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C.E.O
Jul 7, 2015 19:41:06 GMT
Post by Sylvia Arminoff on Jul 7, 2015 19:41:06 GMT
| | Sylvia Arminoff | | There's a (wo)man who leads a life of danger | Boss/Ma'am || Female || unknown || *redacted* |
APPEARANCE Looks like this;
this,
this
and this.
PERSONALITY
Stress does a lot to a person’s mood; anger, short tempers and pushiness are quicker to boil to the surface, especially when a lot rests on your shoulders. As with any CEO this is also true with this boss. Before these responsibilities came to rest on her shoulders she was energetic, determined, confident and unrelenting. Work wasn’t work, work was breathing. You need to breathe to live and she was good at catching her breath. A borderline arrogance flared up from time to time in her confidence, already assured she was going to pass the test, enough so to make the weak minded cower and the strong minded feed off of her energy and strive to do well also. Control is an important aspect of running any business but the main thing to control is the control itself. If you let the control slip away from you…well, it’s not good being fleet admiral on a sinking ship. Keeping her head above water was at times an absolute uphill struggle but volcanic perseverance and even hatred of failure has pushed the boss to a danger zone in physical and mental health just as the home stretch is in sight – a danger that is being alleviated by the support of medical treatment. Rather than viewing support as a crutch of weakness, any support worth having is a must to snatch up and kill, rework and re-release – now changed at its very core to her advantage. Conflict doesn’t make her blink and she can stare down with the best of them without needing any more anger than a monk on morphine. Keeping up a smiling face and jolly attitude comes as naturally to her as to anyone else, some days everyone is “sunshine” or “champ”, other days it’s “Wilson, where are those reports? I asked for them 3 minutes ago.” A fond adoration and reliance on technology has led to life gaining its little unexpected glitches and blue screens from time to time and a crack in the smiling mask she sometimes has to wear to ensure a positive mood in the work place. Though she has considered it, it never occurred to her yet to find one person on a spur of the moment and vent all her rage at them – playing with her dog relaxes her and gives her brain a necessary breath of fresh air and a change of mind.
In truth she’s had this strong work ethic since secondary school, her personality before that, well – about the same as anyone else in the first 11 years of their life. This ruthless change in behaviour isn’t necessarily as unforgiving as it may seem at first, a weak foe is not necessarily an obstacle to be crushed but could be a valuable asset if harvested by the right people and implemented in an effective manner. With an exceptionally open outlook and breathtaking mental conditioning she is able to hold her position stably among other CEO’s of A.C.C.I.D.E.N.T.S.
HISTORY
Aleister Crowley 12 October 1875 – 1 December 1947, born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast 666, was an English occultist, mystic, ceremonial magician, poet and mountaineer, who was responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. In his role as the founder of the Thelemite philosophy, he came to see himself as the prophet who was entrusted with informing humanity that it was entering the new Aeon of Horus in the early 20th century.
Born into a wealthy upper-class family, as a young man he became a member of the esoteric Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Subsequently he claimed that he was contacted by his Holy Guardian Angel, an entity he named Aiwass, while staying in Egypt in 1904, and that he 'received' a text known as The Book of the Law from what he claimed was a divine source, and around which he would come to develop his new philosophy of Thelema. Little did he know it was in fact a Shinigami of the R&D division who had been spotted by Crowley and who had dropped a technological artefact that had been lost which Crowley proceeded to steal while said Shinigami was preoccupied by the Hollow chasing it. He would go on to found his own occult society, the A∴A∴ and eventually rose to become a leader of Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), before founding a religious commune in Cefalù known as the Abbey of Thelema, which he led from 1920 until 1923. After abandoning the Abbey amid widespread opposition, Crowley returned to Britain, where he continued to promote Thelema until his death.
Crowley was also bisexual, a recreational drug experimenter and a social critic. In many of these roles, he "was in revolt against the moral and religious values of his time", espousing a form of libertinism based upon the rule of "Do What Thou Wilt". Because of this, he gained widespread notoriety during his lifetime, and was denounced in the popular press of the day as "the wickedest man in the world".
