Misunderstood and even feared during his lifetime, Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) channelled his brilliance into the black arts, believing that he was the greatest of the world's magicians, brought back to life.

Aleister Crowley (the surname rhymes with "slowly") was an iconoclast among iconoclasts. In an era noted for decadence and rife with religious experimentation and deviation from the rigid Christian strictures suffocating Victorian society, he diverged from even the more bizarre religious factions through his insatiable lust for sensation. Beginning what would become a lifelong study of the occult while still a child, Crowley's thirst for knowledge would cause him to travel the world, studying the Eastern mystics as well as the pagan religions of the ancients. Finally believing that he had achieved a kind of spiritual nirvana, he wrote his The Book of the Law, which has been studied as a primer by students of the occult...