writings during World War I had made him a target back in Britain. His sex magic was freaking out polite society and his drug use was getting harder to ignore. The guy who claimed that he could talk to alien intelligence was now on the

radar of governments and journalists who thought he might be dangerous, or, you know, at least just completely unhinged. And all of that pressure didn't stop him at all. If anything, it pushed him into the next chapter of his life founding the Abbey of Thelma in Sicily, a place where his philosophy of do what thou wilt would be put to the ultimate test and nearly tear everything apart. So by 1914, Crowley had created enemies in multiple continents and World War I was about to give him the perfect opportunity to make even more. When the war broke out, Crowley happened to be in New York, officially stuck there because of the conflict. But in reality, he was kind of enjoying the chaos. Instead of doing what most people expected, you know, heading home to support Britain, he did something that shocked even the people who already hated him.

He started writing pro-German propaganda for American readers. The articles bashed the British Empire as corrupt and praised German efficiency and making arguments that to some looks like treason. But here's where it gets interesting. A lot of intelligence historians now believe he was actually working as a British double agent the entire time. The theory is that MI6 or British naval intelligence recruited him precisely because he already had a shady reputation. I mean, who would ever expect, you know, the wickedest man in the world of being a loyal spot? right his pro-German articles were so over-the-top ridiculous that some believe that they were meant to undermine German propaganda by making it look foolish. If that's true, you know, then Crowley wasn't just straight to the pot. He was weaponizing his own persona to troll or dissuade an entire nation. Right. If you think about it, you know, this guy, the wickedest man ever, this crazy guy that's doing drugs, talking to people, if he likes Germany, then, you know, I can't be, you know, I can't be a supporter of Germany. kind of smart. Now, sure, the evidence is mostly circumstantial, but it's interesting to engage with. Crowley had ties to British intelligence through his old Cambridge connections, and the

articles he wrote were filled with subtle mistakes and, like, these weird exaggerations that made them come off more like parody in a way. And the biggest clue after the war, nothing happened to him. No charges, no trial, not even like a slap on the wrist or like a fine, nothing. Either they were incredibly forgiving, I doubt, or they knew exactly what he was up to the entire time. So by 1920, Crowley was ready for his next experiment. He developed a complete philosophical system in Thelma, tested radical magical techniques through the OTO, and survived this wartime controversy that would have destroyed anyone else. Now he wanted to create a living lab where his ideas could be, without interference from society, and he found the spot. This is in Sicily, a villa called

Santa Barbara that he renamed the Abbey of Thelma. And the Abbey wasn't just some house. It was Crowley's attempt at a utopian community, fully built around this idea, this motto, do what thou wilt. The people who lived there weren't just roommates. They were part of an experiment in radical freedom. They followed their desires without guilt or moral rules and performed daily magical rituals and treated everything from eating to sex to meditation as a part of this spiritual path and the place looked like it i mean crowley painted the walls with wild murals gods goddesses sexual scenes occult symbols all sorts of stuff and you know a full-blown visual map of his belief splashed across all the rooms life at the abbey was all about what crowley called

the great work basically figuring out who you truly are and growing into that But this wasn't just some vague spiritual idea. Crowley had put together intense rituals that were meant to take people to the edge of their physical and mental limits. The morning ritual was called the Lieber Resch and required residents to greet the sun at dawn by facing east, to raising their arms, and reciting, Hail unto thee who art raw in thy rising, even unto thee who art raw in thy strength. evening rituals were more intense inspired by ancient Egyptian practices. People gathered in a dimly lit room where Crowley dressed in robes and headpieces led the ceremony. He called on gods like Babylon and chaos while couples had sex and others chanted believing that energy would be created

and this could bring this spiritual force into the room. And the most shocking ritual was the mass of the phoenix where participants would make small cuts in their arms, their chest, with sacred knives collecting the blood in these ceremonial cups. And they'd mix this blood with wine and drink it while reciting, I am the Lord of Thebes. And I, the inspired fourth speaker of Mentu, for me, unveils the veiled sky, the self-slain, Unc Afna Konsu. The idea was that blood contains a light force that could be consumed

and basically get this magical power. It's basically being a vampire disguised as like a religious ceremony. And when you read the text or when you're reading even like the, you know, the incantations or the rituals, you're just a little bit like, is this like Renaissance Fair? Like it feels a little Game of Thrones, right? You're kind of reading it. You're like, all right. But he took this shit completely seriously.

