The Life of Aleister Crowley Pt 1: "The Great Beast"

Summary

Otherworld Podcast Summary: The Life of Aleister Crowley Pt 1: "The Great Beast"

Release Date: March 10, 2025

Introduction

In the premiere episode of the five-part series "The Life of Aleister Crowley," host Jack Wagner delves into the enigmatic and controversial life of Aleister Crowley, famously dubbed "The Great Beast" and "the wickedest man in the world." Joined by researcher Wolf Fleetwood Ross, Wagner embarks on an exploration of Crowley's multifaceted existence as an occultist, poet, mountaineer, provocateur, and revolutionary thinker whose legacy continues to influence modern culture, spirituality, and the arts.

Early Life and Background

Aleister Crowley was born Edward Crowley on October 12, 1875, into a wealthy family deeply entrenched in the Plymouth Brethren, a strict Christian sect. His upbringing in this austere religious environment heavily influenced his later rebellion against conventional spirituality.

Notable Quote:

Wolf Fleetwood Ross explains Crowley’s birthmarks: “He was born with four hairs on his chest in the shape of a swastika... he was also born with a veil of afterbirth on his face, which is indicative of great magical abilities according to him.” [17:24]

Challenging Childhood

Crowley's childhood was marked by strict religious indoctrination and severe disciplinary measures. His father, a fervent preacher, often engaged in aggressive evangelism, attempting to convert strangers on the street. This oppressive environment, combined with rigid rules that excluded drinking, celebrations, and personal freedoms, fostered Crowley’s early resentment and desire for rebellion.

Notable Quote:

"He was born into what I would call, like, a super Christian cult. So no one drank... Crowley's parents were part of the most hardcore sect." [19:46]

Education and Rebellion

At the age of 15, Crowley began attending boarding schools run by the Plymouth Brethren, where he faced harsh punishments and possibly abuse. These experiences catalyzed his transformation into a free thinker. A pivotal figure during this time was Charles Douglas, a non-religious tutor who introduced Crowley to smoking, drinking, gambling, and poetry, significantly broadening his horizons.

Notable Quote:

"Crowley would steal money from his mother and go visit village prostitutes all the time... He would deny it, and that servant was fired for lying." [37:03]

Adolescence and Early Rebellion

Crowley’s adolescence was characterized by acts of defiance against his strict upbringing. He engaged in sexual escapades, including with servants and prostitutes, as a means to sever ties with his religious roots. His mother’s derogatory references to him as "the Beast" further fueled his association with dark and rebellious identities.

Notable Quote:

"During his vacations from boarding school, his mother would refer to him as the Beast. Crowley took the name of the beast because his mother scolded him with it." [30:49]

Trinity College and Ascendant Ambitions

At 20, Crowley entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he received substantial financial support, estimated between $5 to $12 million in today’s dollars. Despite excelling academically, he chose not to complete his degree, viewing the final examinations as unnecessary. Instead, he immersed himself in poetry, publishing numerous expensive, avant-garde works that often contained shocking and taboo content.

Notable Quote:

"He proudly claimed that his poetry was so expensive that it couldn't reach the masses, which he believed was why he was never a famous poet." [60:36]

Spiritual Awakening and Occult Pursuits

A transformative experience occurred on New Year's night in Copenhagen, which Crowley described as a blend of horror and spiritual ecstasy. This event solidified his belief in his magical abilities and set him on a path to engage deeply with the occult.

Notable Quotes:

"I was awakened to the knowledge that I possessed a magical means of becoming conscious of and satisfying a part of my nature..." [50:59]

"My animal nature stood rebuked and kept silence in the presence of the imminent divinity of the Holy Ghost..." [50:59]

Introduction to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

Crowley’s quest for deeper magical knowledge led him to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a prestigious occult society. Demonstrating exceptional aptitude, he quickly mastered practices like astral projection, earning the respect and mentorship of George Cecil Jones. This initiation marked the beginning of his formal involvement in structured occultism.

Notable Quote:

"Crowley could astral project and fall asleep faster than anyone they'd seen before." [68:35]

Complex Relationships and Personal Life

Throughout his life, Crowley maintained tumultuous relationships, including a significant partnership with Oscar Ecclestein, a renowned rock climber and Crowley’s mentor. Their bond was centered around climbing and intellectual pursuits, but it eventually dissolved as Crowley’s obsession with the occult grew.

Notable Quote:

"Crowley was constantly having sex and publishing extremely expensive poetry books that nobody was reading at the time." [61:43]

Conclusion

Part 1 of "The Great Beast" sets the stage for a comprehensive exploration of Aleister Crowley's life, highlighting his early struggles, rebellion against religious constraints, academic pursuits, and burgeoning fascination with the occult. Through engaging dialogue and detailed research, Jack Wagner and Wolf Fleetwood Ross paint a vivid portrait of a man whose complex personality and relentless quest for power and knowledge made him a legendary, albeit controversial, figure in the realms of magic and spirituality.

End of Part 1.

Next Steps

Listeners interested in continuing Crowley’s intricate journey are encouraged to subscribe to Otherworld’s Patreon, where the remaining four episodes of the series are available. Additional content, including video discussions between Jack and Wolf, provides deeper insights into Crowley’s enduring legacy.

Join the conversation and unlock exclusive content by visiting Patreon.com/Otherworld.

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This summary encapsulates the key points, discussions, and insights from "The Life of Aleister Crowley Pt 1: 'The Great Beast'" episode, providing a comprehensive overview for those who have not listened to the podcast.

