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

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

A biographical history of Aleister Crowleyâ€™s activities in Berlin from 1930 to 1932 as Hitler was rising to power

â€¢ Examines Crowleyâ€™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

â€¢ Explores Crowleyâ€™s relationships with Berlinâ€™s artists, filmmakers, writers, and performers such as Christopher Isherwood, Jean Ross, and Aldous Huxley

â€¢ Recounts the fates of Crowleyâ€™s friends and colleagues under the Nazis as well as what happened to Crowleyâ€™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 â€œThelema,â€ 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 â€œThe Beast,â€ Crowley saw the closing lights of Berlinâ€™s artistic renaissance of the Weimar period when Berlin played host to many of the worldâ€™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Drawing on previously unpublished letters and diary material by Crowley, Tobias Churton examines Crowleyâ€™s years in Berlin and his intense focus on his art, his work as a spy for British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 Crowleyâ€™s colleagues under the Nazis as well as what happened to Crowleyâ€™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 â€œthe Beastâ€ anew in all his ambiguous and, for some, terrifying glory, at a blazing, seminal moment in the history of the world.
Country USA
Brand Inner Traditions
Manufacturer Inner Traditions
Binding Hardcover
ReleaseDate 2014-06-26
UnitCount 1
Format Illustrated
UPCs 884725322360
EANs 9781620552568

Country	USA
Brand	Inner Traditions
Manufacturer	Inner Traditions
Binding	Hardcover
ReleaseDate	2014-06-26
UnitCount	1
Format	Illustrated
UPCs	884725322360
EANs	9781620552568

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

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