And maybe it works. Again, I don't know. I never talked to an alien. He did. Crowley, he also, you know, instituted what he called the Gnostic Mass, which was a parody of Catholic Communion where the Eucharist was replaced with cakes made from bodily secretions. And the priest and priestess would engage in sexual intercourse at the altar with their combined fluids mixed in small cakes that the congregation members would then consume as a sacrament. Drug rituals followed the same pattern.

Participants wouldn't just smoke hash recreationally. They'd fast for days. consume precise measured doses while invoking specific Egyptian deities, then spend hours in darkened rooms recording their visions in these magical diaries. Crowley believed that different substances opened pathways to different spiritual realms, so he'd combined multiple drugs and cocktails designed to produce the specific type of mystical experience. Then there's the ritual that everyone had to go through. Newcomers would be blindfolded, stripped naked, and led through a series of chambers where they'd experience this simulated death and rebirth. They'd drink bitter potions

that induce vomiting, submit to being tied up and symbolically tortured and swear oaths of absolute obedience to Crowley. This wasn't for abuse. It was the newcomer to shed his old life and be reborn, or at least that's what Crowley said. But the Abbey's most intense practice was what Crowley called Crossing the Abyss. A symbolic, rich, meant to shatter the ego and reveal a person's true will. It wasn't just meditation or incense. Some participants underwent days of isolation, fasting, mind-altering substances to break down their sense of self. The goal was spiritual rebirth through ego death, but not everyone came out the same.

Some were never really quite right ever again afterwards. And there were rumors of permanent psychological damage for those who were. weren't ready. It was during one of these extreme blood rituals that tragedy struck. In February 1923, Raul Loveday, a young Oxford student who'd arrived with his wife, Betty May, participated in a ceremony where participants cut themselves and drank each other's blood from a shared bull. The bowl hadn't been properly sterilized between uses, and within days, Love Day was suffering from acute enteritis, a severe intestinal infection that his drug weakened immune system couldn't fight off. So within weeks, Love Day was dead.

The exact cause was disputed, but the combination of poor sanitation, drug use, and the physical stress of intensive practices had clearly weakened his system beyond recovery. His last words, according to witnesses, were a delirious repetition of magical formulas that Crowley had taught him. Betty May, his wife, devastated and furious, fled Sicily and went straight to the British press with stories that made the Abbey sound like, you know, this combination between like a brothel and a death cult and a drug den. She described the blood rituals and sexual ceremonies involving multiple partners and the drug orgies that lasted days. And the tabloids just went crazy.

I mean, they were running headlines about the man we'd like to hang and a cannibal at large. And the media, to be honest, they blew the story out of proportion, and it worked in Crowley's favor. I mean, papers all over Europe ran with these claims of satanic rituals and sacrifices and demons. And Crowley became famous, I mean, for all the wrong reasons, but he didn't care, right? Parents warned their kids about him. Governments kept tabs on him. And even other cultists started backing away from his now infamous reputation. And the final blow came from an unlikely source.

Benito Mussolini. Yes, that Mussolini. What's up, guys? We need to talk skincare. That's right. If you've ever heard me on flagrant or even on this show, I have talked about my love for beef tallow. Yes, I'm not talking about some, you know, lab-made sludge with 39 syllables and a bunch of chemicals and stuff. I'm talking about good old-fashioned beef tallow. Just, yes, it's cow fat. I know. It sounds crazy, but there's a reason that people have used this for, thousands of years. This is the moisturizer that your ancestors used before, you know, big lotion and chemicals and pharma companies came and messed it all up with seed oil, scams and chemical cocktails, all right? Tallow has been used for thousands of years. The ancient Egyptians walking through the desert, they put on beef tallow to make their skin look good and feel good and not crack and actually hold up in the elements. Greeks and Romans, they used it to heal wounds and keep their skin from looking, you know, like papyrus. And even your great, great grandma, she probably used it.

I don't know. And here's a great thing with beef towel. It's got a bunch of, you know, fat-sliable, you know, vitamins, A, D, E, and K. And it actually mimics your skin's natural oils because it comes from a living thing. That means your body recognizes it and says, oh, yeah, this is good stuff. And you don't have some crazy reaction. And, you know, not like the $90 serums that smell like eucalyptus or whatever. I use it. My wife steals it. My baby uses it. Everyone in the family looks good and feels good with the power of beef tallow. So right before bed, I literally just take like a little fingerful, wipe it in my hands and rub it on my face and you kind of spread it in evenly. It comes in a bunch of great flavors. It smells amazing. And when I wake up, I feel moisturized and refreshed. And if you're interested, you can go now and get the best beef tallow on the market. I'll be honest, all beef tallow is basically the same.

