The Cult of Crowley: Did a Leamington Local Influence Scientology?

In 1947, a cult leader named Aleister Crowley died alone in a Sussex boarding house, surrounded by occult objects and a large supply of heroin. Once a prominent figure in esoteric religious circles, Crowley’s unruly behaviour eventually led to him being ostracised from the very cults he helped to create. Of the numerous groups Crowley influenced, Scientology would prove to be the most enduringly infamous. In its early days, the religion’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard, maintained an active correspondence with Crowley and viewed him as a spiritual guide. So, how did Crowley fall from being a key influence on the 21st century’s most successful cult to an impoverished heroin addict? To understand this question, we must look to Crowley’s birthplace: Royal Leamington Spa.

Edward Alexander Crowley was born in Leamington Spa on 12 October 1875. His parents were wealthy Christian fundamentalists, their fortune owing to a successful family brewing business. But behind the veneer of a prosperous Victorian household was a home fraught with tension. From an early age, Crowley feuded with his mother, who nicknamed him ‘the beast’. Rather than shy away from the insult, Crowley embraced it, eventually adopting the title ‘The Great Beast’ and insisting that friends address him accordingly. This disdain for authority followed him through his education: he was expelled from several Christian boarding schools, where he often argued with tutors and spent his spare time hiring prostitutes and engaging in same-sex relationships. His increasingly libertine behaviour caused a permanent breakdown in his relationship with his mother. In an effort to sever lingering familial ties, he changed his name to Aleister.

Despite his rebelliousness, Crowley was sociable and academically gifted. He gained a place at Cambridge University, where he explored various interests – from mountaineering to chess – and even considered a diplomatic career in Russia at the suggestion of a tutor. But one interest eclipsed all others: the occult.

At Cambridge, Crowley encountered esotericism for the first time. Occultism had gained popularity in elite circles in the late Victorian period. The 'cults' of this era bore little resemblance to the exploitative movements of the modern day; they functioned more as social clubs where the wealthy could explore spiritualism and metaphysical ideas. After graduating, Crowley joined one of England’s largest occult organisations, The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, with the goal of establishing himself within esoteric circles. However, his ambitions were short-lived. Crowley’s unorthodox lifestyle and combative personality quickly clashed with the leadership, who expected greater discretion and moral restraint from their members. He was accused of using the cult to broker property deals and to recruit participants for increasingly hedonistic rituals. He left the Golden Dawn less respected than when he joined.

Over the next decade, Crowley travelled across Asia, drawing on the rituals and aesthetic traditions of Buddhism and Hinduism to shape his own brand of Western occultism. He wrote extensively about his belief that magic was a scientifically provable phenomenon, and that mysticism should adopt a rational, empirical approach. These writings gave rise to his central philosophy: Thelema, based on the maxim ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law’. Thelema encouraged individuals to pursue their true will – their passions and purpose – without constraint from societal or psychological structures.

For Crowley, this involved the practice of ‘sex magick’, in which he and fellow occultists engaged in sadomasochistic rituals under the influence of drugs, seeking mystical enlightenment. While controversial, his ideas gained traction among younger occultists disillusioned with the stuffiness of Victorian esotericism. Some view Crowley’s work as a genuine attempt to modernise the occult for a new century. Others are more sceptical, seeing in Thelema a philosophical justification for Crowley’s libertine lifestyle. Regardless of motive, his ideas would go on to influence a new generation of alternative religious leaders.

Following the success of his writings, Crowley joined Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), a group with Masonic roots, and quickly ascended to de facto leadership. Under his direction, the O.T.O. adopted Thelema and sex magick as central tenets and expanded internationally, particularly to the United States. Between the 1910s and 1930s, Crowley established Thelema as a growing religious movement. Its ‘scientific’ occultism appealed to figures like Jack Parsons, a leading American rocket scientist and early pioneer of what would become NASA. Parsons introduced Crowley to L. Ron Hubbard, who was just beginning to explore the occult. Crowley was impressed by Hubbard’s so-called ‘natural talent for magick’, and Hubbard regarded Crowley as both mentor and personal friend. Both men believed in the power of self-realisation: Hubbard called it self-determinism – a concept that would become central to Scientology.

However, the relationship between the two men soured. Crowley, by now elderly and in poor health, was struggling with a crippling addiction to heroin. He remained sexually active and socially engaged in his cult activities, but his finances and reputation deteriorated rapidly. Meanwhile, Hubbard betrayed Crowley’s trusted protégé Parsons, conning him out of $10,000 and absconding to Florida with Parsons’s girlfriend. Upon hearing this, Crowley denounced Hubbard as ‘a con man’ and severed all ties.

Despite this, Hubbard continued to speak publicly of his friendship with Crowley and later absorbed Thelemic ideas into his own teachings. After Crowley’s death, Hubbard rebranded many of those ideas as original insights. The Church of Scientology officially denies any Crowleyan influence, but early documents and their shared history suggest otherwise.

Aleister Crowley died destitute, cut off from many of the occult circles he had once shaped. Yet his legacy endured. His writings and philosophy helped spawn the next generation of cult leaders and spiritual movements. Crowley may have been abandoned in life, but in death, he became a foundational figure for modern occultism – and an unlikely progenitor of the most notorious cult of the 20th century.

Bibliography:

Urban Hugh, The Occult Roots of Scientology?: L. Ron Hubbard, Aleister Crowley, and the Origins of a Controversial New Religion. (University of California Press, 2012)

—The Beast with Two Backs: Aleister Crowley, Sex Magic and the Exhaustion of Modernity. (Unive

Churton Tobias, Aleister Crowley: The Biography (Watkins Publishing Ltd, 2012)