Otherworld - The Life of Aleister Crowley Pt 1: "The Great Beast"

Episode Date: March 10, 2025

Jack is joined by friend of the show, Wolf Fleetwood, for an in-depth journey into the wild and legendary life of Aleister Crowley—an English occultist, ceremonial magician, poet, novelist, painter, and mountaineer. This is the first installment of a multi-part series available exclusively on our Patreon. Aleister Crowley was an enigmatic and controversial figure, often shrouded in myth and mystery. Known as "The Great Beast 666" and dubbed "The Wickedest Man in the World" by the press, Crowley was an English occultist, ceremonial magician, and writer who dedicated his life to exploring the boundaries of the unknown. He claimed to have been contacted by a supernatural entity named Aiwass in 1904, who dictated The Book of the Law to him in Cairo, Egypt. This text became the cornerstone of Thelema, Crowley's spiritual philosophy, which proclaimed, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law," emphasizing individual will and spiritual liberation. Crowley was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, but his unorthodox methods and rebellious nature led him to establish his own esoteric orders, including the A∴A∴ and the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO). His rituals often involved elaborate symbolism, sex magic, and invocations of ancient deities, blending Eastern mysticism, Western esotericism, and his own unique vision. Crowley's life was a tapestry of scandal, excess, and intrigue—he was a mountaineer, poet, and spy, rumored to have worked for British intelligence during World War I. His legacy is a paradox: revered by some as a visionary and prophet, yet reviled by others as a charlatan or even a harbinger of darkness. To this day, Crowley remains an enigmatic figure, his influence echoing through occult circles, art, music, and popular culture, leaving many to wonder whether he was a misunderstood genius or a man who truly tapped into forces beyond human understanding. Part 2 is out now and Part 3 is coming later this week. Listen to those and the rest of the series by signing up for the Otherworld Patreon. Check out our Merch Follow us on: Instagram, TikTok, Twitter For business inquiries contact: [e-mail] If you have experienced something paranormal or unexplained, email us your story at [e-mail] To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to Otherworld. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. In this episode, we're going to begin diving in to the long, strange, and very complicated story of Alastair Crowley. He is known as the Great Beast, the Wickedest Man in the World. He is a self-proclaimed prophet of a new spiritual age, and a man who truly defies categorization. He was an occultist, a poet, a mountaineer, a professional. provocateur and a revolutionary thinker whose influence continues to ripple through culture, spirituality, and the arts. He is, I believe, the first one to start spelling magic with a K. He is on the cover of a Beatles album, and Jimmy Page actually bought and lived in Alistair Crowley's

former estate in Scotland for a while, very famously. Chances are you have heard his name before. Maybe you have seen a picture of him. You might know a thing or two about him, but maybe not the full story. That's how it's always been for me. His name is one that pops up pretty quickly when you begin to explore the occult, spirituality, the paranormal, magic, any of the major themes that get brought up on this show, really. He popped up in the series we did not long ago on Jack Parsons. He also popped up a little bit in the Zozo episodes that we did not long ago. Crowley's tendrils reach far and wide.

Part of the reason I haven't tackled this topic sooner was because I knew that the full story was very, very complicated. And it's a little intimidating, to be honest with you. A main reason that the story of Alistair Crowley is so complicated is because he is a very polarizing individual. And depending on whose version, you're reading, he could be painted as either a brilliant visionary or a dangerous manipulating fraud. There are a lot of conflicting accounts out there about his life, and it could get pretty confusing researching this man. The other reason is that the actual story of his life is genuinely one of the craziest things I have ever heard.

So many parts of this are shocking, confusing, and hilarious. I think you'll find that I'm laughing quite a bit in the process of making this series, even though sometimes the parts are terrifying, disgusting, or bewildering. This man lived a very, very unique life, and you're going to hear all about it in this multi-part series. To help me tackle this topic, friend of the show, Wolf Fleetwood Ross, is back. He spent the last couple months reading every book he could find about Crowley, taking a lot of notes and putting together our version of his story.

In this five-part series, Wolf is going to lead me through the very long and wild story of the wickedest man in the world, Alastair Crowley. I've decided to put this first part of the series on the main podcast feed for free. The other parts will be available on Patreon. To hear those, you could sign up at patreon.com slash otherworld. The second part is already up, if you want to listen to it, and the others are coming very soon.

I believe this is going to be a five-part series. It's very long. Like I said, patreon.com slash otherworld. to sign up and hear those. This is part one. The title is The Great Beast and you're listening to Otherworld. All right, everybody. Welcome to Otherworld. I am joined by a familiar character, Wolf Fleetwood Ross. How are you doing? Good to see you again, Wolf. I'm doing good. I'm very excited to be here. Yes, I'm very excited about this. You've been hard at work, researching, researching a man that we mentioned in the last series where you were featured.

You were previously on the podcast diving into the life of Jack Parsons, a very complicated story. I think people really like those episodes. I liked doing them. And we're back again to do another series. And it's about an even more complicated person. You want to tell me who this is, Wolf? Yeah.

Yeah. So today we're talking about Alistair Crowley. And it was actually your idea, and I think it's super fitting because we're going one up the chain to the guy who sort of more or less created everything that ensnared Jack Parsons. His big homie, you could say. Yeah, his big homie. Yeah. So it's interesting. I'm glad we're doing this next.