You know, it all is great stuff. It's all very natural. This one is natural just like the rest. But this one is 30% off when you go to evil goods. That's right. when you go to evil goods you subscribe just click the link at the top of the video description or go to evil goods.com slash camp do it for your skin do it for the cow do it for your ancestors all right let's get back to the show as he worked to tighten his grip on italy musilini wanted to appear

morally strong and having a british occultist running this drug-fueled sex commune where people die in sicily didn't really help his whole vibe right so by april 1923 the government gave crowley 24 hours to get out of Italy for good. And Crowley didn't fight back. He was like, yeah, you got me. He packed his few remaining possessions and departed Sicily, leaving behind his cult or, you know, whatever you want to call it. And now kicked out of Italy and unwelcome across Europe,

Crowley entered the last chapter of his life as this sort of occult magic exile. Years of heavy drug use were catching up to him, and, you know, his finances were a mess, and his name was too tight. toxic for any normal job. But even as his life fell apart, his ideas started to take on a life of their own. So by his final years, Crowley poured what was left of himself into writing and producing some of his most influential work. At this point, he was broke, addicted to heroin, yet still writing books that occultists used today. His daily routine was a mix between addiction and productivity. He'd start the day with heroin, you know, just to stop the shakes,

then used a little bit of cocaine just to kind of focus and write for a few hours. And then in the afternoon, he would, you know, maybe be using like opium or hash to spark up mystical ideas, followed by slightly more heroin in the evening to dull the pain. And then this cycle went on daily and weekly and monthly and yearly. And he documented it all in his magical diary, treating his drug use like a personal, you know, experiment. This is when he wrote some of the most powerful and disturbing books like magic without tears. and the book of Tooth, which contain insights into consciousness and reality that wouldn't be matched by, you know, a lot of academic researchers even for a long time. But alongside the deep insights were the signs of decline. I mean, everything from paranoid rants about these imagined enemies and delusions of persecution and the kind of warped thinking that comes from years of spending, you know, time convinced that you're in direct contact.

with these other worldly beings, it seemed like Crowley was losing it. What's remarkable is that even in this deteriorated state, Crowley was attracting new followers who would carry on his ideas into completely unexpected territory. I mean, one of the most significant was a young American rocket scientist named Jack Parsons. He discovered Crowley's work in the 1930s. It became convinced that magical rituals could literally contact alien intelligence. And Parsons wasn't just dabbling in the cult. He was a serious scientist.

Like, that was his job. He helped pioneer rocket propulsions at Caltech, co-founded the jet propulsion laboratory, and developed solid fuel tech that NASA still relies on today. But outside the lab, he was an all-in Crowley occultist. At night, he would host these elaborate, you know, philemic rituals at his Pasadena mansion, mixing, you know, the science. with full-blown occult practices. I mean, here's a picture of him, holding a flashlight. So, I mean, if that isn't,

if that isn't, you know, just a full-on indicator of who this guy was, yeah, Jack Parsons, the famed, you know, the Phthalamite, the Crowley follower. Yeah. The link between, you know, these rocket scientists and occultism sounds kind of weird. But to Parsons, it made a ton of sense.

Rockets broke free from Earth's gravity. Magic breaks free from the, the limits of the mind. They both are pushing boundaries outwards, you know, dealing with these powerful, unpredictable forces and both demanded a lot of precision and a lot of guts. For Parsons, there was no contradiction in, you know, crunching fuel formulas by day and then summoning these Egyptian gods by night. It was all the same quest. Stuck in London and low on cash, Crowley was thrilled to have this, you know, wealthy American follower like Parsons. like sending him money. And they actually kept in close contact. Crowley dished out detailed

magical instructions and Parsons would write with some updates in his experiments, maybe a little bit of cash. And to Crowley, Parsons was basically a remote lab, someone who could try out these costly rituals that Crowley was too broke or worn out to himself. So by 1945, Parsons decided to attempt Crowley's most ambitious magical operation. This was the Babylon working, a series of rituals designed to summon the scarlet woman prophesied in the book of the law. This wasn't just about contacting, you know, this spiritual woman. Parsons believed he could literally incarnate the goddess Babylon in human form, creating a divine being who would, you know, usher in Crowley's new Eon. For this operation, Parsons recruit an assistant who would become

