8. Aleister Crowley created a religion revolving around “Sexual Magic”
English writer and occultist Aleister Crowley (1875 – 1947) claimed to be a magician. Not a stage magician, but the warlock, spells and sorcery type. An L. Ron Hubbard type before there was an L. Ron Hubbard, Crowley also founded a religion, Thelema, whose prophet he claimed to be, entrusted with guiding mankind to the “Aeon of Horus”. Crowley summarized the Horus era’s ethics as: “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law“. His magic religion included lots of sex with his followers, which he termed “Sexual Magic”, whereby orgasms and bodily secretions were used as components of magic spells.
A mainstay of Sexual Magic was that adherents should be completely open and uninhibited about sex, without limitations or restraints. Also, followers should expose their children to intercourse from infancy, and accustom them to witness all kinds of promiscuous activity. In 1920, Crowley and his followers established a religious commune in Sicily, but the perverse goings-on there led to controversy, scandals, and denunciations, that became regular fodder for the British and Italian press. Responding to the outcry, the Italian government finally shut down the commune and evicted everybody in 1923.