Childhood: 1875–1894
Crowley was born as Edward Alexander Crowley at 30 Clarendon Square in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England, between 11 pm and midnight on 12 October 1875. His father, Edward Crowley (c.1830–1887), was trained as an engineer but, according to Crowley, never worked as one, instead owning shares in a lucrative family brewing business, Crowley's Alton Ales, which allowed him to retire before Crowley was born. His mother, Emily Bertha Bishop (1848–1917), drew roots from a Devonshire-Somerset family and was despised by her son, whom she described as "the Beast", a name that he revelled in. The couple had been married at Kensington Registry Office in London during November 1874.
The Crowley family were Christian; Crowley's father had been born a Quaker, but had converted to the Exclusive Brethren, a more conservative faction of a denomination known as the Plymouth Brethren. Upon marriage, Emily had also converted to the Exclusive Brethren. Crowley's father was particularly devout, spending his time as a travelling preacher for the sect and reading a chapter from the Bible to his wife and son after breakfast every day. Aged 8, Crowley was sent to H.T. Habershon's evangelical Christian boarding school in Hastings, and then to a preparatory school in Cambridge run by the Reverend Henry d'Arcy Champney, whom Crowley considered a sadist.
On 5 March 1887, when Crowley was 11, his father died of tongue cancer. Crowley would describe this as a turning point in his life, as he kept his encounters with the spirit world out of the public’s ear shot, 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 misbehaviour. Following this, he attended Malvern College and then Tonbridge School, both of which he despised and soon left after only a few terms, instead beginning studies at Eastbourne College. He became increasingly sceptical about Christianity, pointing out to his religious teachers what he perceived as inconsistencies in the Bible, and went against the Christian morality of his upbringing, for instance embracing sex both with girls whom he met and by visiting female prostitutes, including one from whom he contracted gonorrhoea.
Cambridge University: 1895–1897
In 1895, Crowley, who soon adopted the new name of Aleister over his birth name of Edward, 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. 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 recognised him as "a promising climber, although somewhat erratic". Another of his hobbies was writing poetry, which he had been doing since the age of 10, and in 1898 he privately published one hundred copies of one of his poems, Aceldama, but it was not a particular success.
That same year he published a string of other poems, the most notable of which was 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.A third hobby of his was the game of chess, and he joined the university's chess club, where, he later stated, he beat the president in his first year and practised two hours a day towards becoming a champion, but he eventually gave this idea up.
It was while on a winter holiday in Sweden in December 1896 that he had his first significant mystical experience. Several later biographers, including Lawrence Sutin and Tobias Churton, believed that this was the result of Crowley's first homosexual experience. Always being able to see spirits around him, Edward was now the closest he had ever been to deciphering their passings and duties. A dark robed figure wielding a curved blade came to him with a smirk and spoke of a tyrannical society from which he had escaped and offered a device to Crowley. The Shinigami artefact was, in essence, a holographic videophone prototype. To a man living in a world of the industrial revolution, this was considered magic. Now the major aspect of his focus, Edward dedicated much time to trying to understand this artefact in more detail.
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 including receptive anal sex. This was despite the fact that homosexual acts were illegal and punishable with imprisonment at that time. In 1897, Crowley met a man named Herbert Charles Pollitt, the president of the Cambridge University Footlights Dramatic Club, and the two entered into a relationship but broke up because Pollitt did not share Crowley's increasing interest in the esoteric. Being obsessed with his discovery and gradually growing knowledge earned from observing the spirits of humans and monsters roam the earth, Crowley himself stated that "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." 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, and 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. That summer, he then travelled to St Petersburg in Russia under the employ of the British secret service, but the public knew not what for. In actuality Pollitt was intrigued by Crowley’s discovery and had joined the secret service under recommendation of his father, at the time, a naval officer of prestige. Coming also from a wealthy family the two of them proceeded to set up the second office of A.C.C.I.D.E.N.T.S in St Petersburg, the first being at an unknown location. Spending the entirety of a year setting up the new laboratories, finding eager and starry eyed scientists, finding funding and backers to expand this operation into what it eventually became today.
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, which had been founded in 1888. Crowley was subsequently initiated into the Outer Order of the Golden Dawn on 18 November 1898 by the group's leader, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers (1854–1918). The ceremony itself took place at Mark Masons Hall in London, where Crowley accepted his motto and magical name of "Frater Perdurabo", a Latin term meaning "Brother 'I shall endure to the end'", knowing that death was not in fact the end.
