Aleister Crowley - Part 1 (white stains)

This week, we discuss Aleister Crowley, the wickedest man in the world.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to an hour of our time, the podcast where
we pick a topic, study it, come back to tell
you what we've learned. Today, we're getting Spooky with part
one of a two part episode about the Great Beast himself,
Alistair Crowley. We're gonna talk about his early life, his
entrance into the world of occultism, and we're gonna give
our thoughts on occultism in general.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
I'm Joe and I'm Dave. Well, Joe, do you want
to do you want to sing a little bit of
Ozzy for us? I want to get this going.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
Mister crowdy boom boom boom, won't you ride my white hose?
Boom boom, boom boom, mister crow It's symbolic, of course.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
That's my favorite line of the song because it's like.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
He's trying to distance himself just a little bit, but he's.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
Like, mister Crowley, which you're ride by white horse. It's symbolic,
of course, Yes, yes, thank you, Ozzie. We know that
that previous line was about heroin.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
Yes, yes, yeah, it's not. It's but it's not symbolic. Well,
like Crowley did a lot of drugs and AUSSI did
a lot of drugs. So it's it's not a metaphor.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
No. I think I think the white horse was. I
think he's supplied.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
I thought he meant that the suggestion.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
No, no white white horses. Another isn't name for heroin. Yeah,
so he was. He was saying, like, in case you
didn't know that, I'm talking about drugs, leaning leaning closer, I'm.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
Totally talking about drugs, get the gun, Get the gun.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
Oh my god, yeah yeah yeah. If you don't know
what we're talking about, then I.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
First s your fucking nerds if you.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
Have the wrong show, because you're not nerd enough, because
if you well yeah, if you don't, if you listen
to the show and you are not all familiar with
Ozzy Osbourne or Black Sabbath, then I feel like.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Or Alistair Crowley or Alistir Crowley, I feel.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
Like you're not gonna like about For the record, I
was trying to remember which which Ozzie album, Uh, mister
Crowley is on. I could not remember if it was.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
On Ship, It's on it's.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
On Blizard Eyes. I couldn't remember if it was for
some reason that was Diary mad Man, because Diary mad Man, well,
because Alistair Crowley was a madman.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Yeah, there you go, that's true. Yeah, So talking about
Alistair Crowley, we uh, you know, the month of October
is one of our favorite months of podcasting because we
get to do a lot of you know, kind of
spooky stuff. But as if you follow our social media
or you listen to our repost of our zombies episode recently,

(03:08):
you know that my wife and I just had a baby,
which you know slows things down a little bit for us,
keeping us busy, so we're not going to do as
many spooky episodes. But when we started talking about, you know,
a month ago or so, what we wanted to do
in October, one thing that came up was talking about

(03:28):
Alistair Crowley, and he was somebody we've been wanting to
talk about for a while but hadn't really gotten to
and this seemed like a good time to do it.
If you don't know Alistair Crowley and you don't know why,
he's a good topic for you know, Halloween season, we'll
get into that.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
What I wanted to say at the top here was
that I, you know, sometimes I like to make like
a drink to have that kind of like goes with
the episode, not no ways and I don't know. It's
like I did not have a chance to make this drink.

(04:10):
But he was very fond of absinthe, which we discussed
in our Absinthe episode.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
Yes we did.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
He also apparently drank a shit ton of champagne, and
he would bring a bunch of champagne with him when
he would go on his mountain climbing expeditions, which he
The thing that it's so hard to talk about Alistair
Crowley because he did so much stuff. He did a
little weird shit. Also, a lot of what you will

(04:40):
read about him was written by his devotees dev or devotee,
so some of the things about him are not true.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
Yeah. Yeah, it's a lot of legend and it's funny. Also,
like he formed a religion called the Lama. Yeah, and
I don't know if it's the Lame. I think it's Thelamists.
Is how you say, the followers of the religion.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
I think you're right.

Speaker 2 (05:06):
The people who who follow it now have sort of
distanced themselves from Crowley.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
Which is really funny because it wouldn't exist without him.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
It wouldn't exist without him. But I think that there,
I think that's really He was pretty loose about what
some of the stuff meant. And I think that they're
trying to be a little less loose about it. But
what we'll get into all that.

Speaker 1 (05:26):
I guess that seems so strange to me. And he
definitely did a lot of Like we're gonna say some stuff,
we're gonna laugh about some things because we we goof
off when we record this podcast because uh, basically, to
to quote one of our our our other great American poets,
Crowley was British, one of our great poets of the world.

(05:49):
Everything is fucked and everybody sucks.

Speaker 2 (05:52):
So it's true.

Speaker 1 (05:52):
So we like to, you know, learn about some some
weird shit and have a little bit of fun. But yeah,
I under I want and and know it to be
under any pretense that we think Alistarelli is a good dude,
because he did a lot of fucked up stuff.

Speaker 2 (06:07):
No, I thought about this a lot. I'll say this, Joe. Well,
two things. One, I know we mentioned in our absent
episode that Hemingway liked death in the afternoon, which was
absence in Champagne. I'm gathering that he might not have
known that term for it, but might have been a
favorite of Crowley's as well. Given that he liked both

(06:29):
of those things. I don't know if he ever thought
to combine them. He was all about combining fluid. So
it's very like.

Speaker 1 (06:35):
He wrote a whole book about it, which we'll talk about. Yeah,
strap in everyone. The reason why I'm kind of rambling
is because, like I said, he is very difficult to
research the person. And I would say, even some of
the things that we were going to say, maybe even
take them with a grain of salt, because like I said,
it is very difficult to separate the man from the legend. Here.

(06:57):
But before I completely get off the topic that I was,
and I did, I did find a cocktail in honor
of Alstair Crowley. Now this is not necessarily this is
something that he might have drank.

Speaker 2 (07:12):
Okay, but might have because of the time period.

Speaker 1 (07:15):
Because of the time period, Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
Yeah, yeah, we're talking Crowbleby born in eighteen seventy five,
so his heyday sort of like the end of the
Victorian era, early early twentieth century.