I'd also like to point out that this has an interesting tie-in to a series that came out after your last on the podcast, which was the Zozo series. we started to dip our toes into Crowley World during that because we are kind of investigating the Zoso symbol from the famous Led Zeppelin 4 album cover. I'm sure that's going to come up in this series. I'm sure there's many things are going to come up in this series. It's a very complicated man, a bottomless pit, it seems. Yeah, yeah. And, yeah, actually, very, very soon we'll get, well, we're going to get into the Led Zeppelin part very early.

and I actually have a special connection to all that. Interesting. I'm excited to hear this. Wait, so for the people who don't know who this is, is there a way to just give a brief summary of who Alistair Crowley is and why he is interesting? Yeah, I guess as Alistair Crowley, you could say, was like the last mainstream magists.

And sort of, if you look throughout history, the magician or the sorcerer Merlin the roundtable they've always been real and figures that are actually real such as John D who was Elizabeth the first court who did all sorts of magic Coligioestro was another one who ended up in a unfortunately in a jail cell but it was this like it was this role in society

and Crowley is not only the last one who took that mantle, but he pushed it very far. And he ended up probably going a bit too far, as I would say. Yeah. He was famously known in his time as the wickedest man alive. You know, he went by a lot of great names. Some of them were self-prescribed, which was 666, The Beast, master Theron. You know, he was, he was really looking for attention. A man that gives himself nicknames like that, yeah. Yes, yeah. And he thought a lot of himself.

He thought of himself as a prophet, as someone who had been given a new religion, a new social order that would overthrow the current order and that he would be sort of among the gods in ushering in this new age. But I don't want to get ahead of myself. So, yeah, and as an outsider, as the one that knows not,

much about Alastair Crowley. I'd say that like he's a person that's sort of come up in my periphery throughout my life. If you're a person who has even remote interest in any kind of strange things, uh, esoteric interests, uh, not, not necessarily meaning like magical, but just like, I don't know if you're into like music, uh, art. Really anything like this guy, his, his tendrils touch everything a little bit. You're bound to have seen him. I'm sure you've seen a picture of him. If you've seen the Beatles' white album, you've seen his face. He's a face on the, yeah. Or is it Sergeant Pepper?

Oh, yeah, yeah, sorry, Sergeant Pepper. Yeah. He was on the cover of Sergeant Pepper. Yeah, he's kind of had his influence all over the place and had a life that's like hard to track to the point where I never wanted to really dive into this. because I knew I could just never never have the time or patience to scratch the surface. And that's kind of the funny thing about Crowley is he would have loved his influence.

He would have, oh, God, if he had lived to see how big he became, he would have just, it would have been all his dreams come true in a weird way because by the time he died, he was not super well known anymore. His books had never sold. He had thought of himself as a failure. And as time went on, his influence just sort of grew and grew and grew until you're in a world where Jay-Z is wearing a T-shirt that says, Do what thou wilt, which is the sort of number one proponent of Crowley's religion.

The other, you know, I can name a couple, but like Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin is the number. he has all of Crowley's originals, his journals and stuff, and he even bought Crowley's mansion in Scotland for a while and lived in it. And it's funny, I was talking that I was going to be doing this with my grandpa

who's an old rocker. To say the least. Yeah, he's a pretty good rocker. But he was telling me, like, I was with Jimmy Page, and we were partying, and he was doing rituals, and I was right there. And

really yeah so he had some sort of first-hand experience with jimmy when jimmy was going down that rabbit hole uh he didn't partake in it but he was he was like it wasn't a it wasn't a passing fad these guys were actually doing the rituals uh and and really into it so again i and i have to say like the the really annoying thing about researching crowley is on both sides of the he's the wickedest man in the world or he's the greatest sorcerer ever people have an agenda like back back when he was alive he was just like that their their version of tabloids at the time were just hammering him and so you could write a book about him killing children or or whatever shortly after his death and that would be accepted and now in today's time there are people who make a

full-on living, just writing and lecturing about Crowley. So they're sort of want to show the best side of him at all times. So you kind of have to like cut your own middle ground between worst person in the world and greatest sort of godly magician spreader of the Lima. It's worth noting that people have a wide range of opinions on this guy. I don't know much at all. about Alistair Crowley. It's going to be interesting to learn. But, you know, there's probably a good amount of people listening with a wide range of opinions on him. So a hundred percent. And I just want to say, like, by all means, to truly be an expert in Crowley would take years. To read all of his first. He kept three journals and wrote his confessions, which I've read

some of, is like 1,500 pages alone. So there are people who are definitely more knowledge. in the world who have dedicated their life, or at least a significant part of it, to Crowleyism. I think just before we jump in, I just want to quote someone who is much more into the occult than I am. And they had a really good quote, which is occultism is what is hidden from sight. and it's the belief that what is hidden is most of the world and most of reality. And the physical world that we're aware of is a very small part of a much larger reality. And the methods and practices of occultism allow people to enter the larger reality or access the larger reality to be exploited in the physical realm.

And a direct quote from Crowley is, magic is the art and science of causing change to occur in the conformity with will. So I just want to lay out, though, because we're going to be talking about magic and occult a bunch, and I think it's good just to, that's the sort of stuff we're talking about. Weirdly, it's close to manifestation. A lot of ritual, magic is about concentrating your will and manifesting stuff. So it's not too far adjacent from beliefs that we hold to, day pretty openly at any Silver Lake coffee shop. No, yeah. I think a lot of that stuff is like the

very, very watered down version of what these guys were up to back in the day. Very watered down, of course. There's like, you know, in the last decade, we've seen kind of like the corporatization of this type of thing where, you know, stuff that was started by these spooky men years ago, men and women, mind you, are now kind of being taught at like literal corporate training outings. Yeah, totally. How to manifest sales for yourself. Yeah, a really good point.

