Early years: 1875—1894
Aleister was born as Edward Alexander Crowley at 30 Clarendon Square in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England, between 11 p.m. and midnight on 12 October 1875. His father, Edward Crowley, was trained as an engineer but, according to Aleister, never worked as one, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley instead owning shares in a lucrative family brewery business, which allowed him to retire before Aleister was born. His mother, Emily Bertha Bishop, drew roots from a Devon and Somerset family and was despised by her son, whom she described as "the Beast", a name that he revelled in. His father, who had been born a Quaker, had converted to the Exclusive Brethren, a more conservative faction of a Christian denomination known as the Plymouth Brethren, as had his mother when she married him. His father was particularly devout, spending his time as a travelling preacher for the sect and reading to his wife and son a daily reading of a chapter from the Bible after breakfast.
On 5 March 1887, when Crowley was 11, his father died of tongue cancer. Aleister would later describe this as a turning point in his life, and he always maintained some admiration for his father, describing him as "his hero and his friend". Inheriting his father's wealth, he was subsequently sent to Ebor School in Cambridge, a private Plymouth Brethren school, but was expelled for "attempting to corrupt another boy". Following this he attended Malvern College and then Tonbridge School, both of which he despised and soon left after only a few terms and then attending Eastbourne College. He became increasingly skeptical about Christianity, pointing out logic inconsistencies in the Bible to his religious teachers and went against the Christian morality of his upbringing, for instance embracing sex by visiting male and female prostitutes, from one of whom he contracted gonorrhea.
University: 1895—1897
In 1895 Crowley began a three year course at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was entered for the Moral Science Tripos studying philosophy, but with approval from his personal tutor he switched to English literature, which was not then a part of the curriculum offered. It was here that he further severed his ties with Christianity, later stating:
The Church of England... had seemed a narrow tyranny, as detestable as that of the Plymouth Brethren; less logical and more hypocritical.... When I discovered that chapel was compulsory I immediately struck back. The junior dean halled me for not attending chapel, which I was certainly not going to do, because it involved early rising. I excused myself on the ground that I had been brought up among the Plymouth Brethren. The dean asked me to come and see him occasionally and discuss the matter, and I had the astonishing impudence to write to him that 'The seed planted by my father, watered by my mother's tears, would prove too hardy a growth to be uprooted even by his eloquence and learning.'
It was also at university that he made the decision to change his name from Edward Alexander to Aleister. Of this, he later stated:
For many years I had loathed being called Alick, partly because of the unpleasant sound and sight of the word, partly because it was the name by which my mother called me. Edward did not seem to suit me and the diminutives Ted or Ned were even less appropriate. Alexander was too long and Sandy suggested tow hair and freckles. I had read in some book or other that the most favourable name for becoming famous was one consisting of a dactyl followed by a spondee, as at the end of a hexameter: like Jeremy Taylor. Aleister Crowley fulfilled these conditions and Aleister is the Gaelic form of Alexander. To adopt it would satisfy my romantic ideals. The atrocious spelling A-L-E-I-S-T-E-R was suggested as the correct form by Cousin Gregor, who ought to have known better. In any case, A-L-A-I-S-D-A-I-R makes a very bad dactyl. For these reasons I saddled myself with my present nom-de-guerre—I can't say that I feel sure that I facilitated the process of becoming famous. I should doubtless have done so, whatever name I had chosen.
