Camp Gagnon
The Macabre Aleister Crowley: The Great Beast 666 and Father of the Occult
Tue, 03 Jun 2025
THE GREAT BEAST! Today, we look at the occult leader, Aleister Crowley, who is also know as the 666 Great Beast. We cover topics like forming The Hermetic Order of The Golden Dawn, that the Book of Law meant, Aleister’s contact with Egyptian God Horus, s*x magic, if Aleister Crowley was a spy and other interesting topics…WELCOME TO CAMP 🏕️Shoutout to our sponsors: Magic Spoon, Odoo and Evil Goods MagicSpoon, use promo-code ' CAMP ' for $5 off! : https://magicspoon.com/campOdoo, for a 14-day free trial to the following link! : Odoo.com/CAMPEvil Goods - Subscribe and save 30% off on beef tallow! : Evilgoods.com/CAMP👕🧢 GET YOUR CAMP DRIP HERE: https://campgoods.co/🏕️ Get Today In History Email Here (Free): https://camp.beehiiv.com/🎟️ 🎫 Comedy Tour Tickets Here: https://markgagnonlive.comTimestamps:0:00 Intro0:51 The Childhood of Aleister Crowley4:18 Studying at Cambridge6:21 Writing White Stains + Forming The Hermetic Order of The Golden Dawn9:52 Contact With Egyptian God Horus + The Book of Law13:15 Sex Magic17:44 Contacting LAM During Amalantrah Working24:17 Weird Scenarios 26:43 Was Aleister Crowley a British Double Spy?28:49 The Abbey of Thelema + Crowley’s Magic Drug Rituals + Accidental Casualty 38:12 Benito Mussolini kicks Aleister from Italy + Crowley’s Drug Addiction + Writing Final Books 40:29 Jack Parsons & L'Ron Hubbard’s Babalon Working + Foundation of Scientology & UFO Culture46:54 Crowley Thelemic Funeral48:06 Aleister Crowley’s Influence Beyond Death
Chapter 1: What was Aleister Crowley's childhood like?
And honestly, it explains a lot about what comes next. You may have heard of this guy. You know, you probably heard him in Ozzy Osbourne songs or, you know, rock and roll lore. But his real story is all the more fascinating. And today we go through everything, where he's from, what he believes, and why he is so popular amongst occultists around the world. So sit back, relax, and welcome to camp.
What's up, people, and welcome back to camp. My name is Mark Gagnon, and welcome to my tent, where every single week we explore the most interesting, fascinating, controversial stories from around the world from all times. As always, I'm joined by the very handsome 6'5", and bustling muscles, Christos. How are you, Christos? What's going on? All right, all right.
So, let's begin our study of Alistair Crowley. I heard about this guy when I was just a kid. My mom would talk to me about Aleister Crowley and be like, yeah, he was very evil. He's a very evil man. He was a Satanist and he was an occultist and he would do all sorts of evil things. And I didn't really know anything else about him. To be honest, I never really dug into it.
It just didn't really affect my life. All I knew as a kid was that he talked to demons that maybe were aliens, which we'll get to in a second. And he was in some rock and roll songs. And that's basically it. But, like I said... The actual details of his life are far more interesting. So let's go back. October 12th, 1875 in Leamington Spa, England.
This guy, little Edward, I feel like that's how Trump would say it. Little Edward grew up in basically a cult. His parents weren't just Christians. Technically, they'd probably identify as Christians, but they were members of the Plymouth Brethren. Think fire and brimstone. You're going to go to hell forever and burn for eternity. Cranked up to 11.
No dancing, no movies, no theater, no plays, no novels, no fun, basically. His father, old Edward Sr., was a traveling preacher who spent his days warning people about damnation.
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Chapter 2: How did Aleister Crowley become involved in the occult?
The family, you know, they basically just like lived and breathed this apocalyptic Christianity, the kind where you're constantly waiting for the world to end at any given moment and kind of secretly hoping that it happens again. But here's the thing about strict religious households is that they make sluts. Right.
I mean, like everyone that I know that's like just a sexual deviant group and a very repressive religious home, except myself. I actually come to think of it. I don't even think my childhood was that repressed. It wasn't like it was very religious. My mom would take us to church all the time, but like there was no repression. Like we talked about whatever, like we had fun.
Chapter 3: What is the significance of the Book of Law?