Really good point. And, you know, there's... He would probably love that. He would love it. I mean, there's that not to already start with the conspiracy theories, but it's like the CIA was studying astral projection at a time. He would have loved that. He would have loved that.

That is true. Let's dive into this. Let's dive in. Wolf, I'm so happy to have you here. This might be a multi-part series. We will see how long this takes. I know this is a very, very big subject. I'm sure we're barely going to scratch the surface, even in our attempt. Perhaps that's for the best. We will see. All right. Let's dive in. All right. So Crowley was born 50 years after the death of Napoleon in 1875. But he died. somewhat in the modern era after World War II. And I think it's really interesting when you're talking about this time period because it's when the Victorian era

sort of becomes the modern era and the people who live in this world are living in a world where not all the maps are filled in. You know, like there's this unknownness about the world at the time and it sort of fades away within their lifetime. So you find these really interesting people that are crawling out of Victorian era repression or religiousness into this

sort of new world where anything can go. So anyway, he was born on October 12, 1875. He was originally born Edward Crowley. And what I'm about to say comes from him. And he did a lot of his own mythology to make himself awesome. But apparently he was born with several signs that indicated he was destined to be great. The first were four hairs on his chest in the shape of a swastika. And this is before the Nazi, so it didn't have that connotation. And he claimed that that is the mark of the beast. He was also born with a veil of afterbirth on his face,

which is indicative of great magical abilities, according to him. And then finally, he had a membrane restricting his foreskin, and that is apparently the sign of the Buddha, according to a book I read. So... A membrane. It's not just like... Uncumstized. I don't know.

I didn't look too deep into it. I just took him out its word. Okay. I'm sorry. He was also born tongue-tied, and he had to get his tongue cut, so he could never produce R's correctly. Interesting. Kind of funny.

Interesting. He was born into a very wealthy family. Yes. Like, his families had breweries all over, and they had these things, called Crowley Ale Houses, which was like a prototype of an English pub where a working man could come in and get a pint and get a sandwich. And I don't know why, but at the time, that was like a very novel idea.

And in England, it just caught on. And the family just made a fortune. Interesting. Yeah, and he was born into that. And the funniest thing is... I thought pubs were around for a really long time. I wonder what they were doing unique over there. It was the bundling of the food.

and the ale for a set price. This seems so simple back in the day. I know. It would be so easy to get rich back in the day. Just to be a guy that was like, what if we served beer and food? And the funniest thing is like, Crowley was basically born into what I would call

like a super Christian cult. So no one drank. No one drank in his family. His father would eventually buck that and start drinking, but for a long time, it was they were just businessmen who were just just they don't get high in their own supply no not at all that's the best way to be i think right yeah probably just focus on the product this religious cult is called the plymouth brethren and from my research

into it it actually could have been a really big movement but they were so pious that every time they'd get bigger they'd find a way to separate themselves so it'd be like you're not the real plymouth brethren we're the real Plymouth, Rethren, because we believe something very slightly different. So this group sort of kept fracturing itself until you end up in the most hardcore sect, which is the part that Crowley's parents were a part of. Yeah, and you have this thing of like, no one else is right. So Crowley grew up thinking that the very small people that surrounded him were the only people going to heaven and everyone else was damned to hell.

This was like really hardcore fringe Christianity, especially for the time, right? I did learn a little bit about this. Like, like, not only were they against drinking, they had other weird beliefs like you couldn't sign a lease or something.

I saw something like that where, because because like you might, Jesus might come back at any moment. Yeah, yeah, true. If you sign a lease, it means that you don't think he might come back soon or something like that. I mean, this is how eventually Crowley's father would sell their shares in a railroad company and invested into canals because railroads aren't in the Bible, but canals are. That's really funny.

You know, and so Crowley was kind of a genius. He learned how to read at four, but he was only allowed to read the Bible. That's all he read. And so he grew up with the only sort of comparisons of what a relationship was as sort of God, the devil, the sort of, you know, I just, I wasn't raised religious, but I could only imagine if I was only allowed to read the Bible and only allowed to interact with other people in this very, very small sect. And basically a Christian cult. Yeah, and even their servants, the only servants they'd allow in their. house had to be part of this cult. Oh, wow.

And then also just the belief that everyone who's not going into this cult is being burned in hell forever. And I think if you have that imprinted on you from four years old, it's hard, you know. They would start their day reading the Bible. He was, he read it. He basically memorized it. And obviously, he will buck this quite hard. Yes.

Yes. One could say this was probably even the cause. of that. You could. And just other stuff. No Christmases, no presents, no birthdays. Like, just doesn't sound fun for a kid to grow up. Yeah.

No birthdays. No birthdays. Now, his dad probably never held the job. It's unclear. Some people think he did. Other people don't think he did. But definitely what he would do is he considered himself a sort of layman preacher. And he would accost.

accost people on the street and he'd say, what are you doing after this? And they'd say, well, I'm going to go to my shopping or I'm going home. And then he'd go and then, and then. And eventually the person would say, well, I guess I'll just die after that. And he goes, and have you thought about

what happens after that? And he would launch into the Plymouth Brethren sort of diatribe about why they needed to convert. And so if you think about it, like he's a really funny character. He's a multi-millionaire

in Victorian England who would do walking tours across the country trying to get people to convert to the Plymouth Brethren. And Crowley would follow him on these walking tours. And he actually really looked up to his dad during this period and thought his dad was

trying to save anyone he came into contact to. And so he had this sort of admiration for his dad as a young boy. The wealth of their family, did it come from his grandparents, did you say? I'm not exactly sure I have his family tree downstairs, but it might have been his great-great-grandparents. They were like, it's old family money. It's old family money.

