# Mr. Crowley - Best of Coast to Coast AM - 9/26/26

An episode of [The Best of Coast to Coast AM](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1206175991), 27 Sep 2026, 16 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/61c1535a-56bb-431a-ad6b-ae2b00350f5c/e65f33d9-2b86-4ebe-9122-b4d20097bcec/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=b95f0c24-c199-4939-b52c-ae2b00350f65

Guest host Ryan Wrecker and author Lon Milo DuQuette discuss controversial occultist Aleister Crowley. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
[0:04] Speaker 2: Lon, I have a few email questions for you. You know,
[0:08] Speaker 2: one person was asking about the time frame. So, Alistair
[0:11] Speaker 2: Crowley died 1947. He was in his 70s when he died.
[0:17] Speaker 2: Did you ever meet any of his family members during
[0:20] Speaker 2: your life? Talk to people that knew him?
[0:21] Speaker 3: Oh, I talked to plenty of people that knew him.
[0:25] Speaker 3: As a matter of fact, I was.
[0:29] Speaker 3: Kind of superstitious and, you know, scared about what I
[0:34] Speaker 3: heard about Alistair Crowley. Because you hear and read good things,
[0:40] Speaker 3: but mostly you hear and read horrible things like that,
[0:45] Speaker 3: baby eating and things like that. But I was really
[0:49] Speaker 3: lucky enough in the early 1970s to meet And, well,
[1:01] Speaker 3: first of all, two of Crowley's students, Grady L. McMurtry,
[1:12] Speaker 3: who was the only American to be able to visit
[1:18] Speaker 3: personally with Crowley during World War II, and because he
[1:24] Speaker 3: was a lieutenant in the U.S. Army, He had a
[1:29] Speaker 3: Jeep and could go visit Crowley. He was an initiate
[1:33] Speaker 3: of Crowley's order, the Ordo Templi Orientis, in Los Angeles.
[1:42] Speaker 3: And so I met Grady and his wife Phyllis, who
[1:52] Speaker 3: had never met Crowley, but had written Crowley since the
[1:56] Speaker 3: late 30s. Uh, she's an American too. Um, and at
[2:03] Speaker 3: the time they were married and I, I met, uh, uh,
[2:06] Speaker 3: both of them and, uh, they were able to answer
[2:10] Speaker 3: my questions directly. Uh, you know, did he eat babies?
[2:16] Speaker 3: You know, is it true? And, uh, you know, after
[2:21] Speaker 3: they stopped laughing, you know, they, they sort of took
[2:24] Speaker 3: me by the hand and, and, uh, and walk me,
[2:28] Speaker 3: walk me through it. Uh, and, um, then I also, uh, was, uh,
[2:35] Speaker 3: met and was friends with, and, uh, uh, on a
[2:40] Speaker 3: pretty regular basis in the, in the early, uh, uh, eighties.
[2:45] Speaker 3: I think I met him in 1979, uh, Francis Israel
[2:50] Speaker 3: regarding who was, uh, wasn't exactly a neighbor of mine,
[2:55] Speaker 3: but he was just, uh, over the hill, uh, in, uh,
[2:59] Speaker 3: studio city at the time. And, uh, he was Alistair Crowley's, uh,
[3:04] Speaker 3: private secretary in the 1920s. And he was, uh, one
[3:09] Speaker 3: of the, one of the only, uh, at the time, uh, Crowley, uh, biographers.
[3:16] Speaker 3: And I could, I could ask him straightforward questions and, uh,
[3:21] Speaker 3: just knowing those, those three people, uh, Oh, plus Helen
[3:27] Speaker 3: Parsons Smith, who had been married to Jack Parsons of
[3:36] Speaker 3: Strange Angel fame, the rocket scientist. There's a crater on
[3:42] Speaker 3: the moon named after him. He invented jet power takeoff.
[3:47] Speaker 4: Oh, okay.
[3:48] Speaker 3: So I met his widow, Helen Parsons. And she became
[3:55] Speaker 3: our close family friend until her death. And so I
[4:02] Speaker 3: was able to put a personal face on all of
[4:08] Speaker 3: these otherwise fabled characters.
[4:15] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[4:16] Speaker 2: Well, when you talk to them, do you kind of
[4:19] Speaker 2: get this feeling he was more Satirical in the sense
[4:24] Speaker 2: that he played off of the impression that he had,
[4:28] Speaker 2: gave this wrong impression because it was much larger than
[4:33] Speaker 2: life type of feeling. Going back to the magic that
[4:39] Speaker 2: was in him, the magician side, some people believe he
[4:42] Speaker 2: had some sort of special power. There was something special
[4:45] Speaker 2: with him on that side. So did he just have
[4:48] Speaker 2: this giant appearance or was there something more to it?