Transcript

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[Jack Wagner]

Welcome to Otherworld. I'm your host Jack Wagner. In this episode we're going to begin diving in to the long, strange and very complicated story of Aleister Crowley. He is known as the Great Beast, the wickedest man in the world. He is a self proclaimed prophet of a new spiritual age and a man who truly defies categorization. He was an occultist, a poet, a mountaineer, a provocateur, and a revolutionary thinker whose influence continues to ripple through culture, spirituality and the arts. He is, I believe, the first one to start spelling magic with a K. He is on the COVID of a Beatles album and Jimmy Page actually bought and lived in Alistair Crowley's former estate in Scotland for a while. Very famously. Chances are you have heard his name before. Maybe you have seen a picture of him. You might know a thing or two about him, but maybe not the full story. That's how it's always been for me. His name is one that pops up pretty quickly when you begin to explore the occult, spirituality, the paranormal, magic, any of the major themes that get brought up on this show, really. He popped up in the series we did not long ago on Jack Parsons. He also popped up a little bit in the Zozo episodes that we did not long ago. Crowley's tendrils reach far and wide. Part of the reason I haven't tackled this topic sooner was because I knew that the full story was very, very complicated and it's a little intimidating to be honest with you. A main reason that the story of Aleister Crowley is so complicated is because he is a very polarizing individual and depending on whose version your reading, he could be painted as either a brilliant visionary or a dangerous, manipulating fraud. There are a lot of conflicting accounts out there about his life and it could get pretty confusing researching this man. The other reason is that the actual story of his life is genuinely one of the craziest things I have ever heard. So many parts of this are shocking, confusing and hilarious. I think you'll find that I am laughing quite a bit in the process of making this series, even though sometimes the parts are terrifying, disgusting or bewildering. This man lived a very, very unique life and you're going to hear all about it in this multi part series. To help me tackle this topic, friend of the show, Wolf Fleetwood Ross is back. He spent the last couple months reading every book he could find about Crowley, taking a lot of notes and putting together our version of his story. In this five part series, Wolf is going to lead me through the very long and wild story of the wickedest man in the world, Aleister Crowley. I've decided to put this first part of the series on the main podcast feed for free. The other parts will be available on Patreon. To hear those, you could sign [e-mail] Otherworld the second part is already up if you want to listen to it. And the others are coming very soon. I believe this is going to be a five part series. It's very long like I said. Patreon.com otherworld to sign up and hear those. This is part one. The title is the Great Beast and you're listening to Otherworld. All right everybody, welcome to Otherworld. I am joined by by a familiar character, Wolf Fleetwood Ross. How are you doing? Good to see you again, Wolf.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

I'm doing good. I'm very excited to be here.

[Jack Wagner]

Yes, I'm very excited about this. You've been hard at work researching, researching a man that we mentioned in the last series where you were featured. You were previously on the podcast Diving into the life of Jack Parsons. A very complicated story. I think people really like those episodes. I liked doing them. And we're back again to do another series and it's about an even more complicated person. You want to tell me who this is? Wolf, why don't you do the honors?

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Yeah. So today we're talking about Aleister Crowley and it was actually your idea and I think it's super fitting because we're going one up the chain to the guy who sort of more or less created everything that ensnared Jack Parsons.

[Jack Wagner]

His big homie, you could say.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Yeah, his big homie, yeah.

[Jack Wagner]

So it's interesting. I'm glad we're doing this next. I'd also like to point out that this has an interesting tie into a series that came out after you were last on the podcast, which was the Zozo series. We started to dip our toes into Crowley world during that because we are kind of investigating the Zoso symbol from the famous Led Zeppelin 4 album cover. I'm sure that's going to come up in this series. I'm sure there's many things that are going to come up in this series. It's a very complicated man, a bottomless pit, it seems.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Yeah, yeah. And yeah, actually very, very soon we'll get. Well, we're going to get into the Led Zeppelin part very early and I actually have a special connection to all that.

[Jack Wagner]

Interesting. I'm excited to hear this. Wait, so for the people who don't know who this is, is there a way to just give a brief summary of who Aleister Crowley is and why he is interesting?

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Yeah. I guess as Aleister Crowley you could say was like the last mainstream magus and sort of if you look throughout history, the. The magician or the, the Sorcerer Merlin, the Round Table, they've always been real and figures that are actually real, such as John Dee who was Elizabeth I Court who did all sorts of magic. Caligius Stroh was another one who ended up unfortunately in a jail cell. But it was this, like, it was this role in society and Crowley is not only the last one who took that mantle, but he pushed it very far and he ended up probably going a bit too far, some would say. Yeah. He was famously known in his time as the wickedest man alive. You know, he went by a lot of great names. Some of them were self prescribed, which was 666, the Beast Master Theron. You know, he was, he was really.

[Jack Wagner]

Look, yeah, the man that gives himself nicknames like that. Yeah.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Yes, yeah. And he thought a lot of himself. He thought of himself as a prophet, as someone who had been given a new religion, a new social order that would overthrow the current order and that he would be sort of among the gods in ushering in this new age. But I don't want to get ahead of myself, so.

[Jack Wagner]

Yeah. And as an outsider, as the. The one that knows not much about Aleister Crowley, I'd say that he's a person that's sort of come up in my periphery throughout my life. If you're a person who has even remote interest in any kind of strange things, esoteric interests, not necessarily meaning magical, but just. I don't know if you're into music, art, really anything like this guy, his, his tendrils touch everything a little bit. You're bound to have seen him. I'm sure you've seen a picture of him.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

If you've seen the Beatles White Album, you've seen his face. Yeah, the face on the. Yeah.

[Jack Wagner]

Or is it sergeant Pepper?

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Oh, sorry. Yeah, yeah, sorry. Sergeant Pepper.

[Jack Wagner]

Yeah, he was on the COVID of sergeant Pepper. Yeah, he's. He's kind of had his influence all over the place and had a life that's like, hard to track to the point where I never wanted to really dive into this because I knew I could just never, never have the time or patience to scratch the surface.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

And that's kind of the funny thing about Crowley is he would have loved his influence. He would have. Oh, God. If he had lived to see how big he became, he would have just. It would have been all his dreams come true in a weird way, because by the time he died, he was not super well known anymore. His books had never sold. He had thought of himself as a failure. And as you. As time went on, his influence just sort of grew and grew and grew until you're in a world where Jay Z is wearing a T shirt that says do what thou wilt, which is the sort of number one proponent of Crowley's religion, the other, you know, I can name a couple, but like, Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin is the number. He has all of Crowley's originals, his journals and stuff. And he even bought Crowley's mansion in Scotland for a while and lived in it. And it's funny, I was talking that I was going to be doing this with my grandpa, who's an old rocker, and to say the least, yeah, he's a pretty good rocker. But he was telling me, like I was with Jimmy Page and we were partying and he was doing rituals and I was right there. Really? Yeah. So he had some sort of firsthand experience with Jimmy. When Jimmy was going down that rabbit hole, he didn't partake in it, but he was, he was like, it wasn't a. It wasn't a passing fad. These guys were actually doing the rituals and really into it. So again, and then I have to say, like, the really annoying thing about researching Crowley is on both sides of the he's the wickedest man in the world or he's the greatest sorcerer ever. People have an agenda. Like back when he was alive, he was just like their version of tabloids at the time were just hammering him. And so you could write a book about him killing children or whatever shortly after his death and that would be accepted. And now in today's time, there are people who make a full on living just writing and lecturing about Crowley. So they sort of want to show the best side of him at all times. So you kind of have to cut your own middle ground between worst person in the world and greatest sort of godly magician, spreader of Thelema.

