12th October: Aleister Crowley

Aleister Crowley, born this date in 1875, is said, by many to have been the "wickedest man in the world." Whether he was or not is a matter of opinion. Surely Hitler and Osama bin Laden must be in the contest, too? Read the 10 facts and decide for yourself.

1. Crowley actually had a strict religious upbringing. His father was a travelling preacher with the Plymouth Brethren and would read a chapter of the Bible to his family every day after breakfast.
2. Aleister was not Crowley's given name. His parents named him Edward Alexander, but he disliked both names and all their derivatives. Aleister is the Gaelic form of Alexander. Another reason he chose it was because, coupled with his surname, it was a favourable name for becoming famous.
3. Although he described his father as his hero and his friend, his relationship with his mother was not good at all. She called him "the Beast" (which he secretly rather liked). Some scholars believe that his misogynistic views in later life may have stemmed from the dysfunctional relationship with his mother.
4. Crowley was a keen mountaineer and during his life he climbed Beachy Head, the Eiger, Trift, Jungfrau, Mönch, and Wetterhorn. He attempted K2, which had never been climbed at that point, but had to turn back. He also attempted to climb Kangchenjunga in the Himalayas, widely recognised as the world's most treacherous mountain. On this expedition, he didn't get on with the rest of the team, who thought he was too reckless. In the end, the team mutinied and turned back, even though it was near nightfall. Crowley warned then that this was very dangerous, but they didn't listen to him and set off anyway. On the way down there was an accident and several of them were killed. The mountaineering community blamed Crowley for this, even though he had actually tried to stop them.
5. He was also very keen on chess and considered becoming a professional chess player.
6. For a while, he owned a house on the shores of Loch Ness.
7. Known for having countless affairs with both men and women, when Crowley married, it was, to begin with, a marriage of convenience so that his wife, Rose, would not have to enter into an arranged marriage. However, during their honeymoon, he fell in love with her for real.
8. He was hired by George Montagu Bennett, the Earl of Tankerville, to help protect him from witchcraft. Crowley recognised that witchcraft had nothing to do with Bennett's paranoia, but rather, it was caused by cocaine addiction, and a long holiday to France and Morocco should do the trick. In later life, Crowley himself became addicted to heroin (after his doctor prescribed it to him for his severe asthma) and cocaine.
9. Many believe that Crowley was recruited as a spy while at Cambridge. He has been criticised for appearing to support Germany in World War I and writing for an American pro-German magazine - but in actual fact, he was spying for Britain at the time, and the articles he wrote were excessively hyperbolic and intended to make the magazine and its supporters look ridiculous to the American public. Some of the travelling he did was thought by some to be intelligence gathering missions.
10. While widely described as a Satanist, Crowley would never have described himself as such. He didn't worship Satan because, having rejected the Christianity he was brought up with, he didn't believe that Satan even existed.