Crowley largely spent his time at university engaged in his pastimes, one of which was mountaineering; he went on holiday to the Alps to do so every year from 1894 to 1898, and various other mountaineers who knew him at this time recognized him as "a promising climber, although somewhat erratic". Another of his hobbies was writing poetry, which he had been doing since the age of ten, and in 1898 he privately published one hundred copies of one of his poems,
Aceldama, but it was not a particular success. Nonetheless, that same year he published a string of other poems, the most notable of which appeared in
White Stains, a piece of erotica that had to be printed abroad as a safety measure in case it caused trouble with the British authorities. Part of this work, according to biographer Lawrence Sutin, "deserves a place in any wide-ranging anthology of gay poetry." A third hobby of his was chess, and he joined the university's chess club, where, he later stated, he beat the president in his first year and practiced two hours a day towards becoming a champion: "My one serious worldly ambition had been to become the champion of the world at chess." He also related having beaten famous chess players Joseph Henry Blackburne and Henry Bird and was on his way to becoming a master chess player, till he visited an important 1897 tournament in Berlin where "I saw the masters—one, shabby, snuffy and blear-eyed; another, in badly fitting would-be respectable shoddy; a third, a mere parody of humanity, and so on for the rest. These were the people to whose ranks I was seeking admission. 'There, but for the grace of God, goes Aleister Crowley,' I exclaimed to myself with disgust, and there and then I registered a vow never to play another serious game of chess."At university, he also maintained a vigorous sex life, which was largely conducted with prostitutes and girls he picked up at local pubs and cigar shops, but eventually he took part in same-sex activities in which he played a passive role during anal sex. In 1897, Crowley met a man named Herbert Charles Pollitt, the president of the Cambridge University Footlights Dramatic Club, and the two subsequently entered into a relationship but broke up because Pollitt did not share Crowley's increasing interest in the esoteric. Crowley himself stated, "I told him frankly that I had given my life to religion and that he did not fit into the scheme. I see now how imbecile I was, how hideously wrong and weak it is to reject any part of one's personality."
It was in December 1896 that he had his first significant mystical experience, of which he would later claim that "this philosophy was born in me." His later biographer, Lawrence Sutin, believed that this was the result of Crowley's first homosexual experience, which brought him "an encounter with an immanent deity." Following this experience, Crowley began to read up on the subject of occultism and mysticism, and by the next year he began reading books by alchemists and mystics and books on magic. In October a brief illness triggered considerations of mortality and "the futility of all human endeavour," or at least the futility of the diplomatic career that Crowley had previously considered; instead, he decided to devote his life to the occult. In 1897 he left Cambridge, not having taken any degree at all despite a "first class" showing in his spring 1897 exams and consistent "second class honours" results before that.
The Golden Dawn: 1898—1899
In 1898, Crowley was staying in Zermatt, Switzerland, where he met the chemist Julian L. Baker, and the two began talking about their common interest in alchemy. Upon their return to England, Baker introduced Crowley to George Cecil Jones, a member of the occult society known as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Crowley was subsequently initiated into the Outer Order of the Golden Dawn on 18 November 1898 by the group's head, S.L. MacGregor Mathers. The ceremony itself took place at Mark Masons Hall in London, where Crowley accepted his motto and magical name of
Frater Perdurabo, meaning "I shall endure to the end." At around this time, he moved from the elegant accommodation at the Hotel Cecil to his own luxury flat at 67—69 Chancery Lane. There, Crowley would prepare two different rooms: one for the practice of White Magic and the other one for Black Magic. He soon invited a Golden Dawn associate, Allan Bennett, to live with him, and Bennett became his personal tutor, teaching him more about ceremonial magic and the ritual usage of drugs. However, in 1900, Bennett left for Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka) to study Buddhism, whilst in 1899 Crowley acquired Boleskine House, in Foyers on the shore of Loch Ness in Scotland. He subsequently developed a love of Scottish culture, describing himself as the "Laird of Boleskine" and took to wearing traditional highland dress, even during visits back to London.
However, a schism had developed in the Golden Dawn, with MacGregor Mathers, the organization's leader, being ousted by a group of members who were unhappy with his autocratic rule. Crowley had previously approached this group, asking to be initiated into further orders of the Golden Dawn, but they had declined him. Unfazed, he went directly to MacGregor Mathers, who still held the post of chief at the time and who initiated him into the Second Order after learning of the situation. Now loyal to Mathers, Crowley (with the help of his then mistress and fellow initiate, Elaine Simpson) attempted to help crush the rebellion and unsuccessfully attempted to seize a London temple space known as the Vault of Rosenkreutz from the rebels. Crowley had also developed more personal feuds with some of the Golden Dawn's members; he disliked the poet W.B. Yeats, who had been one of the rebels, because Yeats had not been particularly favourable towards one of his own poems,
Jephthat. He also disliked Arthur Edward Waite, who would rouse the anger of his fellows at the Golden Dawn with his pedantry. Crowley voiced the view that Waite was a pretentious bore through searing critiques of Waite's writings and editorials of other authors' writings. In his periodical
The Equinox, Crowley titled one diatribe, "Wisdom While You Waite", and his note on the passing of Waite bore the title "Dead Waite".