Oh, okay. So that actually clears up the whole pub thing, too. So like, this might have been a really long time ago when they revolutionized the idea of the pub. Basically, basically. Okay, so the Crowleys have been... I mean, because at this point, if you think about it, like, his dad never held a job, Crowley will never hold a job. So this money is going back generations at this point, and we're in the 1800s.

So, like, they did good for themselves. Yes, yes. Okay, that is interesting. And was his dad a good guy? Was he a bad guy? By all accounts, his dad, compared to his mom, he loved his dad, and he thought his dad was great. He hated his mom.

He would later claim he hated his mother because she was too ugly to be attracted to, but I think that's probably just for shock value. One of the most complicated statements I've ever heard. Okay. I have heard that his dad was not a great guy. I heard that his mom referred to him as the beast. No, no, that's Crowley. Oh. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. And that'll come, yeah. But from all I could tell is while his dad was alive, it was harmonious living, but within this sort of cult. And his father would get sick when he was 11, and he would get cancer, unfortunately, tongue cancer. and they actually had a connection to the royal family surgeon. And unfortunately, the Plinus Brethren got together, they prayed over it, and they decided that he should do something called electro-homopathy,

which is like, I looked into it, I tried to look into it. It's like, just gobbled the gook. And it probably killed his dad. Not saying that he wouldn't have died anyway. Obviously, tongue cancer in the 1800s is probably fatal anyway, but I do think this pushing him away from that made Crowley start to hate the Plineth Brethren because, in his opinion, they helped kill the only sort of good thing about it for him. Also, pause, there's no way that was in the Bible.

Oh, yeah, no way. I'm sensing some contradictions with this group. right? Yeah, and I think that Crowley would hate the contradictions. Like, he would start to notice them. He said after his father died, he became a free thinker and was able to sort of view things and just say, this, this isn't making sense. The literal interpretation of all this stuff isn't making sense. And so after his father died, his life just got way worse. Like he got, he started getting sent to these boarding schools that were run by Plymouth Brethren. And they were intense.

He may have been sexually assaulted during that time. He was definitely beaten. And one of the boarding schools, the headmaster claimed to be so pious that he had never slept with his wife and encouraged the students to do the same. But this is when Crowley's like dark side. starts to come out a little bit, or a lot, considering. According to him, this is when he started to have fantasies of torture and being sexually degraded by very powerful women.

He also took things very literally to the point where some of his biographers think he might have been on the spectrum to some sort, and I'll give you an example. one time in boarding school he got a cat he got a cat he suffocated it he hung it he stabbed it he poisoned it he smashed it school

he lit it on fire he drowned it he shot it and then he threw it out the window to see if cats really do have nine lives Wolf I do not think that is one of the known symptoms of autism no not that But he had been told cats have nine lives. And this is his way of like testing that.

Okay. So like the most literal interpretation? Yes. And it's the same thing with the Bible. Because what he'll start to do is, you know, the Bible became literal for him. And he like, I don't want to get ahead of myself. But he started to try and pray to the devil the same way. he had been praying to Jesus via the Plymouth Brethren because he just thought, you know,

let's switch it up. Let's switch it up, basically. Yeah. That cat story, by the way, rest in peace to the cat, that's horrible. Horrible. Horrible. We both have cats. Yes.

So, yeah, that's sounding a little bit more like early signs of a sociopath slash serial killer than anything. Look, I'm not the one who wrote the biography that said that. but just reporting dutably. Another thing he took... He did so much to the cat. He did so much. And he was surprised to find that it didn't survive because he had been told it had nine lives.

So that was in boarding school. Yes. And on his vacations from boarding school, as he sort of began to rebel again, his mother would refer to him as the beast. And again, taking everything literal, he took to the Bible, sort of the beast.

I'm not super familiar with the Bible, but obviously 666, the great beast, the ushering of the new era, and the scarlet woman and the whore of Babylon that would be writing the great beast ushering in this new era. And this idea, this relation to that will come into play a lot later into his life. But it's interesting that at the very beginning,

he takes the name of the beast just because his mother, scolds him with it. Yeah, calling your son the Antichrist is very interesting. And also, I doubt that she wanted him to be stoked by that

insult or name. I think she was probably terrorizing her if I had to guess. Yeah, and he hated his mother and he hated her whole family because they were all in the Plymouth Brethren to the point where his mother his uncle, he had an uncle called Tom, who is his mother's brother,

and later in life he would publish Tom's obituary while Tom was still alive in the newspaper and send it to him. That's impressive. I mean, that is English humor. I'm English. I know you wouldn't imagine it from my voice, but, like, Crowley is a really, really English character in a funny way. That's advanced hating.

Oh, yeah. Really, really advanced. Publishing an obituary about a guy you don't like and then mailing him a copy of it. I mean, trust me, we have some better. anecdotes coming up later. Okay, I'm very excited about this. So he started to begin to have this obsession with trying to leave Christianity. He wanted to sin in a way that burned the bridge behind him.