Crowley moved from the elegant accommodation at the Hotel Cecil to his own luxury flat at 67–69 Chancery Lane. He soon invited a Golden Dawn associate, Allan Bennett (1872–1923), to live with him, and Bennett became his personal tutor, teaching him more about ceremonial magic and the ritual usage of drugs, it is believed that Crowley may have already been in contact with human spirits who acted as intermediaries between himself and the Shinigami. 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 organisation's leader, being ousted by a group of members who were unhappy with his autocratic rule. Crowley had previously approached this group of rebels, asking to be initiated into the further orders of the Golden Dawn, but they had declined him. Unfazed, he went directly to Mathers, who still held the post of chief and who agreed to initiate him into the Second Order. 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 tried to seize a London temple space known as the Vault of Rosenkreutz from the rebels.
Crowley had also developed 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 mock-obituary on the passing of Waite bore the title "Dead Waite".
Mexico, India and Paris: 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 (1859–1921) proceeded to climb several mountains, including Iztaccihuatl, Popocatepetl and even Colima, the latter of which they had to abandon owing to a volcanic eruption caused by the evolution from a volcanic Hollow evolving into a Gillian. During this period, Eckenstein revealed mystical learnings of his own and told Crowley that he needed to improve the control of his mind, recommending the Indian practice of raja yoga in order to do so. Crowley had continued his magical experimentation on his own after leaving Mathers and the Golden Dawn, and his writings suggest that he developed the magical word Abrahadabra during this time. This word was in fact his password he used to lock and unlock the controls of the Shinigami artefact.
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, while Crowley went on to India, studying various Hindu practices. In 1902, he was joined in India by Eckenstein and several other mountaineers; Guy Knowles, H. Pfannl, V. Wesseley, and Dr Jules Jacot-Guillarmod – all able to be influenced by the spirit world. Together the Eckenstein-Crowley expedition attempted to climb K2 after noticing it to be a peak of spiritual activity. Having been taught by his colleagues on how to start manipulating his own spiritual presence into a functional tool, he was eager to try and interact more universal with any souls he would find. On the journey, Crowley was afflicted with influenza, malaria, and snow blindness, while other expedition members were similarly struck with illness. They reached an altitude of 20,000 feet (6,100 m) before deciding to turn back.
In 1903, Crowley wed Rose Edith Kelly, the sister of his 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 successfully prove his affections. Gerald Kelly was a good friend of W. Somerset Maugham, who after briefly meeting Crowley would later use him as a model for the protagonist of his novel The Magician, published 1908.
Developing Thelema
Egypt and The Book of the Law: 1904
In 1904, Crowley and his new wife Rose travelled to Egypt using the pseudonym of Prince and Princess Chioa Khan, titles which Crowley claimed had been bestowed upon him by an eastern potentate. According to Crowley's own account, Rose, who was pregnant, began to experience visions while in the country, regularly informing him that "they are waiting for you", but not providing him with any further information as to who "they" were. It was on 18 March, after Crowley sought the aid of the Egyptian god Thoth in a magical rite, that she actually revealed who "they" were – the ancient Egyptian god Horus and his alleged messenger, who – after record checking of the Shinigami archives, was believed to be a bird/humanoid Hollow with enough intelligence to talk and not feed on sight. She then led him to a nearby museum in Cairo where she showed him a seventh-century BCE mortuary stele known as the Stele of Ankh-ef-en-Khonsu (it later came 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 in Christian belief. Crowley took this all to be a sign from a divine entity and on 20 March began performing ritual invocations of the god Horus in his rented 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".
It was on 8 April, when the couple were still staying in Cairo, that Crowley claimed he heard a disembodied voice talking to him, claiming that it was coming from a being Crowley named as Aiwass the Minister of Hoor-Paar-Kraat. Actually it was the bird Hollow using it’s bird call abilities to change its voice. It is not known why this Hollow was assisting Crowley but it was a fight between it and the R&D Shinigami that would lead Crowley to find another artefact. Crowley's disciple and later secretary Israel Regardie believed that this voice came from Crowley's subconscious, but opinions among Thelemites differ widely. Crowley said that he 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. In the preface to the Book of the Law, Crowley explains that the ideas presented within the book are symbolized by Egyptian Gods for 'literary convenience'. The Book declares that a new Aeon for mankind had begun, and that Crowley would serve as its prophet. As a supreme moral law, Nuit 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". The story goes that although this event would prove to be a cornerstone in Crowley's life, being the origin of the philosophy of Thelema, he claimed at the time he was unsure what to think about the whole situation. He wrote that he was "dumbfounded about what to do with The Book of the Law" and eventually decided to ignore the instructions that it commanded him to perform, which included taking the Stele of Revealing from the museum, fortifying his own island and translating the Book into all the world's languages. Instead he simply sent typescripts of the work to several occultists whom he knew, and then "put aside the book with relief".
