Aleister Crowley
Personalities / Aleister Crowley Quotes / By person / Aleister Crowley Quotes Aleister Crowley, original name Edward Alexander Crowley, (born October 12, 1875, Royal Leamington Spa, England—died December 1, 1947, Hastings), British occultist, writer, and mountaineer, who was a practitioner of “magick” (as he spelled it) and called himself the Beast 666. He was denounced in his own time for his decadent lifestyle and had few followers, but he became a cult figure after his death. Crowley’s father was an heir to a brewing fortune who became an evangelist for the Plymouth Brethren, a Nonconformist religious denomination. The younger Crowley, however, formed an aversion to Christianity early in life. As a student at Trinity College, University of Cambridge, he began to use the name Aleister and gained a reputation for skill at chess. In 1898 he left the university without taking a degree. His own inheritance left him free to travel widely and to arr...