This is the story of how a house in Torquay became the scariest place on earth.
Or maybe the second scariest place on earth, at least for a few months anyway.
On 24th of April 1941, Aleister Crowley wrote a letter to Lady Frieda Harris about his new Torquay venture: “The ultimate aim is to have quite populous Abbeys, with every type of talent represented, so that there will be a body of capable and intelligent people to rule the herd, and save the useful elements in our past civilization from being swamped by it.”
This new Torquay Abbey was the second incarnation of Aleister Crowley’s Abbey of Thelema. The original Italian Abbey has been described as an “anti-monastery” and “the scariest place on earth”, so presumably the Bay had the second scariest place on earth.
“I’m closer to the Golden Dawn, Immersed in Crowley’s uniform of imagery”, David Bowie
Let’s begin with a look at the extraordinary and influential life of Aleister Crowley.
Born in 1875 Aleister Crowley was an influential mystic and magician, founder of the religious philosophy of Thelema. Taking the titles Frater Perdurabo and the Great Beast, Aleister is known today for his mostly self-published magical writings and for being one of the most significant occultists of all time.
Proclainimg himself to be “in revolt against the moral and religious values” of his time, Crowley gloried in being a bisexual drug “fiend” and took the motto “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law”. As a consequence, he gained widespread notoriety during his lifetime and was denounced in the Edwardian popular press as “the wickedest man in the world.”
Aleister’s occult career began in Torquay in 1891, where he lost his virginity at the age of 15 to a young actress. He later wrote: “The nightmare world of Christianity vanished at the dawn. I fell in with a girl of the theatre in the first 10 days at Torquay, and at that touch of human love the detestable mysteries of sex were transformed into joy and beauty. I found that the world was, after all, full of delightful damned souls.”
In 1917 Crowley recalled this encounter with this ‘merry maid’ of the Bay in typical florid style, “’Twas at Torquay in Devon, land of stream and cream, merry maids and proper men, tall fellows and bold, and of cider stronger and sweeter than your Norman can make for all his cunning; and this girl was a play-actress, rosy as the apples, and white as the cream, and soft as the air, and high-spirited as the folk, of that enchanted dukedom.”
When his horrified mother learned of his loss of innocence, she condemned her teenage son as the ‘Beast’. This was the title Crowley was to adopt as he went on to provoke and outrage conventional bourgeois Christian society.
In 1920 Aleister relocated to Sicily and set up the Abbey of Thelema in a small house. This became a temple and spiritual centre, the name borrowed from a Rabelais’ satire where the Abbaye de Theleme is described as a sort of “anti-monastery”where the lives of the inhabitants are “spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but according to their own free will and pleasure.”
The Abbey was Aleister’s commune, with the designation “Collegium ad Spiritum Sanctum”, a ‘College towards the Holy Spirit’.
Aleister intended that the unremarkable building should become a global centre of magical training funded by tuition fees. However, this all came to an end in 1923 when a 23-year-old Oxford undergraduate, Raoul Loveday, died at the Abbey.
Raoul’s wife, Betty May, blamed the death on his participation in one of Aleister’s rituals, supposedly involving the consumption of the blood of a sacrificed cat. Or it could just have been the consequence of enteric fever contracted by drinking from a mountain spring; Crowley had warned the couple against drinking the water. When Betty returned to London, she gave an interview to The Sunday Express attacking Aleister.
Following this incident and disturbing rumours about the Abbey, in 1923 Benito Mussolini’s Fascist government expelled Crowley from the country. The Abbey of Thelema was then abandoned and local folk whitewashed over Aleister’s murals.
But the ejection of the Abbey’s members from Sicily didn’t stop the enthusiastic occultist. In 1941 Aleister relocated to Torquay and established a second Abbey of Thelema. On the 24th of April 1941 it was announced, “We the undersigned members of the Abbey of Thelema at Barton Brow, Barton Cross, declare ourselves deeply satisfied with the conduct and condition thereof during the passage of the sun through Aries”.
Yet, this was wartime and Aleister struggled to attract the expected adherents willing to pay to learn the occult arts. He appealed to his supporters, “The Abbey is a bit stagnant; I do wish you would find a couple of suitable people, or a single man, to join”. This Torquay version of Hogwarts failed soon after.
“Mr. Crowley, what went on in your head? Oh, Mr. Crowley, did you talk to the dead?” Ozzy Osbourne
Aleister Crowley died in Hastings in 1947 at the age of 72. The cause of death was given as a respiratory infection. He had become addicted to heroin after being prescribed morphine for his asthma and bronchitis many years earlier.
Aleister remains an influential figure, references to the efficacious esoteric can be found in the works of numerous writers and filmmakers. His reputation particularly appeals to musicians. Jim Morrison, David Bowie and Ozzy Osbourne have all written songs about Crowley.
Led Zeppelin’s guitarist Jimmy Page took his interest in the occult to the extreme of buying Crowley’s Scottish mansion, Boleskine House, and he owned a large collection of Crowley memorabilia.
That’s Aleister in the back row on the famous cover of the Beatles’ 1967 album, ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’. Predictably, the inclusion of the world’s most notorious magician led some American Christian evangelicals to condemn the Beatles as Satanists.
In 1952 Ian Fleming was writing his first novel entitled ‘Casino Royale’. He wanted an arch-villain to rival his new hero, James Bond. The ‘wickedest man in the world’ was an ideal embodiment of intelligent evil. Hence, Aleister Crowley became the model for the Le Chiffre character.
As well as Le Chiffre, the later Bond super-villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld was also supposedly inspired by Crowley; memorable for his white cat and the inventive executions of his underachieving subordinates.
Bond super-villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld inspired by Crowley
Over the years many of Blofeld’s characteristics have become clichés of super villains in popular fiction. For example, we have the stroking of a white cat as a parody of bald Blofeld’s character; note Dr Evil and his cat Mr Bigglesworth in the Austin Powers movies.
We can be sure that we haven’t seen the last of Aleister. He remains an influential figure among occultists and variants of his Magical Order and his ‘Magick’ are still practiced throughout the world. Yet, though many claim Aleister as a visionary, others see a fraud, self-publicist, and a man who exploited the vulnerable.
We’ve said before that the Bay has had some extraordinary residents. Both Lord Lytton, the most famous occult figure of the nineteenth century, and Aleister Crowley, the most notorious of the twentieth century, both decided to live in our town. Their influence is with us still.