one of the most controversial figures in the 20th century. This assistant, his name was Elron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology. At the time, Hubbard was just a struggling science fiction writer with an interest in the occult, but he threw himself into Parsons' magical work. Together, they performed weeks of intensive sexual magical rituals using techniques that Crowley had developed during his years in the Abbey. The Babylon working was a series of intentional, you know, rituals where Parsons and Hubbard tried to summon a goddess using sex and symbolism and altered states, all the things that Crowley had taught them. And they set up rooms with Egyptian-style decorations and performed long invocations and used sex as a tool to build the energy that they believed was needed.

Parsons believed the ritual worked when he met Marjorie Cameron, a red-haired artist who, to him, perfectly embodied, you know, this wild divine energy he had been trying to summon, I mean, this horny motherfucker, he became convinced that she was the one, that she was the, you know, the scarlet woman that he was looking for. And their relationship quickly turned into this intense romance and spiritual worship. But back in England, Crowley was skeptical of the whole thing, right? He couldn't help, you know, being curious about these bold claims that he was hearing. But, you know, Crowley, over here being like, yo, did a giant piece of smoke and a woman come out of like a closet or something? He's like, no, no, I met this girl on the train. He's like, dude, that's not, can you focus?

I'm trying to, I'm trying to perform magic and Parsons was like, dude, I've met this baddie. This absolute joint. So the Babylon working didn't end the way that anyone really expected. So Hubbard took off with a large sum of Parsons money and his girlfriend leaving Parsons, not only broke, but single. And there was something even stranger. Some theorists believe that the rituals, Parsons, and Hubbard performed didn't just mess with their personal lives. They maybe, or literally, opened a doorway, a portal they claim that let extraterrestrial entities start interacting with humans more often. Whether that's wild speculation or not, one thing is clear that the late 1940s was the start of modern UFO culture.

And strangely enough, many of those early alien encounter stories sound a lot like the visions and experiences Crowley had been writing about for years, beings of light and symbols and messages from beyond. Crowley's influence was also spreading through less obvious channels. His idea about expanding consciousness and exploring altered states started showing up in early psychedelic research, right? You have thinkers like Aldous Huxley, who was experimenting with mesculine in ways that echoed Crowley's magical experiences almost exactly. Exactly. At the same time, intelligence agencies were working quietly and studying his techniques, too, not for spirituality, but for their own potential and psychological warfare interrogation and mind control. Think about the operations such as MK Ultra, which would use LSD in the attempt to mind control people to do things against their will. So once again, Crowley's legacy was slipping into science, culture, and even espionage. I believe that. the song, Mr. Crowley by Ozzy Osbourne, is about this infamous man, one and the same. Crowley had died on December 1st, 1947, in a rundown boarding house in Hastings, England. According to those that were there, his final words were, I am perplexed.

After 72 years chasing the hidden truths of the universe through magic, drugs, sex, rituals, all that, even he wasn't sure. what it all added up to. His funeral turned into one final scandal. The British press expected a quiet burial, a final chance to, you know, bury the man in his legacy. But Crowley's followers had other plans. They wanted a public ceremony, reading aloud from the book of law and performing thellemic rituals right over his coffin. And death was just the beginning of Crowley's real influence. I mean, within decades, his face would appear on you know, the most famous cover in rock history, you know, Sergeant Pepper's, if we can pull that up.

His philosophy would inspire countercultural movements across the globe, and his magical techniques would be studied by everyone from NASA to pop stars seeking creative inspiration. So Crowley dies in 47, but his name does not die with him. By the 1960s, counterculture was like rocket fuel for Crowley's posthumous, you know, reputation, Suddenly a generation of young people that was rejecting the conventional religious experience started experimenting with psychedelic drugs and embracing sexual liberation. What does this sound like? Sounds a little bit like Alistair Crowley. And they basically began doing everything that Crowley had been preaching since 1904.

