In the parlors of Victorian England, a boy branded "the Beast" by his own mother defies the chains of piety, embarking on a forbidden odyssey that will shatter the boundaries of the soul. Aleister Crowley—mountaineer, poet, and self-proclaimed prophet—unearths ancient secrets in Cairo's shadowed temples, conjures ecstatic rites amid London's glittering scandals, and builds a utopian abbey in Sicily where love and will collide in rituals of transcendence... or damnation. Accused of presiding over Black Masses that mock the divine and summon infernal forces, Crowley dances on the edge of ecstasy and abyss, his Thelemic creed—"Do what thou wilt"—igniting a firestorm of blasphemy, betrayal, and tragedy. From blood-soaked invocations to a funeral hymn that echoes like a curse, this tale unveils the man behind the myth: a visionary seeker whose quest for ultimate freedom exposes the darkest corners of human desire. But in the shadows of Thelema, where gods and demons blur, can one truly escape the specter of the Black Mass?

Macabrium is produced by Macabrium Creative and hosted by Megan Alda and Derek Stephen Brown, with writing and research by Chloë Kibbe, Megan Alda and Derek Stephen Brown. 

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Show Notes & Further Reading

The Confessions of Aleister Crowley

Magick in Theory and Practice

London Sunday Dispatch 1933 article on Black Mass

The Great Beast by John Symonds

1934 libel trial records (Crowley v. Hamnett)

John Bull magazine 1923 article

The Times 1934 trial report

The Book of the Law

The Equinox

The Vision and the Voice

Tiger Woman by Betty May

Laughing Torso by Nina Hamnett

The Magician by Somerset Maugham

The Devil Rides Out by Dennis Wheatley

The Book of Thoth

Religion and the Arts special issue March 2024

Marco Visconti's The Aleister Crowley Manual

Marco Visconti's Aleister Crowley's Mysticism: A Practical Guide

Warburg Institute's "Tarot: Origins & Afterlives" (January–April 2025)

Lecture "Embracing the Impossible: Arthur Conan Doyle, Aleister Crowley, and the Occultural Turn in Detective Fiction" (July 24, 2025, Green College)

Magick in Theory and Practice entering U.S. public domain in 2025

Harry Ransom Center Aleister Crowley manuscript

Warburg Institute Yorke Collection

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