Speaker 1 (07:26):
Well, yeah, it's interesting because he he was born in
the in the Edwardian era actually, like yeah, I guess
before the Victorian era, but died in the modern era.
So he kind of like lived a long time and

(07:48):
sort of lived in a period of time where there
was like a lot of sort of rapid social change. Anyway,
But this, this drink that I found from the website
Drunkards all neck is is an ode to Alistair Crowley
and is called the Satan's Whiskers. It is a prohibition

(08:09):
erra or cocktail, so it is something that he he
might have encountered, but I didn't have time to make it,
so I'm drinking beer it is.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
Can you tell me about this? This content is.

Speaker 1 (08:21):
Gin driver Move Sweet Remove, so equal parts sweet and dry,
which normally if you minx that equal parts of those,
and like a Manhattan, you would call that a perfect Manhattan.

Speaker 2 (08:33):
So this I would think they just cancel themselves out. Well,
I mean driver Moves more of a joke.

Speaker 1 (08:39):
Oh sorry, Yeah, Driver Move is like a white wine,
and sweet Remove is generally made from like a red wine,
and it's it's obviously summer sugar.

Speaker 2 (08:46):
So kind of a road.

Speaker 1 (08:49):
Yeah, yes, half ounts of cointrow, which is an orange liqueur,
cordounts of orange juice, dash of orange bitters, and a
orange twist, and definitely gonna get those like herbal flavors
from the genitive vermouths and then the the there's three
three different or four different components which have a orange flavor.

(09:15):
And this does give you the the instructions that Tara
reading or other cult rituals is optional.

Speaker 2 (09:23):
Oh I thought you said Tara reading like Taro. Sorry,
just being like an after that peaked in the nineties
and then kind of went on a bender. That's Tera.
That's Tara reading.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
Oh my god, Obi like I've become Obi Wan. That's
the name. I've not heard it a long time. I
have to study for I have to do some study
and some research for another podcast which I'm going to
be appearing on, which I will keep a secret until
that actually releases. But I may have a Satans Whiskers

(10:01):
once I do that.

Speaker 2 (10:03):
Well, you know, speaking of Satan's whiskers. The other thing
i'd point out here, Joe, and this is what was
really funny to me. You know I've read about Alistair
Crawley and Thalima off and on for years. Yeah, what
did you know watch different things? Well, what I was
gonna say was, you know, in getting ready for this,
I knew quite a bit about him, But in getting
ready for this, I wanted to like find some good

(10:24):
like just to kind of refresh a little bit, and
I peruse some of the obvious things, look in a Wikipedia,
Britannica and things like that. The most concise and and
surprisingly objective source was Christianity dot Com. Okay, I only

(10:45):
opened up that link because I thought, oh, I got
to see what they say, and obviously, like they have
a pretty negative stance on Crowley, but overall pretty objective
when you're talking about history, and I just thought that
was funny. I also think it's funny that there's a
Christianity dot Com. Yeah, but that's beyond me. I do

(11:06):
also find that funny. Well, we should get into talking
about him. But one of the things if you do
try to do some oh sorry, I should say what
I knew about Alister Crowley, Uh, precious a little, to
be honest, I knew, excuse me, that he had a
house near Lockness that was purchased. Is that the one
that Jimmy Pape was bought by Jimmy Page. Yeah, he's

(11:26):
on the cover of Sergeant Pepper.

Speaker 1 (11:28):
Was on the cover of Sergeant Pepper. I'm not a
big Beatles fan, so I actually didn't know that. I
knew that the Jimmy Page thing. I knew that. I knew,
I knew a lot about the Azzi song. But to
be honest, and I knew he was like a like
an occultest but actually got him up until fairly recently
when we did a lot of studying about Edgar Casey, yeah,

(11:53):
and then now Alister Crowley. I confused the two them,
I do. To be very I knew that there were
different people, but I would often like confuse, like who
did what, because I really didn't know much about him.
So this is kind of interesting. But if you want
to do some digging. He wrote so many books, you
would have to spend years, yeah, reading his books in

(12:18):
order to read all them. And I do mean that literally,
you would spend years of your life because he published
like often multiple books in the year. Yeah, and he
published them throughout his relatively long life.

Speaker 2 (12:33):
And I think also it's tough with like learning about
the Leima. Like if you learn about, like, I don't know, Buddhism,
for example. I'm not saying that it's like a simple
religion to understand, but there are like really basic tenants
to follow. The Laima has tenants, but they're very broad.
He kept them intentionally broad, and I think a lot

(12:56):
of it ends up up to interpretation, which is why
modern followers really distance themselves from Crowley's actions. Well, you know,
I compared it a lot like you know, if you
compare it to something like Levey and Satanism, I think
that there is like a fundamental similarity that quickly has

(13:18):
a fundamental difference. So we'll get into that.

Speaker 1 (13:21):
Well. And also religions or or new religious movements. I
think many people would call this a cult, but people
that people that study this stuff prefer to refer to
them as new religious movements.

Speaker 2 (13:35):
They because I maintain, Joe that the difference between a
cult and a religion is simply numbers. Well, that's why
I know that it's denser than that. Well, but I
still feel that way.

Speaker 1 (13:46):
Well, you're there are elements of cults, there is no overlap.
But that is why people who is who study religion
prefer to call these things new religious movements and not cults,
because they they are trying to partly partly that is,
to recognize the similarities between quote unquote proper religions and cults.

Speaker 2 (14:14):
Well, and also, if you were to compare Alistair Crowley
to say, like Jim Jones, like Alistair, Crowley did not.
He had followers, but not a large number of them.
He was not as concerned about that. He was not
his organizer as charismatic to do that. Well, forming a
group like that really wasn't his focus. So if you

(14:34):
if you want to split hairs and look at something
that we consider a cult, this is definitely the a cult,
but not a cult.

Speaker 1 (14:42):
He must have been. He must have been somewhat charismatic,
which will because it's too fucked.

Speaker 2 (14:48):
It's what I'm speaking of, which I did. I will say,
I think I mentioned this on the show before, but
last summer I went to a cult museum in Cleveland
in which they had like a dagger and a big
cloak that was owned by Crowley. Oh now it's pretty
fucking dope.