His motto, due as thou wilt, became the unofficial slogan for the hippie movement in the 60s, even though most of the kids chanting it had no idea. where it came from. But the real breakthrough came when rock musicians started discovering his work. These weren't casual fans. Major artists became genuinely obsessed with Crowley's magical philosophy and started incorporated into their music

and personas. I mean, Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin was probably the most serious Crowley devotee in rock history. In 1970, Page actually bought Crowley's former mansion, the Bullskine house on the shores of Lock

Ness in Scotland. This wasn't just, you know, a celebrity real estate purchase. Page was convinced that the house retained magical energy from Crowley's rituals and wanted to tap into that power for his own creative work. He filled the place with Crowley's books, magical artifacts, and even some of the original furnishings from Crowley's home. Page didn't just live in Crowley's house. He studied his magical system seriously enough, you know, to influence Led Zeppelin's music. The band's mysterious symbols, including Jimmy Page's personal sigil, that appears on Led Zeppelin's fourth studio album, were derived directly from Crowley's magical writings. I mean, if we can get an image here of the Zoso symbol, when Page played guitar solos that seemed to channel otherworldly energy, he genuinely believed that he was using techniques that Crowley had developed for contacting these supernatural forces. So on the back of this album, even on the t-shirt that I wear of.

on a regular basis, my favorite Led Zeppelin shirt. It has this symbol, the Zosos symbol. And it is arguably the most controversial symbol of, you know, the entire Zeppelin anthology. And one of the theories, you know, was found in the book, the Collective Works Volume 1 by Alastro Crowley, when a symbol was found that closely resembled the logo on one of Jimmy's pages. Jimmy Page never explained what the symbol was, and the only one he told was Robert Plant, who later forgot the meaning. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because you are a grown child. Yes, you're a giant man child, and you just love stuff in your face and all the sugary cereals.

He ate when you were a kid. When you were just a fat little eight-year-old, you would sit down on your couch and you would just eat these sugary cereals. And nowadays, you try to do that like I have. You feel terrible. You go, oh, yeah, my blood pressure is rising. I do get a hangover from eating these cereals that I ate when I was a child. And that's what I want to talk to you about Magic Spoon. This thing right here, freshly opened because I was just engorging myself.

Magic Spoon is all the flavors that you love that come from your favorite nostalgic cereals, flavors like fruity, cocoa, frosted. Do those sound familiar to you? Because legally, I can't say what they are, but those are the flavors that Magic Spoon has. And here's what's amazing about Magic Spoon. It's the same taste. It's all the flavor packed into every bite from those childhood cereals. But 13 grams of protein, zero grams of sugar, and four grams of net carbs. Yeah, imagine that.

13 grams of protein. This is protein pack cereal. So instead of being a little fat kid, you can sit down on Sunday morning watching cartoons and get freaking jacked. Yeah, you look like Ronnie Coleman or something. You keep on crushing these, you're going to be diesel as hell. So instead of being a little fat boy, you can be a giant strong man, but still keep your same habits of just sitting down and watching your cartoons.

And for the listeners of this program, if you go to magicspoon.com slash camp, that's right, magicspoon.com slash C-A-M-P, you're going to get $5 off your next order, five whole dollars that you can save and apply to therapy for figuring out your disgusting twisted childhood of stuff in your face with processed sugars and red dye 40 and stuff like that. But with Magic Spoon, you don't have to worry about any of that stuff. It's all good, 13 grams of protein, none of the sugar, four grams of carbs. Get it today. Magic Spoon on Amazon or at your nearest grocery store. Or you can go to magic spoon.com slash camp C-A-M-P for $5 off. And let's get back to the show, you fatty. But the moment that truly pushed Crowley into the mainstream of pop culture came in 1967. When The Beatles featured his face on the iconic cover of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band,

one of the great albums of all time. And there he is. second from the left on the very top row, surrounded by other cultural icons, the band wanted to honor. Paul McCartney later explained that they chose people who had shaped their worldview. And Crowley's rebellious philosophy

about breaking free from societal norms, clearly struck a chord. It was a subtle nod, but one that introduced millions to the Great Beast without ever saying a word. Now, think for a second. The most popular band in history put the face of the wickedest man in the world

on their most famous album cover. Teenagers who had never heard of occultism or Thelma were suddenly, you know, staring at Crowley's image every time they played their favorite record. David Bowie, as a matter of fact, took it farther than most. He didn't just reference Crowley. He tapped into his ideas, things like transformation, identity, treating life as this type of art project