Like when I turned 16 and my dad went to like a club and like had a good time and the whole family was there. We got a table, you know what I mean? So like it wasn't repressed in that in like the traditional sense. But it was very religious. But when things are repressed, it gets, you know, haywire, right? The tighter the leash, the harder they pull, as they say.
So young Edward, he started to rebel. And when I mean rebel, I mean like literally the craziest rebellion you can imagine. His father died when he was 11, which only made sense. Things worse for young, you know, Aleister Crowley. And by age 14, he was deliberately breaking every religious rule that he could think of.
His mother, Emily, would find him experimenting with what he called impure thoughts and generally acted like, you know, the opposite of everything that she had tried to teach him. He'd masturbate while thinking about religious images. curse during prayers, and do basically anything to horrify his hyper-religious mother. When she called him the beast, he didn't cry or apologize or do anything.
He almost embraced it and wore it like this badge of honor. His mother doubled down on the religious intensity, convinced that Satan was literally possessing her kid. And the more she pushed religion, the harder he pushed back. So by the time he reached his late teens, Edward had decided that Christianity wasn't just wrong, but it was actively harmful.
Chapter 4: What is sex magic according to Aleister Crowley?
He started calling his mother a brainless bigot to her face and announced that he was changing his name. From now on, he would be Alistair Crowley, spelled with a theatrical E-I because it looked more... mysterious and Celtic. It was his first real act of self-creation, right? Turning himself into someone completely different from the brethren boy that his parents tried to raise him to be.
So by 1895, Alistair headed to Trinity College in Cambridge, ostensibly to study philosophy. But Cambridge in the 1890s was where young men went to discover themselves. And Crowley got into all sorts of shit. He dove headfirst into poetry, writing about, you know, graphic sexuality and blasphemy and everything that his mother would have just hated.
And he even explored his sexuality, not only with women, but with men too, which could actually get you thrown into prison in Victorian England. But more importantly, he discovered the occult. It started with books. Crowley was always a big reader, and once he got his hands on works about magic and mysticism, esoteric philosophy, he couldn't stop.
He devoured everything from medieval grim wars to contemporary works on spiritualism. He read about ancient Egyptian mysteries, Hindu tantra, even Buddhist meditation techniques. And this wasn't just academic curiosity. Crowley genuinely believed that hidden knowledge existed, and he was determined to find it.
So at Cambridge, he also realized that he had a gift, not just for writing, but for making jaws drop. I mean, this boy was a full-time jaw dropper. He wrote a collection of erotic poems called White Stains that was so explicit, no mainstream publisher would touch it.
Literally, we're talking about detailed descriptions of literally every sexual act imaginable mixed with religious blasphemy and, you know, all sorts of debauchery. And the poems weren't just dirty. They were spiritually dirty, treated sex, you know, treating sex is like the sacred act that could connect you to the divine.
Basically, you know, what we'll get into later is, you know, sex magic, right? He had to publish it privately and anonymously, but it circulated underground and established his reputation as someone willing to cross all the lines. So by 1898, Crowley had left Cambridge without a degree, but with something special. a little more valuable. A mission. A clear sense of purpose.
He saw religion as fake, morality as a cage, and normal life as dull. But what he really wanted was this truth, this spiritual truth, the kind... that he thought, you know, Christianity had buried under guilt and rules. And that's when he discovered the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. This was a secret society that promised to teach genuine magical techniques.
If you, you know, watched our episode on secret societies, you probably remember these guys. Founded in 1888, the Golden Dawn was where London's occult elite originated. gathered to study ceremonial magic. But not just that, alchemy, mysticism. Members included poets like W.B.
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Chapter 5: Was Aleister Crowley a British double agent?
Crowley had advanced quickly through the Golden Dawn's grading system, but when he tried to initiate himself into the highest level without proper authorization... The Order's leaders had had enough, and they kicked him out for being too chaotic, too experimental, and frankly, just too weird for the group of, you know, these proper Victorian occultists.
But being kicked from the Golden Dawn didn't slow him down. Now he was free to develop his own approach to magic without... really anyone telling him what to do. He started traveling and mixing like Eastern philosophies of Western occultism and combinations that no one had ever tried.
Chapter 6: What experiments did Crowley conduct at the Abbey of Thelema?
He studied yoga in India and practiced Buddhism and learned about Taoism and Taoist alchemy in China, but he wasn't trying to find himself Crowley was learning techniques building towards something bigger. He also started to experiment seriously with drugs as like a spiritual tool. So at the time, opium, hash, cocaine, mescaline, all these substances were somewhat prevalent.
