Every man and every woman is a star.

~Luibere Al verl Legis I:3

Poet, mountain climber, world traveler, cross-dresser, magician, heroin addict, big game hunter, prophet of the Aeon of Horus - Edward Alexander Crowley was all of these things, and more. It is impossible to do the man justice in less than a million words. He was a complicated, paradoxical, and greatly misunderstood man who changed the world in ways we have yet to fully realize.

Assuming the Gaelic form of his middle name, Aleister, he came to be reviled in the scandel sheets of his day as "The Wickedest Man in the World." Aleister Crowley was a man of passion and lust who gave the world a new religion, a new perspective on magic, and a new eon.

Raised in a strict, fundamentalist Christian household, Crowley began his life as a dedicated student of the Bible. After the death of his father, however, things went progressively sour between Aleister and his mother, who dubbed him "the Beast," a title he quickly adopted and relished throughout his colorful life. Although he was sickly and often bullied as a child, Crowley proved to be very intelligent for his age. As he developed intellectually, he was determined to overcome his weakness, and so took up rock climbing because it was regarded the most dangerous of sports. The self-confidence and physical vitality that came with his new-found athleticism, coupled with the eruption of his sex drive, led him to thoroughly reject Chritianity because he saw it as the embodiment of all the cruelty, meanness, and fanaticism he had endure in the course of what he described as a "boyhood hell."

Free of the stifling opression of the Plymouth Brethren, Crowley pursued mountaineering, poetry, and sexual conquests. Reading voraciously, he filled his rooms with books, but he graduated without a degree. He practiced at chess up to four hours a day, became the president of the chess club, yet never went on to become the world champion he had once planned on becoming. His inheritance gave him the means to indulge his emerging hedonistic tendencies.  Something he did with wild abandon - love without guilt and sex without shame were his way. Casting off his parents' morality, Crowley explored every facet of human sexuality with gusto, having affairs with men and women alike. Ultimately, it would be his free-wheeling bisexual liaisons that would be used to deny him initiation, sparking the downfall of the Golden Dawn.

Through all his escapades and adventures, Crowley remained fascinated with all the teachings of magic, alchemy, and of Eastern philosophies. In his search for answers he eventually met George Cecil Jones, who intiated young Mr. Crowley into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1898. Crowley adopted the magical name of Frater Perdurabo, Latin for "I will endure to the end." Of all the great Adepts of the Golden Dawn, he has indeed endured. Crowley has more followers today, than at any time when he was alive.

The Golden Dawn collapsed in the midst of bickering and petty politics, with Crowley right in the thick of things. From out of the ashes emerged a number of off-shoots and descendent magical lodges and orders, including Crowley's own order, the Astrum Argentium. Five years later, in 1912, Theodor Reuss intiiated Crowley into the O.T.O. - the Ordo Templi Orientis, or Order of the Temple of the East, a radical lodge of German Masons who practiced sexual magic. Crowley immediately embraced the O.T.O. and remade it in his image, becoming the International Head of the order in 1925. It is perhaps his involvement with the O.T.O. that most influenced Crowley's work. A great deal of his writings and records have been maintained and published by the O.T.O., who have worked to keep the magic of the master alive.

Reckoned by many to be the foremost magician of the twentieth century, Crowley has had a tremendous impact on the world through his various publications, public ritual performances, and shocking behavior that opened the door for the sexual revolution and the occult renaissance of the sixties.

Crowley lived a grand life of passion and 'elan, traveling across the world, exploring the mysteries of every esoteric discipline he could find, including Shaivism, Tantra, Yoga, Taoism, and Sufism. The ancient teachings of the East captured his imagination and left their mark upon everything he did. He applied the analytical techniques of modern science to everything from sex, to drugs, to yoga, to magic. Crowley kept meticulous records of every experiment, leaving behind an invaluable treasure trove of personal research into the effects of various drugs, mind-states, and ritual techniques. A bold pioneer and trail-blazer into ambiguous and subtle regions of human consciousness and spirituality, Crowley opened the doors for those who would come after him. He saw clearly that others would follow, and that he was just the beginning of something greater himself.