Aleister Crowley

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

Edward Alexander (Aleister) Crowley was born October 12, 1875 in Leamington Spa, England. His parents were members of the Plymouth Brethren. He grew up with a biblical education and an equally thorough hatred of Christianity.

He attended Trinity College at Cambridge University, quitting just before completing his degree. Shortly thereafter he was introduced to George Cecil Jones, who was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The Golden Dawn was an occult society which taught magic, kabala, alchemy, tarot, astrology, and other hermetic subjects. It had many notable members including A. E. Waite, Dion Fortune, and W. B. Yeats. Crowley was initiated into the Golden Dawn in 1898. He advanced up rapidly through the grades. But in 1900 the order was shattered by schism, and Crowley left England to travel extensively throughout the East. There he learned and practiced the mental and physical disciplines of yoga, supplementing his knowledge of western-style ritual magick with the methods of Oriental mysticism.

In 1903, Crowley married Rose Kelly, and they went to Egypt on their honeymoon. After returning from Cairo in early 1904, Rose began entering trance states. She told him that the god Horus was trying to contact him. Crowley took Rose to the Boulak Museum and asked her to point out Horus to him. She passed several images of the god and led Aleister straight to a painted wooden funerary stele from the 26th dynasty, depicting Horus receiving a sacrifice from the deceased, a priest named Ankh-f-n-khonsu. Crowley was impressed by the fact that this piece was numbered 666 by the museum, the number which he had identified since childhood.
 He began to listen to Rose, and at her direction, on three successive days beginning April 8, 1904, he entered his room and wrote down what he heard dictated from a shadowy presence behind him. The result was the three chapters of verse known as The Book of the Law. 

In 1906 Crowley rejoined George Cecil Jones in England, and they set created a magical order to continue where the Golden Dawn had left off. They called this order the A.'. A.'. (Astrum Argentium or Silver Star).
 
 In 1910 Crowley was contacted by Theodore Reuss, the head of an organization called the Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.). This group of high-ranking Freemasons claimed to have discovered the supreme secret of practical magick, which is taught in its highest degrees. Crowley joined, becoming a member of O.T.O. Crowley rewrote the rites of the O.T.O. 

Crowley referred to himself as "The Beast" and indulged in every aspect of the occult and was obsessed with it. He was into every form of sexual perversion you can imagine. He also had various sexually transmitted diseases. Aleister Crowley died in Hastings, England on December 1, 1947. However, his teachings live on.