Wanderer of the Wastes: Aleister Crowley, The Great Beast, as Mountaineer
The ordinary man looking at a mountain is like an illiterate person confronted with a Greek manuscript.–Aleister Crowley
Boasting in his Confessions, Aleister Crowley (1875–1947), with all the braggadocio of youth, claimed he was “white-hot on three points; climbing, poetry and Magick.” All these pursuits were to define his early career as a mountaineer, poet and magician. Given his immersion in the latter two, Crowley’s hitherto neglected mountaineering career has only recently excited a renewed interest by his various biographers. This presentation intends to put into context Aleister Crowley’s controversial mountaineering career particularly regarding his involvement in the first ever attempt to scale K2 (1902) and then Kangchenjunga (1905), the world’s second and third highest peaks. Through his revelatory discovery of the relatively new Victorian sport of rock-climbing during his teenage years, Crowley developed a keen awareness of technique and methodology and eventually set his sights on attempting to conquer two of the most challenging and treacherous Himalayan peaks.
Having climbed throughout the British Isles and then the Alps, Crowley came under the wing of Oscar Eckenstein (1859–1921), his mountaineering superior. As a preparatory exercise, they both climbed Mexico’s highest peaks in 1900, creating a number of fast high-altitude ascents. There, it was decided to make an attempt to conquer K2, led by Eckenstein, which ended in failure. Joined by Dr Jules Jacot Guillarmod (1868–1925), Crowley then made an attempt upon Kangchenjunga, on which he led, but which also ended not only in failure but also controversy. It was an abject disaster from which Crowley’s reputation would never fully recover.
Despite a yearning to try his luck again on Himalayan peaks, it was an ambition that for Crowley would remain unfulfilled. Nonetheless, his interest remained which would never be completely subdued despite his ostracisation from the mountaineering establishment.
Drawing upon recent research, this presentation aims to reassess Crowley’s mountaineering career by offering a more nuanced and better-balanced view of his achievements in the nascent art of Himalayan mountaineering at the outset of the twentieth-century.
Biography
Andrew Wiseman is a cultural historian, specialising in the Scottish Highlands from the late medieval to the modern period, who has developed a keen interest, perhaps even an unhealthy one, in Boleskine House and its long-held association with the iconoclastic occultist Aleister Crowley. He is currently editing a number of works and has authored around twenty chapters and articles as well as numerous blogs and mainstream publications. As author of the forthcoming title Lord Boleskine: Aleister Crowley and the House of the Beast 666, a detailed and engaging account of Crowley’s residence at his Highland home will be offered as well as the controversial legacy which he left in his wake.
Image: Aleister Crowley, Aimé Dupont Studio, 5th Ave, New York, May 1906
Curated & Hosted by
Marguerite Johnson is a cultural historian of the ancient Mediterranean, specialising in sexuality and gender, particularly in the poetry of Sappho, Catullus, and Ovid, as well as magical traditions in Greece, Rome, and the Near East. She also researches Classical Reception Studies, with a regular focus on Australia. In addition to ancient world studies, Marguerite is interested in sexual histories in modernity as well as magic in the west more broadly, especially the practices and art of Australian witch, Rosaleen Norton. She is Honorary Professor of Classics and Ancient History at The University of Queensland, and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. She lives in Mytilene on the Greek island of Lesvos.Image: Aleister Crowley, Aimé Dupont Studio, 5th Ave, New York, May 1906
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