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With great esoteric power, comes great esoteric responsibility.
Aleister Crowley was considered many things, a poet, an artist, a master of the dark arts, and a prophet of Thelma. But who was the man behind the mask? And how did he go from being a leading figure and social commentator to dying in relative obscurity?
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Hello. Hello.
Do you want to see one of those buttons for me?
Yes, I do.
I can't hear it.
Oh, I didn't turn it on the phone, sorry.
Damn.
No.
I'll try one more time.
Okay.
I mean, I imagine that people respond, people's response when they hit that
this episode is about to start.
Yes, yeah, woo!
Woo!
Here, on shorthand, we usually start at the beginning, but not tonight, Josephine.
In keeping with today's theme, we are starting at the end.
And also, today's topic is a religious one,
no matter what anyone says, you can come and find me.
Welcome to Hannah McGuire's Helen Hot Takes, as above, so below addition.
Alistair Crowley, and it is Crowley, people say Crowley, including Ozzy Osborne,
but they are wrong, sorry.
There you go.
Alistair Crowley, the most wicked man in the world, the beast 666, the magician, the poet,
the perpetual catcher of STDs, and the inventor of magic with a K,
died by the sea in Hastings in 1947.
He died with his fifth child, Atta Tuck, and his baby mother,
Patricia McAlpine, by his side, in his final words,
what I am perplexed.
And according to Patricia, as Alistair Crowley slipped from this life to the next,
the heavens opened in a mighty thunderclap to welcome Alistair Crowley home.
Once a wielder of great esoteric power, Alistair Crowley died in obscurity
in a rundown guesthouse at 72, and this guesthouse was rather spookily named Netherwood House.
Crowley had spent a few years at the guesthouse, feeding his heroin habit,
and reading long into the night in room number 13, of course.
Due to his once-seronious reputation as a double worshipping deviant,
the town of Hastings denied Crowley a cremation within their jurisdiction.
I've never heard of that happening before, is that interesting?
Yes, that is interesting.
It is said that because of this, Crowley cursed Hastings.
Declaring that if a person has ever lived there, they will never be able to leave.
Even if one tries, they will always return.
Legend has it that the only way to circumvent this Crowley curse
is to carry a hackstone, and just in case you don't know what one is,
it is apparently a stone with a hole in it, and you have to carry it from Hastings Beach
with you wherever you go.
So you never quite leave?
No, it's the argument.
I see, I see.
So since Hastings said, no, we're not having you hear Crowley,
Brighton took the hit.
So Crowley's ashes were shipped to New Jersey,
where he was buried in the garden, a famed German occultist,
and definitely not Nazi.
Karl Gurma.
Karl Gurma is a very interesting guy.
I had a whole section about it, but he's on the cutting room floor.
I see.
Maybe a candidate for his own shorthand,
because a lot of the stuff we know about concentration caps is because of letters he wrote.
Interesting.
Really interesting.
But back to the beast.
The doctor who was at his side when Alistair Crowley died,
refused Crowley, his beloved heroine, as he lay there dying,
literally why?
This happened to my uncle, his sister,
long-term alcoholic died of cirrhosis of the liver,
and she was lying in hospital,
and they were like, don't give her anything to drink.
My uncle was like, why she's dead in the next 10 minutes anyway?
Yeah.
Anyway, as a result of being refused his heroine Crowley,
with the last of his strength laid a deadly curse upon this doctor.
It's enough with the curse, it's Crowley.
But this one seems to have worked.
The day after Alistair Crowley died,
his doctor was found dead in his bath,
allegedly, of natural causes.
It would only be better if it was dead of a heroine.
Yes, a heroine overdose.
But I'm not particularly sure that death certificates come with a black magic section.
And I'm also not saying it would be good if he had died of a heroine overdose.
I just meant it would have been more cursy.
True.
So now we have the end.
Let's get to the beginning.
The beast 666 was not born that way.
