Satanism Today - An Encyclopedia of Religion, Folklore and Popular ...

56 Curse of the Demon
and is the principal source for modern Satanism’s
magical practices. One measure of this influence is
that the Enochian Keys in Anton LaVey’s Satanic
Bible were taken from Crowley’s periodical
Equinox.
In 1898 he was initiated into the Hermetic
Order of the Golden Dawn (OGD), an occult
group focused on ritual magic—or magick, as
Crowley liked to spell it. In 1903 he married Rose
Edith Kelly. He seemed destined for leadership in
the OGD, but was denied higher grades of initiation
because of his homosexual activities. Samuel
(MacGregor) Mathers, one of the founders of the
OGD, gave Crowley the higher grades anyway,
thus causing a split in the organization. By 1904
Crowley decided to exit the OGD and was seeking
another avenue of expression. Visiting in Cairo,
Egypt, in April 1904, he reportedly received a
communication lasting several days from a spirit
entity named Aiwass. The result was The Book of
the Law, an outline of his Egyptian brand of
magic, which he called Thelema, from the Greek
word for will. Crowley taught that “‘Do what thou
wilt’ shall be the whole of the Law,” which is to say
that training the will to achieve the fulfillment of
one’s destiny is crucial for magical activity.
In 1907 he founded his own order, Argenteum
Astrum (Silver Star), and two years later began the
semiannual periodical, Equinox, the collected
issues of which later became an important source
of magical material. Also in 1909 he obtained a
divorce. In 1912 he met Theodor Reuss, head of
the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), an occult group
that taught sex magic at its higher levels. Crowley
joined the OTO and soon was made the head of its
British branch. He added rituals for homosexual
magic.
Crowley went to the United States in 1914 and
met with the few OTO adherents there at that
time. At some point he discovered and was
inspired by the sex magic theories of P. B.
Randolph, founder of the Fraternitas Rosae Crucis
in America, and over the following years altered
the OTO sex magic rituals to accommodate his
new findings. In 1919 he moved to Italy, where he
continued his training and reached ipsissimus, the
highest magical level. In 1922 he succeeded
Theodore Reuss as outer head of the OTO.
In 1923 Mussolini, as part of a move against
occultists, forced Crowley to leave Italy. He went
first to Tunis, then France (from which he was
expelled about 1930), then to England, where he
remained for the rest of his life. In 1929 he
married Maria Theresa Ferrari de Miramar.
Despite Crowley’s dedicated leadership, the OTO
did not grow, but steadily diminished. Perhaps it
was because Crowley’s energies were diverted by
an addiction to heroin, or perhaps the times were
not conducive to occultists generally. At the time
of his death, there was only one remaining center
of the OTO, and the group almost disappeared
entirely until its surprising resurgence in the
1970s. Crowley’s impact has continued to be
tremendous among almost all the magical groups.
See also Left-Hand Path; Magic and Magical
Groups
For Further Reading:
Crowley, Aleister. Magic in Theory and Practice. New
York: Castle, 1929.
King, Francis. Sexuality, Magic and Perversion.
London: New English Library, 1971.
Regardie, Israel, ed. Gems from the Equinox: Selected
Writings of Aleister Crowley. St. Paul, MN:
Llewellyn, 1974.
Curse of the Demon
John Holden, a skeptical psychologist, goes to a
conference on the paranormal in this 1957 film.
There he meets Julian Karswell, a self-proclaimed
warlock, but refuses to believe that the eccentric
individual leads a cult of evil devil-worshipers.
Karswell responds to Holden’s efforts to expose
him by slipping a piece of paper that Karswell slips
into the psychologist’s possession. The paper,
containing Runic letters, bears a curse.
Curses
Be certain you DO NOT care if the intended victim
lives or dies, before you throw your curse, and having
caused their destruction, revel, rather than feel
remorse....To insure the destruction of an enemy,
you must destroy them by proxy! They must be shot,
stabbed, sickened, burned, smashed, drowned, or rent
in the most vividly convincing manner!
Anton LaVey, The Satanic Bible