So there was no going back. Like I said, he began to pray to the devil, but it didn't have any results. And he was really disappointed by that. And then he says in his journal after that, he found out what Master was and quote i applied myself to this practice with much vigor so that that took the price of playing to satan was jerking off basically uh in the beginning and he refers to it as a practice a practice yes to get better at yeah he's a gooner of his time oh yeah oh yeah um some some some would say the gooner of all time but and so we'll get into that yeah we will definitely get

into that. So his career at boarding school came to an end because he was being punished by this headmaster, maybe fairly, maybe unfairly, actually, but definitely unfairly because what was happening is he was being locked basically in a shed in solitary confinement with very little clothing, was getting very, very sick. And when his mother and some relatives came to visit him, they knew that even for them this was going too far. I mean, it's not like they didn't believe in physical punishment, but they actually went and got that school shut down. And Crowley's education started to basically come in the form of hand-picked tutors.

And for the most part, they were Plymouth Brothers approved. However, there was one tutor called Charles. Douglas, who slipped through the cracks and really changed Crowley's life forever. Charles Douglas believed it was really important for young men to be physically fit as well as mentally fit. So he would take a young Crowley on these long walking tours across England, visiting different villages and historic sites. And so he was getting his education and his exercise at the same time. But Charles Douglas was also a man who was not super religious, and he smoked,

and he dranked and he gambled and he did all these things and he introduced Crowley a 15-year-old Crowley to all of those things to the point where on one of their walking trips Crowley actually lost his virginity to one of

the village girls and so... By the way, this sounds like a really sick version of education. Yeah, I really... It sounds like an awesome way to be educated, I agree. Honestly, yeah, walking around England with a guy, showing you the world drinking, smoking at 15,

that sounds pretty... Learning how to gamble, doing billiards. And you've got to think, like, this guy has been so constrained his whole life. And now he has a literal sense of freedom in his walking tours, but also this, like, revelation of... I'm sinning, and I'm not being shot dead at the moment.

Like, this whole world just kind of... opened up to him. The other thing that he did, which would be with Crowley for the rest of his life, is he introduced Crowley to poetry and classics. And Crowley, you could make an argument that Crowley would have rather have been a great poet than a great occultist.

He was always chasing poetry fame. He was obsessed with poetry. He would come in contact with the great, poets of his time. And his poetry would span sort of the most insane topics, which I will mention in a bit,

to very mundane topics. Yeah, we'll get to that, but from what I've seen, I don't think that he had the chops to be one of the great poets. No. But he considered himself to be the greatest poet of all time.

Sure. So that's important. I mean, he can, that seems to be a pat- with him. Yeah, yeah. So here's Crowley returning home from his walking trip. Poor Charles Douglas was eventually fired for all of his indiscretions. But Crowley now had a taste for sex, and he would steal money from his mother and go visit village prostitutes all the time. He also would seduce one of his in-house servants and sleep with her in his mother's bed. And

as an extra fuck you to his mom. And when the servant came forward because she felt guilty, he would deny it. And then that servant was fired for lying. My God. And then if anyone else wants to jump down this rabbit hole because I didn't. But according to Crowley, that servant would go to London, live as a prostitute, be killed by Jack the Ripper.

and Crowley would claim that he knew who Jack the Ripper was and named him as Robert Donston. And I briefly looked into that. There seems to be people who believe that. I would, when I have more time, I'm going to jump deeper into that hole, but it's quite the claim. All right.

We'll be right back after this quick break. Yeah, okay, so I could already, tell that in this series there's going to be possible side quests that could just take entire episodes if not like be a series of their own. Oh yeah. And that one is seeming like one of those paths where we could easily go down it, but I know we wouldn't be coming back for a very long time. Yeah, it's like if you were to read every book Crowley's ever put out, probably take you five

years. You know, there's a, I think it's funny because with Jack Parsons, there's little, there was little written words and with Crowley there's an abundance of every sort of everything you want to know more about you can go do that it's easier to just pick sections that you want to rather than

tackling the entire thing at once so how old is he at this point so he's 15 15 and I'll just say one thing as we continue on this story if I were to list all of Crowley sexual escapades

we would be here forever. So it should just be assumed from this point on that he's constantly having sex. He's having sex with basically everything that moves. And he'll be doing that for the rest of his life. And obviously I'll mention his sort of very important partners, but even when he's with them, he's always having sex with basically anyone.

And it's kind of like a lot of people comment on how shocking it was that he was able to attract so many women, even later in his life when he's so down and out, he always had a sexual partner usually at that point much younger than him by his size. Well, he's a very coercive man, too. Like, I know we'll probably get into that, but like not only the magic, but like I did read that he used drugs to take advantage of people a lot. Like, you know, like providing drugs to people who are already addicted.

And of course, as well. right? This is a man who essentially his entire existence was manipulation, whether it was of people or of the universe with magic, his entire belief system structured around like imposing his will on everything around him. So yeah, you know, that's caveat to that as well. I'm sure that I'm sure that a lot of the sex was not above boards by by modern standards for various reasons. So yeah. I would definitely agree with that. Just a huge blanket, blanket asterisk on everything we talk about in this. Yes, yes. And so... If we seem like we're being lighthearted about this man, no. Yeah, no.

Not at all. Please don't email us, trying to convince us that he's a bad dude. He's literally the wickedest man in the world. We said at this very beginning. We know. We know, and we haven't even gotten into... No, we haven't even got into the real stuff yet. Let's dive back in.