Travels around the World: 1900—1903
In 1900, Crowley travelled to Mexico via the United States on a whim, taking a local woman as his mistress, and with his good friend Oscar Eckenstein proceeded to climb several mountains, including Ixtaccihuatl, Popocatepetl and even Colima, the latter of which they had to abandon owing to a volcanic eruption. During this period, Eckenstein revealed mystical leanings of his own and told him that he needed to improve the control of his mind, recommending the practice of raja yoga. Crowley had continued his magical experimentation on his own after leaving Mathers and the Golden Dawn, and his writings suggest that he discovered the word
Abrahadabra during this time.
Leaving Mexico, a country that he would always remain fond of, Crowley visited San Francisco, Hawaii, Japan, Hong Kong and Ceylon, where he met up with Allan Bennett and devoted himself further to yoga, from which he claimed to have achieved the spiritual state of
dhyana. It was during this visit that Bennett decided to become a Buddhist monk in the Theravada tradition, travelling to Burma, whilst Crowley went on to India, studying various Hindu practices. In 1902, he was joined in India by Eckenstein and several other mountaineers named Guy Knowles, H. Pfannl, V. Wesseley, and Dr Jules Jacot-Guillarmod. Together the Eckenstein-Crowley expedition attempted to climb the mountain K2, which at that time no other Europeans had attempted. Upon the journey, Crowley was afflicted with influenza, malaria, and snow blindness, whilst other expedition members were similarly stricken with illness. They finally reached a point of before deciding to turn back.
Returning to Europe, he visited MacGregor Mathers in Paris, and although they had once been friends, the two soon fell out; Crowley stated that Mathers had been stealing from him whilst he had been away (he subsequently stole the items back), and as Crowley's biographer John Symonds noted, both figures now considered themselves the superior esotericist, each refusing to submit to the other. In 1903 Crowley wed Rose Edith Kelly, who was the sister of Crowley's friend, the painter Gerald Festus Kelly, in a "marriage of convenience". However, soon after their marriage, Crowley actually fell in love with her and set about to woo her. Gerald Kelly was in fact a very good friend of W. Somerset Maugham, who would later use Crowley as model for his novel
The Magician, published in 1908.
Aiwass and The Book of the Law: 1904—1906
In 1904, Crowley and his new wife Rose traveled to Egypt using the pseudonym of Prince and Princess Chioa Khan, titles which Crowley claimed had been bestowed upon him by an eastern potentate. During this time, according to Crowley's own account, Rose, who was pregnant, had become somewhat delusional, regularly informing him that "they are waiting for you". It was on 18 March, after Crowley sought the aid of the Egyptian god Thoth, that she actually revealed who the "they" were — the god Horus and his alleged messenger. She then led him to a nearby museum in Cairo where she showed him a 7th century BCE mortuary stele known as the Stele of Ankh-ef-en-Khonsu (it would later come to be revered in Thelema as the "Stele of Revealing"); Crowley was astounded for the exhibit's number was 666, the number of the beast. He took this all to be a sign and on 20 March began invoking the god Horus in his room. It was after this invocation that Rose, or as he now referred to her, Ouarda the Seeress, informed him that "the Equinox of the Gods had come". This referred to a more cosmic version of the regular Golden Dawn ritual of the Equinox, when they changed their initiating officer and password. The Equinox of the Gods supposedly replaces the office's ruling deity Osiris with Horus.
It was on 8 April that Crowley first heard a voice talking to him and calling itself Aiwass. The nature of Aiwass has never been fully explained. Crowley's disciple and secretary Israel Regardie believes that this voice came from Crowley's subconscious, but opinions among Thelemites differ widely. Aiwass claimed to be a messenger from the god Hoor-Paar-Kraat, meaning Horus as the child of Isis and Osiris. Crowley wrote down everything the voice told him over the course of the next three days, and subsequently titled it
Liber AL vel Legis or
The Book of the Law. The god's commands explained that a new Aeon for mankind had begun, and that Crowley would serve as its prophet. As a supreme moral law, it declared "do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law", and that people should learn to live in tune with their "True Will".Returning to Scotland, in July, Rose and Aleister had a daughter, whom Crowley named Nuit Ma Ahathoor Hecate Sappho Jezebel Lilith Crowley after his favourite mythological females. Meanwhile in 1905 Crowley traveled once more to India in order to lead a mountaineering expedition up the Kangchenjunga, although they failed to reach the top, and four men were killed by an avalanche. Crowley's apparently uncaring attitudes towards the deaths and the fact that he beat one of the porters made "himself odious in the eyes of all mountaineers." Following the expedition, he left for Calcutta where he met up with Rose and their daughter. The family embarked on a trip through China, Rose having chosen this destination over Persia. Leaving them in Indo-China (modern Vietnam), he traveled to Shanghai where he met up with Elaine Simpson once again who encouraged him to follow Aiwass and
The Book of the Law. Upon his return to Britain, he learned that his daughter had died in Rangoon, something that he blamed upon his wife and her alcoholism.