He wasn't even born with the name Alistair.
He was born in Royal Lemmington Spa in 1875,
and christened Edward Alexander Crowley.
His parents despite having made their fortune in the booze business
were pretty much as straight edges as they come.
They were members of a fundamentalist Christian denomination
called the Plymouth Brethren, which sounds absolutely terrifying.
Some of their beliefs included no makeup, no haircuts, no drinking outside the home,
no smoking, no gambling, and absolutely no tattoos.
They're basically the pilgrims who didn't leave.
Sure, sure, sure.
Yeah, they're like, we got as far as Plymouth and we didn't get on the boat.
So yeah, as you can tell, they were a fun bunch.
And it may be a surprise, but a young Crowley was extremely devout and desperately dedicated
to his part as father. I can believe that.
I feel like most people who end up feeling very
counter-culture in that way, especially at this time period,
probably did come from very religious backgrounds because they need something to rebel against.
But all of that changed when Crowley's father died, quite suddenly in 1887.
Looking back, Alistair Crowley would describe this as a turning point in his life,
but not one that included a renouncement of religion.
Quite the opposite. Crowley simply went over to Satan's side.
He claimed not to really know why this happened,
but I know better than anyone that the death of a revered father can make anyone question.
The existence of benevolent omnipotent and omnipresent God.
Young Crowley never thought that much of his mother
any treated her more like a servant than anything else,
and then at the ripe old age of 14.
Crowley had his way with his mother's maid on his mother's bed,
in an act of defiance.
And that led Crowley's mother to give him the name that he would make his own
the beast.
Now, because this is the 1800s and the Crowley's will rich, Mrs Crowley only had to deal
with her beast of a son in the summer holidays,
because the rest of the time he was shipped off to Moulvin boarding school.
Years later, he would claim that the school was run by a sadist,
and he should know.
Pretty qualified to make that assessment I would argue.
Now, Crowley didn't make it the full nine yards at the school, though,
and at a lesson, Alistair Crowley was expelled from Moulvin
for contracting gonorrhea from a sex worker.
Not for the final time.
No, that happens to him quite a lot.
But to be honest, he was such a precocious little shit
that they were probably just waiting for an excuse to get rid of him.
Crowley's expulsion didn't stop him from enrolling in Cambridge University, however,
and he did this in 1895,
which I would love to put down to being the bad old days,
but let's face it, Prince Harry was allowed to go to St Andrews with a D in art.
I mean, he doesn't even finish school in Cambridge, it's like, come in my boy.
Prince Harry should never have been allowed to go anywhere near any university.
I mean, it's shocking.
So unsurprisingly, Crowley wasn't that interested in learning,
given that he basically didn't even finish school.
He was much more concerned with fucking bitches and reading Arabian nights,
which does have more fun.
And this, of course, sparked an obsession in Crowley with Arab culture that would stay with him forever.
Crowley had a rotation of women that he would fall desperately in love with and then get
bored of just as quickly.
And then, in his final year at Cambridge, a 23-year-old Crowley fell in love with a man
called Jerome Pollett.
Jerome was 10 years older than Crowley, he was worldly, and best of all, he was a drag queen.
Jerome's drag name was Diane de Roushie, and he entertained at many private parties.
Crowley always maintained that there was no sexual element to their relationship.
I don't believe him.
But what he does say is that it was as intimate as the ancient Greeks would have wanted it,
so the sort of like, elder man, younger boy, vibe.
They were fucking.
Still though, whether they were fucking or not, it was Jerome that introduced Crowley,
who, after a brief obsession with Celtic tradition was now insisting that everyone
called him Alistair, to the decadent movement.
And according to Crowley himself, Jerome made a poet out of him.
If you want to read Crowley's poetry, you can.
Many people who do pieces on him do.
I don't have the strength.
It is so graphic that he had to publish it all abroad
under a fake name, and he invented some convoluted story, including a translating monk.
