蜜芽传媒

Aleister Crowley has been called many things - poet, mountaineer, occultist, fraudster, prophet, pervert, genius, charlatan. He branded himself 鈥淭he Great Beast鈥� and the tabloids of the 1920s happily obliged, denouncing him as 鈥渢he wickedest man in the world.鈥� But how did this Edwardian eccentric, once dismissed as a scandalous curiosity, become a lasting countercultural icon - celebrated by rock stars, adopted by metal musicians, and still invoked in popular culture today?

Writer and broadcaster Paul Morley - somewhat hesitantly - steps into the shadow of this defiant nonconformist who was born in 1875 into a wealthy but fundamentalist Plymouth Brethren family.

Crowley founded his own occult religion with the mantra "do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" and, in the decades after his death in 1947, his occult ideas and descriptions of drug-taking travelled through countercultural bookshops into the worlds of psychedelia, hard rock and heavy metal. The Beatles included him on the cover of Sgt Pepper, Jimmy Page collected his books, Ozzy Osbourne sang 鈥淢r Crowley鈥�, Blondie鈥檚 Gary Lachman found himself initiated into Crowley鈥檚 magickal order in California. And new generations of artists and musicians continue to rediscover his blend of provocation and self-mythology.

Is Crowley best remembered as a pioneering thinker who made esoteric knowledge public, a dangerous manipulator who wrecked lives, or simply as a flamboyant showman who understood the power of scandal? 150 years after his birth, his name still provokes fascination, fear and amusement.

Featuring:
Crowley biographer Gary Lachman, a founding member of Blondie who is now an academic and acclaimed writer on the occult.
Social historian and third generation witch Geraldine Beskin of Atlantis bookshop
Pioneering pop artist Jann Haworth
Musician and composer Dr Jaz Coleman of Killing Joke who is composing a choral work based on Crowley's Book of The Law
Keeper of the Sacred Flame of Rock, Dante Bonutto of Spine Farm records
Musician Edgar Broughton of the psychedelic proto-punk Edgar Broughton Band
Olly Pearson from Helgi's occult metal bar

Thanks to Mogg Morgan for providing a lost Radio 4 archive recording

Writer and Presenter: Paul Morley
Producer: Victoria Ferran
Executive Producer: Susan Marling
A Just Radio production for 蜜芽传媒 Radio 4