All right. And I'm just going to mention... this very briefly as another side quest because we're going to come back to it. But when he was 16, he started to sort of climb mountains, which at the time was like a new sport, an Englishman sport of the time. And he would become very sort of, he'd become one of the best climbers in the world at the time. I think you could, I think you can say that. And so we're going to detail some of his climbs, but right now he's just sort of climbing these chalk face cliffs in England, and he's sort of getting his bearings on sort of archaic mountain climbing, which was at the time

thought of as a gentleman sport, only rich people could do it, there was gentlemen's societies, like everything in Victorian era that you had to make a secret club about it. So he would, anyway. I mean, I'm jealous of the lifestyle in so many ways. ways of an aristocrat of the time that came up in jack parsons right but yeah just as a guy especially then a guy who had the ability to hang out essentially in an era where where nobody was hanging out yeah it was hard to live right yeah to hear about a guy that was doing this stuff back then that's crazy so we're gonna skip ahead a couple years so we're gonna revisit crowley he's now 20

he's entered the venerated halls of Trinity College, Cambridge. It's a huge deal back then, especially you think of class structure, where you went to college was basically like you're standing in the world in Victorian, especially in England. Like, if you think England's a bit snobby now, like, think about it back then. Crowley was 20. He was finally free. He could study whatever books and poetry he wanted to.

And on top of that, his trust. fund was fully relinquished to him. So I've seen... Yeah, gloves are off. Yeah, gloves are off. I've seen different estimations. You could probably say somewhere between $5 to $12 million he got when he was 20 years old. At the time?

No, no, for today's standard. Okay, okay. No, at the time, yeah. I mean, that's still, today's standard is crazy. Yeah. Crazy. For a 20, you would never give a 20-year-old $5 million or $12 million and say, figure it out.

And he'd never handled money before. He had never had any real access to cash before. So it's just suddenly, here it is. Go for it. That's incredible. Yeah. And this is also on his first sort of couple weeks in Trinity, he officially changes his name from Edward to Alistair.

There's two reasons that people have differing opinions. One is he didn't want to be related to his dad anymore. Didn't want that closeness. The second one is he had read a book about how to become famous and something about the sort of the way Alistair Crowley rolls off the tongue, the didactic sort of. He just read in a book like it was easier to get famous if you had a name that fell in these things. So he was already adopting a stage name and thinking about how he could make his mark. In the first couple of years, he famously kept to himself. He just read a bunch of books.

He wrote very bad poetry. He was sleeping with prostitutes. He joined the chess club, was president. He could have gone pro in chess. He was like a crazy, crazy chess player. Later in his life, he could be having sex with a woman and playing two games from two different rooms and being like Bishop to B7 and then pawn to A whatever. And he would do that famously quite a bit. that's insane

yeah like I couldn't even imagine the mental prowess to do something like that or yeah sure it's just like the amount of time on your hands you have to like

be at the point where you decide to do such a thing hey it was an era before scrolling so you had to have to do some that's true that's true he had so much time you know yeah and he

he refused to read he only read authors who'd been dead for 50 years because he hated the era that he was growing up in. Okay. And so, you know, he's going through his sort of college experience. He's climbing. He's still climbing.

He's funnily enough studying moral sciences. Okay. But when college breaks, he sort of begins to do what he'll do for a lot of his life, which is to travel around the world and to use his newfound wealth to explore. And there's one sort of incident that I want to talk about that happened while he was in Copenhagen on the night of the new year. And to me, it sounds somewhat like sleep paralysis and lucid dreaming at the same time. But for him, the experience convinced him that he had a deep magical ability. and in his own words, I'll just quote him,

I was awakened to the knowledge that I possessed a magical means of becoming conscious of and satisfying a part of my nature, which had up to that moment concealed itself from me. It was an experience of horror and pain combined with a certain ghostly terror. Yet at the same time, it was the key to the purest and holiest spiritual ecstasy that exists. A year later, he would have a similar experience, and I'll just quote that one as well.

My animal nature stood rebuked and kept silence in the presence of the imminent divinity of the holy ghost, omnipotent, omniescent and omnipresent, yet blossoming in my soul, as if the entire forces of the universe from all eternity were concentrated and made to manifest in a single rose. And it should be also noted that New Year's Night in Copenhagen seems to be the first time he had sex with a man. So he may have been speaking about that experience as well. So this was, what he just described was the first night he had sex with a man. It could, there are two differing opinions. Some people say it's something of magical happening that happened to him in bed after the sex of the man, or people say as he was having sex with a man, this happened to him.

And he sort of embraced it, as he said, you know, it was terrifying, but the purest moment at the time. So that's interesting, yeah, because I did read somewhere that he, his first experience with magic or like the supernatural was when he first had gay sex. Yeah, and you can definitely interpret it to that, 100%. And it should also be noted that Crowley was always the bottom. He was always the receiver. Interesting. Yeah. And I also think he's...

That's actually like really surprising. I know. Because later in life, he'd become obsessed with anal sex with women. But yeah, I think it's also fair to call him bisexual. I really do. I don't think at the time, I don't... obviously you could be arrested for that. Yeah, this was extremely illegal.

Extremely illegal. Yeah. In the modern times, he would be bisexual. But at the time, I think he was considered himself to be a straight man who just did this sometimes. Yes. And he would have some relationships with men later in life, but they were all magical based. They weren't sort of companion-based. That was always for women.