All you do need to know is that Crowley's poetry is not only bad,
it's full of farts, gonorrhea, sodomy, and earth-shattering orgasms.
So go forth and read it at your own risk.
And fisting, right?
You know, like the saying that's like, if you can think about it, there's porn about it.
Uh-huh.
If you can think of it, he's already done it.
Sure.
And probably lots of things that we can't think about also,
because we don't have the imagination.
Yeah, sure.
The sin, though, as any adult would, Jerome Pollett got bored of Crowley,
who was getting more and more interested in two things,
the occult and mountains.
Jerome couldn't give a shit about either of these things, so he dipped.
Alistair Crowley would regret this parting for the rest of his life,
but nevertheless, Crowley threw himself into his new hobbies.
He left Cambridge without graduating, shocker,
and took himself off hiking in the Alps.
And it was there in the Alpine splendor,
the Alistair met a member of the hermetic order of the Golden Dawn.
The Golden Dawn, which is now like a fucking fascist group in Greece,
this is a separate Golden Dawn that we're talking about,
were like the illuminati of their day.
They were high society types, poets, artists,
border aristocrats, who truly believed in magic and in powerful spiritual entities
that could be communicated with.
And they called themselves the secret chiefs.
That's a bad name, I know.
As soon as Alistair heard about this, he knew that he needed a piece of it, though.
And the most famous alums of the Golden Dawn are obviously,
Crowley himself, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
AE Weight and Pamela Coleman Smith, the co-creators of the Rider Weight Tarot Deck,
and the poet, novelist and namesake of Irish pubs all over the world, WB Yates.
Can you think of any WB Yates works?
Oh, I think you can say locations.
No, I mean, there's one in Finnsbury Park.
It does a great roast there, actually.
I had one.
Oh, WB Yates is, there are no strangers here, only friends you haven't met yet.
That's him.
And something to do with striking, not striking while the iron's hot,
but like strike to make the iron hot in the first place, something like that,
but more succinct and poetic.
Nice.
Anyway.
The co-founder of the Golden Dawn, Samuel Mathers, liked Crowley very much.
And as a result, Alistair moted through the magical levels of pace.
But he was basically the only one.
The Golden Dawn was not particularly concerned with Blackmagic.
And soon, that would be the only thing that Alistair was interested in at all.
WB Yates particularly hated Crowley.
But Alistair put that down to poetic jealousy,
which is absolutely an example of Delulu being the only salulu.
Crowley, in a succession with the darker side of the veil,
split the hermetic order of the Golden Dawn right down the middle.
But Mathers, a Crowley fan, remember flat out refused to hand over leadership of the sect.
And that eventually led to Crowley heading up what he called an astral siege,
but was actually just Crowley and a kilton and a Cyrus mask flailing a dagger around.
And with that, Alistair Crowley was expelled from the hermetic order of the Golden Dawn.
But he wasn't going to let that stop him.
He continued to travel far and wide.
And in 1903, he married his first wife, Rose Edith Kelly,
who he described as the perfect mistress and the perfect wife.
Crowley and Kelly honeymooned in Egypt and then Crowley took his new wife
into the central chamber of the great Pyramid,
which sounds like quite the euphemism.
There he cast many incantations and attempted to communicate with the ancient Egyptian deities
that he had been studying all of his life.
I really hope that Rose knew all of this about him because always quite a shock on your honeymoon.
Rose fucking loves it.
Because otherwise, you're just like, and also what?
Yeah, it is a lot of sorry what, and also as we all go on to learn,
Rose was so drunk all the time she probably had no idea what was going on.
Now, unfortunately, these ancient Egyptian deities that Crowley was trying to communicate with
did not speak to him. But much to his dismay, they did speak to his much less-learned wife.
After their chamber chanting session, Rose went into a trance.
The only words she said to her new husband were,
they are waiting for you.