Speaker 1 (15:02):
Uh so, okay. So, But one of the reasons why
it is to and we should dive to this his
life and hearing them. But one of the reasons why
it is difficult to study this, as I mentioned, is
because you're either going to read stuff by his detractors.
He was called the Great Satan, the most wickedest man
who ever lived, the beast, which it was a name
from the originally from his own mother that he actually

(15:25):
kind of like adopted. And but then you'll also read
things that are from his like followers or people who
are or were sort of inspired into like occultism. And
then one of the other reasons why it's difficult to
learn about things like the Lemma and things like that
is that they are esoteric movements. Esoterism is meant to

(15:47):
be somewhat mysterious. You must be initiated in order to
learn about it, and it is meant to be knowledge
reserved for a small number of people.

Speaker 2 (15:58):
So that and it's often often knowledge that is a
openly a hodgepodge of different things, pulling from multiple sources
to find a quote unquote truth, which I think clouds.

Speaker 1 (16:08):
It even more, yes, because sometimes they're you're meant to
have been inspired by spirits, communicating with spirits or or
oh yeah, or aliens or you know, whatever happens to be.

Speaker 2 (16:21):
I mean, Thalaima is directly connected to like Egyptian gods
and like ritual magic. Yeah, and then just like fucking and.

Speaker 1 (16:30):
Then I think another thing that we should in another term,
So if I say, like I have really esoteric or
esoteric music taste. That would like also imply that, like,
you know, I listened to like obscure bands and no
one's heard of, Like, so it's kind of like that's
where that works.

Speaker 2 (16:45):
It really means you mean eclectic, right.

Speaker 1 (16:47):
Well, clectic means you listen to a bunch of different
kinds of.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
Oh okay, well yeah, so let's out for a second.
The definition of the word esoteric, Yes, intended for This
is from Oxford Dictionary. Intended for or likely to be
understood by only a small number of people with a
specialized with a specialized knowledge or interest.

Speaker 1 (17:13):
Yes, So you could also say that like, oh my,
you know, my my thesis research when I was in
graduate school was like very esoteric because I, you know,
only only I know about it and like my graduate advisor. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (17:28):
But if you're looking for something like similar in like
the like modern America, it'd be like the Freemasons. And
it's funny because two Freemasons are the ones that start
something called the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Yes,
that is a great influence on Crowley when he joins
that group. So you know, I would call the Freemasons esoteric.

Speaker 1 (17:47):
Yeah, And another thing, another term that we should define
and I think we should maybe talk about or maybe
we could say this for the end is occultism. Yeah, now,
I don't want to spend I think we could like
kind of define it sort of quickly and then I
feel like we'll discuss it more. But Dave, before I

(18:08):
joined the podcast, you you all did an episode about cultism. Well,
or we did or touched on it. It wasn't that
wasn't the name of that.

Speaker 2 (18:19):
We did an episode early on about Satanism, and I
think that that kind of well, you know, what do
we do one about occultism?

Speaker 1 (18:27):
Maybe you're right, wasn't it something we have and stuff? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (18:32):
Well, I mean we are we are on what like
two hundred and fifty episodes. Deep, I'm gonna have to search.
I'm going to search here a cult We did an
episode about Nazis and the occult, but we've done like
tangential Yeah.

Speaker 1 (18:44):
This is a thing that we've touched on.

Speaker 2 (18:46):
Well, yes, very much.

Speaker 1 (18:47):
So, well, okay, so what a cultism is? And it
was a it really gained a lot of popularity or
a cult thinking cults organizations and things like that really
gained a lot of popularity in a relative sense, these

(19:08):
are still definitely like very underground and like countercultural organizations
in the eighteen hundreds, especially the late eighteen hundreds. And
occultism is the idea and again here's the sort of
overlaps with religion, but occultism is the idea that the
world that we can see generally, occult falls outside of

(19:35):
organized traditional reli falls outside of both organized religion and science.
So these are people who were both.

Speaker 2 (19:43):
Leads more conspiracy theory.

Speaker 1 (19:45):
These are people who are disillusioned by both organized religion
and the burgeoning scientific revolution in the mid to late
eighteen hundreds. So occultism essentially like believe that there are
phenomena that are hidden or secret. So what we can

(20:05):
see in the world and by sea originally really meant
like literally what we can see and hear in touch,
but increasingly as science began to use different kinds of
instruments to extend the human senses to be able to
detect things that are invisible like magnetism, looking at the

(20:31):
very small with microscopes, looking at things that are far
away with telescopes, and then increasingly, like I said, as
you got later into the late eighteen hundreds being able
to detect things like radio waves and the electromagnetic spectrum
and things like that, which they which are actually like
kind of hard to to even like conceptualize that there

(20:54):
is a world that is even outside of that that
you cannot experience through the tools of science and must
be experienced through ritual and magic. Yeah. And the reason
why I never really got that interested, to be honest

(21:16):
in Crowley until you know, more recently, is that I
think that basically I don't believe that that exists, and
I don't want to get into my personal beliefs like
too much, because that's not really what this is about.

Speaker 2 (21:32):
And if you're a regular listener of the show, this
is not going to be surprising. No, I mean you
you kind of know where we're coming from.

Speaker 1 (21:38):
I want to differentiate, and if this is where my
philosophy Greek comes in, I want a differential two different
ways of thinking. There is methodological materialism, so materialism is
that you only deals with the materials, stuff that you
can touch, stuff that you can see, stuff that you
can detect with the rints of science. There's methodological materialsm

(22:03):
which means that I'm going to describe the world only
in ways that rely on the material. So I'm only
going to like, you know, construct my experiments and things
like that with the things that can be described with
material cause and effect. That leaves open the possibility that

(22:27):
there are things like like God or the afterlife or
things like that that I just I can't see. But
they may still exist, but basically they don't like affect me,
and they don't explain, like, you know, why the sky
is blue or why black holes exist, so I can

(22:50):
I basically, I can ignore them, or I can ignore
that when I'm doing my like scientific research or thinking
about those things. But maybe when I, you know, go
to church and con template, you know, why why am
I here? And those things like that, Like I have
a leave a place for those things, and I think
that's perfectly fine. I happen to subscribe to something which

(23:11):
is philosophical materialism, which is like, I don't actually think
that there is anything beyond the natural. There is no supernatural.

