Aleister Crowley Case Study

Aleister Crowley: A Cult Leader and Public Celebrity

Power and abuse go hand in hand. This is shown throughout history in leaders who have a large or small following. When this statement is made, many people automatically think of dictators, such as Hitler or Kim Jong Un. However, leaders such as doctors, teachers, and even presidents use and abuse their power over their followers. One group of power-abusers people rarely think of, though, are cult leaders. Cult leaders throughout history gain followers in many ways, and their rise to power is almost always tied closely to the abuse of power they exert. By gaining a wider and bigger audience filled with people as wicked as they are, cult leaders can easily get away with abusing their power,

In 1898, he became a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn is an organization that believes anyone can hone special abilities, or magic, that is passed down from generation to generation. Crowley also visited Egypt in 1904. Here, he “reported mystical experiences and wrote The Book of Law, which he claimed had been dictated to him by a spirit (Lewis).” The phrase “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law”, which was included in The Book of Law, became the basis for his new religion called he named “Thelema”. The Book of Law was later accepted as scripture and regularly taught by the Ordo Templi Orientis, a German group of mystics. After he realized how influential his teachings were, Crowley broke ties with both organizations and founded his own order. The symbol of this new order was the same symbol that stood for “silver star” in Latin, which is “A∴A∴”. During World War I, Crowley moved to the US and actively contributed in pro-German propaganda, which included writing for the newspaper The Fatherland. Although he was accused of betraying the British during this time, “it appears he actually worked as a double agent, and he had many ties in the British intelligence community (Jones).” Once the war was over, he returned back to Europe and started a life in Sicily, Italy, which is where he had a major revelation. He felt that he needed a sanctuary-like place where he and

Raoul Loveday was a man who lived in Italy with his wife, Betty May. He would regularly practice Thelema with Crowley in the Abbey of Thelema, despite his wife’s warnings and pleas for him to stop. On February 16th, 1923, Crowley ordered Loveday to kill a cat during a ritual and drink its blood after claiming it had contained an evil spirit (Gallagher). After doing what Crowley had told him, Loveday fell ill and died that same day. Crowley accomplished the task of making Loveday do as he says by gaining his trust and using the respect Loveday had for him as a gateway to making Loveday unknowingly kill himself. Betty May immediately wrote reports to the Daily Express to get public justice for her husband. Once they had read over her letters and reports, they described Crowley as “the wickedest man in the world (Lewis)”. This soon lead to the deportation of Aleister Crowley out of Italy (Skramstad). After he left, the Abbey of Thelema stopped being used, yet the building still stands today. Crowley continued the rest of his life in Hastings, which is where he later died in 1947 of pneumonia, although other reports suggest he died once his doctor stopped providing him with the heroin he was addicted to. After Crowley passed, the religion of Thelema and Crowley’s legacy slowly trickled away. However, Crowley’s name and face was used