[Jack Wagner]

It's worth noting that people have a wide range of opinions on this guy. I don't know much at all about Aleister Crowley. It'll be interesting to learn, but you know, there's probably a good amount of people listening with a wide range of opinions on him.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

So 100%. And I just want to say, like, by all means, to truly be an expert in Crowley would take years to read all of his first he kept three journals and wrote his confessions, which I've read some of is like 1500 pages alone. So there are people who are definitely more knowledgeable in the world who have dedicated their life, or at least a significant part of it to Crowleyism. I think just before we jump in, I just want to quote someone who is much more into the occult than I am. And they had a really good quote which is occultism is what is hidden from sight. And it's the belief that what is hidden is most of the world and most of reality and the physical world that we're aware of is, is a very small part of a much larger reality. And the methods and practices of occultism allow people to enter the larger reality or access the larger reality to be exploited in the physical realm. And a direct quote from Crowley is magic is the art and science of causing change to occur in the conformity with will. So I just want to lay out though, because we're going to be talking about magic and occult a bunch and I think it's good just to. That's the sort of stuff we're talking about. It's weirdly, it's close to manifestation. A lot of ritual magic is about concentrating your will and manifesting stuff. So it's not too far adjacent from beliefs that we hold today pretty openly at any Silver Lake coffee Shop.

[Jack Wagner]

No, yeah, I think a lot of that stuff is like the, a very, very watered down version of what these guys were up to back in the day. Very watered down. Of course there's like, you know, in the last decade we've seen kind of like the corporatization of this type of thing where, you know, stuff that was started by these spooky men years ago. Men and women, mind you, are now kind of being taught at like literal corporate training outings.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Yeah, totally.

[Jack Wagner]

How to manifest sales for yourself.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Yeah, really good point. Really good point. And you know, there's.

[Jack Wagner]

He would probably love that.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

He would love it. I mean, there's that. Not to already start with the conspiracy theories, but it's like the CIA was studying astral projection at a time. He would have loved that. He would have loved that.

[Jack Wagner]

That is true. Let's dive into this.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Let's dive in.

[Jack Wagner]

Wolf, I'm so happy to have you here. This might be a multi part series. We will see how long this takes. I know this is a, a very, very big subject. I'm sure we're barely going to scratch the surface even in our attempt. Perhaps that's for the best. We will see. All right, let's dive in.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

All right, so Crowley was born 50 years after the death of Napoleon in 1875, but he died somewhat in the modern era after World War II. And I think it's really interesting when you're talking about this time period because it's when the Victorian era sort of becomes the modern era. And the people who live in this world are living in a world where not all the maps are filled in. You know, like there's, there's this unknownness about the world at the time and it sort of fades away within their lifetime. So you, you find these really interesting people that are crawling out of Victorian era repression or religiousness into this sort of new world where anything can go. So anyway, he was born on October 12, 1875. He was originally born Edward Crowley. And what I'm about to say comes from him. And he did a lot of his own mythology to make himself awesome. But apparently he was born with several signs that indicated he was destined to be great.

[Jack Wagner]

Okay.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

The first were four hairs on his chest in the shape of a swastika. And this is before the Nazis, so it didn't have that connotation. And he claimed that is the mark of the beast. He was also born with a veil of afterbirth on his face, which is indicative of great magical abilities according to him. And then finally he had a membrane restricting his foreskin, and that is apparently the sign of the Buddha, according to a book I read. So a membrane.

[Jack Wagner]

Isn'T that just, like, uncircumcised?

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

I don't know. I didn't look too deep into it. I just took him at its word.

[Jack Wagner]

Okay, I'm sorry.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

He was also born tongue tied and he had to get his tongue cut, so he could never produce R's correctly.

[Jack Wagner]

Interesting.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Kind of funny.

[Jack Wagner]

Interesting.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

He was born into a very wealthy family and, like, his families had breweries all over and they had these things called Crowley Ale Houses, which was like a prototype of an English pub where a working man could come in and get a pint and get a sandwich. And I don't know why, but at the time that was like, a very novel idea. And in England, it just caught on and the family just made a fortune.

[Jack Wagner]

Interesting.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Yeah. And he was born into that. And the funniest thing is pubs were.

[Jack Wagner]

Around for a really long time. I wonder what they were doing unique over there.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

It was the bundling of the food and the ale for a set price.

[Jack Wagner]

This seems so simple.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Back in the day, I know it would be so easy to get a.

[Jack Wagner]

Beer just to be a guy that was like, what if we served beer and food?

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

And the funniest thing is, like, Crowley was basically born into what I would call, like, a super Christian cult. So no one drank. No one drank in his family. His father would eventually buck that and start drinking, but for a long time it was. They were just businessmen who were just. Just.

[Jack Wagner]

They don't get higher supply?

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

No, not at all.

[Jack Wagner]

That's the best way to be, I think. Right?

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Yeah. Probably just focus on the product. This religious cult is called the Plymouth Brethren, and from my research into it, it actually could have been a really big movement. But they were so pious that every time they'd get bigger, they'd find a way to separate themselves. So it'd be like, you're not the real Plymouth Brethren. We're the real Plymouth Brethren because we believe something very slightly different. So they. This group sort of kept fracturing itself until you end up in the most hardcore sect, which is the part that Crowley's parents were a part of. Yeah. And you have this thing of, like, no one else is. Right. So Crowley grew up thinking that the very small people that surrounded him were the only people going to heaven and everyone else was damned to hell.

[Jack Wagner]

These. This was like, really hardcore fringe Christianity, especially for the time. Right. I did learn a little bit about this. Like. Like, not Only were they against drinking, they had other weird beliefs. Like, like you couldn't sign a lease or something. I saw something like that.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Where.

[Jack Wagner]

Because, because like, you might. Jesus might come back at any moment.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Yeah, yeah, true.