[4:53] Speaker 3: Oh, magic. We all have this magic power within us.
[5:00] Speaker 3: Ask any self-help person. We've all got the magic. Magic is,
[5:11] Speaker 3: I would say, it's a spiritual art form that does
[5:14] Speaker 3: deal with the unseen powers and abilities of inherent in
[5:22] Speaker 3: every human being, if they would only, you know, kind
[5:27] Speaker 3: of wake up enough to see what kind of a
[5:34] Speaker 3: wonderful spiritual entity they really are. So his magic was
[5:42] Speaker 3: quite serious. And for those who knew him, he took
[5:47] Speaker 3: the disciplines and the the, the, the literature of, uh,
[5:54] Speaker 3: of his, uh, of his magic quite seriously. So he wasn't, uh, uh,
[6:00] Speaker 3: he no longer had to, uh, you know, put on a,
[6:04] Speaker 3: on a false persona for his, uh, uh, his personal
[6:08] Speaker 3: students at all. He was, uh, he was, uh, quite, uh, uh,
[6:14] Speaker 3: in his own way, a guru kind of character, not
[6:19] Speaker 3: so much, uh, uh, he didn't want cult members.
[6:26] Speaker 4: Okay.
[6:27] Speaker 3: Uh, he, he, he thought that attitude was, um, uh, uh,
[6:36] Speaker 3: was too subservient to, to, for someone, uh, who was
[6:40] Speaker 3: learning to discover and, and, uh, uh, do their, their
[6:44] Speaker 3: own true will. And, uh, uh, so he was, uh,
[6:50] Speaker 3: He was quite serious. Now, there are those that would,
[6:57] Speaker 3: for a time, hang on his every word. You know,
[7:02] Speaker 3: like the characters in The Life of Brian. You know,
[7:05] Speaker 3: I have his shoe. He gave us his sandal. But
[7:11] Speaker 3: that didn't last long around Crowley because he really wanted
[7:16] Speaker 3: you to settle down. into self-discovery. And his whole thing
[7:23] Speaker 3: about do what thou wilt shall be the whole of
[7:25] Speaker 3: the law is more or less just a sublime philosophy
[7:32] Speaker 3: that every one of us, you and me and everybody,
[7:36] Speaker 3: every monad of consciousness is here because we need to
[7:42] Speaker 3: be here. We wouldn't even be sucking our breath in
[7:47] Speaker 3: and out unless there was something in this universe that
[7:51] Speaker 3: we need to do that can only be done by us.
[7:56] Speaker 3: And it's our job to find out what that is
[8:00] Speaker 3: and do it. And he was quite frank about saying,
[8:06] Speaker 3: if you discover what that is, that's your will. And
[8:11] Speaker 3: that That's what you're here to do, so do it, okay?
[8:17] Speaker 3: And if you find out what that is, that's exactly
[8:21] Speaker 3: the same thing that people for the last few thousand
[8:24] Speaker 3: years have been trying to say is God's will. And
[8:29] Speaker 3: he says it's a whole lot easier to find out
[8:32] Speaker 3: what your will is than it is to try to
[8:35] Speaker 3: guess God's what a God's will is for you, and
[8:38] Speaker 3: then attempt to cooperate with that. No, find out what
[8:43] Speaker 3: you're here to do, because everybody's got that job.
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[9:01] Speaker 5: was suffering with Not just one or two warts, but
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[9:06] Speaker 5: So significant it impacted his ability to really function.
[9:10] Speaker 6: Yeah, he was having trouble even holding a pencil to write.
[9:13] Speaker 6: It was Ty's book actually that got me thinking about it.
[9:16] Speaker 1: I'm not surprised.
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[9:21] Speaker 4: that it would work.
[9:22] Speaker 5: And so at what point did you see that there
[9:25] Speaker 5: was actually improvement? Is it really going to work?
[9:27] Speaker 6: Well, look, we really started to notice it around 12
[9:29] Speaker 6: weeks later. You can see these things actually getting smaller
[9:33] Speaker 6: and smaller and then going down to where they're just
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[9:42] Speaker 6: that's going to.
[9:42] Speaker 1: Wow.
[9:43] Speaker 4: It's just been miraculous to see him get into a
[9:46] Speaker 4: pair of shoes.
[9:47] Speaker 1: Yes.
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[9:53] Speaker 4: Our friends that have seen it, they're just blown away.
[9:55] Speaker 1: Ty, this is awesome.
