(Trigger warning – this post does contain factual material that some blog followers may find contrary to their morals. I don’t wish to offend anybody but be aware I will be talking about the erotic so-called Templar philosophy of Aleister Crowley though not in too salacious depth.)
There are many organisations claiming to be Knight Templar in nature but one of the oddest in the 20th century had to be the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO for short). And this Templar sect’s most notorious devotee was the occultist Aleister Crowley, a bizarre individual who mixed sex, magic and religion – often for his own personal pleasure.
READ MORE: Were the Knights Templar gay?
Ozzy Osbourne, Aleister Crowley and a teenage me
I first came across the name Aleister Crowley when, in 1980, I bought an album by the rock group Blizzard of Ozz. The lead singer of this short lived band was former Black Sabbath front man Ozzy Osbourne who shared with Crowley an interest in the darker side of the occult.
The track is named after Crowley and it’s not one of Ozzy’s classic numbers but you get the gist of who Crowley was – a man so reviled and feared in Britain before the Second World War that the press referred to him as “the Beast” and “666”.
Born in 1875, Crowley came from a typical Victorian Christian family in the English Midlands. But he grew up at a time when there was a booming interest in magic and spiritualism. Seances and ouija boards were all the rage! What Crowley brought to this was bags of charisma and a stratospheric libido.
DISCOVER MORE: The Templars, Atlantis and the Nazis
Ordo Templi Orientis – Templars and Aleister Crowley
At the turn of the 20th century, two men – Karl Kellner (a chemist and Freemason) and Theodor Reuss (a German journalist and Freemason) – founded the Ordo Templi Orientis. When Crowley jumped on board, the original Masonic aims of this Templar group were diverted increasingly into his philosophy centred on the Greek word “Thelema”. In a nutshell, this pseudo-philosophy essentially stated – if you want to do something, then just do it.
The OTO mixed up elements of different religions with Masonic and magic symbology and obligatory references to ancient Egypt. Crowley developed a religious rite based heavily on the Catholic and eastern Orthodox mass declaring it was Gnostic in nature. Into this he inserted his trademark obsession with the erotic. Those who decided to join the OTO went through grades of membership similar to the Masonic structure but with a very different approach to moving up the chain.
FIND OUT MORE: The truth about Oak Island and the Templars
Look away now if you’re squeamish!
Crowley recommended devotees eat special cakes into which might be baked semen, blood or excrement. Members moved up through degrees of membership to achieve an understanding of their identity and nature. This culminated in something termed The Hermit Triad where masturbation was taught as a form of magic. Members then advanced to mixing magic with other sex acts – in which, needless to say, Crowley was only too happy to participate.
Crowley justified this sexual behaviour claiming he was trying to return Christianity to its origin as a “solar-phallic religion”. Gnosticism is in part about releasing the spirit from the evil and corrupt physical world. Crowley – and OTO founder Reuss – believed that sex was a means of achieving this. Or as Reuss put it: the more sperm you eat, the more the manifestation of the Christ takes place within you.
This kind of logic led OTO to be described as – Spermo-Gnostics. Seriously dear readers, I’m not making this up!!
And the Templar connection to Aleister Crowley…
There isn’t space in this modest blog post to detail the whole belief system of Crowley and its ranging across all kinds of mythologies, religions and cultish practices. This is a mere taster. The Templar elements centred on initiation rites believed to reflect what the knights practiced – particularly alleged magic kisses on the body, defiling the crucifix and even sodomy.
Add to that the reported worshipping of a being referred to in the trials of the Templars as Baphomet. This was a devilish head of varying description. See my earlier blog posts for accounts from the early 14th century trials stating that this head sometimes spoke, gave orders or demanded obedience. Crowley lapped all that up!
What Crowley believed was that the Templars had indulged in a form of sex based magic while pretending to be defenders of the Catholic church. His OTO was carrying on that noble tradition.
READ: The Top Ten blog posts of all time on The Templar Knight
The much darker side of Crowley
Given the turbulent politics of our own times, I need to highlight that Crowley had views which were elitist and racist. He advocated the strict separation of racial groups and assigned rather crass stereotypes to them. In one almost laughable statement he claimed that Italians had “discarded the noble and beautiful toga for shoddy city clothes”.
He claimed – with zero scientific evidence – that hashish incited some races to murder whereas others (pointing at himself no doubt) became more philosophical under its influence. Crowley’s comments on India and the superiority of the British Empire are best left unprinted here. I could go on and on but you get the gist.
2 thoughts on “Occultist Aleister Crowley and the Knights Templar”