[Jack Wagner]

If you sign a lease, it means that you don't think he might come back soon or something like that.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

I mean, this is how. Eventually Crowley's father would sell their shares in a railroad company and invest it into canals. Because railroads aren't in the Bible, but canals are. That's really, you know, and so Crowley was kind of a genius. He learned how to read at 4, but he was only allowed to read the Bible. That's all he read. And so he grew up with the only sort of comparisons of what a relationship was as sort of God, the devil, the sort of, you know, I just, I. I wasn't raised religious, but I could only imagine if I was only allowed to read the Bible and only allowed to interact with other people in this very, very small sect and.

[Jack Wagner]

Basically a Christian cult.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Yeah. And even their servants, the only servants they'd allow in their house had to be part of this cult. And then also just the belief that everyone who's not going into this cult is being burned in hell forever. And I think if you have that imprinted on you from 4 years old, it's hard. You know, they would start their day reading the Bible. He was, he read it, he basically memorized it. And obviously he will buck this quite hard. Yes, yes.

[Jack Wagner]

One could say this was probably even the cause of that.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

You could. And just other stuff. No Christmases, no presents, no birthdays, like, just doesn't sound fun for a kid to grow up in.

[Jack Wagner]

Yeah, no birthdays, interesting birthdays.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Now, his dad probably never held a job. It's unclear. Some people think he did, other people don't think he did. But definitely what he would do is he considered himself a sort of layman preacher and he would accost people on the street and he'd say, what are you doing after this? And they'd say, well, I'm going to go to do my shopping or I'm going home. And then he'd go, and then, and then. And eventually the person would say, well, I guess I'll just die after that. And he goes, and have you thought about what happens after that? He would launch into the Plymouth Brethren. Sort of diatribe about why they needed to convert. And so if you think about it like, he's a really funny character. He's a multimillionaire in Victorian England who would do Walking tours across the country, trying to get people to convert to the Plymouth Brethren. And Crowley would follow him on these walking tours. And he actually really looked up to his dad during this period and thought his dad was trying to save anyone he came into contact to. And so he had this sort of admiration for his dad as a young boy.

[Jack Wagner]

The wealth of their family. Did it come from his grandparents, did you say?

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

I'm not exactly sure. I have his family tree downstairs, but it might have been his great, great grandparents. They were like. So it was like, it's old family money. It's old family money.

[Jack Wagner]

Oh, okay. So that actually clears up the whole pub thing too. So, like, yeah, this might have been a really long time ago when they revolutionized the idea of the pub.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Basically. Basically. Okay.

[Jack Wagner]

Okay. So the Crowleys have been.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

I mean, because at this point, if you think about it, like, his dad never held a job. Crowley will never hold a job. So this money is going back generations at this point, and we're in the 1800s. So, like, they did good for themselves.

[Jack Wagner]

Yes, yes. Okay, that is interesting. And was his dad a good guy? Was he a bad guy, by all.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Accounts, his dad compared to his mom. He loved his dad and he thought his dad was great. He hated his mom. He would later claim he hated his mother because she was too ugly to be attracted to. But I think that's probably just for shock value.

[Jack Wagner]

One of the most complicated statements I ever heard. Okay. I have heard that his dad was not a great guy. I heard that his mom referred to him as the Beast.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

No, no, that's Crowley. Oh, yeah.

[Jack Wagner]

Okay.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Yeah. And that'll come. Yeah. But. But from all I could tell is as. While his dad was alive, it was harmonious living, but within this sort of cult. And his father would get sick when he was 11, and he would get cancer, unfortunately, tongue cancer. And they actually had a connection to the royal family surgeon. And unfortunately, the Plinus Brethren got together, they prayed over it, and they decided that he should do something called electro homopathy, which is like. I looked into it. I tried to look into it. It's like just gobbledygook. And it probably killed his dad. Not saying that. He wouldn't have died anyway. Obviously, tongue cancer in the 1800s is probably fatal anyway. But I do think this pushing him away from that made Crowley start to hate the Plynneth Brethren, because in his opinion, they helped kill the only sort of good thing about it for him.

[Jack Wagner]

Also, pause. There's no way that was in the Bible. Electro. Yeah, no, Way, I'm sensing some contradictions with this group. Right, yeah.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

And I think that Crowley would hate the contradictions. Like, he would start to notice them. He said after his father died, he became a free thinker and was able to sort of view things and just say, this. This isn't making sense. The literal interpretation of all this stuff isn't making sense. And so after his father died, his life just got way worse. Like, he got. He started getting sent to these boarding schools that were run by Plymouth Brethren. And they were intense. He may have been sexually assaulted during that time. He was definitely beaten. In one of the boarding schools, the headmaster claimed to be so pious that he had never slept with his wife, encouraged the students to do the same. But this is when Crowley's, like, dark side starts to come out a little bit, or a lot, considering. According to him, this is when he started to have fantasies of torture and being sexually degraded by very powerful women. He also took things very literally, to the point where some of his biographers think he might have been on the spectrum to some sort. And I'll give you an example. One time in boarding school, he got a cat. He got a cat, he suffocated it, he hung it, he stabbed it, he poisoned it, he smashed its skull, he lit it on fire, he drowned it, he shot it, and then he threw it out the window to see if cats really do have nine lives.

[Jack Wagner]

Wolf, I do not think that is one of the known symptoms of autism.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

No, no, not that. But he had been told cats have nine lives. And this is his way of, like.

[Jack Wagner]

Testing that, like the most literal interpretation.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Yes, and it's the same thing with the Bible, because what he'll start to do is, you know, the Bible became literal for him and he, like, I don't want to get ahead of myself. But he started to try and pray to the devil the same way he had been praying to Jesus via the Plymouth Brethren. Because he just thought, you know, switch it up, let's switch it up. Basically, yeah.

[Jack Wagner]

That cat story, by the way, rest in peace to the cat. That's horrible.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Horrible, horrible. But we both have cats.

[Jack Wagner]

Yes. So, yeah, that's sounding a little bit more like early signs of a sociopath slash serial killer than anything.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

But look, I'm not the one who wrote the biography that said that, but just reporting dutifully. Another thing.

[Jack Wagner]

He did so much to the cat.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

He did so much. And he was surprised to find that it didn't survive because he had been told it had had nine lives.

[Jack Wagner]

So that was in Boarding school.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Yes. And on his vacations from boarding school, as he sort of began to rebel again, his mother would refer to him as the Beast. And again, taking everything literal, he took to the Bible, sort of the Beast. I'm not super familiar with the bible, but obviously 666, the great beast, the ushering of the new era, and the scarlet woman and the Whore of Babylon that would be riding the great Beast, ushering in this new era. And this idea, this relation to that will come into play a lot later into his life. But it's interesting that at the very beginning he takes the name of the beast just because his mother scolds him with it.

