The Magick of Aleister Crowley: A Handbook of the Rituals of Thelema

by Lon Milo DuQuette, Jason Louv (Foreword), Hymenaeus Beta (Foreword)

The 30th Anniversary of the Classic Guide to Thelema, Aleister Crowley’s Spiritual System of Ritual Magick, with a New Introduction by the Author .This is the perfect introductory text for readers who wonder what the works—rather than the myth—of Aleister Crowley are all about. DuQuette begins by dispatching some of the myths that have surrounded Crowley’s life and legend. He then explores the practice of rituals themselves, unpacking Crowley’s often opaque writing and offering his own commentary. Step by step, and in plain English, he presents a course of study with examples of rituals and explanations of their significance. DuQuette also includes a survey of many of Crowley’s original works with an extensive bibliography and endnotes. Formerly titled The Magick of Thelema, then released in a revised edition published in 2003, this Weiser Classics edition includes a new introduction by the author.

Genres: Occult, Thelema, Magick, Nonfiction, Magic, Spirituality, Religion

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Lon Milo DuQuette is an American singer-song writer, author, lecturer, and occultist, best known as an author who applies humor in the field of Western Hermeticism.

Born in Long Beach, California and raised in Columbus, Nebraska, he was an aspiring studio musician and recording artist in the 1970s, releasing two singles and an album, Charley D. and Milo, on the Epic Records label.

He married to his high school sweetheart, Constance Jean Duquette. They live in Costa Mesa, California and have one son, Jean-Paul.

Since 1975 he has been a National and International governing officer of Ordo Templi Orientis, a religious and fraternal organization founded in the early part of the 20th century. Since 1996 he has been the O.T.O.'s United States Deputy Grand Master and one of the most visible members of the Order. He is also an Archbishop of Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica, the ecclesiastical arm of O.T.O.

Reviews

[Noel]

I tend to stick pretty close to the bone in my occult readings. There's been a lot of shit written over the last 20 years by people who have no business either writing books or professing expertise in occult matters. DuQuette is a respected author of the Western Ceremonial/Crowlean magick traditions, and this book finds him tackling the man himself, and his modifications of prior rituals. While the bulk of the book features yet more reprints of the same rituals you'll find everywhere else, his notes on same are quite valuable.

[Aisllan]

Very good book for beginners, explaining carefully some main aspects of Thelema, Aleister Crowley and some basic Rituals like the Sun Adoration (Liber Resh) and others. Even after practicing and having a shallow background on the subject this book shed some light in some key aspects and stirred up the flames to take my studies and practices more seriously and in depth. My only critic is including the Book of the Law. I think it's unnecessary, no further explanation about it or anything it just occupied space IMO, plus you can find it easily online.

But besides that, great read for anyone interested in the subject but don't know where to start.


93!

[Jordan Fitzgerald]

1 of my top 10 recommended books to people new to learning practical Hermeticism. Although, I would place this further in the back of the list. This book fucking rocks(as do all of Lon's books)! It explains a lot of difficult/abstract Thelemic concepts, that is very helpful to people who don't live within driving distance of an OTO lodge.

[Todd Myers]

DuQuette does a good job of presenting and translating the rituals and meaning of them from Crowley's work, one of the better interpretations I've seen.

[Tanner Butterfield]

This is a great summary of thelema and ritual magick. This is lon milos best work. Included are pentagram rituals and i think hexagram rituals. The best and most unique part of thelema is the ritual. This book shouldnt be read alone but suppliament the scriptures Crowley wrote.

[Mathew]

If you want to start doing some Magick this is the book. I was hoping for more history and insight rather than a modern book of spells.

[Amanda]

So I didn't finish this book.

I thoroughly enjoyed this audiobook and was pleasantly surprised by Duquette's focused and straightforward writing style.

It had be running downstairs to my library again and again to double check things in different books.

It helped me find a possible source for a little something something that mattered to me.

