Bisexual sorcerer Aleister Crowley helped popularize the occult by fusing sex with magick in the early 20th century

Bisexual sorcerer Aleister Crowley is celebrated by magicians today but was widely disliked during his lifetime for being an open queer occultist. 

Born in England in 1875, Crowley was the son of two devout Christians, a belief system he started questioning at a young age. Historians have described him as “a self-indulgent and flamboyant young man.”

By 21, he had abandoned Christianity completely and purportedly had his first gay sexual experience with a Scottish salesman. After that, he was sold — pun intended —  and even developed a romantic relationship with a different man the following year.

Several years later, Crowley developed a romantic relationship with yet another man, this time a student of his named Victor Neuburg. The two spent years traveling and experimenting with sex magick, a practice fusing sex with acts of occultism.

In 1913, they found themselves in Paris, city of love, where they used sex magick techniques to invoke the ancient Gods Mercury and Jupiter. (Ironically, Uranus was not involved.) Disinterested in the Christian view of sex, Crowley instead saw it as a sacred act with magical potential, an idea he explored for decades.  

While summoning ancient spirits and having gay sex might sound like an average Tuesday to many of us, Crowley risked much by partaking in this behavior 100 years ago. He was judged harshly by a conservative Christian Europe and even by fellow occultists who held more repressive views about sex. 

He found himself in several disagreements with fellow occultists throughout his lifetime, some of whom took philosophical issues with the teachings of Crowley’s religion, Thelema.

You see, back in 1904, be was married–to a woman named Rose, calm down–and the two honeymooned in Cairo, Egypt.

On the trip, Crowley claimed to be visited by Aiwass, a disembodied spiritual messenger of the Egyptian god Horus. Writing down all that the voice told him, Crowley created “The Book of Law”, which would eventually become an integral document of Thelema. 

The book claimed humanity was entering a new age and contained the quote: “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law,” which is well known today in occult and witchy communities. 

(Side note: Crowley and Rose divorced in 1909. He got remarried in 1929 to a woman named Maria Teresa Sanchez.)

“Crowley has repeatedly said that ‘Do what thou wilt’ does not mean ‘do whatever you want,’” explained biographer Richard Kaczynski. “He characterized this phrase as a call to discover one’s true will or purpose in life, and to devote oneself to doing that.”

Throughout his life, Crowley was subjected to unfair public hysteria surrounding his magick, drug use, support of sex work, and queer experiences. As if that’s not enough, an English tabloid even accused him of being an abusive cult leader and traitor to the British nation. 

English tabloid John Bull ran a series of attacks on Crowley in 1923, publishing the story of former follower Betty May, who accused the occultist of forcing people to drink the blood of a sacrificed cat and to cut themselves with razors.

All the negative press resulted in him being banned from Italy. 

“The tabloids paid Betty May for a salacious story, and they got one,” Kaczynski said.

Kaczynski and fellow biographer Tobias Churton have spent decades studying Crowley’s life and writings and are both convinced the cat blood story was a lie.

Churton pointed out that May was paid to testify against Crowley a decade later during a court case in 1934. And Kaczynski noted that the autobiography May wrote years later contradicted her previous story and matched what Crowley had written in his diary at the time.

“Crowley didn’t force anybody to drink blood,” Churton said. “He didn’t force anybody to do anything.”

In December 1947, Crowley died of bronchitis, with only a few friends attending his funeral, which the press incorrectly labeled as a satanic black mass. He was 72 years old.

Throughout his life, the bisexual occultist traveled to Nepal, India, Sri Lanka, Hawaii, Paris, Sweden, North Africa, Moscow, China, Burma, Canada, and across the U.S. and Mexico. He studied Islamic, Hindu, and Chinese mysticism, western occultism, ancient spellbooks, yoga practices, and the I Ching. 

He invoked angels and gods and evoked spirits and demons. He explored sexual mysticism and also the use of hashish, opium, and peyote to aid spiritual experiences, documenting it all along the way. 

Besides creating the religion Thelema, Crowley is most known for his contributions to modern astrology, for co-creating the now iconic tarot set the Book of Thoth, for spelling magick with a ‘k,’ and for his influence on his friend Gerald Gardner, who is now largely regarded as the founding father of the Wiccan religion. 

Through these contributions to the occult Crowley has fascinated generations, casting a spell the world likely won’t ever forget.