[Jack Wagner]

Yeah. Calling your son the Antichrist is very interesting. And also, I doubt that she wanted him to be stoked by that insult or name. I think she was probably terrorizing her, if I had to guess.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Yeah. And he hated his mother and he hated her whole family because they were all in the Plymouth Brethren, to the point where his mother, his uncle, he had an uncle called Tom, who is his mother's brother. And later in life, he would publish Tom's obituary while Tom was still alive in the newspaper and send it to him.

[Jack Wagner]

That's impressive.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

I mean, that is English humor. I'm English. I know you wouldn't imagine it from my voice, but, like, Crowley is a really, really English, English character.

[Jack Wagner]

In a funny way, that's advanced hating.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Oh, yeah. Really, really advanced obituary about a guy.

[Jack Wagner]

You don't like and then mailing him a copy of it.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

I mean, trust me, we have some better anecdotes coming up later. Okay.

[Jack Wagner]

I'm very excited about this.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

So he started to begin to have this obsession with trying to leave Christianity. He wanted to sin in a way that burned the bridge behind him. So there was no going back. Like I said, he began to pray to the devil, but it didn't have any results. And he was really disappointed by that. And then he says in his journal after that he found out what masturbation was and quote, I applied myself to this practice with much vigor. So that took the price of praying to Satan was jerking off, basically, in the beginning.

[Jack Wagner]

And he refers to it as a practice.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

A practice? Yes, to get better at. Yeah, he's a. Yeah.

[Jack Wagner]

A gooner of his time.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

[Jack Wagner]

Some. Some would say the gooner of all time, basically. And so we'll get into that.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Yeah, we will definitely get into that. So his career at boarding school came to an end because he was being punished by this headmaster, maybe fairly, maybe unfairly. Actually definitely unfairly, because what was happening is he was being locked basically in a shed in solitary confinement with very little clothing, was getting very, very sick. And when his mother and some relatives came to visit him, they knew that even for them this was going too far. And it's not like they didn't believe in physical punishment, but they actually went and got that school shut down and Crowley's. Yeah, and Crowley's education started to basically come in the form of hand picked tutors. And for the most part they were Plymouth brothers approved. However, there was one tutor called Charles Douglas who slipped through the cracks and really changed Crowley's life forever. Charles Douglass believed it was really important for young men to be physically fit as well as mentally fit. So he would take, he would take a young Crowley on these long walking tours across England, visiting different villages and historic sites. And so he was getting his education and his exercise at the same time. But Charles Douglas was also a man who was not super religious. And he smoked and he drank and he gambled and he did all these things. And he introduced Crowley, a 15 year old Crowley to all of those things to the point where on one of their walking trips, Crowley actually lost his virginity to one of the village girls. And so by the way, this sounds.

[Jack Wagner]

Like a really sick version of education.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Yeah, it sounds like an awesome way to be educated. I agree. Honestly.

[Jack Wagner]

Yeah. Walking around England with a guy showing you the world, drinking, smoking at 15, that sounds pretty.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Learning how to gamble, doing billiards. And you got to think like this guy has been so constrained his whole life and now he has a literal sense of freedom in his walking tours. But also this like revelation of I'm sinning and I'm not being shot dead at the moment. Like this, this whole world just kind of opened up to him. The other thing that he did, which would be with Crowley for the rest of his life is he introduced Crowley to poetry and classics and Crowley, you could make an argument that Crowley would have rather have been a great poet than a great occultist. He was always chasing poetry fame. He was obsessed with poetry and I'll detail it. He would come in contact with the great poets of his time and his poetry would span sort of the most insane topics, which I will mention in a bit to very mundane topics.

[Jack Wagner]

So yeah, we'll get to that. But from what I've seen, I don't think that he had the chops to be one of the great poets.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

No, but he considered himself to be the greatest poet of all time. That's Important.

[Jack Wagner]

I mean, he can. That seems to be a pattern with him.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Yeah, yeah. So here's Crowley returning home from his walking trip. Poor Charles Douglas was eventually fired for all of his indiscretions. But Crowley now had a taste for sex and he would steal money from his mother and go visit village prostitutes all the time. He also would, would seduce one of his in house servants and sleep with her in his mother's bed as an extra fuck you to his mom. And when the servant came forward because she was guilty, she felt guilty, he would deny it. And then that servant was fired for lying.

[Jack Wagner]

My God.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

And then if anyone else wants to jump down this rabbit hole, because I didn't. But according to Crowley, that servant would go to London, live as a prostitute, be killed by Jack the Ripper, and Crowley would. Yeah, and Crowley would claim that he knew who Jack the Ripper was and named him as Robert Dunston. And I briefly looked into that. There seems to be people who believe that I would. When I have more time, I'm going to jump deeper into that hole. But it's quite, quite the claim.

[Jack Wagner]

All right, we'll be right back after this quick break.

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[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

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[Jack Wagner]

You'Re going to help me stop it us. Why?

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

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[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

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[Jack Wagner]

This film is not yet rated. Yeah, okay, so I could already tell that like in this series there's going to be possible side quests that could just take entire episodes, if not like be a series of their own. Oh yeah, and that one is seeming like one of those paths where we could easily go down it, but I know we wouldn't be coming back for a very long time.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Yeah, it's like if you were to read every book Crowley's ever put out, probably take you five years. You know, there's just, there's a. I think it's funny because with Jack Parsons there's little. There was little written words and with Crowley there's an abundance of every sort. Everything you want to know more about you can go do that. It's easier to just pick sections that you want to. Rather than tackling the entire thing at once.

[Jack Wagner]

So how old is he at this point?

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

So he's 15. 15. And I'll just say one thing as we continue on this story. If I were to list all of Crowley's sexual escapades, we would be here forever. So it should just be assumed from this point on that, that he's constantly having sex. He's having sex with basically everything that moves, and he'll be doing that for the rest of his life. And obviously I'll mention his sort of very important partners, but even when he's with them, he's always having sex with basically anyone. And it's kind of like a lot of people comment on how shocking it was that he was able to attract so many women. Even later in his life when he's so down and out, he always had a sexual partner, usually at that point much younger than him by his.

[Jack Wagner]

Well, he's a very coercive man, too. Like, I know I get into that, but like, not only the magic, but, like, I. I did read that he used drugs to take advantage of people a lot.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Like, you know. Yeah.

