"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law…" These are perhaps the most famous words ever spoken by Aleister Crowley.

Aleister was born Edward Alexander Crowley in Leamington Spa, England on October 12, 1875. His parents, strict fundamentalist Christians, gave him a thorough biblical education as he grew up, which perhaps led to his seeming revulsion towards Christianity. Dubbed everything from "the devil's disciple" to "one of the most infamous figures of the first half of the twentieth century," even his own mother nicknamed this self-styled "wickedest man in the world" as "the Beast."

He attended Cambridge University's Trinity College, though he left just before completing his degree. In 1898 he was initiated into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, an occult society led by S. L. MacGregor Mathers and including notable members such as A. E. Waite, Dion Fortune, and W. B. Yeats. In 1900, however, the order fell apart by schism, and Crowley departed England to travel the East.

In 1903 he married Rose Kelley, one year younger than himself. They took their honeymoon in Egypt, but before they even reached the Far East she was pregnant with their daughter, whom Aleister would later christen Nuit Ma Ahathoor Hecate Sappho Jezebel Lilith. At Rose's prompting, in 1904 he composed possibly his most renowned work, Liber AL vel Legis, or The Book of the Law. In 1906 he returned to England to rejoin his friend George Cecil Jones, who had first introduced him to the Golden Dawn. They undertook the task of creating a new magical order to resume the work of the Golden Dawn, and called this new group 'Astrum Argentium' or Silver Star.

Crowley died in Hastings, England on December 1, 1947. His writings and deeds left an incredible, though often disturbing, legacy. His final words: "I am perplexed. Sometimes I hate myself."