Speaker 2 (23:24):
Yeah, I'm right there with you, as you know.

Speaker 1 (23:27):
So I think most people operate and that's a philosophical
I can't prove that with science, nor would I try to.
I think most people operate as methodological materialists. Even people
who are religious. We go about our lives and we

(23:48):
like are not expecting to like move things with our
mind or you know, things like this. But then you
have people who are very religious who don't ascribe to that,
and then you have people like who have a belief
in the occult, like the folks that we're gonna talk
about in this episode that are sort of very much outside.

(24:09):
They are like mainly concerned with the hidden world. So
that's that's what I thought it was really important to
define that before we started talking about this weird.

Speaker 2 (24:22):
I love it. I think that that's a great way
to dig into this. All right, well, let's you know,
we're twenty five minutes in. Let's talk about Crown.

Speaker 1 (24:29):
Yeah, and the thing is it's this is going to
be like a mile wide and an inch deep.

Speaker 2 (24:33):
Oh my god, yes, which is all Crowley's favorite.

Speaker 1 (24:37):
Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (24:38):
Actually it'd be the other way around, an inch wide
and a mile deep.

Speaker 1 (24:45):
We're okay, yeah, we're gonna get to the sex stuff.
Just yeah, all right, we're gonna talk about his early
life here real quick.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
Yeah, go for it.

Speaker 1 (24:55):
All right. So his title was really fucked up, but
he was very rich, and that is One of the
things about Alistair Crowley is that he never worked a
day in his life. And I think that's actually really
important because you can't do like a tenth of the
shit that this guy did if you actually have to

(25:17):
like go to a job, especially during the Victorian era,
because this is a period of time where people were like,
leisure time was very people had very little time for leisure,
your working in the factory and things like this. It
was a leisure was really only a thing reserved for

(25:37):
the very wealthy, and like going and climbing mountains and
things like that, that's only a thing you could do
if you were wealthy. So anyway, he was born to
his very wealthy family. It's really funny because they were
in this religious sect, but they actually got rich by
being like the first people to come up with the
idea of, like what if we started serving food in

(25:58):
our pub.

Speaker 2 (26:00):
Yeah. Weren't they like basically Quakers, yes, but they figured
out this way of like, yeah, selling beer in their
like little establishments even though they weren't drinking it.

Speaker 1 (26:09):
He was born a Quaker, his father was, but then
he converted to the Exclusive Brethren, which is this which
later became the which was a faction of something called
the Plymouth Brethren, which was Christian fundamentalist or evangelical sect.
You might you might call them a cult, I would say, so. Yeah,

(26:33):
So they didn't drink. I do think his father started
drinking later in life. Okay, he started, like, you know,
dipping into the his own supply.

Speaker 2 (26:44):
Oh, it happens to the best.

Speaker 1 (26:46):
Of So his family is very wealthy. But he was
born Edward Alexander Crowley, Yeah, in Warwickshire, London, in eighteen
seventy five.

Speaker 2 (26:57):
I believe as a child he kind of went by Alec,
but he didn't. I don't think he loved that name.

Speaker 1 (27:02):
No, he did not like any of the sort of
names or dominionto's that he could have been called, so
he changed. So he changed his name later. Yeah, So
the family's green business was called Crowley's alton Ales, which
is why I'm drinking me beer. And so his father
was actually retired before Alistairs or Edward was even born.

(27:25):
He married Emily Bertha Bishop. So his he hated his mom.
His mom called him the beast because he was I
think he was the piece of shit.

Speaker 2 (27:38):
Yeah, he claimed like that. It was because he was
marked with the Sign of the Beast at birth. But
I think that just you know, that just sounded cool.

Speaker 1 (27:47):
Well he was, Yeah, he hated his mom and he
hated his mom's whole family. So he was in this group.
They were in this group called the Plymouth Brethren, and
his father was super devout. He kind of retired to
become like a traveling preacher for the religious group. You know,

(28:09):
about the only thing that al stair Slash Edward was
allowed to read as a child was the Bible, so
his father would read a chapter from the Bible every
day after breakfast. They his mother and father had a
baby daughter, but she died in eighteen eighty and then

(28:33):
they moved and when he was a he got sent
to his first like boarding school. And at this boarding school, apparently,
like the reverend that the Irana was like a crowdly
called him a sadist. So his family was not opposed
to beaten kids, but apparently even they were like the

(28:56):
people at the boarding school were going too far. Okay,
So well, in eighteen eighty seven, his dad died when
he was eleven from tongue cancer. And after that that
this kind of like really affected him because later on
he said that he called his heir, his father, my
hero and my friend. But he also inherited a third

(29:16):
of his father's wealth, which was like millions of dollars.
Oh shit in in like today's money, but it was
in a trust fund, so he couldn't touch it yet.
So he was at this you know, these this, these
different boarding schools, and uh, he actually was like put

(29:37):
in solitary confinement in like a shed, and he actually
developed something called albion uria, which is uh basically a
type of kidney disease. So they actually got the school
shut down because it was wealthy family shit.

Speaker 2 (30:00):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (30:01):
So then eventually he went to he had different tutors
that he was hanging out with, and most of the
tutors were picked from this religious sect. But he had
one tutor who was like a quote unquote cool guy.
Oh he's the youth pastor, the youth pastor. But it

(30:22):
was like he would let him, he would let him read.
So he this guy thought that he needed to engage
like or or uh, work your physical body, hone the
physical body as well as the mind. So they go
and walking tours like all over and during on during
these walking tours, this guy would give him alcohol, and

(30:44):
he was like fifteen, So I don't know. I guess
I don't know when people like we're allowed to drink
at this point. But that feels weird.

Speaker 2 (30:54):
Oh yeah, yeah, I think that's I think that's weird.

