English occultist, poet and founder of the religion he called Thelema. Paris was his home from 1924 until the French government expelled him in 1929, and he had worked there earlier: the ritual sequence he and Victor Neuburg conducted between December 1913 and February 1914 is known as the Paris Working. He was a figure in the city's avant-garde circles as much as its occult ones, which is the part usually left out.
Aleister Crowley was born Edward Alexander Crowley in Leamington Spa in 1875, into a wealthy family of Plymouth Brethren, and spent his adult life constructing an elaborate opposition to everything that upbringing stood for. He was a mountaineer of real distinction before he was anything else, a prolific and uneven poet, and the founder of Thelema, the religious system set out in The Book of the Law of 1904.
His first substantial Paris episode is the one his own literature makes most of. Between 31 December 1913 and 12 February 1914, in Paris, Crowley and the poet Victor Neuburg carried out a sequence of ritual magic operations invoking Jupiter and Mercury — the Paris Working. The stated objects were money and inspiration. Neuburg broke with him later that year, left the order, and Crowley responded by cursing him ceremonially, which was a fairly typical resolution of a Crowley friendship.
From 1924 Paris was his base. This is the period that matters for the city, and it is less lurid and more interesting than the reputation suggests: Crowley in the twenties was moving through the same Montparnasse in which the modernists were working, known to painters, writers and photographers, a recognisable and much-discussed figure in the studios rather than a purely underground one. Tobias Churton's book-length study of these years makes the case that his Paris circle was substantially an artistic one.
It ended by order of the state. The French government issued an expulsion order in the spring of 1929, effective 17 April, and he was required to leave. The stated grounds combined his reputation as a drug user and libertine with a suspicion — never substantiated — that he had worked as a German agent. The Paris press covered the expulsion with relish; Le Populaire ran a piece on him that April under the heading of a strange figure.
He spent his last years in England, in declining health and chronic poverty, and died at Hastings in 1947. His cultural afterlife has been enormous and largely posthumous, running through popular music, film and publishing in a way that would have delighted him.
Born Edward Alexander Crowley in Leamington Spa.
The Book of the Law, the founding text of Thelema.
The Paris Working with Victor Neuburg, from 31 December to 12 February.
Neuburg breaks with him and leaves the order.
Paris is his home; he moves in the city's artistic as well as occult circles.
France issues an expulsion order effective 17 April; the Paris press covers it widely.
Dies at Hastings, England.
Paris was his home from 1924 until the French government expelled him in 1929. He had also worked in the city earlier, notably during the Paris Working of 1913–14.
A sequence of ritual magic operations Crowley conducted with the poet Victor Neuburg in Paris between 31 December 1913 and 12 February 1914, invoking Jupiter and Mercury. Its stated aims were money and inspiration.
An expulsion order took effect on 17 April 1929. The grounds combined his reputation as a drug user and libertine with an unproven suspicion that he had acted as a German agent.
To a considerable extent, yes. In the 1920s he was a known figure among the painters, writers and photographers of the quarter, which is the aspect of his Paris years that popular accounts tend to leave out.
Frequented · 1924–1929
Paris was Crowley's home from 1924 until his expulsion in 1929, and Tobias Churton's study of those years places his circle substantially among the artists, writers and photographers of Montparnasse rather than only in occult company.
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