After Rose had come back to reality, she told Crowley that an Egyptian god called Horus
had appeared to her and said that the gods would not make contact with Alistair
because he was too arrogant.
Ah, Rose knows what she's doing.
She's like, look, I've had a word with the guys upstairs.
And they say, you just hear a bit arrogant.
Maybe she needs to chill out a little bit.
Crowley was outraged.
He had done years of work, and the gods spoke to his dumb wife and not him.
He couldn't be possible, he thought.
Rose didn't even know who Horus was.
How could the great beyond have been so totally unfair?
So Crowley resolved to test his wife, and he took her to a nearby museum,
and asked her to point out the deity and the hieroglyphs that had spoken to her.
Without hesitation, Rose walked up to an exhibit and pointed to a depiction of Horus.
And declared that this was the entity with which she spoke.
Crowley was stunned.
He was even more aghast when he studied the exhibition more closely,
and more specifically, the exhibition number.
The article that his wife had pointed to with such certainty
was artifact number 666.
The number of the beast that he had claimed as his own.
That was just like a mistranslation, according to Mary Bid.
Well, I tried to figure this out, right?
To be honest, maybe I'm not right that it's not a mistranslation.
I think 666 is in the, I forget which way round it is.
I wish I had looked this up.
But it's like the whole thing about Nero being the antichrist,
being the great beast 666.
And it was like how back in the day, back in Roman times,
they had had numbers aligning with letters,
and therefore when you do Nero's name, it adds up to 666.
But actually it was like a mistranslation,
and it didn't add up to 666, but they just said that it did.
Whatever.
I don't know.
I go ask Mary.
Yeah, I think it comes from like Hebrew numerology things,
and it was like the Greek spurt.
It's like they spelt Nero wrong to then do the alphabetical,
numerological translation.
And then it doesn't really add up to 666 if you spell it the right way.
But anyway, we're just going to leave out that.
There's loads on the internet about it if you're really that bothered by it.
So eventually, the ancient Egyptian gods
spoke to Alistair Crowley too.
Horus appeared to him under the guise,
Isewa, and it was under this influence that Crowley wrote,
the book of the law, where famously he wrote,
do as that wilt, shall be the whole of the law.
Crowley used this celestial guidance and his new authorship
to found his own badass version of the hermetic order of the golden dawn,
which he called the Ordi,
Thelma, Orientus.
Crushed it, well done.
Thank you.
With the emphasis being fulfilling one's own divine purpose.
Now, Rose wouldn't be around for long.
She had an epic struggle with alcoholism and depression,
and Crowley divorced her and she went right into an institution.
Now we're going to take Himalayan detour.
We mentioned earlier that Crowley was quite the accomplished climber.
Actually, he was one of the best of his time.
He led an unsuccessful mission to summit K2,
the world's most dangerous mountain,
but they were basically the first Westerners to even try.
And in 1905 he had a crack at Kanchandunga,
again the first expedition of its kind.
His company didn't summit,
but they did get higher than anyone else had managed until 1922.
Crowley was a wonderful climber, but a terrible leader,
there was dissension in the ranks that led to an almost mutiny.
Crowley left his party on the mountain to die,
some survived, and some didn't.
It is interesting to think though, last podcast on the left make this point.
It's interesting to think that there is a parallel universe
where Alistair Crowley was the first to summit K2.
And that's what he would be remembered for,
rather than adding the letter K to magic.
He's like, he would rather the second one.
Yes, true.
As much as he loves fucking bitches,
magic with a K and mountains.
It's magic with a K that comes first.
That's true.
So after the Kanchandunga disaster,
Crowley gave Alpinism a rest for a bit,
and focused on the OTO instead,
which is his order that don't make me say it again.
He described his mission as using the method of science
with the aim of religion.
Ding ding ding, Scientology.
Oh yeah.
Now Alistair studied magic by collecting data and looking for patterns.
He went whole hog on the OTO in 1907.
He also started a magazine called the Equinox,
a periodical, totally dedicated to the occult arts.
