2007. Pencil on illustration board.

Portrait of Aliester Crowley.

Aleister Crowley, born Edward Alexander Crowley, (12 October 1875 – 1 December 1947), was a British occultist, writer, mountaineer, poet, and yogi. He was an influential member in several occult organizations, including the Golden Dawn, the A∴A∴, and Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), and is best known today for his occult writings, especially The Book of the Law, the central sacred text of Thelema. He gained much notoriety during his lifetime, and was dubbed "The Wickedest Man In the World."

Crowley was also a chess player, painter, astrologer, hedonist, bisexual, drug experimenter, and social critic. He was a 33 degrees Freemason, but the regularity of his initiations have been disputed by a member of the Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon.

Aleister Crowley died of a respiratory infection in a Hastings boarding house on 1 December 1947 at the age of 72. He had become addicted to heroin after being prescribed morphine for his asthma and bronchitis many years earlier. He and his last doctor died within 24 hours of each other; newspapers would claim, in differing accounts, that Dr. Thomson had refused to continue his opiate prescription and that Crowley had put a curse on him.