"Beast or poet? Monster or moralist? Charlatan or magician? Genius or madman?"
These are the questions William Seabrook, the great writer on such things as zombies and witchcraft, posed when, in weekly instalments published in various American newspapers between April 1st, 1923 and June 17th, 1923, he presented the public with a startling exposé on his close friend Aleister Crowley, the famous occultist who was "one of the most complex characters in the modern world, and one of the most extraordinary in human history."
Under the title of Astounding Secrets of the Devil-Worshippers' Mystic Love Cult, the series promised to reveal the intimate details of Crowley's unholy rites, his power over women, his drug orgies, his mysticisms, and his startling adventures around the globe as "the Beast of the Apocalypse."
Presented here for the first time in book form, this remarkable group of chapters, which reads like a decadent novel, not only delivers on the advertised goods, but provides an intimate revelation of the man whose creed was "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law."
