Do what thou wilt

Born in 1875 Crowley’s journeyed from a devout Christian to one of the most controversial men of the twentieth century.  A prolific writer, Crowely wrote volumes of poetry, many texts on the occult and novels.  As a historic figure he had slipped into obscurity until he was featured staring out of the cover of the Beatles Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.  This led to his rediscovery by a whole generation and Crowley’s famous dictum “Do what thou wilt, shall be the whole of the law” struck a chord with the flower children of the sixties who were seeking freedom from the constraints of the past. Crowley now is more famous in death than he ever was in life with thousands of followers across the world.

Listen to my interview with Alistair Braidwood about Crowley on the Scots Whay Hae podcast

His status as a mountaineer has been overlooked.  His lifestyle and refusal to conform to accepted norms of behaviour led him to be ostracised by the mountaineering establishment and his achievements were largely ignored.  Instead lurid tales prevail of him threatening fellow climbers with a revolver and breaking a Sherpa’s’ leg with an ice axe to prevent him fleeing the mountain.

Crowley began his climbing career as a teenager on the chalk cliffs of Beachy Head where is pioneered a number of routes. He quickly progressed and spent much time in what was then the cradle of British mountaineering, Wasdale Head.  There he met many leading climbers, including Collie and the Abraham brothers, but it was Oscar Eckenstein who was to become his mentor and climbing partner on many of his expeditions.  Eckenstein was twenty years his senior and already a Himalayan veteran when he met Crowely. Eckenstein was a notable mountaineer and is credited with the development of “balance climbing,” which was the birth of modern climbing technique.  He also designed an early type of crampon.  He and Crowely were amongst the earliest proponents of bouldering as a way of developing climbing technique.  Crowely, a member of the Scottish Mountaineering club, went on to climb extensively in the Alps, Mexico and the Himalaya’s. 

They call him The Beast and thousands still follow him today, Crowley lives on in his writings and his influence and is one of the towering figures of his age.  He was a leading mountaineer, a poet, a novelist, his experiments with drugs and sexual excesses led him to be reviled in Victorian England.  So much so that the Daily Mail dubbed him The Wickedest Man in the World and campaigned for him to be hung.

It was his exploration of the occult that gave Crowley his greatest notoriety.  Son of a Plymouth Brethren preacher he grew up as a devout Christian but, when his father died, when Crowley was 11 years old, he cast aside his religion and went in search of a different faith.  He explored many of the world’s religions only to reject them finally finding solace in what he called Magick, an old faith with its roots in paganism. 

Find out more about Aleister Crowley’s life as a mountaineer by listening to these Aleister Crowley Mountaineer