Kangchenjunga and China: 1905–1906
Returning to Boleskine, Crowley came to believe, for reasons that are documented in his diaries, that his former friend Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers had become so jealous of his progression as a ceremonial magician that he had begun using magic against him, and the relationship between the two broke down. On 28 July 1905, Rose gave birth to Crowley's first child, a daughter, whom he named Nuit Ma Ahathoor Hecate Sappho Jezebel Lilith, although she would commonly be referred to simply by her last name. He also founded a publishing company, naming it the Society for the Propagation of Religious Truth in parody of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and through this released more of his own poetry, including The Sword of Song. While his poetry often received strong reviews (either positive or negative), it never sold well, and attempting to gain more publicity, he issued a reward of £100 for whomever could write the best essay on the topic of his work. The winner of this would prove to be J.F.C. Fuller (1878–1966), a British Army officer and military historian, whose essay, The Star in the West, heralded Crowley's poetry as some of the greatest ever written.
Crowley decided to climb another of the world's greatest mountains, Kangchenjunga in the Himalayas, widely thought of as "the most treacherous mountain in the world" by climbers at the time. Assembling a team consisting of Dr Jacot-Guillarmod, a veteran of the K2 climb, as well as several other continental Europeans including Charles Adolphe Reymond, Alexis Pache and Alcesti C. Rigo de Righi, the group travelled to British India to undertake the task. Throughout the expedition, there was much argument between Crowley and the others who felt that he was reckless. They eventually mutinied against Crowley's control, with the other climbers heading back down the mountain as nightfall approached despite Crowley's warnings that it was too dangerous. Crowley was proved right as Pache and several porters were subsequently killed in an accident.
Returning from this expedition, he met up with Rose and Lilith in Kolkata before being forced to leave India after shooting dead a native who had tried to mug him – this individual was in fact the Shinigami that had given him the as of yet unknown artefact in a Gigai, trying to reclaim it with fervent mumblings of “Needing the key to unlock the doors”. Travelling to China, Crowley soon fell down a forty-foot cliff; finding himself unscathed, he said he believed that he was being protected for some prophetic purpose, and underwent a religious experience that he felt bestowed on him the rank of Exempt Adept, the highest grade of the Second Order of the Golden Dawn. Devoting himself fully to spiritual and magical work, he began studying the Goetia, and recited the grimoire's preliminary invocation daily in order to try to get in contact with his Holy Guardian Angel. The Crowleys spent the next few months travelling around China, but it was decided that in March 1906, they would return to Britain.
Rose took Lilith with her and set off for Europe via India, while Crowley himself decided to travel back via the United States, where he hoped he would be able to get support for a second expedition to Kangchenjunga. Before departing, Crowley visited a significant lover and 'Scarlet Woman' Elaine Simpson in Shanghai. She was a fellow occultist who had been his colleague in the Golden Dawn. She was fascinated by The Book of the Law and the apparent prophetic message that it contained, and together they performed a ritual to invoke Aiwass once more. Inspired by the text, Simpson acted as a psychic medium and told Crowley that Aiwass wanted him to "Return to Egypt, with same surroundings. There I will give thee signs." Nonetheless, Crowley ignored the advice of Simpson, instead heading off to America. Stopping off at the Japanese port of Kobe along the way, Crowley had a vision which he interpreted as meaning that the great spiritual beings known as the Secret Chiefs had admitted him into the Third Order of the Golden Dawn. Subsequently arriving in America, he found no support for his proposed mountaineering expedition, and so set sail to return to Britain, arriving there in June 1906.
The A∴A∴ and the Holy Books of Thelema: 1907–1910
Upon arrival at Britain, Crowley learned that his daughter Lilith had died of typhoid in Rangoon and that his wife had begun suffering from alcoholism. Heartbroken, his health began to suffer, and he underwent a series of surgical operations. He began having a short-lived sexual affair with Vera "Lola" Stepp, an actress to whom he would devote some of his poetry, while Rose gave birth to his second daughter, Lola Zaza, for whom Crowley devised a special ritual of thanksgiving.