The couple had another daughter, Lola Zaza, in the summer of that year, and Crowley devised a special ritual of thanksgiving for her birth.
He also performed a thanksgiving ritual before his first claimed success in what he called the "Abramelin operation", on 9 October 1906. This was his implementation of a magical work described in
The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage — Crowley had begun his version in China. The events of that year gave the Abramelin book a central role in Crowley's system. He described the primary goal of the "Great Work" using a term from this book which he also applied to the voice of Aiwass: "the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel". An essay in the first number of
The Equinox gives several reasons for this choice of names:
- Because Abramelin's system is so simple and effective.
- Because since all theories of the universe are absurd it is better to talk in the language of one which is patently absurd, so as to mortify the metaphysical man.
- Because a child can understand it.
These rituals, performed soberly and combined with hashish, produced the mystic experience of Samadhi as promised by the god Horus (according to Crowley's diary) in March 1904. Meanwhile Crowley and his old mentor George Cecil Jones had discussed the formation of a new magical order that the younger man would lead. In September they began reconstructing or reforming Golden Dawn ritual. After Crowley reported Samadhi, Jones urged him to claim one of the titles Mathers had reserved for the Secret Chiefs. He refrained at this time, but did feel that he had clearly surpassed his magical father and could take his place as a mystical authority.
The A?A?: 1907—1911
1907 saw two important events in Crowley's life. The first was the creation of a new magical Order called A?A?, and the second was the composition of the Holy Books of Thelema. In Paris during October 1908, he again produced Samadhi by the use of ritual and this time did so without hashish. He published an account of this success in order to show that his method worked and that one could achieve great mystical results without living as a hermit. On 30 December 1908, Aleister Crowley using the pseudonym Oliver Haddo made accusations of plagiarism against Somerset Maugham, author of the novel
The Magician. Crowley's article appeared in
Vanity Fair, edited then by Frank Harris who admired Crowley and who would later write the famous work
My Life and Loves. Admittedly, Maugham did model the character of his magician Oliver Haddo after Crowley himself and Crowley confessed Maugham acquiesced privately on the question of plagiarism.
In 1909, Aleister and Rose divorced, largely due to her alcoholism. She was subsequently admitted to an asylum suffering from alcoholic dementia. Meanwhile, Crowley soon moved on and took a woman named Leila Waddell as his lover or "Scarlet Woman". In 1910, Crowley performed his series of dramatic rites, the Rites of Eleusis, with A?A? members Leila Waddell and Victor Benjamin Neuburg.
Ordo Templi Orientis: 1912—1913
According to Crowley, Theodor Reuss called on him in 1912 to accuse him of publishing O.T.O. secrets, which Crowley dismissed on the grounds of having never attained the grade in which these secrets were given (IXth Degree). Reuss opened up Crowley's latest book,
The Book of Lies, and showed Crowley the passage. This sparked a long conversation which led to Crowley assuming the Xth Degree of O.T.O. and becoming Grand Master of the English-speaking section of O.T.O. called
Mysteria Mystica Maxima.
Crowley would eventually introduce the practice of male homosexual sex magick into O.T.O. as one of the highest degrees of the Order for he believed it to be the most powerful formula. Crowley placed the new degree above the Tenth Degree — not to be confused with any title in his own Order — and numbered it the Eleventh Degree. There was a protest from some members of O.T.O. in Germany and the rest of continental Europe that occasioned a persistent rift with Crowley.