And he managed to recruit the inventor of rocket fuel into his rank.
Who is?
Er, oh my god, I've forgotten his name.
Johnny Banks.
Johnny, Johnny Fuel Banks.
Jack Parsons.
Jack Parsons.
That's it.
Sure good.
So yeah, Jack Parsons joins his ranks with a bunch of mystics
and also some silent film stars.
It's like the Parsonage before the Parsonage.
Sure sure sure.
It was also around this time that Alistair met poet Victor Neuburg,
who would change the course of his life.
In Crowley's own words,
Neuburg possessed an altogether extraordinary capacity
for magic with a K.
And Crowley took him under as wing.
I think he wanted to fuck him.
Yeah, he does.
He goes on to do many of fucking Victor Neuburg.
Neuburg.
He was talented, but Victor was lazy.
And Crowley handled this by abusing him.
Most of the abuse happened on the shores of Loch Mess
at a property purchased by Crowley
for double the market rate at the time called Boleskin House.
In 1909, Neuburg traveled up to the Highlands
on the night train just like we did,
after he graduated Cambridge with a Carol,
which is a third because Carol Waldman got a third in maths.
When Victor Neuburg arrived on the lock,
he was told by Crowley that he was about to undergo
a magical retirement, a complete withdrawal
from the world in pursuit of astral light.
What this actually meant was that Victor was forced
to sleep on prickly shrubs for nights on end,
and Crowley would show up in the middle of the night
to beat him with nettles.
Crowley tried a great deal of other nonsense
at Boleskin House.
His main purpose was to call forth the 12 kings and jukes of hell.
Please see the lesser key of Solomon for further reference,
or you can watch a red-itry one of them as in there as well.
What's he called, Pymon?
That's why I was just trying to think Pymon.
Hmm, something like that.
Yeah, the Pymon.
One of the lesser known cryptids that hang out in the woods
were hereditary, sir.
When the beast first arrived in the area,
it wasn't a huge fan.
So much so that he wrote a letter of complaint
to the local vigilant society.
He claimed that prostitution was most unpleasantly conspicuous.
An officer replied to him, confused.
There was no prostitution on Loch Ness,
and there still isn't.
It's as rural as rural gets.
So Crowley wrote back,
can speak US by its absence, you fools.
Thunderclapped.
He's such a fucking...
He's such a fucking, I don't even know.
I don't know what he is, he has to describe him.
Anyway, maybe it was the lack of sex workers,
or perhaps his failure to summon up Pymon,
or Pymon, or Mr. Pie, man.
Either way, Crowley left Bolskin House in 1913.
But locals say that it has never been the same since.
And here's why.
Crowley's housekeeper had two children
that both died suddenly under mysterious circumstances.
An employee of Crowley's estate
who had been tea-total for decades
got wasted one night and tried to murder his entire family.
A butcher who supplied the house cut off his own hand,
and the myth list goes on.
Eventually, the house was bought by Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page in 1965.
And he always claimed that whatever Crowley had left behind
had never left.
The house has changed hands several times since Jimmy Page owned it.
And in 2015, it spontaneously burned to the ground.
It's being rebuilt as some sort of national trust situation,
but they're there...
You know, like when we went to the Labyrinth where the Minotaur is
in Crete and they'll let nope.
Oh yeah.
It is very that.
Yeah, all the marketing.
Half-ball, half-baby.
When you get there.
Sorry what?
K was K in Greek.
That is what we got a lot of.
But anyway, for now, let's get back to Victor.
His time at Bolskin was short-lived,
but he would not care for it at the beast that easily.
In 1909, the two men took themselves off to Algiers.
They traveled into the desert on a journey of sexy magic discovery.
The first thing Victor did was get a haircut.
Crowley insisted that he shaved his entire head,
save two tops at his temples, twisted into haunts,
which apparently turned him into, quote,
a demon that I had tamed and trained to serve me as a familiar spirit.
