“Born in 1875, Aleister Crowley had, like the Rolling Stones, rebelled against a regulated small-town background. He’d been raised in Leamington, Warwickshire, by parents who were members of the Strict Brethren, a fundamentalist Christian sect. From an early age young Aleister identified with the enemies of God in the Bible stories that were read to him. In particular he identified with the Antichrist predicted in the book of Revelation. In 1898 he joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a magical society. Most of Crowley’s adult life was dedicated to indulging in everything he believed God would hate: performing sex magic, taking heroin, opium, hashish, peyote and cocaine, invoking spirits, and even once offering himself to the Russian authorities to help destroy Christianity. He wrote volumes of books that he believed were dictated to him by a spirit from ancient Egypt called Aiwass. “To worship me take wine and strange drugs,” the spirit conveniently told him. “Lust, enjoy all things of sense and rapture. Fear not that any God shall deny thee for this.” Crowley finished his life as a sick, wasted heroin addict given to black rages and doubts about the value of his life’s work. His last words as he passed into a coma on December 1, 1947, were, “I am perplexed…”
Steve Turner, Hungry for Heaven, pp. 92,97,98

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