I mean, I wouldn't say widespread, but you could find them and it could alter life. your consciousness in a pretty significant way. And Crowley tried it in combination with magical rituals. He kept detailed reports of these experiments, treating his own mind as a lab for exploring these altered states of consciousness decades before psychedelic research actually became respectable.
And all of this led to the spring of 1904, when Crowley was in Cairo with his wife, Rose. They were honeymooning, but Crowley just, you know, being Crowley, He'd also arranged to perform magical rituals in the king's chamber of the Great Pyramid. At this time, it was much easier to get access to these giant artifacts.
So Rose, who normally showed little interest in her husband's little occult hobby, started acting strangely. She began talking about Horus, the ancient Egyptian god, insisting that he was trying to communicate... Something important? And Crowley was skeptical at first, right?
Rose didn't know anything about Egyptian mythology, but when she led him to a Cairo museum and pointed to a specific Stella numbered 666, which Crowley almost took as a cosmic joke about his little nickname, That is when he started to pay attention.
Rose told him that Horace wanted him to prepare for a revelation and that he should sit in his hotel room at noon for three consecutive days to receive a message. And what happened next... changed everything. April 8th, 9th, and 10th in 1904, Crowley sat in his Cairo hotel room and claimed to receive a dictation from a preternatural intelligence calling itself
This wasn't a gentle spiritual whisper either. According to Crowley, Iwas spoke in a clear authoritative voice that seemed to come from just over his left shoulder. The entity dictated exactly 220 verses over three days, creating the text that Crowley would call the book of law. The book claimed a new spiritual age had begun, the eon of Horus.
It would replace Christianity's focus on guilt and self-denial with a new idea, with the central tenet being, do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. Not do whatever you want in a hedonistic sense, but discover your true will and follow it regardless of people, whatever people say.
The book proclaimed that every person was like a star, a unique cosmic entity with its own perfect orbit that shouldn't be deflected by others' moral systems. And Crowley spent the rest of his life trying to understand what his spiritual message really meant. That's when he created a new belief system called Thelema. A Greek word means will.
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Chapter 7: How did Crowley influence modern occult practices?
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Chapter 8: What legacy did Aleister Crowley leave behind?
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That's right. Odoo.com. Use the promo code camp and you will get 14 days for free just to try it out. See if you like it. If it's not for you, you don't need it. All right. But Odoo is going to make your life so much easier. Everything you need all in one place. Save time. Make more money. Let's get back to the show. Each Scarlet Woman brought different energies to his magical work.
there was lila waddell a violinist who could improvise music during rituals and helped with crowley's poems mary deste who helped him decode the numerical mysteries hidden in the book of law and jeannie robert foster a journalist who actually documented their experiments And these weren't random hookups.
Crowley genuinely believed that each one was chosen by these supernatural forces to help him unlock these levels of reality. Now, remember, the sex wasn't separate from the magic. It was the magic. Crowley would design these elaborate ceremonies where
You know, these sexual positions corresponded with different planets and their influence and the timing of climax aligned with the astrological events and every fluid was collected and used in these follow-up rituals. It was this whole thing, right?
He kept these detailed diaries regarding, you know, basically everything that happened and basically everything that happened, you know, spiritually and physically because he believed that the two were inseparable. So by 1912, Crowley's experiments caught the attention of Theodor Roos, the head of the German occult organization called the Ordo Templi Orientis, also known as OTO.
Roos had heard rumors about Crowley's sex magic techniques and was convinced that he had independently rediscovered ancient secrets that the OTO claimed to preserve. He initiated Crowley into the Order and eventually made him the head of the British branch. And this was perfect for Crowley, a group he could take over and mold to fit his own ideas. The OTO had started out kind of like a...
almost like a mystical or like a more mystical version of Freemasonry, full of these rituals and ranks you had to move through. But once Crowley was in charge, he pushed it way further. He rewrote the rituals to include real sex acts, treating them as these tools for magic. What used to be Symbolic ceremonies became actual physical rituals meant to create real power.
And at the top of Crowley's version of the O.T.O., things got even more intense. He introduced what he called the supreme secret, a specific sexual technique that, according to him, could create powerful power. Magical energy and lead to these even greater supernatural results. And this wasn't just talk.
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