Speaker 1 (30:56):
And also smoking and things like that. And this is
also around the time that he started to become really
skeptical of Christianity and pointing out like inconsistencies in the Bible,
and for one of the first times he was allowed
to read other things that weren't in the Bible. Eventually,
this guy got fired because of you know, being like

(31:19):
Rex cool guy. But during this time, in one of
his walking tours, he had sex for the first time
with a woman from the town that they were visiting
on their walking tour, and that seemed to be like
a real turning point because from that point on he
was like seemingly fairly obsessed with having sex with basically

(31:41):
anything that moved.

Speaker 2 (31:44):
Yeah. No, that's I did pretty.

Speaker 1 (31:47):
Much get a really important part, which is, at some
point before this he he was started to try to
figure out how he could get himself like kicked out
of the sact and like cast out, and so he
started praying to satan okay, and nothing nothing happened. So

(32:08):
then he he discovered.

Speaker 2 (32:11):
Masturbating, you know, as one does.

Speaker 1 (32:15):
And I'm paraphrasing the quote because I can't find it
in my notes, but it was said he said that
He later wrote that this was a practice with which
I applied to myself vigorously because he because this was
a sin, and so he thought that if he jerked
it enough that that God would you know, shun him,

(32:39):
which is, you know, that's strategy, that's what he wanted.
At some point in his teens, he did contract gonorrhea
for the first time.

Speaker 2 (32:51):
Well, that seemed inevitable.

Speaker 1 (32:52):
It was not the first time that he would contract
aven ariial disease. I am going to skip through this
stuff a laugh ast but I think his like early
life was like really important. Around this time in his teens,
he also took his first chemistry courses, which is kind

(33:14):
of what got him interested later on in alchemy, which
is one of his kind of entres into occultism. Yeah,
this is also this time when he started developing his
interests in chess and rock climbing and poetry. So among

(33:37):
the things that's fascying about him is that he was
extremely good at chess. Really supposedly Dave. This is one
of the stories about him that again I think I
have no way of corroborating, right, yeah, that he would
be known to be having sex with a person and

(34:00):
playing two games of chess simultaneously, so essentially like dictating
see what ended there cock chess, his moves to like
people in like an adjoining room.

Speaker 2 (34:17):
Oh I thought like they were just like right next
to him.

Speaker 1 (34:21):
Maybe dude is a freaky ship man. Oh yeah, but
like he could actually be like in his mind playing
two games of chess at the same time, like uh,
you know, bishop to see two.

Speaker 2 (34:36):
Maybe this was just like, you know, like sometimes it's
been a while and you gotta think about baseball something,
which for me, I get really excited thing about baseball.
But you know what I mean, maybe that was for
him he had to play two games of chess.

Speaker 1 (34:50):
Oh my god, Dave loves baseball, so like, oh yeah,
I gotta think about base to actually got stopping about
stopping about baseball.

Speaker 2 (34:59):
M hm, oh my god, there's thing about golf.

Speaker 1 (35:03):
No way to not talk about freaky ship with this guy. Okay,
So later on he started attending college, and this is
when he got real freaky because once he went to
college and once he became an adult, he got his
trust fund, and so now he has access to like
millions of dollars and you can also read whatever he wants.

Speaker 2 (35:28):
I hate him, Like the more we talk about his upbringing,
the more I.

Speaker 1 (35:32):
Just trusting trust fund kid man. Yeah. No, there's some
times where it's like, I don't know. I think like
the fact that he was living in a time where
it was like extremely extremely religious and social.

Speaker 2 (35:46):
Right if he were born now he had just gotten
in to going to top golf, but like, it's fucking
it's this because of the time period.

Speaker 1 (35:54):
I mentioned mountain climbing, right, I also mentioned poetry. He
really wanted to be a great poet, but I think
he was like that good of a poet, so instead
he had to become famous by being like just extreme
and everything that he did. Okay, sorry, they've please, so
free to like jump in in any time here.

Speaker 2 (36:13):
Okay, no, I'm in keep going.

Speaker 1 (36:15):
So he went to Cambridge Trinity College, which is a
very very very prestigious institution. He uh, well, one of
the things that really interesting about him was that he
thought that you shouldn't read anything that was published less
than fifty years ago, because he really he was really

(36:37):
hated all like the contemporary thought and ideas. Yeah, this
is also around this time when he changed his name,
and not to quote why he changed his name, So
this is a quote from him. For many years, I
had loathed being called Alec, partly because of the unpleasant

(36:59):
sound and psyche of the word, partly because it was
the name by which my mother called me. Remember he
hated his mom a lot. That's very important. Edward did
not seem to suit me, and the diminutives ted or
ned were even less appropriate. Alexander was too long, and
Sandy suggested tawel, hair and freckles. I had read in
some book or other that the most favorable name for

(37:20):
becoming famous was one consisting of a dactyle followed by
a spondee as at the end of a hexameter, like
Jeremy Taylor. Alistair Crowley fulfilled these conditions, and Alistair is
the Gaelic form of Alexander. To adopt it to satisfy
my romantic ideals.

Speaker 2 (37:40):
Well that's pretty clear.

Speaker 1 (37:41):
Yes, So an important part in his life happened in
eighteen ninety six where he was on a vacation in Stockholm,
so he traveled all over the world at this point.
He is also like going and climbing up the Alps
every year. He was one of the best climbers in

(38:05):
the world at this time, which is like kind of wild.
But when he was on vacation in win Stockholm in
ninety in eighteen ninety six, it was regarded by many
people that this is the first time he had a
same sex sexual experience. Around that same time, he also

(38:31):
had or at this same point he also had a
religious or mystical experience, and it is it depends on
who you talk to or read whether this happened like
when he was asleep afterwards, or whether this religious experience

(38:53):
happened during the act. Sure, and he actually never considered
himself to be bisexual because this was because same sex
activities were illegal, like you put in jail.

Speaker 2 (39:11):
Yeah, and we haven't talked about Oscar Wild, but he
hated Oscar Wild, or maybe the other way around. He
hated Oscar Wild, but like, yeah, that's a good example.

Speaker 1 (39:22):
He really hated a lot of these like poets. But anyway, Yeah,
he continued to have sex with women, and I don't
know I learned this, so now you have to learn it.
I'm I'm not at all going to like try to
analyze this. But he when with men, he always was
the receiver.

Speaker 2 (39:41):
Oh man, Okay, so he was a yeah, okay, I
didn't realize that.