[Jack Wagner]

Like providing drugs, people who are already addicted and of course, his wealth. Right. This is a man who essentially his entire existence was manipulation, whether it was of people or of the. The universe with magic. His entire belief system structured around, like, imposing his will.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Yeah.

[Jack Wagner]

On everything around him.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

So, yeah.

[Jack Wagner]

You know, that's caveat to that as well. I'm sure that. I'm sure that a lot of the sex was not above boards by. By modern standards for various reasons. So.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Yeah, I would definitely agree with that.

[Jack Wagner]

Just a huge blanket. Blanket asterisk on everything we talk about in this.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Yes, yes.

[Jack Wagner]

And so if we seem like we're being light hearted about this man. No.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Yeah. No, not at all.

[Jack Wagner]

Please don't email us trying to convince us that he's a bad dude. I mean, he's literally the wickedest man in the world. We said in the very beginning, we know, we know.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

And we haven't even gotten into.

[Jack Wagner]

No, we haven't even gotten into the real stuff yet. Let's dive back in.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

All right. And I'm just going to mention this very briefly as another side quest because we're going to come back to it. But when he was 16, he visited the. He started to sort of climb mountains, which at the time was like a new sport, an Englishman sport of the time. And he would become very sort of. He'd become one of the best climbers in the world at the time. I think incredible. I think you can say that. And so we're gonna detail some of his climbs. But right now he's just sort of climbing these chalk face cliffs in England and he's sort of getting his bearings on, on sort of archaic mountain climbing, which was at the time thought of as a gentleman's sport. Only rich people could do it. There was gentlemen's societies, like everything in Victorian era. You had to make a secret club about it. So he would.

[Jack Wagner]

Anyway, this is, I mean, I'm jealous of the lifestyle in so many ways of an aristocrat of the time that came up in Jack Parsons. Right. But yeah, just as a guy, especially then a guy who had the ability to hang out essentially in an era where, where nobody was hanging out. Yeah, it was hard to live, right, yeah. To hear about a guy that was doing this stuff back then, that's crazy.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

So we're going to skip ahead a couple years. So he's, we're going to revisit Crowley. He's now 20. He's entered the venerated halls of Trinity College, Cambridge. It's a huge deal. Back then, especially think of class structure. Where you went to college was basically like, you're standing in the world in Victoria, especially in England. Like if you think England's a bit snobby now, like, think about it back then, Crowley was 20, he was finally free. He could study whatever books and poetry he wanted to. And on top of that, his trust fund was fully relinquished to him. So I've seen gloves off. Yeah, gloves are off. I've seen different estimations. You could probably say somewhere between 5 to 12 million dollars he got when he was 20 years old.

[Jack Wagner]

@ the time.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

No, no, for today's standard.

[Jack Wagner]

Okay, okay, okay.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

No, at the time.

[Jack Wagner]

Yeah, I mean that's still. Today's standard is crazy.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Yeah, crazy for a 20. You would never give a 20 year old 5 million or 12 million dollars and say, figure it out. And he'd never handled money before. He had never had any real access to cash before. So it's just suddenly, here it is. Go for it.

[Jack Wagner]

That's incredible. That's incredible.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Yeah. And this is also on his first sort of couple weeks in, in Trinity, he officially changes his name from Edward to Alastair. There's two reasons that people have differing opinions. One is he didn't want to be related to his dad anymore, didn't want that closeness. The second one is he had read a book about how to become famous and something about the sort of the way Aleister Crowley Rolls off the tongue. The didactic, sort of. He just read in a book, like, it was easier to get famous if you had a name that fell in these things. So he was already adopting a stage name and thinking about how he could make his mark in the first couple years. He famously kept to himself. He just read a bunch of books. He wrote very bad poetry. He was sleeping with prostitutes. He joined the chess club, was president. He could have gone pro in chess. He was like a crazy, crazy chess player. Later in his life, he could be having sex with a woman and playing two games from two different rooms and being like, bishop to B7 and then pawn to a whatever. And he would do that famously, quite a bit.

[Jack Wagner]

That's insane.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Yeah. I couldn't even imagine the mental prowess to do something like that or.

[Jack Wagner]

Yeah, sure. Just, like, the amount of time on your hands, you have to, like, be at the point where you decide to do such a thing.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Hey, it was an era before scrolling. So you had to do something. That's true.

[Jack Wagner]

That's true. He had. He had so much time, you know.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Yeah. And he. He refused to read. He only read authors who'd been dead for 50 years because he hated the era that he was growing up in.

[Jack Wagner]

Okay.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

And so, you know, he's going through his sort of college experience. He's climbing. He's still climbing. He's, funnily enough, studying moral sciences.

[Jack Wagner]

Okay.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

But when. When college breaks, he sort of begins to do what he'll do for a lot of his life, which is to travel around the world and to use his newfound wealth to explore. And there's one sort of incident that I want to talk about that happened while he was in Copenhagen on the night of the new year. And to me, it sounds somewhat like sleep paralysis and lucid dreaming at the same time. But for him, the experience convinced him that he had a deep magical ability. And in his own words, I'll just quote him. I was awakened to the knowledge that I possessed a magical means of becoming conscious of and satisfying a part of my nature which had, up to that moment, concealed itself from me. It was an experience of horror and pain combined with a certain ghostly terror. Yet at the same time, it was the key to the purest and holiest spiritual ecstasy that exists. A year later, he would have a similar experience, and I'll just quote that one as well. My animal nature stood rebuked and kept silence in the presence of the imminent divinity of the Holy Ghost, omnipotent, omniescent and omnipresent, yet blossoming in my soul as if the entire forces of the universe from all eternity were concentrated and made to manifest in a single rose. And it should be also noted that New Year's night in Copenhagen seems to be the first time he had sex with a man. So he may have been speaking about that experience as well.

[Jack Wagner]

So this was what he just described was the first night he had sex with a man.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

It could. There are two differing opinions. Some people say it's something, a magical happening that happened to him in bed after the sex with the man. Or people say as he was having sex with a man, this happened to him and he sort of embraced it as he said, you know, it was terrifying, but the purest moment at the time.

