Crowley's Apprentice: The Life and Ideas of Israel Regardie

by Gerald Suster

Dr. Francis Israel Regardie was one of the most important figures in the 20th centure development of the Western Mystery Tradition. From the teachings of Madame Blavatsky, the Bhagavad-Gita, Buddhism, and yoga he came to study with Crowley and became his secretary.

Genres: Occult, Biography, Psychology, Magic

188 pages, Paperback

First published August 15, 1989

About the author

Gerald Suster was a British revisionist historian, occult writer, and novelist. He was best known for his biographies of Aleister Crowley (The Legacy of the Beast) and Israel Regardie (Crowley's Apprentice), and many novels of horror and the occult.

While working in California, Gerald Suster met Israel Regardie and Gerald Yorke, two of the few remaining occultists who had studied directly under Aleister Crowley... and became a well-known figure in the London occult and pagan scenes.

In 1989 he became a tutor at Boarzell Tutorial College in Sussex; however his teaching career came to an abrupt end when he was featured in an exposé of his occult activities in the News of the World newspaper on 16 April 1989.[3] Suster sued the paper for libel... and got £80,000 of costs from them.

After the case, Gerald Suster & his new wife went on honeymoon to Madrid. On their return, he focused on being a full-time author, producing books of horror fiction, biography, occultism, and erotica. He called his new occupation "my most productive period of creative writing".

(Adapted from Wikipedia.)

Reviews

[Damien · Rating 1 out of 5]

Israel Regardie is to Thelema what Luisah Teish is to Santeria.
At the very best, this biography made me dislike Regardie by about this much [*gestures with thumb and forefinger giving an inch of space*]. So I can be just a touch more fair to him.
Anyhow, the author is hokey and blinded by hero worship. Understandably, Suster met the old buzzard when he was mostly at his best, and the latter gave the impression of being a wonderfully kind person to the former. I do not deny that maybe Regardie could be a great friend to certain individuals such as Suster, but that doesn't change anything about his teachings (based on his writings).

[Christopher Plaisance · Rating 4 out of 5]

Suster’s (1951–2001) biography of Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) is presently the largest and most complete biography of Israel Regardie (1907–1985). The book covers, in detail, Regardie’s early life, his experience with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn’s offshoot — the Stella Matutina — his dealings with and influence from Crowley, and a rather full account of his occult philosophy. While Suster largely eschews the impartial descriptive approach of academic historians, the book is, at present, the only book length biography of Regardie, and as such remains the standard reference when dealing with the details of his life. While I found Suster’s interpretations of Regardie’s ideas to be somewhat idiosyncratic and, at time, at odds with what Regardie himself wrote, this book has the benefit of having been written by someone who was a student and personal friend of Regardie — giving Suster a unique insight into Regardie’s personality. In terms of my research, Suster’s work was far more valuable as a reference source for the mundane details of Regardie’s life and education than it was his thought, since the latter sections dealing with Regardie’s negotiation between modern psychology and Golden Dawn magic was obfuscated by Suster’s (sometimes mis-) understanding of Regardie’s ideas.

[Moe Shinola · Rating 5 out of 5]

Israel Regardie was an occultist and chiripractor who died in the 1980s, and who was Aleister Crowley's secretary, typing up several of Crowley's books. He was also a disciple of Crowley until a rather public falling-out in the 30s, and was also a member of the Golden Dawn organazation in it's waning years in England. Regardie took it upon himself to publish the secret teachings of the order, in a form still available today, when he felt that it's leadership had become detrimental to the teachings' future. These and many other of his experiences can be read about here. Regardie also was a proponent of Reichean psychoanalysis, and claimed that the "orgone" that Reich believed in and the force behind "magick" were the same thing. He was a lay psychoanalyst and treated many neurotics in his practice and so felt he could speak as an authority on the subject. I think this is a great account of a little-known but important life from the mid-twewntieth century.