He looks like the frontman of the prodigy.
Sure, sure, sure.
And so, new hairstyle unlocked.
They entered into the desert on their quest to make it to the other side.
And they did, but it ruined both of them.
They performed many rituals out there in the wilderness,
just had Christ had done for 40 days and 40 nights.
I'm guessing there was a lot more fisting in there.
Quite a quite ritual.
I'm getting to the fisting.
This is a shorthand, so we're only going to tell you about one of these rituals and one of them only.
Crowley and Neuburg, deep in the desert, drew a circle of protection and a triangle
of invocation.
Then, they had sex.
I understand that Neuburg was the giver and Crowley was the receiver,
and that Neuburg actually became the godpan.
And Crowley later wrote, there was an animal in the wilderness,
but it was not eyes.
Then after this, Crowley entered into the triangle of invocation,
which is a magical no-no.
You don't do that.
I don't know.
And he told Neuburg not to speak to anything that appeared to him even
if it looked like Crowley himself.
As Crowley sat in the triangle in toning passages from the Quran,
he saw an all-glorious angel and heard the crying of beasts.
And he later described this experience as a total ego death.
Crowley had crossed the abyss, something he'd always wanted to do,
but something he had no knowledge of the consequence that came with it.
Neuburg claimed that the demon, Chorazon, Koronzon,
and attempted to lure him from his circle of safety.
And when he refused,
this demon shapeshifted into a savage man who attempted to tear out his throat
with froth-covered fangs.
Now, we'll never know what really happened.
I'm guessing it's not that.
But yet, we'll never know what really happened in the desert that year.
But those close to Neuburg have said that he, quote,
bore the marks of his magical adventure to the grave.
And that is to Crowley, never recovered either.
After the algae's expedition Crowley actually went quiet for a few years.
Just in time for the outbreak of World War I,
he went to New Hampshire for another magical retirement.
But he still did loads of rituals in heroin.
During this time, he wrote quite a lot of pro-German propaganda
that posthumously he claimed to be some kind of a pro-German
during this time, he wrote quite a lot of pro-German propaganda
that posthumously he claimed to be satire.
He would later claim that he was actually working for British intelligence.
But no, he wasn't.
Which is also exactly what Elrond Hubbard does
whenever he does anything weird. He's like, what? I'm CIA.
So the Great War came and went.
Alistair found himself in Portugal.
He was pissed off with his own current mistress,
so he went and did what any normal man would do.
He faked his own death.
So a few people talk about this, but it is absolutely hysterical.
Yeah, because he wrote a letter claiming to have taken his own life
at the Bocaderm for no caves.
Which means caves of what does Bocaderm mean?
Mouth.
Mouth, mouth of, hell.
Yes, hell mouth.
No, mouth of hell, yeah.
The mouth of hell.
But after this, he reappeared three weeks later at an art gallery.
He's just like jokes on you guys.
He is a risen and you girlfriend.
His quote unquote suicide note read the following.
Can't live without you.
The other mouth of hell that will catch me
won't be as hot as yours.
Oh my god.
He's so, it's like he's sending a text.
Yeah.
Can't live without you.
And don't worry, the other mouth of hell
is not going to be as hot as you.
Bye.
So obviously this was all just a fun little stunt,
but Crowley had real damage to do
on the European continent still.
In the early 1920s, he bought a monastery
in a small town in Sicily,
which he named the Abbey of Thelma.
He, his lovers, his children and his acolytes
all lived there together, taking drugs,
performing magical rites and having orgies,
all with a view of the Mediterranean.
Do you feel like when you're learning about Alistair Crowley
that our lives are really boring?
He is just on one constantly.
I couldn't, I don't have the stamina for this.
I think if I took as many drugs as he did,
then I would have the stamina.
I don't think anyone who consumes that that many drugs can stop.
No, and that is a big take here.