[Jack Wagner]

So that's interesting. Yeah. Because I did read somewhere that he, his first experience with magic or like the supernatural was when he first had gay sex.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

And you, you can definitely interpret it to that 100%. And it should also be noted that Crowley was always the bottom. He was always the receiver. Interesting. Yeah. And I, I also think that's actually like, really surprising. I know, because later in life he'd become obsessed with anal sex with women. Uh, but yeah, I, I think it's also fair to call him bisexual. I, I really do. I don't think at the time. I don't. It's obviously you could be arrested for that.

[Jack Wagner]

Yeah, this was extremely illegal.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Extremely illegal.

[Jack Wagner]

Yeah. In modern, in the modern times, he would be bisexual. But yes, at the time, I think he was considered himself to be a straight man who just did this sometimes. Yes.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

And he would, he would have some relationships with men later in life, but they were all magical based. They weren't sort of companion based. That was always for women. And wherever he was at, you know, a lot of times he would go to the Middle east because sex between men at that time was actually okay. More okay over there. And so he would go and sort of imbibe himself in houses of pleasure and stuff. So, yeah, you know, we could dive deep into the psychology of the time. But it's. It is interesting that this is how it starts. So that October Crowley would fall seriously ill, like almost deathly ill. And he'd start to meditate on how he wanted to leave his mark in the world. And he thought diplomats would be forgotten. He thought poets were only slightly less forgotten. And he just was sort of at an end. And at the end of this sickness, he decided that only spiritual things were worthwhile, that he would make his name in the spiritual world. Because again, I think Crowley could never escape his Christian upbringing and how much that weighed on him. So it does kind of make sense that he would try and basically create his own Bible later on. Interesting. Now, these two incidences sort of reunited Crowley's attempts to physically get in contact with the devil. Now that he was older and he had access to funds, he was able to visit an occult bookstore and buy this book called the Book of Ceremonial Magic or the Book of Black Magic, depending on which biography you're reading. And that's the one I actually sent to you. And it's got these beautiful illustrations in it, but it's a bit scary looking and we both don't want it in our house.

[Jack Wagner]

No, yeah, it's terrifying. It was. Also, it's at. Not even on ebay or something. It's at, like a formal auction.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jack Wagner]

We'd have to attend.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Yeah.

[Jack Wagner]

And so a $6,000 tome.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Yeah. To get cursed.

[Jack Wagner]

Even if I can afford that, I don't want to keep it. You don't want to keep it? I joked that if, if, if the show ever blows up, I'll buy it for you. But you don't want it.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

No, I don't want it, but thank you. I appreciate it.

[Jack Wagner]

I don't want to. I don't want a tome.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

It's like I said, I'm agnostic. Could 100%, like, fly open one night.

[Jack Wagner]

Yeah. I don't need a flying book.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

So the important thing, besides the rituals in this book is that hinted at a secret church or a secret order being out there. And this really got Crowley's attention. So he actually wrote to the author and demanded to know what the secret order was. And the author wrote back and told him to read this book called the Cloud upon the Sanctuary. And this book didn't do much to clear things up, but it continued to hint at a secret order. And it was written by a different author. So Crowley thought he was sort of stumbling onto this secret society that would be his indoctrination. So, returning to Cambridge, this is interesting, but Crowley actually had a sort of boyfriend for the kind of only time in his life. And this person was an early archetype of a drag queen. Like, they. They would. Yeah. And I have pictures and stuff I can show you afterwards of. Of them in full drag performing. And they. They had a. They had a pretty normal relationship. Crowley quoting was. Our relationship was that of a marriage. He made a man and a poet out of me, and I lived as his wife. Huh. Yeah. Again, like, super not allowed at the time. Like, you're going to jail for a long time if this ever comes out. Unfortunately, his partner was not into rock climbing and not into the occult. And as these two things started to take more and more of Crowley's time, Mitvit eventually got in the way of their relationship and they would part ways.

[Jack Wagner]

Classic, classic breakup situation. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a listener out there who had broken up with somebody for the same reasons. They don't like the occult and rock climbing. Yeah, I mean, very Pacific Northwest style breakup, you could say.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Yeah, yeah. It's a lot of people in Portland go through the same thing.

[Jack Wagner]

It's true tales, oldest time.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Totally. And then sort of a new person would enter Crowley's life who's called Oscar Wilde. And I've heard the name. Yeah. Right. And this happened towards the end of his relationship with his live in relationship. And they hated each other. But actually more truthfully, I think Crowley hated him and Oscar Wilde barely knew who Crowley was. Crowley would claim that Oscar Wilde was not actually gay and was doing it to be famous, which is just not true at all.

[Jack Wagner]

That's really funny.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Yeah, really funny. And also during this relationship, Crowley started to suspect that he might be hermaphroditic because he had big breasts. And he thought, he thought that this led him to understood women better than anyone because he knew his feminine side and could manipulate them. And as one biographer put it, he's.

[Jack Wagner]

Like really appreciating that line of thinking.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Yeah, no, no, exactly. As one.

[Jack Wagner]

I'm assuming he was a large man at this age as well, because he was rather.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

I think he would go in and out depending, depending on how much rock climbing he was doing.

[Jack Wagner]

Okay.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

But one biographer said he wished he was a hermaphrodite, but was unfortunately simply bisexual. All right, all right, so he.

[Jack Wagner]

There's a lot of great quotes in here. There's a lot of great quotes in.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Yeah, that is Crowley. He's like, he's very quotable, I guess.

[Jack Wagner]

Yeah. And I'm looking at Crowley. Yeah, he was not big like he seems large in the later years. The photos of him, later years.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

He was big for sure.

[Jack Wagner]

Looks like a classic large man. But yeah, I'm looking at the young photos and there's some where he's quite skinny in the rock climbing era, I.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Mean, and actually pretty handsome. There's some, some. He was a really good looking dude in early life.

[Jack Wagner]

A dashing young man. Yeah, I mean, he was an aristocrat, so basically.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

And then. So after this relationship, he meets this guy Called Oscar Ecclestein, who would become his, like, best friend who's not involved in magic. Their relationship would be purely rock climbing. Oscar Ecclestein was, like, famous in rock climbing circles at the time, had invented some new pieces of gear and sort of took Crowley in as his student. Oscar was much older than Crowley at the time and they would form this relationship. Also. He began to publish his own poetry at his own expense. And he would do this for the rest of his life. And it would actually be where most of his fortune would go. Because when he published poetry, it would be like the finest leather, the finest pages, like that. What the book looked like at the time was incredibly important. And he would claim, I don't think this is true, but he would claim that's why he was never a famous poet is because his books were too expensive. It was too expensive. It couldn't reach the masses. Yeah.

