Issue 3 - Fever Dreams E-Zine

ARTICLE > HAUNTED HISTORIES(above) Photograph of Boleskine House (P. Meredith June 2012)ago this unassuming building, BoleskineHouse, was the power-base of notoriousoccultist, poet and drug-addict AleisterCrowley.Aleister Crowley was born into a wealthyMethodist family in 1875 and had, by allaccounts, an indulgent childhood. He claims tohave lost his virginity at 14, and in hisCambridge memoirs discusses at length thevoracious life style he indulged in with bothmen and women. Sex would be an importantpart of his life from that point onwards.His memoirs tell of an epiphany that occurredwhilst staying in a hotel in Stockholm. Heawoke to a sensation of ghostly terror which,he attests, turned into the sensation of purestecstasy. This epiphany persuaded him tobecome involved with occultist Samuel LiddellMacGregor Mathers and the Golden Dawn.The Golden Dawn embraced the entire gamutof spiritual knowledge from Christianity toKabbalah. Once initiated into the order asBrother Perdurabo, Crowley was instructed tobuild an oratory. With his inheritance hepurchased the eighteenth century farmbuilding in Inverness-shire and prepared toperform a ritual from The Book of SacredMagick of Abra-Melin the Mage. He describesthe alterations to his home in The Confessionsof Aleister Crowley, which was published in1922.“The first essential is a house in a more orless secluded situation. There should be adoor opening to the north from the room ofwhich you make your oratory. Outside thisdoor, you construct a terrace covered withfine river sand. This ends in a ‘lodge’where the spirits may congregate.”Crowley was determined that Boleskine Houseshould become a focal point for magicalenergies, and while we will never beabsolutely sure of what occurred within itswalls, there is sufficient evidence to suggestthat Gnostic masses were practiced. Thesemasses were no doubt the inspiration forFEVER DREAMS ISSUE 3