Thelema
Aleister Crowley
Edward Alexander Crowley
Golden Dawn initiate, founder of Thelema and the most influential ceremonial magician of the twentieth century.
- Dates
- 12 October 1875 – 1 December 1947
- Dating
- documented dates
- Born
- Royal Leamington Spa
- Died
- Hastings, England
The life
Crowley entered the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1898, quarrelled with its leadership, and went on to build a new religious and magical system around The Book of the Law, which he said was dictated to him in Cairo in April 1904. He became head of the British branch of Ordo Templi Orientis, organised the A∴A∴, travelled widely, wrote compulsively and spent much of his later life in poverty. He died at Netherwood, a Hastings boarding house, aged seventy-two.
Place in the tradition
He gathered Golden Dawn ritual, yoga, Tantra, Qabalah, Tarot and his own received scripture into Thelema. His spelling 'magick', his tables of correspondence and his account of ritual practice still organise a large part of English-language ceremonial magic.
a note on the record
History and later legend
The Book of the Law's supernatural authorship is a Thelemic religious claim. Crowley's own mythology and the hostile mythology of the British press both crowd his biography and need to be read as such.
the written record
Principal works
-
received 8–10 April 1904; first printed 1909
The Book of the Law
Liber AL vel Legis
The short scripture of Thelema, centred on the maxim 'Do what thou wilt'. Crowley said the text was dictated by a non-human intelligence called Aiwass.
-
1909
Liber 777
Tables aligning Qabalistic, astrological, elemental, mythological and magical systems. This is one of the principal mechanisms by which Golden Dawn correspondences became portable.
held in the source catalogue Read at hermetic.com ↗
-
issued intermittently from 1909
The Equinox
A serial publication carrying Crowley's essays, rituals, received texts, fiction, poetry and instructions for the A∴A∴.
-
parts published 1912–1936
Book 4
His principal instructional work on yoga, ceremonial equipment, magical theory and the method he called magick.
-
1944
The Book of Thoth
Crowley's account of the Tarot system embodied in the deck painted by Frieda Harris.
held in the source catalogue Read at hermetic.com ↗