Saying that he believed that he was now amongst the highest level of spiritual adepts, Crowley began to think about founding his own magical society. In this he was supported by his friend and fellow occultist George Cecil Jones. The pair began to practice rituals together at Jones' home in Coulsdon, and for the autumn equinox on 22 September 1907, they developed a new ceremony based upon the Golden Dawn initiatory rite, for which Crowley composed a verse liturgy entitled "Liber 671", and later dubbed "Liber Pyramidos". The pair repeated this ritual again on 9 October, when they had made some alterations to it. In Crowley's eyes, this ritual would prove to be one of the "greatest events of his career" during which he "attained the knowledge and conversation of his holy guardian angel" and "entered the trance of samadhi, union with godhead". He therefore finally succeeded with the aim of his Abramelin operation – as set out in the grimoire known as The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage – which he had been working on for months. Because of his spiritual attainment, Crowley came to believe that he could finally enter into conversation with his Holy Guardian Angel, and as a result of this, on 30 October 1907, penned "Liber VII", a text that he again claimed had been dictated to him by Aiwass through automatic writing. Following The Book of the Law, which had been received in 1904, "Liber VII" would prove to be the second book in a series of Holy Books of Thelema. Over the next few days, he also received a further Holy Book, "Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente".
Soon, Crowley, Jones and J.F.C. Fuller decided to found a new magical order as a successor to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which would be known as the A∴A∴, the Argenteum Astrum or the Silver Star. Following the order's foundation, Crowley continued to write down more received Thelemic Holy Books during the last two months of the year, including "Liber LXVI", "Liber Arcanorum", "Liber Porta Lucis, Sub Figura X", "Liber Tau", "Liber Trigrammaton" and "Liber DCCCXIII vel Ararita". Meanwhile, effectively separated from his wife Rose by this point, Crowley entered into a romantic and sexual affair with Ada Leverson (1862–1933), an author and friend of Oscar Wilde. This affair was brief, and in February 1908, Crowley was reunited with his wife as she had overcome her alcoholism, and together the couple travelled to Eastbourne for a holiday. Rose however relapsed and Crowley, who disliked her when drunk, fled to Paris.
In Paris during October 1908, he claimed to have again produced samadhi by the use of ritual but this time 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 stated that Maugham acquiesced privately on the question of plagiarism.
In 1909, when doctors stated that Rose required institutionalisation for her alcoholism, Crowley finally decided that it was time to get a divorce, but because he did not want the proceedings to reflect badly upon her, he agreed that she could divorce him for infidelity, thereby meaning that any bad appearances would instead be reflected upon him, and he remained her friend following the proceedings. Crowley soon moved on and took a woman named Leila Waddell as his lover or "Scarlet Woman".
Trying to gain more members for his A∴A∴, Crowley decided to begin publishing a biannual journal, The Equinox, which was billed as "The Review of Scientific Illuminism". Starting with a first issue in 1909, The Equinox contained pieces by Crowley, Fuller and a young poet Crowley had met in 1907 named Victor Neuburg. Soon other occultists had joined the order, including solicitor Richard Noel Warren, artist Austin Osman Spare, Horace Sheridan-Bickers, author George Raffalovich, Francis Henry Everard Joseph Fielding, engineer Herbert Edward Inman, Kenneth Ward and Charles Stansfeld Jones. In 1910, Crowley performed his series of dramatic rites, the Rites of Eleusis, with A∴A∴ members Leila Waddell (Laylah) 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.
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. 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 and the Gnostic Mass is still regularly performed by OTO.
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, Crowley attempted to introduce Neuburg to the spiritual world he dabled in but he had a nervous breakdown. Afterward, Crowley and Neuburg would never see each other again.
United States and Canada: 1914–1918
During his time in the U.S., Crowley practised 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 women, the poet Jeanne Robert Foster, led him to claim the title of Magus, also referring to the system of the A∴A∴.
The mysterious second artefact, still nowhere near being deciphered, remained with Crowley only some of the time. Figuring out how to use the phone eventually he started trying to contact anyone but he only ever heard voices saying “This Hell Butterfly channel is kept for absolute emergencies, get off the line.” Eventually the other side called him and a long discussion was had but the end result wasn’t recorded by Crowley. With the onset of World War 1, the vastly numerous dead were wandering the earth in greater number and Crowley began once again fervently researching what he could.