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[10:20] Speaker 2: Playing off of that, when you look at what he's
[10:23] Speaker 2: saying there, and, you know, especially during that time frame,
[10:26] Speaker 2: late 1800s, early 1900s, when you hear things like that,
[10:31] Speaker 2: which is, you know, forget about God's will. You can
[10:34] Speaker 2: have your own will. You just have to find out
[10:36] Speaker 2: what it is. I think when people hear things like that,
[10:39] Speaker 2: they'll say, okay, and he's a magician, dark magic, dark arts.
[10:44] Speaker 2: He's kind of tipping his toe or even going even further,
[10:49] Speaker 2: fully embracing the dark magic side of things. Is that
[10:53] Speaker 2: true or is that just part of the lore behind them?
[10:56] Speaker 3: Well, that's part of the superstition that people would project
[11:01] Speaker 3: on something they don't understand.
[11:02] Speaker 4: Yeah.
[11:04] Speaker 2: So when people see that and he kind of did
[11:07] Speaker 2: his own thing, from what I understand, he kind of
[11:11] Speaker 2: rejected Christianity. So organized religion, things like that, he wasn't into.
[11:15] Speaker 1: So was he....
[11:18] Speaker 2: Is rejection the right word or was he against it? What, what,
[11:21] Speaker 2: how was his relationship with, let's say other religions?
[11:26] Speaker 3: Well, as far as, um, uh, the, the, the modern, um, uh,
[11:33] Speaker 3: his parents were, uh, Plymouth brethren, uh, which was, uh, uh,
[11:39] Speaker 3: kind of a Protestant cult. Uh, He was against ignorance
[11:45] Speaker 3: and superstition, no matter what form it took. As far
[11:52] Speaker 3: as the mystical and ethical teachings of Jesus, he had
[12:04] Speaker 3: no problem with that whatsoever. As a matter of fact,
[12:08] Speaker 3: Crowley's magic is sort of Kabbalah-based. which is, in a sense,
[12:16] Speaker 3: Jewish mysticism. And so the idea of the divine and
[12:24] Speaker 3: the consciousness of the singularity of Godhead and all of
[12:28] Speaker 3: that was all just perfectly fit in with Crowley's thing.
[12:34] Speaker 3: What didn't fit in with Crowley's things is fear and superstition.
[12:40] Speaker 3: And anything that would sort of even hint of being
[12:49] Speaker 3: a death cult of some kind. And the idea of
[12:59] Speaker 3: much of Crowley's nomenclature and the words that he used
[13:06] Speaker 3: and the imagery that he used and the metaphors that
[13:09] Speaker 3: he used were Christian metaphors. including his identity as the
[13:15] Speaker 3: beast 666.
[13:15] Speaker 4: Right, yeah.
[13:18] Speaker 3: This is another thing. It's simply an interpretation or the
[13:26] Speaker 3: misinterpretation of the last couple thousand years over those particular
[13:33] Speaker 3: verses in the book of the Revelations. And not that
[13:39] Speaker 3: he had any problem with the book of the Revelation.
[13:41] Speaker 3: He had a big problem with the interpretation of it.
[13:47] Speaker 3: And he saw that ages go in cycles. And in
[13:56] Speaker 3: a sense, the Christian era brought in a new cycle
[14:02] Speaker 3: of human consciousness and religious spiritual consciousness. And just as
[14:08] Speaker 3: it took over an older age, that will be overtaken, too,
[14:16] Speaker 3: in the normal course of human mental, literally, mental evolution.
[14:23] Speaker 3: You know, in that last 2,000 years, we figured that...
[14:29] Speaker 3: The sun doesn't go up and down. It's the earth
[14:32] Speaker 3: that turns around. That's pretty fundamental stuff. But it did
[14:38] Speaker 3: characterize that misconception, characterize the whole religious formula of a
[14:45] Speaker 3: couple thousand years. And now we know the sun stays
[14:49] Speaker 3: on all the time. And so we more or less...
[14:52] Speaker 3: in the back of our minds, realize that we stay
[14:55] Speaker 3: on all the time and that death and winter are
[15:01] Speaker 3: just the shifting of a shadow. And so in that
[15:06] Speaker 3: way of looking at things, using a vocabulary of images
[15:10] Speaker 3: that were already there, that were already used to seeing,
[15:15] Speaker 3: he identified with 666, which is actually the Hebrew Kabbalistic
[15:21] Speaker 3: number Of the sun itself.
[15:23] Speaker 2: Was he a numerologist, some people were asking?
[15:26] Speaker 3: Yes. He was a Kabbalistic numerologist, and to a degree
[15:34] Speaker 3: I am too.
[15:37] Speaker 1: Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
[15:41] Speaker 1: 1 a.m. Eastern and go to coasttocoastam.com for more.

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