And wherever he was at, you know, a lot of times he would go to the Middle East because sex between men at that time was actually okay, more okay over there. And so he would go and sort of imbibe himself in houses of pleasure and stuff. So, you know, we could dive deep into the psychology of the time. But it's, it is interesting that this is how it starts. So that October, Crowley would fall six. seriously ill, like almost deathly ill. And he'd start to meditate on how he wanted to leave his mark in the world. And he thought diplomats would be forgotten. He thought poets were only slightly less forgotten. And he just was sort of at an end. And at the end of this sickness, he decided that only spiritual things were worthwhile, that he would make his name in the spiritual world.

world because again, I think Crowley could never escape his Christian upbringing and how much that weighed on him. So it does kind of make sense that he would try and basically create his own Bible later on. Now, these two incidences sort of reunited Crowley's attempts to physically get in contact with the devil. Now that he was older and he had access to funds, he was able to visit an occult bookstore and buy this book called The Book of Ceremonial Magic or the book of Black Magic, depending on which biography you're reading. And that's the one I actually sent to you, and it's got these beautiful illustrations in it, but it's a bit scary looking, and we both don't want it in our house. No, yeah, it's terrifying. It's also, it's not even on eBay or something.

It's at like a formal auction. Yeah, yeah. And we'd have to attend. Yeah. And so. A $6,000 tome. Yeah, to get cursed. Even if I can afford that, I don't want to keep it. You don't want to keep it. I joked that if this show ever blows up, I'll buy it for you. But you don't want it. No, I don't want it.

I appreciate it. I'm too superstitious. I don't want a to tomb. It's like I said, I'm agnostic. Could 100% fly open one night? Yeah, I don't need a flying book. So the important thing besides the rituals in this book is that, hinted at a secret church or a secret order being out there. And this really got Crowley's attention.

So he actually wrote to the author and demanded to know what the secret order was. And the author wrote back and told him to read this book called The Cloud Upon the Sanctuary. And this book didn't do much to clear things up, but it continued to hint at a secret order. and it was written by a different author. So Crowley thought he was sort of stumbling onto this secret society that would be his indoctrination. So returning to Cambridge, this is interesting, but Crowley actually had a sort of boyfriend for the kind of only time in his life. And this person was an early archetype of a drag queen. Really?

Really? Yeah, and I have pictures and stuff I can show you afterwards of them in full drag performing. And they had a pretty normal relationship. Crowley quoting was, our relationship was that of a marriage. He made a man and a poet out of me, and I lived as his wife. Huh. Yeah, again, like, super not allowed at the time. Like, you're going to jail for a long time if this ever comes out. Unfortunately, his partner was not into rock climbing and not into the occult.

And as these two things started to take more and more of Crowley's time, they eventually got in the way of their relationship and they would part ways. It's a classic breakup situation. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a listener out there who had broken up with somebody for the same reasons. They don't like the occult and rock climbing. Yeah, I mean. The very Pacific Northwest-style breakup, you could say. Yeah, yeah.

It's a lot of people in Portland go through the same thing. It's true. Tale's old as time. Totally. And then sort of a new person would enter Crowley's life who's called Oscar Wilde. I've heard the name. Yeah, right? And this happened towards the end of his relationship, with his living relationship.

And they hated each other. actually more truthfully, I think Crowley hated him and Oscar Wilde barely knew who Crowley was. Crowley would claim that Oscar Wilde was not actually gay and was doing it to be famous, which is just not true at all. That's really funny. Yeah, really funny. And also during this relationship, Crowley started to suspect that he might be hermaphroditic. because he had big breasts.

And he thought that this led him to understood women better than anyone because he knew his feminine side and could manipulate them. And as one biographer put it, he... I'm sorry, I'm just like really appreciating that line of thinking. Yeah, no, no, exactly. As one biographer... I'm assuming he was a large man at this age as well, because he was rather...

I think he would go in and out, depending on how much rock climbing he was doing. Okay. But one biographer said he wished he was a hermaphrodite, but was unfortunately simply bisexual. All right, so he moves on... There's a lot of great quotes in here. There's a lot of great quotes in here.

Yeah, that is Crowley. He's like, he's very quotable. I guess... Yeah, and I'm looking at Crowley. Yeah, he was not big. Like, he seems large. In the later years, the photo... of him. Later years he was big, for sure.

It looks like a classic large man, but I'm looking at the young photos, and there's somewhere he's quite skinny in the rock climbing era. And actually pretty handsome. There's some he was a really good-looking dude in early life. A dashing young man. Yeah. I mean, he was an aristocrat, so. Basically.

And then, so after this relationship, he meets this guy called Oscar Echelstein. who would become his best friend who's not involved in magic. Their relationship would be purely rock climbing. Oscar Echlestine was like famous in rock climbing. Circles at the time had invented some new pieces of gear and sort of took Crowley in as his student. Oscar was much older than Crowley at the time and they would form this relationship.

Also, he began to publish his own poetry at his own expense. And he would do this for the rest of his life. And it would actually be where most of his fortune would go. Because when he published poetry, it would be like the finest leather, the finest pages. Like what the book looked like at the time was incredibly important. And he would claim, I don't think this is true, but he would claim that's why he was never a famous poet. It's because his books were too expensive.

