阿莱斯特·克劳利传记

诗人的传记

爱德华·亚历山大·克劳利于1875年10月12日晚上11点至午夜出生在英国沃里克郡皇家利明顿温泉的克拉伦登广场30号。他的父亲爱德华·克劳利(Edward Crowley)是一名工程师，但据阿莱斯特说，他从未当过工程师。然而，他确实拥有一家利润丰厚的家族酿酒厂的股份，这使他能够在阿莱斯特出生前退休。由于他父亲的生意，他认识了奥布里·比尔兹利。他的母亲艾米丽·伯莎·毕晓普(Emily Bertha Bishop)来自德文郡和萨默塞特郡的一个家庭。他的父母都是排外兄弟会的成员，是普利茅斯兄弟会中比较保守的一派。克劳利在一个虔诚的弟兄会家庭长大，他只被允许和信仰相同的家庭的孩子们一起玩耍。他的父亲是一名狂热的传教士，在英国各地旅行，制作小册子。每日圣经学习和私人辅导是“阿利克”童年的主要内容。1880年2月29日，她的妹妹格蕾丝·玛丽·伊丽莎白出生了，但只活了5个小时。 Crowley was taken to see the body and in his own words (in the third person): The incident made a curious impression on him. He did not see why he should be disturbed so uselessly. He couldn't do any good; the child was dead; it was none of his business. This attitude continued through his life. He has never attended any funeral but that of his father, which he did not mind doing, as he felt himself to be the real centre of interest. On March 5, 1887, his father died of tongue cancer. This was a turning point in Crowley's life, after which he then began to describe his childhood in the first person in his Confessions. After the death of his father to whom he was very close, he drifted from his religious upbringing, and his mother's efforts at keeping her son in the Christian faith only served to provoke his scepticism. When he was a child, his constant rebellious behaviour displeased his mother to such an extent that she would chastise him by calling him "The Beast" (from the Book of Revelation), an epithet that Crowley would later adopt for himself. He objected to the labelling of what he saw as life's most worthwhile and enjoyable activities as "sinful". Aleister Crowley died in a Hastings boarding house on 1 December 1947 at the age of 72. According to one biographer the cause of death was a respiratory infection. He had become addicted to heroin after being prescribed morphine for his asthma and bronchitis many years earlier. He and his last doctor died within 24 hours of each other; newspapers would claim, in differing accounts, that Dr. Thomson had refused to continue his opiate prescription and that Crowley had put a curse on him. Biographer Lawrence Sutin passes on various stories about Crowley's death and last words. Frieda Harris supposedly reported him saying, "I am perplexed," though she did not see him at the very end. According to John Symonds, a Mr. Rowe witnessed Crowley's death along with a nurse, and reported his last words as "Sometimes I hate myself." Biographer Gerald Suster accepted the version of events he received from a "Mr W.H." who worked at the house, in which Crowley dies pacing in his living room. Supposedly Mr W.H. heard a crash while polishing furniture on the floor below, and entered Crowley's rooms to find him dead on the floor. Patricia "Deirdre" MacAlpine, who visited Crowley with their son and her three other children, denied all this and reports a sudden gust of wind and peal of thunder at the (otherwise quiet) moment of his death. According to MacAlpine, Crowley remained bedridden for the last few days of his life, but was in light spirits and conversational. Readings at the cremation service in nearby Brighton included one of his own works, Hymn to Pan, and newspapers referred to the service as a black mass. Brighton council subsequently resolved to take all necessary steps to prevent such an incident from occurring again.