# Abbey of Thelema

Part of a series on :
Thelema :
Unicursal hexagram :
The Rights of Man :
Holy Books and Stele
The Book of the Law
The Holy Books of Thelema
The Stele of Revealing :
Key figures
Ankh-af-na-Khonsu
François Rabelais
Aleister Crowley
Victor Neuburg
Charles Stansfeld Jones
Jack Parsons
Wilfred Talbot Smith
Jane Wolfe
Karl Germer
J. F. C. Fuller
Grady McMurtry
Marcelo Ramos Motta
Marjorie Cameron
Sara Northrup
Helen Parsons Smith
Phyllis Seckler
Christopher Hyatt
Kenneth Grant
James Lees
Nema Andahadna
James Wasserman
Kenneth Anger
The Scarlet Women
Rose Edith Crowley
Mary d'Este Sturges
Jeanne Robert Foster
Roddie Minor
Marie Rohling
Leah Hirsig
Leila Waddell :
Core concepts
One Star in Sight
Great Work
True Will
The Abyss
Magick
Qabalah
Holy Guardian Angel
Thoth Tarot
Yoga
Gnostic Mass
The Aeon :
Methods
Abrahadabra
Night of Pan
Liber Resh
Crossing the Abyss
Banishing
Invocation
Bornless Ritual
Qaballa
Sex magic
Body of light
Tree of life :
Thelemic texts
Aleister Crowley bibliography
Kenneth Grant bibliography
Marcelo Motta bibliography :
Organizations
A∴A∴
O∴A∴A∴
Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica (EGC)
Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO)
Society Ordo Templi Orientis (SOTO)
Thelemic Order of the Golden Dawn
Typhonian Order (TOTO) :
Deities
Nuit
Hadit
Heru-ra-ha
Aiwass
Therion
Babalon
Baphomet
Chaos
Ma'at :
Places
Boleskine House
Abbey of Thelema
Agape Lodge :
Related topics
Abramelin oil
Cake of Light
Choronzon
Eroto-comatose lucidity
Goetia
Liber Pennae Praenumbra
Magical formulae
Number of the beast
Obeah and wanga
Qlippoth
Table of magical correspondences
The Beast and Whore of Babylon
Worship of heavenly bodies :
vte :
The Abbey of Thelema is a small house which was used as a temple and spiritual centre, founded by Aleister Crowley and Leah Hirsig in Cefalù (Sicily, Italy) in 1920.
The villa still stands today, but in poor condition. Filmmaker Kenneth Anger, himself a devotee of Crowley, later uncovered and filmed some of its murals in his film Thelema Abbey (1955), now considered a lost film.

## Name

The name was borrowed from François Rabelais's satire Gargantua and Pantagruel, where an Abbaye de Thélème is described as a sort of "anti-monastery" where the lives of the inhabitants were "spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but according to their own free will and pleasure." Prior to arriving at the name, Crowley referred to the house as Villa Santa Barbara. The name "Thelema" is derived from the Greek θέλημα (« thélêma »), which refers to 'divine will'.

## Objectives

The Abbey was to be Crowley's commune, while also being a type of magical school, giving it the designation Collegium ad Spiritum Sanctum (A College towards the Holy Spirit). The general program was in line with the A∴A∴ course of training, and included daily adorations to the sun, a study of Crowley's writings, regular yogic and ritual practices (which were to be recorded), as well as general domestic labor. The object was for students to devote themselves to the Great Work of discovering and manifesting their True Will.
Crowley had planned to transform the small house into a global center of magical devotion and perhaps to gain tuition fees paid by acolytes seeking training in the Magical Arts; these fees would further assist him in his efforts to promulgate Thelema and publish his manuscripts.

## Residents
### Raoul Loveday

In 1923, a 23-year-old Oxford undergraduate, Raoul Loveday (or Frederick Charles Loveday), died at the Abbey. His wife, Betty May, variously blamed the death on his participation in one of Crowley's rituals (allegedly incorporating the consumption of the blood of a sacrificed cat) or the more probable diagnosis of acute enteric fever contracted by drinking from a mountain spring. Crowley had warned the couple against drinking the water, as reported in biographies by Lawrence Sutin and Richard Kaczynski.
When May returned to London, she gave an interview to a tabloid paper, The Sunday Express, which included her story in its ongoing attacks on Crowley. With these and similar rumors about activities at the Abbey in mind, Benito Mussolini's government demanded that Crowley leave the country in 1923. After Crowley's departure, the Abbey of Thelema was eventually abandoned and local residents whitewashed over Crowley's murals.

### Jane Wolfe

Jane Wolfe worked with Crowley's Thelemic system of training in Cefalù for three years, and emerged from those years with a degree of attainment, having survived Crowley’s ordeals. Whilst a resident at the Abbey of Thelema, Wolfe was admitted to the A∴A∴ by Crowley, taking the magickal name Soror Estai. She undertook various practises including yoga, dhāraṇā and pranayama of which she kept a detailed record which was later published by the College of Thelema of Northern California as The Cefalu Diaries. She later worked as Crowley’s personal representative in London and Paris.

## In popular culture

Danish artist Joachim Koester created five colour and five black and white photographs of the villa; these photographs comprise his Morning of the Magicians (2005) work.

## Gallery

* Ruins of the Abbey
* Abbey of Thelema, current rooms
* Abbey of Thelema, the present chapel