The latest fad of Hollyweird is Satanism itself, dressed up as a revival of the late occultist Aleister Crowley’s (1875–1947) sex cult, Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) or Thelema.

Aleister Crowley in ceremonial magik costume on right

The Daily Mail reports, April 21, 2013, that celebrities are now falling for an even more sinister “religion” of Ordo Templi Orientis – the “Satanic sex cult” founded by Aleister Crowley, b. 1875, who styled himself “the Great Beast 666″ and reveled in being called “the wickedest man in the world.”

Crowley was born into an upper-class evangelical Christian English family. He fashioned a form of worship involved sadomasochistic sex rituals with men and women (Crowley was openly bisexual), spells which he claimed could raise malevolent gods, and the use of hard drugs, including opium, cocaine, heroin and mescaline.

Crowley’s motto and that of OTO is “do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law,” which is also the motto of the contemporary Church of Satan.

The new-old Satanic cult has snared stars such as Peaches Geldof, Jay-Z, and Led Zeppelin guitariist Jimmy Page. The latter is so intrigued by Crowley he bought his former home, Boleskine House, on the shores of Loch Ness in Scotland.

Peaches Geldof (left), a 24-year-old socialite whose father is the Irish singer-songwriter Bob Geldof, had flirted with Scientology and Kaballah. Recently, she shared her “religious” convictions with her 148,000 followers on Twitter, and even has the cult’s OTO initials tattoed on her left forearm.

There are now OTO lodges scattered around the country, practicing Crowley’s ceremonial magik rituals. While membership is secret, Geldorf is said to have been initiated into it, raising the prospect that many of her impressionable fans could try to do the same.

Indeed, when one of her Twitter followers asked how she could find out more about Thelema, Geldorf directed her to read his books, which she described as ‘super interesting’.

Rapper Jay-Z has repeatedly purloined imagery and quotations from Crowley’s work. Some examples:

• Wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with “Do what thou wilt”.
• Hiring singer Rihanna to hold aloft a flaming torch in his music videos. The torch is a reference to the Illuminati.
• Jay-Z’s clothing line, Rocawear, is shot through with OTO imagery such as the “all seeing eye” in a triangle, the “eye of Horus” (an ancient Egyptian symbol frequently referenced in occult texts) and the head of Baphomet.
• Jay-Z even has a song to “Lucifer” in his 2003 The Black Album. (See my post “Pop Culture Satanists.”)

A former FBI agent, Ted Gundersen, who investigated Satanic circles in Los Angeles, found that Crowley’s teachings about “raising demons to do one’s bidding” suggested human sacrifice, preferably of “an intelligent young boy.”

On December 1, 1947, at age 72, Crowley died of chronic bronchitis aggravated by pleurisy and myocardial degeneration.

So much for magik.

Here’s a video showing singers Bob Dylan and Katy Perry, and rappers Kanye West and Eminem, admitting they’d sold their souls to the devil: