CULT: Aleister Crowley & the Chamber of Nightmares

In 1920 Aleister Crowley rented a farmhouse above Cefalù in Sicily and called it the Abbey of Thelema, a school for unlearning everything society had taught you. Residents greeted the sun four times a day, took whatever drugs he handed them, and cut their forearms whenever they said the word I. He made every one of them keep a diary of what they did and what they wanted, and he read all of it. When a 22-year-old Oxford graduate died there in 1923, his widow went to the London papers, and within a month Crowley was the wickedest man in the world. Almost nothing they printed was true, and what the diaries record is smaller and much worse. In this episode of Conspiracy Theories, Cults, & Crimes, Vanessa Richardson traces the school Crowley said he was building, the year that broke the people inside it, and why the legend outgrew everything the diaries record. Please note, this episode contains descriptions of drug addiction, self-harm, the death of a child, and a miscarriage, and may not be suitable for all audiences.

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