[Jack Wagner]

I keep laughing so much.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

No, I love.

[Jack Wagner]

I love the parallels of people I have met in my life. You know, I'm sure everybody has. Everybody's met a person that's like, yeah, never, never worked out because my music was actually too good. Yeah, I'm actually. I'm actually too good at guitar. So that's why my band never took off.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Exactly. Similar to that.

[Jack Wagner]

Yeah, yeah.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

And I'm not exaggerating. He would spend millions of dollars of his fortune self publishing. By today's standards, it would probably be the one, the number one expense that would drive him to be broke later in his life. And that's another thing, sort of along with his sexual escapades is from this point out, he's always publishing books. And as he grows, it'll sometimes be poetry, sometimes be a cult, sometimes be novels. Like, this man's output is just ridiculous. So, yeah, I'm not going to mention every book he publishes because that would be a fool's errand. But it, again, you should just be assumed in the background, he's having sex and writing.

[Jack Wagner]

I love that chaos. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just to imagine that he's constantly masturbating, having sex and publishing extremely expensive poetry books that nobody's reading, apparently.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Exactly. And for instance, at the end of his college career, he's already published five books. Five books in four years. One of these books is very notorious. It's called White Stains. And it was, okay, so controversial it had to secretly be printed in Amsterdam because the publisher feared arrest should he typeset this in England at the time. And a lot of these poems, I think, are done for shock value. To try and get noticed. He has one poem that's about having sex with Jesus as he's being crucified on the cross.

[Jack Wagner]

Okay.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

He has another poem titled Necrophilia that is. You know, it's got some crazy lines in it. I mean, it's. I can send it to you, but you know, to quote a little bit. To gnaw thy hollow cheeks and pull thy lustful tongue from out its sheath to wallow in the bowels of death and rip the belly fill. Fill my hands with all putridities to chew thy dainty testicles to revel with the worms in hell's delight in such obscenities. And that's just two paragraphs from a much longer poem, so you get the gist. And in Victorian era, this would be considered, like, just unknown. You know what I mean? This would put you in jail, basically, if this got out there.

[Jack Wagner]

And is it safe to assume that the white stains he's referring to are what I'm thinking of?

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Yeah, 100%.

[Jack Wagner]

Okay. Okay.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

He would have.

[Jack Wagner]

I'm getting the sense that Aleister Crowley, if he was alive today, would possibly be some kind of noise musician or.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

You know, maybe noise musician, Maybe prototype to jackass, Maybe an annoying streamer, maybe.

[Jack Wagner]

Oh, I could see him being a streamer. Yeah.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Yeah. Like just doing. Going out and just doing insane stuff for shock value. Because that's what a lot of this sounds like in the early times is. Is trying to get noticed via shock value.

[Jack Wagner]

Okay, interesting. Were people. Was it working?

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Well, the thing is, he couldn't put his name on white stains because he'd be arrested, so he would. He would send them out under pseudonyms at the time. It's hard to figure out why exactly he was doing this other than I think if the book was well received, he would come out and be like, it was me. But to give himself cover at the time in case no one cared, which no one did care at the moment and later in life.

[Jack Wagner]

Okay, so he's putting out these horrible shock poems.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Yep. And books. And he reaches the end of his college career. He gets very good grades, but refuses to sit the final examination because he considers it's a waste of time. So he just leaves without a degree after four years of studying.

[Jack Wagner]

That seems like some other. That's. That also seems like some stuff a guy would lie about.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Yeah. 100.

[Jack Wagner]

No, I actually did graduate, but I didn't feel like going to the exam, so.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Yeah, I got it.

[Jack Wagner]

It was just a technicality that I.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Don'T have A degree, basically. I think there were some, like, famous poets and famous thinkers from Cambridge that had done the same thing. So he was sort of trying to be like, I'm as good as that person.

[Jack Wagner]

It's a power move.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

Yeah. I think Tennyson might have done it.

[Jack Wagner]

Okay.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

I could be wrong about that. But some very famous English poets did that. So he was trying to put himself in the same category as these people.

[Jack Wagner]

Interesting.

[Wolf Fleetwood Ross]

So after college, he's mountain climbing with Ecclestein in the Swiss Alps, and he gets sick and he has to climb down. This is 1898, and he climbs down into the village of Zermatt, and he goes into a beer hall and this big, crowded place, and he starts lecturing everyone on alchemy, even though he doesn't know anything about alchemy. Just kind of makes a fool of himself. But, and this is crazy, one of the attendants in that beer hall was a man called Julian L. Baker, who was a real alchemist and practicing occultist, magician. And he sort of pulls Crowley to the side and starts talking to him. And Crowley tells him, I want to join the secret order. Like, what is the secret Order about? And Julian L. Baker confirms it's real, but says he's not a master and he can't help Crowley. But when he returns to London, because this guy also lived in London, he would connect him to a master who could initiate him. So upon arriving back in London, he meets George Cecil Jones, who would be Crowley's magical mentor and friend for many, many, many years. They'd eventually actually co. Found their own magic order together and then have a horrible falling out. But right now, Jones is Crowley's, like, connection to the occult. This initial thing is sort of forged. So Baker and Jones set out to. Before they introduce him to the order and bring him in, they want to train him a bit. They want to, like, see if he's a worthy disciple. So they give him some magical practices, meditation and astral projection. And apparently both men were astounded at how fast Crowley could astral project and go in and fall asleep. And they would move things in different rooms and Crowley would be able to tell them exactly where stuff was. And they just hadn't. According to what I read, they hadn't seen anyone sort of take to this practice as fast as Crowley did. So Crowley again asked Jones for admission. I'm pretty sure it's the same order mentioned in the books, but I just, you know, who knows? There was a bunch of secret orders at the time. But Crowley ends up becoming an initiate of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

[Jack Wagner]

All right, that does it for the first part of this series. This is a very long one. I believe this is going to be about five episodes long, hopefully not longer, but it might be. If you want to hear Part two and all of the rest of the episodes, they are available on our Patreon. You could sign [e-mail] we also have video versions of these episodes, so if you want to watch me and Wolf talk about all of this face to face, you can see those on the Patreon as well. Like I said, Part 2 is already up. Part 3 is coming soon, as are the rest of them. Patreon.com Otherworld this has been Part 1. The title is the Great Beast and you've been listening to Otherworld.