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Aleister Crowley engaged in activities and wrote literature that have earned him the title of most evil man in the world. (Leek, 30. ) He lived a life that most people would publicly denounce as sinful but secretly wish that they could live. Crowley's background suggests that he was influenced greatly by many people and events to become the way he was. But was it the people and events more so than a natural inclination that led him to his involvement in the occult? Born Edward Alexander Crowley on October 12, 1875, Crowley started out with a happy though somewhat unusual childhood. His mother, Emily Bertha Bishop Crowley, and father, Edward Crowley, were members of a strict religious fundamentalist group called the Plymouth Brethren. Among this group, Edward Crowley was a known and respected leader and pamphleteer.
In fact, years before the birth of his son, Edward published a pamphlet titled The Plymouth Brethren (so called), Who they Are Their Creed Mode of Worshipetc. Edward Crowley was highly religious to the point where, ten years before Edward Alexander was born, he foresaw the death of Christianity and the temporary accession of the Antichrist. He wrote: There can be no doubt but that they [the religious systems] will continue their course, that they will grow worse and worse, waxing bolder and bolder against God until the Antichrist himself will be revealed, who shall oppose and exalt himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; who shall sit in the Temple of God, showing himself that he is God; whom the Lord shall destroy with the brightness of His coming, and consume with the spirit of His mouth. (Hutchinson, 19) During his childhood years, Edward Alexander, or Alick, as he came to be called, accompanied his father on many traveling sermons. As a child, he showed a natural precocity and intellect. Young Alick also had unremitting curiosity. In one instance, walking in a field, Edward told Alick to avoid a clump of nettles.
Alick could not understand why, and his father asked him if hed rather take his word for it or learn by experience. Alick chose to learn by experience and dove into the nettles. (Hutchinson, 26. ) As stern as Edward Crowley was, young Alick looked up to him. His father was his hero and his friend, though, for some reason or other, there was no real intimacy or understanding (Crowley, 48). Alick spent much of his childhood with his father, accompanying him from village to village or studying the Bible with him. He was not displeased with Christianity in any way as he was growing up.
Aleister Crowley himself noted later, however, that his sympathies were with the opponents of heaven (Crowley, 44). He preferred the stories from The Book of Revelations, especially the Dragon, the False Prophet, the Scarlet Woman, and the Beast, whose number was 666. For all the happiness Alick experienced in his childhood, certain events were to lead him away from the influence of the Plymouth Brethren. When Alick was a young boy, his mother bore a second child, a girl, who lived for only five hours.
The death of Mary Grace Elizabeth Crowley in 1880 was, we may assume, a traumatic occasion for the family. It was certainly disturbing to five-year-old Alick, who deeply resented being taken to see his sisters corpse, and during the rest of his sixty-seven years on earth, attended only one other funeral before his own. (Hutchinson, 28) Alick did not attend school until he was eight years old. Life outside the Plymouth Brethren was something of a shock to young Alick. He was sent to a strict Evangelical private preparatory school, but it was not, of course, the closely-knit family life he was accustomed to.
School did not agree with Alick. Though unusually intelligent, he was chubby and not athletic. This led to many years of being bullied by other children. Alick grew to loathe this school, and was soon moved to a different institution. While at school, Alick claimed to have had dreams about the death of his father, Edward. At this period in time, Edward Crowley really was sick, diagnosed with cancer of the tongue.
The Saints of the Plymouth Brethren held prayer meetings and rejected the advice of the foremost surgeon in the country to get surgery. Instead he was treated by electro-homeopathy. This was a strange and short-lived treatment that Edward Crowley did not survive. He died in March of 1887. After his dreams were confirmed in fact, Alick Crowley was never the same again. (Hutchinson, 32) Alick was devastated by the loss of his father and disgusted with his mother. He had never liked her.
There was a physical repulsion, and an intellectual and social scorn. He treated her almost as a servant She always antagonized him. (Crowley, 48) The attitude of disgust worsened when Emily Bertha Crowley brought in her brother to be the patron of the family. Tom Bond Bishop was a member of the Evangelical branch of the Church of England. He considered himself to be an expert on the development of young souls, having had founded the church's Childrens Scripture Union and Childrens Special Service Mission. Alick was not convinced, nor was he even fond of his uncle. In his memoirs, Crowley recalls Uncle Tom as having the meanness and cruelty of a eunuch perfidious and hypocriticalunctuousodiousin feature resembling a shaven ape, in figure a dislocated dachshund no more cruel fanatic, no meaner villain, ever walked the earth ruthless, petty tyrant. (Crowley, 54 - 55) Crowley blamed the Plymouth Brethren for the death of his father.
It had been they who had decided to put Edward Crowley through electro-homeopathy instead of the recommended surgery. Between this fury at the Brethren and this anger towards his uncle, Crowley began to detach himself from his family's religion. At school he was still bullied, but he was no longer a troubled child. He was now a troublesome adolescent. Alick began causing so many problems that he had to be moved from new school to new school.
He was still academically gifted and an amazing chess player. As he got older, he began writing poetry and giving pseudonyms. He disliked his given name and the ones he threw around were too exotic for everyday. He finally decided on Aleister along with his own last name because he liked the sequence of syllables.
In 1891, Crowley visited Torquay with a new tutor. His name was Archibald Douglas, a former Bible Society missionary whod been approved by Uncle Tom. Douglas turned out to be from a very liberal wing of the evangelical movement. He introduced Crowley to some of the pleasure he was known to partake in later in life, such as gamb...
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