Aleister Crowley: The Beast in Berlin: Art, Sex, and Magick in the Weimar Republic

by Tobias Churton

A biographical history of Aleister Crowley’s activities in Berlin from 1930 to 1932 as Hitler was rising to power

• Examines Crowley’s focus on his art, his work as a spy for British Intelligence, his colorful love life and sex magick exploits, and his contacts with magical orders

• Explores Crowley’s relationships with Berlin’s artists, filmmakers, writers, and performers such as Christopher Isherwood, Jean Ross, and Aldous Huxley

• Recounts the fates of Crowley’s friends and colleagues under the Nazis as well as what happened to Crowley’s lost art exhibition

Gnostic poet, painter, writer, and magician Aleister Crowley arrived in Berlin on April 18, 1930. As prophet of his syncretic religion “Thelema,” he wanted to be among the leaders of art and thought, and Berlin, the liberated future-gazing metropolis, wanted him. There he would live, until his hurried departure on June 22, 1932, as Hitler was rapidly rising to power and the black curtain of intolerance came down upon the city.

Known to his friends affectionately as “The Beast,” Crowley saw the closing lights of Berlin’s artistic renaissance of the Weimar period when Berlin played host to many of the world’s most outstanding artists, writers, filmmakers, performers, composers, architects, philosophers, and scientists, including Albert Einstein, Bertolt Brecht, Ethel Mannin, Otto Dix, Aldous Huxley, Jean Ross, Christopher Isherwood, and many other luminaries of a glittering world soon to be trampled into the mud by the global bloodbath of World War II.

Drawing on previously unpublished letters and diary material by Crowley, Tobias Churton examines Crowley’s years in Berlin and his intense focus on his art, his work as a spy for British Intelligence, his colorful love life and sex magick exploits, and his contacts with German Theosophy, Freemasonry, and magical orders. He recounts the fates of Crowley’s colleagues under the Nazis as well as what happened to Crowley’s lost art exhibition--six crates of paintings left behind in Germany as the Gestapo was closing in. Revealing the real Crowley long hidden from the historical record, Churton presents “the Beast” anew in all his ambiguous and, for some, terrifying glory, at a blazing, seminal moment in the history of the world.

Genres: Biography, Thelema, History, Occult, Nonfiction, Magick, Germany

432 pages, Hardcover

First published May 15, 2014

About the author

Tobias Churton is a filmmaker and the founding editor of the magazine "Freemasonry Today". He studied theology at Oxford University and created the award-winning documentary series and accompanying book The Gnostics, as well as several other films on Christian doctrine, mysticism, and magical folklore, such as "A Mighty Good Man" (2002), a documentary on Elias Ashmole, his religious ideas and Masonic initiation in 1646. He is currently a lecturer on Freemasonry at the Exeter Centre for the Study of Esotericism, Exeter University. He lives in England.

Reviews

[Tepintzin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Churton has written numerous books on Crowley, his latest being on Crowley's years in America. This is mostly an account of Crowley living as an artist in Berlin while lowkey being also a spy for Britain. He was trying to get Thelema established in Germany, since Berlin in the early 30s was a wild place. Alas, dark days came on very soon, crushing all that.

The book is entertaining and very thought-provoking in the political climate here in the US. My only negative is that Churton is a little less critical of Crowley the Professional A--hole as he could be. I feel sorry for the women in his life particularly!

[Meredith · Rating 4 out of 5]

...and then he went to Berlin. Filled in the blanks well. The author wasn't objective, but that was fine. Many books are so heavily weighted one way or the other, a slight positive spin was ok.

[Damien · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I first started reading this, the quality of the writing made me imagine that Geraldo Rivera was narrating it. Eventually, it became engrossing, and I was fascinated by the information and the letters exchanged among the OTO members (and others). However, the last chapter is little but psychobabble and the 11th chapter seems a bit off.

[Timothy]

If you're not already highly familiar with the life of Aleister Crowley ( which I was not, and am still not ) than this book may not be for you. I got about 80 pages in and was totally lost. It picks up later in Crowley's life and talks about his history as if the reader knows all of this. Good luck

[Marley · Rating 5 out of 5]

To really get the full enjoyment of this l book the reader needs a fuller bio of Crowley. That said, the book is also a wonderful portrait of Crowley during his Berlin years It also gives a great view of Berlin culture in the Wiemar Republic and why the city was the epicenter of modernity. If you are a prude, don't read it. BTW, how did he, at that age, get so much so much sex magick?

[Peter Morris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely fascinationg examination of a little known period in Crowley's busy life. The atmosphere that the author describes of 1930s Berlin is worth reading the book for that reason alone. Absolutely first class bio.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fun entertaining and enlightening.

[Steven McKay · Rating 3 out of 5]

I must admit I was hoping for something similar to Secret Agent 666 but this is pretty much just a reference book with endless names of people and events that really are and were meaningless in the grand scheme of things. I had the book by my bed for months and spent a lot of evenings trying to get through it before I had to give up.
As a piece of research, this is fantastic and that makes it a valuable reference for Crowley scholars. As a book you might want to read and enjoy, well, it wasn't for me and I'll avoid the author's work on Crowley in America as a result.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book would have been improved if there had been more about Crowley and less about the magician. Also, this is another hagiography so there's little by way of critique or examination of the man and his motivations.

Those devoted to the recuperation of the Beast will find something here for them. Those attempting to understand the man and Germany in the dying days of Weimar will be disappointed.

Rating 3 out of 5 Stars.

[Per Thykjaer Jensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A well researched portrait of the mystic Aleister Crowley and whatever he did in Berlin. There is a hypothesis: perhaps Mr. Crowley was a spy? Crowleys role as artist, magus and his experiments with "sexpower and attraction" are also covered.