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Aleister Crowley (1875–1947), born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, astrologer, mystic and ceremonial magician, responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. He was also successful in various other fields, including mountaineering, chess and poetry. Crowley was also bisexual, a recreational drug experimenter and a social critic. In many of these roles he “was in revolt against the moral and religious values of his time”, espousing a form of libertinism based upon the rule of “Do What Thou Wilt”. Because of this, he gained widespread notoriety during his lifetime, and was denounced in the popular press of the day as “the wickedest man in the world.”

Crowley believed that he was contacted by his Holy Guardian Angel, an entity known as Aiwass, while staying in Egypt in 1904, and “received” a text known as The Book of the Law, which served as the basis for Thelemite philosophy. Through Thelema, Crowley came to see himself as the prophet who was entrusted with informing humanity that it was entering the new Aeon of Horus — the third of three aeons, in which humanity will enter a time of self-realization and self-actualization.

He has been described He has also been cited as a key influence on many later esoteric groups and individuals, including Kenneth Anger, Jimmy Page, Kenneth Grant, Jack Parsons, Gerald Gardner, Robert Anton Wilson and, to some degree, Austin Osman Spare. (WIKIPEDIA)