An exploration into the life and works of a modern mystic, occultist, poet,mountaineer, and bisexual adventurer known to his contemporaries as "The GreatBeast"

Aleister Crowley was a groundbreaking poet and an iconoclastic visionarywhose literary and cultural legacy extends far beyond the limits of hisnotoriety as a practitioner of the occult arts.

Born in 1875 to devout Christian parents, young Aleister's devotion scarcelyoutlived his father, who died when the boy was twelve. He reached maturity inthe boarding schools and brothels of Victorian England, trained to become aworld-class mountain climber, and seldom persisted with any endeavor in which hecould be bested.

Like many self-styled illuminati of his class and generation, the hedonisticCrowley gravitated toward the occult. An aspiring poet and a pamperedwastrel-obsessed with reconciling his quest for spiritual perfection and hisinclination do exactly as he liked in the earthly realm-Crowley developed hisown school of mysticism. Magick, as he called it, summoned its users to embracethe imagination and to glorify the will. Crowley often explored his spiritualyearnings through drug-saturated vision quests and rampant sexual adventurism,but at other times he embraced Eastern philosophies and sought enlightenment onascetic sojourns into the wilderness.

This controversial individual, a frightening mixture of egomania andself-loathing, has inspired passionate-but seldom fair-assessments fromhistorians. Lawrence Sutin, by treating Crowley as a cultural phenomenon, andnot simply a sorcerer or a charlatan, convinces skeptic readers that theself-styled "Beast" remains a fascinating study in how one man devoted his lifeto the subversion of the dominant moral and religious values of his time.