The Great Beast: The Life of Aleister Crowley

✍ Scribed by John Symonds

• Publisher: Panther Books / Hamilton & Co
• Year: 1956
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 274
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law."

'Was Crowley mad? Was he just a super-
confidence trickster? Was he just a de-
bauchee who found an easy trick for
hypnotizing women? He was all these--
and something more. He spent his own
fortune on his weird beliefs. What makes
him interesting is not that he himself was
a freak; it is the influence he was able
to exert on so many people of education
and social standing.'
--Reynolds News

[Rear cover:]
MADMAN? CONFIDENCE TRICKSTER? DEBAUCHER? They called him the wickedest man in the world, and his excesses scandalised and shocked the world of his day as wantonly he trod the path of evil.

'Death, suicide, misery, stalk through the pages ... would make the stoutest admirer quail'
--Times Literary Supplement.

'Mr. Symonds has given us all the information which the laws of libel and obscenity permit.'
-- News Chronicle.

'Certain to startle the ordinary reader with its narrative of lethal excesses.'
--The Scotsman.

✦ Table of Contents

[No Contents page or Chapter names/numbers]

Mother, Father, and Son
........................ 8
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
.......... 14
The Laird of Boleskine
......................... 24
Against Chogo Ri
............................... 36
Prince and Princess Chioa Khan
................. 42
Kangchenjunga, the Five Sacred Peaks
........... 56
Aiwass, the Holy Guardian Angel
................ 51
The Walk Across China
.......................... 73
Eaters of Scorpions
............................ 79
The Brothers and Sisters of the A.'. A .'.
..... 85
Sexual Magic in Victoria Street
................100
The Wizard in the Wood
.........................105
The Scarlet Woman
..............................118
Concubines One and Two
.........................126
The Sacred Abbey of Thelema
....................131
The Ipsissimus
.................................146
Cakes of Light for Mary Butts
..................153
'The Fountain of Hyacinth'
.....................160
Crowley Upsets James Douglas
...................171
The Gods Claim a Victim
........................177
Norman Mudd
a Probationer of the A .'. A.'.
....193
In Exile
.......................................198
Persecution of the Thelemites
..................208
The Rebirth of Alostrael
.......................222
A Nest of Serpents
.............................233
The Beast and the Monster
......................241
The Ambivalence of Gertrude
....................253
Mr. Justice Swift is Surprised
.................258
Magical Retirement
.............................263

✦ Subjects

666, Aceldama, Aiwass, Alostrael, Baphomet, Blavatsky, Boleskine, Book of the Law, Mary Butts, cult, defamation, recreational drugs, Rites of Eleusis, espionage, Golden Dawn, Hermeticism, Ipsissimus, sex magick, mountaining, occult, Frater Perdurabo, philandering, Plymouth Brethren, blood sacrifice, Lord Tankerville, Thelema, venereal disease