The ‘Worst Man in the World’ Tells the Astounding Story of His Life in Articles by Aleister Crowley.

“The man who, having practiced strange rites, becomes a drunkard or a drug-fiend, is evidently a failure as a magician. He has lost his grip.” [via]

Consider also:

  1. “I have been shot at with broad arrows. They have called me the ‘worst man in the world.’ They have accused me of doing everything from murdering women and throwing their bodies into the Seine to drug peddling. Some well-known journalists have delighted in attacking me in print. James Douglas described me as ‘a monster of wickedness.’ Horatio Bottomley branded me as a ‘dirty degenerate’ cannibal–everything he could think of. Some have been more precise.”
  2. “Nobody stops to look at me in the street. My appearance is, I suppose, that of a simple country gentleman up in town for a weekend. All my notoriety arises from the fact that I am a magician. I AM THE MASTER THERION. Practically my whole life has been spent in the study of magic.”
  3. “Let me say here that it is impossible for a magician to be a man of bad character. He cares nothing for conventions, but he needs the sternest virtues. His powers are limited by himself.”
  4. “But I am a white magician, not a black one. I belong to a secret order which has representatives all over the world; we are all working for the good of humanity, not for its downfall.”
  5. “Foolish people say that I am a Black Magician, that I am in the habit of celebrating the Black Mass and the Witches’ Sabbath, that I eat new-born babes and explore the sky on a broomstick. They say that Satan is my master and that I am his faithful agent.”