It answered a qabalistic formula I'd been trying to work out for a few YEARS now on my own. Omfg

I thought it would be a fun review kind of book. Nope, it covered new territory for me. And listening in audio format just stopped working for me.

So DNF, I need to buy the book. and let me just say I don't buy many occult books anymore.

Perhaps the greatest benefit of the audio version was the reading of the Book of the Law, which I'm not so sure has the same value in written format (when all of us probably own a few copies. Amirite?)

[raccontami]

Se cercate qualcosa di più pragmatico in italiano/ inglese vi consiglio il manuale dedicato a Crowley di Marco Visconti. Questo di DuQuette è stato un libro fondamentale per l’epoca, ma è solo un commentario, nel 2025 abbiamo una scelta più ampia

[Sirene]

My impression is this book fits squarely in the Piscean age. Much of it was like being in church—having many prayer-like rituals and odd stories without much explanation or a clear enough introduction for them. Maybe it assumed prior familiarity. Reading Wikipedia was more helpful for some basic history and concepts. If possible it would be nice to know more about these entities we’re summoning and why they sometimes help humans.

[Damien]

I bought this when it first came out and at the time I thought it was the best book written on the subject after "Magick In Theory And Practice". Due to the low quality of the publisher, the pages fell apart. Years later, upon reading "The Magick Of Aleister Crowley", the revised edition of this book, I find that Lon Milo Duquette and this book are not as impressive as I once thought they were. In fact, it seems that they are both (author AND book) a little off in their conclusions and explanations and suggestions.

[william m manzie]

Fantastic

So much information made accessible and understandable, a real gem in Thelemic literature with no nonsense straightforward writing and interpretation of the ceremonies and rites.😎93s

[A.]

Lon's very best work. Wish he had written more in this vein.

[Jack Lhasa]

Possibly the very best on Crowley and Thelema.

[Steven]

Advanced, yet contradictory. Use caution when using.

[Tamsin]

This type of "beginners book" gets people nowhere. Better to dive straigth into Crowley if his magick interests you.

[Thomas Pinneck]

The Magick of Aleister Crowley remains one of the best gateways into practical Thelema because Lon Milo DuQuette understands that Crowley’s difficulty is often less a matter of conceptual obscurity than presentation. Crowley wrote across an enormous body of material, frequently assuming familiarity with Qabalah, Golden Dawn ritual, astrology, yoga, magical formulae, and his own shifting technical vocabulary, so beginners are often confronted with fragments before they understand the architecture connecting them. DuQuette remedies this by organizing the system around actual practice, moving from Will and the evolution of magical formulae into The Book of the Law, pentagram and hexagram rituals, the Holy Guardian Angel, solar rites, mysticism, and the larger institutional and religious dimensions of Thelema. His great talent is explanation without domestication: he makes Crowley readable without pretending that the underlying system is simple.

The ritual chapters are especially valuable because DuQuette explains why the forms change as one moves from Golden Dawn antecedents into specifically Thelemic adaptations. The pentagram and hexagram material becomes a lesson in magical grammar rather than merely a series of scripts, while his discussions of rituals such as the Star Ruby, Star Sapphire, Liber Samekh, and related practices help clarify how Crowley reconfigured inherited ceremonial technology around his own Aeonic theology. DuQuette is also very good at showing that Thelema cannot be reduced to the slogan of “Do what thou wilt”; True Will belongs to an initiatory and mystical framework culminating in Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel and increasingly profound transformations of identity. The sections on solar practice, Thelemic mysticism, the Rites of Eleusis, orders, and the Gnostic Mass consequently broaden the picture from private ceremonial practice into an entire religious and initiatory culture.

What makes the book endure is DuQuette’s position as an interpreter who is simultaneously knowledgeable, irreverent, and deeply committed to the tradition he is explaining. He refuses both the sensationalized Crowley of popular culture and the opposite temptation to surround Crowley with so much initiatory mystique that his work becomes inaccessible to anyone outside a formal order. The result is a handbook in the proper sense: a book meant to be used alongside Crowley’s primary texts, with enough explanation to make those texts practicable and enough bibliography and commentary to send the serious reader back into the source material rather than replacing it. For someone already immersed in ceremonial magic, much of the basic ritual technology will be familiar, but DuQuette’s ability to reveal the internal coherence of Crowley’s revisions remains extremely useful. This is still one of the clearest demonstrations that Thelema is best understood through doing the work rather than merely reading about the man who devised it.