Speaker 1 (39:46):
Again, I think if he would have lived in uh,
you know today, I think he would just have uh,
you know, called himself bisexual and and possibly you know,
been more open about it because of you know, he
wouldn't be put in jail, right, Okay. So this is

(40:08):
also where later the next year is also where he
met his first a man who he formed a relationship with,
Herbert James Pollitt. But Pollitt was not interested in esoterrorism esoterroism.

(40:34):
But that first breakup like seemed to kind of like
bother him. He uh that same year, traveled to Saint
Petersburg because he said he was trying to learn Russian
because he wanted to become a diplomat. At this point,
he also thought he was trying to figure out how
he can make his mark on the world, and maybe
being a diplomat was one of the things that he
thought he could do, or perhaps being a poet. He

(40:57):
was in it like I said, like a world, like
a not a famous but like a well regarded claimer.
But while he was in Russia he got really sick,
and it was like a brief illness, but apparently he
was like sick enough that he thought he might die,
or he or he thought about dying. And this is
when he considered something what you called the quote the

(41:21):
futility of all human endeavor, and he devoted himself to
the occult. He got a copy the next year of
a book called The Book of Black Magic and of
Pacts by Carl von Eckertzhausen. Oh, I'm sorry. That was

(41:41):
by A. E. Waite, who is a British mystic. And
then the other book by Carl von Eksousen was The
Cloud upon the Sanctuary, which was a book written back
in the seventeen hundreds. These are all cult books. And

(42:02):
in that same year he published a book of poems
called White Stains. Okay, white Stains, Dave, it's not subtle.
What did you think that book's about.

Speaker 2 (42:21):
I think we know what it's about.

Speaker 1 (42:22):
Apparently a lot of the stuff in this book was
it was erotic poetry. Apparently a lot of the stuff
and it was just really extreme and people think that
it was just like the start of him just kind
of doing things to get a rise out of people. Yeah,
and like purposely being provocative. Later he actually like was

(42:48):
going to getting ready to graduate, but he decided to
leave without a degree. So all you had to do
is do his final exams, but he left without his degree.
He claimed that he would have graduated like at the
top of his class, okay, but was like, nah, that's

(43:12):
not important to me. This is apparently like a thing
that like kindoclastic people did at this point, but whatever.

Speaker 2 (43:21):
Okay, eighteen ninety waiting a thing that they did was
drop out early so they could claim that they they
performed better than they actually did.

Speaker 1 (43:31):
No, just like, look how cool I am. I don't
need these accolades. Okay, these are rich focks day remember
they knew they were before it was cool. He didn't
really need this degree, yeah, Okay. So in eighteen ninety eight,
this is very important because this is when he joined
the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. He was in
Switzerland where he met a chemist or I'm sorry, an alchemist.

(43:56):
He was both named Julian Baker, and Baker introduced him
to his brother in law George Cecil Jones and who
introduced him to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn,
which was a secret society. Do you I think this

(44:17):
is the kind of thing that you're typically interested in,
Dave saidn't if you want to just talk about the
Golden Down at all.

Speaker 2 (44:22):
You know, I don't have a ton to say about
the Golden Down other than again, it was started by
two Freemasons, and as a group that is also very
much based around ritual magic, we're not going to really
have a chance to get into like the right and
left hand path and chaos magic and all stuff. At
some point we need to do an episode. We did

(44:44):
an episode already about magic. It was literally about stage magic. Yeah,
Crowley uses an antiquated spelling M A G I K
to distinguish between this ritualistic magic in these in these
like religious sects and then like stage magic. So we'd
have to do another episode just about magic. But yeah,

(45:06):
I don't have a ton to say about the Golden Dawn. Yeah,
so keep rolling if you want.

Speaker 1 (45:13):
There's just so I like, really we had a delay
in this episode, and I like worked on trying to
like condense my notes, but there's still like so much
to talk about the Like I feel like we're still
like we're still in eighteen hundreds in the time, like
we have several decades to go, So I want.

Speaker 2 (45:31):
To I mean, you know, you know what the truth
might be here, Joe, this might be a part one
part two, and part one is about Crowley like his life,
and part two is about the Lama.

Speaker 1 (45:41):
Yeah. I kind of wondered if that might be the case.

Speaker 2 (45:44):
Yeah, let's keep rolling because I kind of think we
could talk about the Lama separately because I don't know
that we can really dig into it in like five minutes.
It's it's no, it's a big thing.

Speaker 1 (45:52):
I'd like to talk about. Like also his like like
his influence and things like that. So let me. I
did want to talk at length about how like his
early lived because I think I kind of set up
what he would do later. Okay, So, so he joined
this organization called the Golden Dawn.

Speaker 2 (46:15):
He it is it is what is called a Magical Order.
It's a secret society again started by Freemasons. It's you know,
you know what it makes me think of you've seen
the movie Eyes Wide Shut.

Speaker 1 (46:36):
I haven't.

Speaker 2 (46:36):
Actually, Yeah, So there's like a lot of like ritual
like sexual ritual magic in there. My understanding what the
Golden Dawn is that like the ritual magic is very ritualistic,
but a lot less sexual than what Crowley's going to
get into, which is one of the things that sort
of separates him from what he learns here.

Speaker 1 (46:56):
They are doing a lot of drugs.

Speaker 2 (46:59):
A lot of drugs, more drugs last sex if you're
comparing it to Crowley's thing eventually.

Speaker 1 (47:05):
Yeah, so he.

Speaker 2 (47:11):
Wasn't W. B. Yates part of this or in a
group similar.

Speaker 1 (47:16):
That's later that was well, sorry, the W. B. Yats
was in The Golden Dawn and he hated Yeats too.
I do kind of wonder if he hated all these
like poets because he was like, not that good of
a poet.

Speaker 2 (47:30):
I think it's just like Hitler hating artists. Well that
was for a lot of reasons, but you know what
I mean, when you're a failed something, you hate those
that succeeded.

Speaker 1 (47:41):
Oh I think we're saying the same thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Sorry,
we're gonna get to But I wanted to talk about
lock ness because that relates to led Zeppelin. It is
around this time in eighteen ninety nine that he bought
Bolsky in house, which is on a sh of locked ness.