In March 1913, producer Crowley introduced Leila Waddell in
The Ragged Ragtime Girls follies review at the Old Tivoli in London where it enjoyed a brief run. In July 1913, the production enjoyed a six-week run in Moscow where Crowley met a young Hungarian girl named Anny Ringler. Crowley went on to practice sado-masochistic sex with Ringler. According to Crowley, "... She had passed beyond the region where pleasure had meaning for her. She could only feel through pain, and my own means of making her happy was to inflict physical cruelties as she directed. The kind of relation was altogether new to me; and it was because of this, intensified as it was by the environment of the self-torturing soul of Russia, that I became inspired to create by the next six weeks." While in Moscow, Crowley would see Anny for an hour and then he would write poetry. During this summer in Moscow, Crowley would write two of his most memorable works, the
Hymn to Pan and the Gnostic Mass or
Ecclesiae Gnosticae Catholicae Canon Missae. The
Hymn to Pan would be read at his funeral thirty four years later. Certain Thelemites regularly perform the Gnostic Mass to this day. It symbolizes the act of sex as a magical or religious ritual.
Upon returning to London in the autumn of 1913, Crowley published the tenth and final number of volume one of
The Equinox. In December 1913 in Paris, Crowley would engage Victor Benjamin Neuburg in
The Paris Working. The first ritual took place on New Year's Eve 1914. In a period of seven weeks, Crowley and Neuburg performed a total of twenty four rituals which they recorded in the 'holy' or partially holy book formally entitled
Opus Lutetianum. Around eight months later Neuburg had a nervous breakdown. Afterward, Crowley and Neuburg would never see each other again.
Theory of Crowley as a British spy
Richard B. Spence writes in his 2008 book
Secret Agent 666: Aleister Crowley, British Intelligence and the Occult that Crowley could have been a lifelong agent for British Intelligence. While this may have already been the case during his many travels to Tsarist Russia, Switzerland, Asia, Mexico and North Africa that had started in his student days, he could have been involved with this line of work during his life in America during the First World War, under a cover of being a German propaganda agent and a supporter of Irish independence. Crowley's mission might have been to gather information about the German intelligence network, the Irish independent activists and produce aberrant propaganda, aiming at compromising the German and Irish ideals. As an agent provocateur he could have played some role in provoking the sinking of the RMS Lusitania, thereby bringing the United States closer to active involvement in the war alongside the Allies. He also used German magazines
The Fatherland and
The International as outlets for his other writings. The question of whether Crowley was a spy has always been subject to debate, but Spence uncovered a document from the US Army's old Military Intelligence Division supporting Crowley's own claim to having been a spy:
Aleister Crowley was an employee of the British Government ... in this country on official business of which the British Consul, New York City has full cognizance.
United States: 1914—1918
During his time in the U.S., Crowley practiced the task of a Magister Templi in the A?A? as he conceived it, namely interpreting every phenomenon as a particular dealing of "God" with his soul. He began to see various women he met as officers in his ongoing initiation, associating them with priests wearing animal masks in Egyptian ritual. A meditation during his relationship with one of these woman, the poet Jeanne Robert Foster, led him to claim the title of Magus, also referring to the system of the A?A?.
In June 1915, Crowley met Jeanne Robert Foster in the company of her friend Hellen Hollis, a journalist; Crowley would have affairs with both women. Foster was a famous New York fashion model, journalist, editor, poet and married. Crowley's plan with Foster was to produce his first male offspring but in spite of a series of magical operations, she did not get pregnant. By the end of 1915, the affair would be over. During a trip to Vancouver in 1915, Crowley met Wilfred Smith, Frater 132 of the Vancouver Lodge of O.T.O., and in 1930 granted him permission to establish Agape Lodge in Southern California. During the same trip in 1915, Crowley stopped over at Parke Davis in Detroit for some mescaline.
In early 1916, Crowley had an illicit liaison with Alice Richardson, the wife of Ananda Coomaraswamy, one of the greatest art historians of the day. On the stage, Richardson was known as Ratan Devi, mezzo-soprano interpreter of East Indian music. Richardson became pregnant but on a voyage back to England, in mid-1916, she had a miscarriage. Just before his affair with Ratan Devi, Crowley was practicing sex magick with Gerda Maria von Kothek, a German prostitute.