[Chronicler of Creepy]

I don't really feel qualified to rate this book.

I will say that I LOVED chapter two. DuQuette's explanation of the Aeons is masterful and makes complete sense. I'm still thinking about and processing that chapter specifically.

I don't feel able to comment about the rest of the material, but I do think that people who choose to walk the path of Thelema will find this a resource to reference again and again. I think this book is better geared toward people who have already decided to practice Thelema or have already been doing so. This is a practicing book rather than an introduction or informational book, though it does have fragments of those as well.

[Jon Daniels]

DuQuette does the valuable job of translating Crowley from Crowley into something resembling human language, pentagram rituals, hexagrams, solar work, Knowledge and Conversation and all the rest without pretending the confusion itself is part of the initiation. I still think Crowley had a pathological allergy to saying one clear thing when twelve obscure references would do, but once DuQuette explains what the ritual is actually trying to accomplish alot of the machinery suddenly becomes usable. Probably one of the better ways into Thelemic practice if you want to actually do the work before disappearing up your own footnotes.

[Ellen Taylor]

For those seeking a practical guide to Thelema, this seems like a good book. I realised a couple of chapters in that this was not what I was after, and the foreword (audio sample) didn’t quite capture what I was getting myself in for. I would have liked more critical scholarly reflection on Thelema and a more general introduction to its aims, goals and beliefs.

Still, I learned a bit about Crowley’s beliefs and I can see how this would be a very helpful book for people with different aims to me.

[Benjamin Richards]

I liked it, it's an exciting book and intrigues me immensely - it's just that I had to skip large chunks of it because it was actually a lot more proscriptive regarding the rituals. I took a punt on a random book but I immediately knew I needed something a lot more entry level. If I ascent the ranks or ever get to hear about the O.T.O. where I live then I am sure this will be a useful tool. Until then.

[John Cramer]

A fine compiling of some of the primary rituals that serve at the core of Thelemic practice. Milo is a true insider, and as such he does a good job mixing a brief rundown of Crowley and his teachings and presenting them to those completely new to Crowley. Having said that, if you are completely starting at the very beginning, the explanation of the rituals won't have much meaning for you, but that shouldn't stop you. As a ritualistic primer, this is a fine volume.

[Rose]

Oh, thank god, I am done with this book. I read this book for research purposes, and it was hard to get through this book. It took me two years and 3 or 4 times, but I finally finished it.

There is a lot of fascinating elements to this book when one compares it to the Bible. I am sure this book is helpful for those who are into magic, but I am not one of them. For that reason, I found it boring and dragging.

[Emilio Mireles]

Great book for beginners trying to understand the rituals of Thelema, read it for yourself and don’t let the reviews determine your perspective before reading it. You can sample it if you have a kindle downloaded as an app on your phone.

[G]

Very practical.

[Shemuel Bensusan]

Templar Order of the Golden Age

[victoria]

la verdad no entendí mucho (no pensé que más de la mitad del libro fueran instrucciones de rituales) pero siempre es interesante leer sobre crowley

[Alan Kraskow]

I've read it as a teenager and it wasn't what I expected. Maybe if I re-read it in future, I will change my rating. But for now, from what I remember, it was just a disappointment.

[Xzavier]

Useful as a sort of primer to the Thelemic system of magick, with some nuggets of history surrounding Aleister Crowley and his works.

[Hakim]

Solid read and overview with handy explanations and graphics for those looking for a deeper understanding of how the different pentagrams are constructed.

[Jonathan Bartholomew]

An excellent commentary on a few of Crowley's rituals, and overall mindset. DuQuette is very good at looking at these works from a modern lens - because he's lived them.