Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #250529 in Books
• Published on: 2002-01-16
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 496 pages

From Amazon.co.uk
The legendary Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) is a tantalising and bizarre subject. As an occult leader, heroin addict, sexual adventurer, misogynist, and visionary, he is the inspiration for many vile Gothic protagonists. Author W. Somerset Maugham even devoted a novel, The Magician to this chilling figure of indulgence and religious mockery. Like any good biographer, Lawrence Sutin set out to discover the man behind the myth. After considerable research, Sutin admits that Crowley was "a shameless scoffer at Christian virtue" and "a spoiled scion of a wealthy Victorian family" but he also sees him as a 20th century figure as "protean, brilliant, courageous, and flabbergasting as ever you could imagine".

Consider these facts about the man who named himself "The Great Beast": he was one of the first Westerners to seriously study Buddhism and Yoga. He radically redesigned the traditional Tarot deck (thus the "Crowley deck"). Contrary to common belief, he was never known to participate in satanic ritual--to do so would acknowledge the Christian church, which he was loathe to do (although he nicknamed his son "The Christ Child"). These are but a few of the surprising morsels one can glean from this excellent biography. Don't expect to find Crowley a likeable figure. Do, however, expect to meet a flamboyant man who challenged all forms of religious, sexual, and social oppression and hence became a revered visionary and a reviled demon. --Tara West

From Library Journal
The name Aleister Crowley has generally been associated with hedonistic, self-absorbed, occult-infatuated Victorian English intellectuals. Sutin (creative writing, Hamlin Coll.; A Postcard Memoir) does much to expand upon this simplistic perception, showing that while Crowley was indeed all these things, he was also much more. Crowley was an arrogant misogynist, yet he was also a very gifted poet and visionary who painfully drove himself to seek deeper visions through drug-induced vision quests and rampant sexual experimentation. He was prominent in the movement to bring Eastern philosophies into Christian England and America and sought enlightenment in the rawness of nature. Sutin wonderfully details the eccentricities of this puzzling man while being careful not to overburden his narrative with academic psychological theories or personal observations and conclusions. The result is a fascinating, easily readable narrative about one of the most interesting cultural phenomena of the late Victorian period. Recommended for all libraries.DGlenn Masuchika, Chaminade Univ., Honolulu, HI
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
"Virtually every current handbook on the 'cult crisis' in America features a purple-prose paragraph on the sinister Crowley," Sutin says. "The popular image endures of Crowley as a vicious Satanist," but he wasn't. Satan worship, Sutin points out, is the flip side of Christianity. Crowley--"the Beast, the Prophet"--wanted to create "a full-fledged successor religion," in which "Do What Thou Wilt" was the central credo. In charting the progress of the man who also denominated himself "666" (the number of the beast of Revelations 13:18), Sutin examines his imbroglios, his braggadocio, and the improbable conflicts in his makeup and life. An advocate of absolute individual freedom, his politics were decidedly right wing, yet his greatest triumph was making himself the popular face of evil incarnate. Sutin details his doings, writings, and comings and goings in pursuit of that triumph. He examines Crowley whole rather than merely advocating for or against him. Beware, though, for Crowley's success assures that even today a book about him may lead to lively interface with the local minions of decency. Mike Tribby
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