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 son; 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 practising 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. 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. A Shinigami appeared to him informing him that he had contacted the Soul Society, a real place (apparently pictures were provided) and that he shouldn’t seek to know too much about the less than eternal bliss civilians experienced on the other side. 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.
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.
Abbey of Thelema: 1920–1923
Soon after moving from West 9th St. in Greenwich Village, New York City, to Palermo, Sicily, with their newborn daughter Anne Leah (nicknamed Poupée, born February 1920, died in a hospital in Palermo 14 October 1920), Crowley, along with Leah Hirsig, founded the Abbey of Thelema in Cefalù(Palermo) 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, 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 epic 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. This would be a testing ground to find a wider range of likeminded people to bring into the A.C.C.I.D.E.N.T.S, the idea was dropped soon after creation as its openness proved the world wasn’t ready yet to have their eyes opened.
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 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.
Later life
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 criticised 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. Students of Gurdjieff perceived Crowley as a black or at least ignorant magician and said his teacher "kept a sharp watch" on the visitor, but mentions no open confrontation.
On 16 August 1929, Crowley married Maria de Miramar, a Nicaraguan, while in Leipzig. They separated by 1930, but 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, who translated his poem "Hymn To Pan" into Portuguese. With the assistance of Pessoa, Crowley faked his own death at a notorious rock formation on the shore called Boca do Inferno (Mouth of Hell). Crowley then left the country and enjoyed the newspaper reports of his death, and reappeared three weeks later at an exhibition in Berlin.
Bankruptcy
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 court, 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.
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. Hamnett was in fact an assistant of A.C.C.I.D.E.N.T.S and losing the court case was the most convenient and rapid way of transferring all his funds into his community, which was on the verge of a breakthrough with the second artefact given from Soul Society.
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 the Second World War, future James Bond author Ian Fleming (then a Navy intelligence officer) along with other colleagues 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, "strictly 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 leukaemia in January 1946.
Crowley died at Netherwood on 1 December 1947 at the age of 72 due to 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. In actuality the doctor was another Gigai wearing Shinigami who despised the social structure of the other world he lived in and supported the “true” purpose Crowley was forming secretive business.
Patricia "Deirdre" MacAlpine, who visited Crowley with their son and her three other children shortly before 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 excerpts from Crowley's works, among them his poem 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.
Crowley was just the beginning of the A.C.C.I.D.E.N.T.S origins, often criticised as being too scattered and unfocussed by the current operators, vast improvements had since been made.
In the late 60’s the transfer of funds covered by the false court case bore fruit as with electric generators powerful enough to activate the “key” a tear in the fabric of reality was formed but for a moment. With further funding from business mergers in the late 70’s onward, the A.C.C.I.D.E.N.T.S now owned Yum! Brands Inc. 3G Capitol, McDonalds, Burger King Holdings Inc. Balfour Beatty, Carillion, BHP Billiton, Anglo American, Impala Platinum, BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, ABB and Aurotek Corp to name a few. From reports Crowley had kept, the ones that called themselves Shinigami, lived in the parallel Japan of the Spirit World, but what of the rest of the planet? Over the next decade tests were performed into breaching the barrier to reach the other side. Eventually managing to do so, the many sites across the globe found the rest of the planet this Soul Society resided on wasn’t populated by life, only rock as far as the eye could see with geological abnormalities.
Breakthroughs came in the 80’s when generators small enough to be portable, thanks to the reverse engineered technology from the holographic phone and parts of the key (later found to be an essential part of the Zanpaktou’s hilt used to open the Shinigami Gateways and Konso souls to the other side). It wasn’t long after that A.C.C.I.D.E.N.T.S gave the go ahead to begin building infrastructure, depots, refineries, geothermal power plants and mines on the Soul planet. New materials not known to the human periodic tables were found, ranging from Anima Ferrous (Soul Steel), the most common occurring material in a Zanpacktou, to Harmurium, a radioactive material that produced an entirely unknown wave of radiation known to affect only the mentality of a person, not their cellular structure.
Alongside these advances, the other fields of A.C.C.I.D.E.N.T.S (Investigation, Detention, Engagement, Negotiation and Treatment) developed a wide variety of technological wonder which continue to grow with every passing day and new discovery.
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