num_pages: 768
description: An exploration of Crowleys relationship with the United States Details Crowleys travels passions literary and artistic endeavors sex magick and psychedelic experimentation Investigates Crowleys undercover intelligence adventures that actively promoted U.S. involvement in WWI Includes an abundance of previously unpublished letters and diariesOccultist magician poet painter and writer Aleister Crowleys three sojourns in America sealed both his notoriety and his lasting influence. Using previously unpublished diaries and letters Tobias Churton traces Crowleys extensive travels through America and his quest to implant a new magical and spiritual consciousness in the United States while working to undermine Germanys propaganda campaign to keep the United States out of World War I.Masterfully recreating turn-of-the-century America in all its startling strangeness Churton explains how Crowley arrived in New York amid dramatic circumstances in 1900. After other travels in 1914 Crowley returned to the U.S. and stayed for five turbulent years that changed him the world and the face of occultism forever. Diving deeply into Crowleys 5-year stay we meet artists writers spies and government agents as we uncover Crowleys complex work for British and U.S. intelligence agencies. Exploring Crowleys involvement with the birth of the Greenwich Village radical art scene we discover his relations with writers Sinclair Lewis and Theodore Dreiser and artists John Butler Yeats Leon Engers Kennedy and Robert Winthrop Chanler while living and lecturing on now-vanished Genius Row. We experience his love affairs and share Crowleys hard times in New Orleans and his return to health magical dynamism and the most colorful sex life in America. We examine his controversial political stunts his role in the sinking of the passenger ship Lusitania  his making of the Elixir of Life in 1915 his psychedelic experimentation his prolific literary achievements and his run-in with Detroit Freemasonry. We also witness Crowleys influence on Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard and rocket fuel genius Jack Parsons. We learn why J. Edgar Hoover wouldnt let Crowley back in the country and why the FBI raided Crowleys organization in LA.Offering a 20th-century history of the occult movement in the United States Churton shows how Crowleys U.S. visits laid the groundwork for the establishment of his syncretic religion of Thelema and the now flourishing OTO as well as how Crowleys final wish was to have his ashes scattered in the Hamptons.
language: English
title: Aleister Crowley in America: Art, Espionage, and Sex Magick in the New World
publisher: Inner Traditions