(48:02):
He got really into Scottish culture. He sort of feels
like the kind of person who goes and studies abroad
for a week and comes back and is like, you know,
that's become their whole personality.

Speaker 2 (48:14):
Yeah, he's he's a rich kid going on like some
sort of meditation retreat.

Speaker 1 (48:19):
Like this guy is traveling.

Speaker 2 (48:20):
I know exactly who this guy. Yeah, I know exactly
who he would fucking be now, Yeah, and he would
just be insufferable.

Speaker 1 (48:28):
So he started climbing the ranks of the Golden Dawn
going like and and these groups always have like it's
kind of like scientology today, where like you got to
get in like now you're in like the you know,
like the inner circle, but now you're gonna you're in
like the inner inner circle. So anyway, he's getting up
to like, you know, higher levels. But a lot of

(48:50):
people didn't like him because of because of his bisexuality
and because he was uh like fucking all the time.
Basically Yep, he did not like w b eats or
w bats did not like him, and the Golden Dawn

(49:12):
refused to initiate him into the second order. Yeah, so
this kind of like developed like a schism between him
and some of the some of his like you know,
people that liked him.

Speaker 2 (49:30):
Isn't there a specific guy who was like one of
the higher ups in the Golden who was sort of
splitting off and Crowley kind of all was on his side.

Speaker 1 (49:39):
Yes, I'm trying. It's hard to decide like which names
to drop here.

Speaker 2 (49:46):
Yeah, yeah, I don't want to make it more complicated.
Yeah yeah, but that guy that the guy I'm speaking
of is is Mathers, yes.

Speaker 1 (49:58):
Yeh uh. Also this time he had a mistress. I
skipped at one point. He's already gotten syphilis a few
years prior to this, a lot of STIs Yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:17):
I like that, Like venereal disease is a footnote for him.

Speaker 1 (50:23):
Well it'll come up again.

Speaker 2 (50:25):
Oh yeah, that's the problem.

Speaker 1 (50:27):
So anyway, so basically crowdly in matters, they pretty much
like got themselves kicked out of the group.

Speaker 2 (50:37):
Mm hmmm.

Speaker 1 (50:39):
So then he traveled to Mexico and he settled in
Mexico City, and he's talking, if you heard this, you
found a new living girlfriend. Uh and uh, he fell
in love with Mexico and started like doing more magic. Uh.

(51:03):
He became infatuated with John D, who we're not going
to be able to talk about. But John D was
basically the the court magician and advisor for Elizabeth the
first mm hmm.

Speaker 3 (51:17):
It is.

Speaker 1 (51:20):
He definitely fashioned himself to be the modern day John
D or the modern day Merlin hmmm uh, and definitely
like thought of himself like that or saw himself at
least in John D. I would love to talk more
about John D because he like invented this language based.

Speaker 3 (51:43):
On the.

Speaker 1 (51:46):
The Book of Enoch, which is like an apocryphal book
from the Bible, but we won't be able to talk
about that. He he actually he said he was initiated
into free the Freemasons when he was in mac Xico,
but that's one of those things that is I think disputed.
He climbed several of the tallest mountains in Mexico and

(52:12):
Central America. Eventually he went to San Francisco and Hawaii.
While he was on the boat to Hawaii, he had
another affair with a married woman named Mary Alice Rogers.
He wrote a book of poems in nineteen oh three
called Alice An Adultery this dude was a fucking hooer.

Speaker 2 (52:38):
Yes, yes he was.

Speaker 1 (52:40):
He went to Japan, he went to Hong Kong, he
went to Vietnam. He met a man named Alan Bennett,
and possibly they had a relationship, it's unclear till Bennett
decided to become a buddhistmunk. So then Crowley went and

(53:05):
toured around India and he devoted himself to yoga, and
a form of yoga that is steeped in Hindu tradition,
right right, So he's he's kind of studying like Hindu
and Buddhist esoterism or spiritualism. At this point he wrote

(53:30):
more poetry. The books called The Sword of song Yat Malaria.

Speaker 2 (53:38):
Of the penis No just regular, just the regular one.

Speaker 1 (53:44):
Yeah. This time in nineteen oh two, he attempted, along
with some others, attempted to climb K two. Yeah he did,
which had never been climbed before. So K two is
the second highest mount on Earth. So it says Everest
is the only mountain that's taller than K two. So

(54:05):
no one had ever climbed this mountain before. And now
this sounds batshit, but you have to remember that he
was actually like a very good climber, but on the
way there he got super bad flu malaria and snow blindness,
so they had to turn back. They got about twenty
thousand feet up.

Speaker 2 (54:24):
Yeah, if you look a Wikipedia, there's a photo of
him during the K two expedition where he's just like
sitting in a pond of water, like on a wash
in his ass or something.

Speaker 1 (54:33):
He looks like his way. One of the things he
will notice if you look at pictures of him is
his weight fluctuated extremely drastically throughout his life.

Speaker 2 (54:44):
Yeah, he had Oh who's the dude who played Chandler
and Friends? Oh, I don't, uh, Matthew Perry. Yeah, the
Matthew Perry effect where his weight just fluctuated a lot.

Speaker 1 (54:57):
I didn't. I don't know much about Friends or Matthew Perry,
so I didn't know that.

Speaker 2 (55:01):
But well, it's because of drugs in both cases.

Speaker 1 (55:03):
Well yes, I think, well I think it depends on
how much he was climbing, but also the drugs obviously.

Speaker 2 (55:08):
Well that's that's true.

Speaker 1 (55:10):
Yeah, okay, sorry, So during this time and again it's
like nineteen oh two, he was in Paris and he
became like you know popular in the the with like
the artists. There he wrote a bunch of poems called

(55:34):
Rodin in Rhyme, was published in nineteen oh seven, and
he at this time. In nineteen oh three, he came
back to Scotland to Bolskine or Bolskayne. He got married
to Rose, a woman named Rose Edith Kelly, which was

(55:58):
in order to prevent her from getting an arranged marriage,
which apparently like made her brother get really pissed off
of him. And but then on the way to their
honeymoon in Paris and then Cairo, apparently he did actually

(56:21):
fall in love with her.