Two periods of magical experimentation followed. In June 1916, he began the first of these at the New Hampshire cottage of Evangeline Adams, having ghostwritten most of her two books on astrology. His diaries at first show discontent at the gap between his view of the grade of Magus and his view of himself: "It is no good making up my mind to do anything material; for I have no means. But this would vanish if I could make up my mind." Despite his objections to sacrificing a living animal, he resolved to crucify a frog as part of a rehearsal of the life of Jesus in the Gospels (afterward declaring it his willing familiar), "with the idea ... that some supreme violation of all the laws of my being would break down my Karma or dissolve the spell that seems to bind me." Slightly more than a month later, having taken ether (ethyl oxide), he had a vision of the universe from a modern scientific cosmology that he frequently referred to in later writings.
Crowley began another period of magical work on an island in the Hudson River after buying large amounts of red paint instead of food. Having painted "Do what thou wilt" on the cliffs at both sides of the island, he received gifts from curious visitors. Here at the island he had visions of seeming past lives, though he refused to endorse any theory of what they meant beyond linking them to his unconscious. Towards the end of his stay, he had a shocking experience he linked to "the Chinese wisdom" which made even Thelema appear insignificant. Nevertheless, he continued in his work. Before leaving the country he formed a sexual and magical relationship with Leah Hirsig, whom he had met earlier, and with her help began painting canvases with more creativity and passion.
Abbey of Thelema: 1920—1923
Soon after moving from West 9th St. in Greenwich Village New York City with their newborn daughter Anne Leah nicknamed Poupée (born February 1920 and died in a hospital in Palermo 14 October 1920), Crowley, along with Leah Hirsig, founded the Abbey of Thelema in Cefalù (Palermo), Sicily on 14 April 1920, the day the lease for the villa Santa Barbara was signed by Sir Alastor de Kerval (Crowley) and Contessa Lea Harcourt (Leah Hirsig). The Crowleys arrived in Cefalu on 1 April 1920. During their stay at the abbey, Ms Hirsig was known as Soror Alostrael, Crowley's Scarlet Woman, the name Crowley used for his female sex magick practitioners in reference to the consort of the Beast of the Apocalypse whose number is 666. The name of the abbey was borrowed from Rabelais's satire Gargantua, where the "Abbey of Thélème" is described as a sort of anti-monastery where the lives of the inhabitants were "spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but according to their own free will and pleasure." This idealistic utopia was to be the model of Crowley's commune, while also being a type of magical school, giving it the designation "Collegium ad Spiritum Sanctum," The College of the Holy Spirit. The general programme was in line with the A?A? course of training, and included daily adorations to the Sun, a study of Crowley's writings, regular yogic and ritual practices (which were to be recorded), as well as general domestic labour. The object, naturally, was for students to devote themselves to the Great Work of discovering and manifesting their True Wills. Two women, Hirsig and Shumway (her magical name was Sister Cypris after Aphrodite), were both carrying Crowley's seed. Hirsig had a two-year old son named Hansi and Shumway had a three-year old boy named Howard; they were not Crowley's but he nicknamed them Dionysus and Hermes respectively. After Hirsig's Poupée died, Hirsig had a miscarriage but Shumway gave birth to a daughter, Astarte Lulu Panthea. Hirsig suspected Shumway's Black Magic foul play and what Crowley found when reading Shumway's magical diary (everybody had to keep one while at the abbey for reasons explained in Liber E) appalled him. Shumway was banished from the abbey and the Beast lamented the death of his children. However, Shumway was soon back in the abbey again to take care of her offspring.
Mussolini's Fascist government expelled Crowley from the country at the end of April 1923.
After the Abbey: 1923—1947
In February 1924, Crowley visited Gurdjieff's Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man. He did not meet the founder on that occasion, but called Gurdjieff a "tip-top man" in his diary. Crowley privately criticized some of the Institute's practices and teachings, but doubted that what he heard from disciple Pindar reflected the master's true position. Some claim that on a later visit he met Gurdjieff...who firmly repudiated Crowley. Biographer Sutin expresses skepticism, and Gurdjieff's student C.S. Nott tells a different version. Nott perceives Crowley as a black or at least ignorant magician and says his teacher "kept a sharp watch" on the visitor, but mentions no open confrontation.
On 16 August 1929, Crowley married Maria de Miramar, from Nicaragua, while in Leipzig. They separated by 1930, but they were never divorced. In July 1931, de Miramar was admitted to the Colney Hatch Mental Hospital in New Southgate where she remained until her death thirty years later.