where, you know, these are fundamental ideas central to both men. With characters like Ziggy Stardust and then, you know, thin white Duke, Bowie constantly reinvents himself almost like Crowley's magical personas. For Bowie, it wasn't just about image. It was using this persona as a way to explore and reshape reality. Ozzy Osbourne, like I had mentioned before, he leaned into the shock value. His song, Mr. Crowley played upon the spooky, mysterious vibe

and helped cement Crowley's place in rock mythology. And even Iron Maiden gave him nods and songs about, you know, mysticism and the occult punk bands. Like, you know, they enjoyed his anti-authoritarian energy and rock artists more into the depth of his philosophy. Crowley's influence shows up all over music just in different ways. Sometimes as, you know, rebellious icon, other times as a symbol of creative freedom. But Crowley's influence was far beyond music. His ideas about consciousness were. you know, at the same time influencing academic research and the psychology and neuroscience.

Scientists studied altered states of consciousness were rediscovering techniques that Crowley had been doing since 1890. Specifically, researchers in creativity and P. Performance found that his methods for achieving, you know, a magical consciousness that he writes about in many of his books was wildly similar to what academics would call in modern times the flow state and the human potential of the 1970s and 80s, you could argue, was, you know, borrowing heavily from some of Crowley's techniques, often without acknowledgement, right? I mean, like rebirth therapy and a bunch of different new age practices used the same psychological methods that Crowley had developed for his magical initiations. The idea that you could completely transform your personality through,

you know, these intensive experiential workshops came from his magical curriculum. And the internet age has only expanded Crowley's reach. I mean, online communities focused on chaos magic and art and self-transformation ideas often treat him like, you know, a foundational figure. His books are easy to find online and his rituals and the techniques get shared in forums, Reddit threads, YouTube breakdowns, all sorts of stuff. And it continued to kind of spread and evolve a lot of his messages for better for worse. What started as this underground philosophy now goes through digital. spaces and remixes Crowley's work for this entire new generation. And his legacy is, you know, messy and polarizing. But to be honest with you, that's kind of what he wanted. Right.

Like that's like the whole point. He is chaos. He's the wickedest man to ever live. His own, you know, his own terms. Breaking, you know, ground on all these different things of magic and psychedelics and sexual liberation. This was all part of. of his plan in some way, right? He wanted people to view him as this sort of spooky occult figure. And love him or hate him, you can't ignore him. That's the point. Crowley cracked something open in Western culture that never closed, whether it was a portal to aliens or just his ideas about, you know, freedom and self-expression. Do what you will, not what society tells you. This core idea of Thelma slipped into everything from the...

the 60s onward, you know, from rock and roll albums to occult circles to self-help books. So, you know, the kid dubbed the Beast by his mom became just that. Maybe Satan, maybe something weirder. And even people who've never heard his name before are still, in a way, affected by his influence. I don't know. Seems like magic, if you ask me. So there you have it. That is the life of Alice.

Crowley. Now, if you are an occultist or someone that's fascinated by the occult, I would love to know, did I miss anything? Was there anything that we got wrong? And if you're just a casual observer of the strange and weird and weird, weird, weird rabbit holes, what did you think? What did you find about Crowley's work and how he kind of predicted the social fabric of the 1960s? He really called it out and knew exactly what was going to happen. And in a way, he was right. Was that just a lucky guest? Could you see the writing on the wall? Or did he get influence from some type of outside prophetic force. These are questions that I don't have the answers to.

But maybe you do. So drop them in. I'll be reading all of them. And once again, we do this every single week. I would love for you guys to join me in my tent to explore the weirdest, darkest, darkest stories from around the world from all times.

And without further ado, I will see you next time. Thank you for camping with us. Peace be with you. What's up, people? Quick announcement. If you are a fan of Camp Gagnon or Religion Camp, I have great news because we are dropping

history camp. That's right. This is the channel we're going to be exploring the most interesting, fascinating, controversial topics from all time throughout all history. Right? You probably know about Benjamin Franklin, uh, I don't know, Thomas Jefferson, Nicola Tesla. Interesting figures from history. And you probably learned about it in school and they were pretty boring, but not here. No. As you know, uh, I was raised by a conspiracy theory. So I'm going to be diving deep into all of the interesting, strange, occult and secretive societal relationships that all of these famous influential men from our shared past have. So if you're interested, please go ahead and subscribe to the YouTube channel. It will be pinned in the description as well as the comments.

And if you're on Spotify, this doesn't really apply to you, but these episodes will be dropping as well. Just go ahead and give us a high rating because it really helps the show.