Speaker 2 (56:22):
So I guess that's good, okay, And you know, this
honeymoon in Cairo is maybe a good place to stop
because that's where he's going to develop some of the
principal tenants of the Lama.

Speaker 1 (56:35):
That's what I wanted to get to. Yeah, so he
wrote he wrote some love poems for her because he
was trying to remember this is like a kind of
a a wedding of convenience.

Speaker 2 (56:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (56:50):
But then he decided like, actually I do it seemed
like he sort of like fell in out of love,
like you know, all willing nilly throughout his life.

Speaker 2 (57:01):
Yeah, I would say that that's a good way of
putting in.

Speaker 1 (57:03):
But he wrote these love poems which were published as
the books Rosa Mundy and Other Love Songs in nineteen
oh six, as well as he also wrote a religious
satire called White Jesus Wept in nineteen oh four. So
during this time, a lot of these books that he's writing,
like the White Stains Are like, he would publish them

(57:28):
outside of Britain only or wherever he happen to be living,
because this you could get you arrested, sure, or at
least would like cause an uproar. Yes, So in nineteen
o four Alster Crowley and his new wife Rose arrived
in Cairo. They pretended to be a prince and a princess,

(57:54):
and anybody believed that I probably not, I don't know.
And in that time they said their apartment and he
started studying Egyptian deities as well as Alamic Islamic mysticism.
And that I think would be like the good place
to end, because this is where again he became very

(58:17):
infatuated with the Egyptian deities, which would come to come
into play when he was developing for Elma. Like you said, Dave, absolutely,
so yeah, so we will continue on with our our
spooky journey into the dire of a madman. Did did

(58:38):
because it's call back to what we.

Speaker 2 (58:40):
Said, oh I got you. If we wouldn't get flagged
for it, we would play that song right now for sure.

Speaker 1 (58:48):
Our ip tazzi by the way, which we didn't say, hmmm.

Speaker 2 (58:52):
That's true. We're a little or you know, well like
a month or so late on that on that.

Speaker 1 (58:58):
But I was born is that he you know, like
we kind of made fun of that, that that song
bit of song lyric at the beginning, and that's really
the best song writer of history. I don't think anyone
would say that. Certainly, like you know, some some great
bits of lyrics here and there. But and definitely like

(59:20):
even he admitted that he was like not the best singer, right, Yeah,
I don't think that that was the point, you know,
But he had such a kind of like Alster Crowley,
Like I think like Ozzie was one of these, you know,
musicians who was kind of fashionated with Crowley, because I

(59:41):
think Ozzie had like, you know, the the the eye
for the theatrics and the other thing. Uh. This maybe
reaching to draw parallels, but Ozzie was so good at
like bringing people to him, like talented people. Oh yeah,
like Randy Rhodes, like one of the greatest guitarists in history,

(01:00:03):
like his like Ozzie's like solo albums. No one would
be talking about Ozzy Osbourne, I don't think other than
than as like he used to be the singer for
Black Sabbath in the seventies. I don't think anyone would
be talking about him without Randy Rhodes.

Speaker 2 (01:00:20):
No, I totally agree. And then I think Ozzie said
as much.

Speaker 1 (01:00:24):
Yeah, and then all the other all the other musicians
like like Zach Wilde and everything, but he's worked with
over the years. But yeah, that was his greatest talent.
And I, like I said, I've been like thinking about
Ozzie because it's like Halloween time and I listened to
a lot of Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne and other
stuff around this time of year. But also I've been
reading a bunch about Alistair Crowley, and it seems like

(01:00:47):
he did also like draw a bunch of people to him.
He had to have some kind of charisma, although he
does think like a lot of his relationships were very coercive,
but but he also then did seem to like really
piss people off and then never talk to me again. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:01:04):
I'm not saying he didn't have charisma. He just didn't
have the same level of charisma that like Jim Jones did.

Speaker 1 (01:01:12):
Well I guess, uh yeah, uh yeah. So anyway, after
we'll we'll come back in a little while and then
we'll talk more about his mystery religion that he created and.

Speaker 2 (01:01:27):
Yeah, yeah, we'll get all into Thalaima.

Speaker 1 (01:01:29):
Yeah, maybe talk a little bit more about why all
these rock musicians got really into him.

Speaker 2 (01:01:36):
Yeah yeah, and hopefully we can talk a bit about,
you know, where the followers are now and why they've
distanced themselves a bit.

Speaker 1 (01:01:44):
Yeah. So yeah, all right, Well, I hope you enjoyed
this spooky journey, and in the meantime, you should definitely
look up pictures of Alistair Crowley because yep, I don't know.
I vacillate between like what what a weird asshole? And

(01:02:06):
like some of this stuff looks sick as fuck?

Speaker 2 (01:02:09):
I mean, yeah, it's yeah, it's really just like his
being a like silver Spoon Trust fun kid who just
is reading a bunch of bullshit.

Speaker 1 (01:02:20):
Yeah, I don't know, it's maybe it's because like like,
I like heavy mental music and everything, but I'm really
into the imagery of this.

Speaker 2 (01:02:27):
But man, oh the logo thing with like the little
flower and the diamond, Yeah, it's pretty dope looking too.

Speaker 1 (01:02:34):
Yeah, I could really use less of the like really
uh obvious allusions to ejaculation.

Speaker 2 (01:02:44):
Though, And we're going to get into the Moonchild.

Speaker 1 (01:02:48):
There's more. There's more. If you thought white stains.

Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
It's this way to get into the Scarlet Woman and
the moon Child and all this shit. So strap in
that next episode will be coming out on Halloween, so
that seems perfect.

Speaker 1 (01:03:05):
Fuck yeah, all right, well we'll see you then.

Speaker 2 (01:03:08):
All right, so long. Thank you for listening to An
Hour of Our Time.

Speaker 1 (01:03:15):
If you like what you heard, explore our catalog of
over two hundred episodes and rate and review us on
your platform of choice.

Speaker 2 (01:03:22):
And if you'd like to support what we do, visit
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