It was too expensive. It couldn't reach the masses. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I keep laughing so much I love the parallels of people I have met in my life I'm sure everybody has everybody's met a person that's like

yeah never never worked out because my music was actually too good I'm actually too good guitar so that's why my band never took off Exactly it's similar to that Yeah Yeah And I'm not exaggerating

He would spend millions of dollars Of his fortune self-publishing By today's standards it would probably be the one the number one expense that would drive him to be broke later in his life and that's another thing sort of along with his sexual escapades

is from this point out he's always publishing books and as he grows it'll sometimes be poetry sometimes be a cult sometimes be novels like this man's output is just ridiculous so Yeah, I'm not going to mention every book he publishes because that would be a fool's Aaron. But again, he should just be assumed in the background he's having sex and writing at all times.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just to imagine that he's constantly masturbating, having sex, and publishing extremely expensive poetry books that nobody's reading, apparently. Exactly. And for instance, at the end of his college career, he's already published five books, five books and four years. one of these books is very notorious. It's called White Stains. And it was so controversial it had to secretly be printed in Amsterdam because the publisher feared a rest

should he typeset this in England at the time. And a lot of these poems, I think, are done for shock value to try and get noticed. He has one poem that's about having sex, with Jesus as he's being crucified on the cross. Okay. He has another poem titled necrophilia. That is, you know, it's got some crazy lines in it.

I mean, I can send it to you, but, you know, to quote a little bit, to gnaw thy hollow cheeks and pull thy lustful tongue from out its sheath, to wallow in the bowels of death and rip the belly, fill, fill. my hands with all putridities to true thy dainty testicles to revel with the worms in hell's delight in such obscenities. And that's just two paragraphs from a much longer poem. So you get the gist, and in Victorian era, this would be considered like just unknown. You know what I mean? This would put you in jail, basically, if this got out there.

And is it safe to assume that the... the white stains he's referring to or what I'm thinking of? Yeah, 100%. Okay, okay. I'm getting the sense that Alster Crowley, if he was alive today, would possibly be some kind of

noise musician or, you know. Maybe noise musician, maybe prototype to jackass, maybe an annoying streamer. Maybe. Oh, I can see him being a streamer, yeah. Yeah, like just doing, going out and just doing insane stuff for shock value. Because that's what a lot of this sounds like in the early times,

is trying to get noticed via shock value. Okay, interesting. Were people, was it working? Well, the thing is, he couldn't put his name on white stains because he'd be arrested. So he would send them out under pseudonyms at the time. It's hard to figure out why exactly he was doing this, other than I think if the book was well-received,

he would come out and be like it was me. But to give himself cover at the time in case no one cared, which no one did care at the moment ends later in life. Okay, so he's putting out these horrible shock poems. Yep, and books. And he reaches the end of his college career. He gets very good grades, but refuses to sit the final examination

because he considers it to waste of time. So he just leaves without a degree after four. years of studying. That seems like some other, that also seems like some stuff a guy would lie about. Yeah, 100%. No, I actually did graduate, but I didn't feel like going to the exam, so. Yeah. I got it.

It was just a technicality that I don't have a degree. Basically. I think there were some, like, famous poets and famous thinkers from Cambridge that had done the same thing. So he was sort of trying to be like, I'm as good as that person. It's a power move. Yeah, I think Tennyson might have done it. Okay. I could be wrong about that.

But some very famous English poets did that. So he was trying to put himself in the same category as these people. Interesting. So after college, he's mountain climbing with Ecclstein in the Swiss Alps. And he gets sick. And he has to climb down. This is 1980. 1898, and he climbs down into the village of Zermot, and he goes into a beer hall and it's a big,

crowded place, and he starts lecturing everyone on alchemy, even though he doesn't know anything about alchemy. It just kind of makes a fool of himself. But, and this is crazy, one of the attendants in that beer hall was a man called Julian L. Baker, who was a real alchemist and practicing occultist magician. and he sort of pulls Crowley to the side and starts talking to him. And Crowley tells him, I want to join the secret order. Like, what is the secret order about?

And Julian Al Baker confirms it's real, but says he's not a master, and he can't help Crowley. But when he returns to London, because this guy also lived in London, he would connect him to a master who could initiate him. So upon arriving back in London, he meets George Cecil Jones, who would be Crowley's magical mentor and friend for many, many, many years. They'd eventually actually co-found their own magic order together and then have a horrible falling out. But right now, Jones is Crowley's like connection to the occult. This initial thing is sort of forged.

So Baker and Jones set out to, before they introduce him to the order and bring him in, they want to train him a bit. They want to, they want to like see if he's a worthy disciple. So they give him some magical practices, meditation and astral projection. And apparently both men were astounded at how fast Crowley could astral project and go and fall asleep. And they would move things in different rooms and Crowley would be able to tell them exactly. where stuff was. And they just hadn't, according to what I read, they hadn't seen anyone sort of

take to this practice as fast as Crowley did. So Crowley, again, asked Jones for admission. I'm pretty sure it's the same order mentioned in the books, but I just, you know, who knows? There was a bunch of secret orders at the time. But Crowley ends up

becoming an initiate of the hermetic order of the Golden Dawn. All right, that does it for the first part of this series. This is a very long one. I believe this is going to be about five episodes long,

hopefully not longer, but it might be. If you want to hear part two and all of the rest of the episodes, they're available on our Patreon. You could sign up at patreon.com slash Otherworld. We also have video versions of these episodes,

so if you want to watch me and Wolf talk about all of this face-to-face, You can see those on the Patreon as well. Like I said, part two is already up. Part three is coming soon, as are the rest of them. Patreon.com slash Otherworld. This has been part one. The title is The Great Beast, and you've been listening to Otherworld.