In September 1930 Crowley was in Lisbon to meet the poet Fernando Pessoa, that translated into Portuguese his poem "Hymn To Pan", and was a passionate for thrillers. With the assistance of Pessoa, he faked his own death at a notorious rock formation on the shore called Boca do Inferno (Mouth of Hell). In fact Crowley left the country and enjoyed the newspaper reports of his death — reappearing three weeks later at an exhibition in Berlin.
In 1934, Crowley was declared bankrupt after losing a court case in which he sued the artist Nina Hamnett for calling him a black magician in her 1932 book,
Laughing Torso. In addressing the jury, Mr. Justice Swift said:
I have been over forty years engaged in the administration of the law in one capacity or another. I thought that I knew of every conceivable form of wickedness. I thought that everything which was vicious and bad had been produced at one time or another before me. I have learnt in this case that we can always learn something more if we live long enough. I have never heard such dreadful, horrible, blasphemous and abominable stuff as that which has been produced by the man (Crowley) who describes himself to you as the greatest living poet.—Mr. Justice Swift
However, Patricia "Deirdre" MacAlpine approached Crowley on the day of the verdict and offered to bear him a child, whom he named Aleister Atatürk. She sought no mystical or religious role in Crowley's life and rarely saw him after the birth, "an arrangement that suited them both."
In March 1939, Dion Fortune and Aleister Crowley met publicly for the first time. Fortune had already used Crowley as a model for the black magician Hugo Astley in her 1935 novel
The Winged Bull.
During World War II, Ian Fleming and others proposed a disinformation plot in which Crowley would have helped an MI5 agent supply Nazi official Rudolf Hess with faked horoscopes. They could then pass along false information about an alleged pro-German circle in Britain. The government abandoned this plan when Hess flew to Scotland, crashing his plane on the moors near Eaglesham, and was captured. Fleming then suggested using Crowley as an interrogator to determine the influence of astrology on other Nazi leaders, but his superiors rejected this plan. At some point, Fleming also suggested that Britain could use Enochian as a code in order to plant evidence.
On 21 March 1944, Crowley undertook what he considered his crowning achievement, the publication of
The Book of Thoth, limited to 200 numbered and signed copies bound in Morocco leather and printed on pre-wartime paper. Crowley sold ?1,500 worth of the edition in less than three months.
In April 1944, Crowley moved from 93 Jermyn St. to Bell Inn at Aston Clinton, Bucks. Daphne Harris was the landlady.
Death
In January 1945, Crowley moved to Netherwood, a Hastings boarding house where in the first three months he was visited twice by Dion Fortune; she died of leukemia in January 1946. On 14 March 1945, in a letter Fortune wrote to Crowley, she declares: "... The acknowledgement I made in the introduction of
The Mystical Qabalah of my indebtness to your work, which seemed to me to be no more than common literary honesty, has been used as a rod for my back by people who look on you as Antichrist."
Crowley died at Netherwood on 1 December 1947 at the age of 72. According to one biographer the cause of death was a respiratory infection. He had become addicted to heroin after being prescribed morphine for his asthma and bronchitis many years earlier. He and his last doctor died within 24 hours of each other; newspapers would claim, in differing accounts, that Dr. Thomson had refused to continue his opiate prescription and that Crowley had put a curse on him.
Biographer Lawrence Sutin passes on various stories about Crowley's death and last words. Frieda Harris supposedly reported him saying, "I am perplexed," though she did not see him at the very end. According to John Symonds, a Mr. Rowe witnessed Crowley's death along with a nurse, and reported his last words as "Sometimes I hate myself." Biographer Gerald Suster accepted the version of events he received from a "Mr W.H." who worked at the house, in which Crowley dies pacing in his living room. Supposedly Mr W.H. heard a crash while polishing furniture on the floor below, and entered Crowley's rooms to find him dead on the floor.
Patricia "Deirdre" MacAlpine, who visited Crowley with their son and her three other children, denied all this and reports a sudden gust of wind and peal of thunder at the (otherwise quiet) moment of his death. According to MacAlpine, Crowley remained bedridden for the last few days of his life, but was in light spirits and conversational. Readings at the cremation service in nearby Brighton included one of his own works,
Hymn to Pan, and newspapers referred to the service as a black mass. The Brighton council subsequently resolved to take all the necessary steps to prevent such an incident from occurring again.