But then I think you do have meltdowns like he had in the desert,
where it's like there's so many times in his life where it's like
and he was left-changed forever.
The Abbey of Thelma is still standing today,
although it is deserted.
Inside, it still bears the marks of the OTO.
Crowley created a room called the Chamber of Nightmares.
And he decorated it with hand-painted,
extremely explicit satanic frescoes.
There's still there, you can look them up.
Crowley called the Abbey a college towards the Holy Spirit,
and it was the happiest he had ever been.
But hedonistic fever dreams come to an end.
So in 1922, a resident of the Abbey called Raoul Love Day,
died of typhoid, probably because of dirty spring water.
But that is not the story that his wife told when she went back to Britain.
She told the press that her young husband had died because he was forced by Crowley
to drink cat's blood after a sacrifice.
And that article is what gave Crowley his moniker of the wickedest man in the world.
He fucking loved that!
I'm calling him that!
But things were already falling apart,
and any of you who have been paying attention to the timeline will know what is coming next.
Mussolini, Mussolini as was coming next,
because in 1923, Mussolini kicked Crowley out of Italy,
and the Abbey closed its doors forever.
Although documentary crews who have gone to film there have been welcomed
with dead cats on the doorstep, perhaps as a warning.
And so marked the beast's return to obscurity.
He popped around North Africa and Europe for a bit,
having lots of sex and taking a whole shitload more of heroin.
Can you imagine if Alistair Crowley had a YouTube channel?
The world, the change that would ever come to the world.
We're stuck with Joe Rogan.
Well the thing is, it's just like people have always been saying whatever and doing,
whatever and be it that's true.
And now it's just like, yeah, you get to do it everywhere.
And as we already know, Crowley ended his time on Earth in Hastings.
He had a few kids along the way, but not all of them survived to adulthood.
But he did in his twilight years find a love that everyone looks for.
He loved his final son, Akator.
There's like nice pictures of them on the beach and stuff.
And after he was gone, the British subculture scene embraced
Alistair Crowley with open arms.
After his death, he seemed to have been forgiven his debauchery,
his rapes, his poems about gonorrhea.
He was seen in the 60s and 70s as an icon of counterculture,
a symbol of rebellion and ancient wisdom.
He's on the cover of Dr. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band for God's sake.
And more interestingly though, unless prolifically,
British R&B musician Graham Bond claimed to be one of Alistair Crowley's
legitimate children.
Graham Bond set up a chapter of the OTO in a space rented by his record company.
But not long after, he then threw himself under a train at Fitzruepark in
1974.
Now these days, all that is left of the great beast is legend.
Whatever the fuck is going on at Bolskin.
And of course the immortal phrase.
Do what that will.
And just before we let you go, you may have noticed that I brought a pad of paper
and a pencil down here with me.
I did, I wondered why.
I'm going to tell you why now.
I'm going to come over and show your mic.
Oh.
Sorry to bother.
If your name was Alistair Crowley, how would you write it?
How would I write it?
Okay.
Alistair, I before he hit the top of the sea.
Like that.
I mean, you spelled it wrong, but that's this is how he wrote his name.
Oh, for gods.
Oh, for gods.
I was going to say the whole time I did the episode.
He is just a teenage boy.
Can I take a picture of that for socials?
Wait, let me finish it.
Sure.
Sure.
You're welcome.
I just wanted to enjoy that.
Brilliant.
And yes, as this is an audio format in you.
Don't know what we're laughing at.
The A in Alistair is just a giant dick.
You can go follow us on all the socials where you can see
Hannah's own fair hand drawing it for you, so there you go.
So yeah, that's it guys.
That is our shorthand on Alistair Crowley.
We hope you enjoyed it.
We hope you learned some things.
I feel terribly embarrassed that we couldn't get to the bottom
of the whole Nero 666 thing.
We'll come back to you in another episode
where I know what I'm talking about
from many years ago.
Goodbye.

RedHanded