In 2002, the British Broadcasting Corporation polled its viewers for the names of those they believed were the greatest Britons of all time. The BBC compiled the feedback and came up with a list of the top 100 greatest men and women in all British history. One of the names on that list, at number 73, was Aleister Crowley.

Crowley polled ahead of Robert the Bruce, J.K. Rowling, Chaucer, Henry II, J.R.R. Tolkien, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Richard Burton, among others. So, who is Aleister Crowley and why should we care?

There is no doubt Crowley had a significant impact on Great Briton, even the world. It is difficult to see, though, how anyone could view the impact he had as being great.

Crowley was born in 1875 to a wealthy English family. His father, an evangelist, raised Crowley as a Christian. If his father had not died when Crowley was 11, things might have turned out differently for Alister. Following his father’s death, Crowley became unmanageable for his mother. He began questioning Christian teachings and he completely turned away from his early moral upbringing. He started challenging his teachers, took up smoking and began to frequent prostitutes. He became so unruly his mother called him “the Beast,” a nickname he proudly retained for his whole life. After having a child, he insisted that his daughter call him by that name, and she did.

Crowley’s parents had named him Edward Alexander Crowley, but at 20 he changed it to Aleister since he loathed the nickname, Alec (in his biography Crowley spelled it Alick), that his mother called him.

While Crowley attended Cambridge University he engaged in torrid sexual relations with both men and women, was introduced to the occult through an organization called the Golden Dawn and became captivated by the practices. And he became involved with magic and with the ritual use of drugs.

Crowley later became disillusioned with Golden Dawn because the leadership found him to be too hedonistic. After graduating, Crowley travelled the world. He climbed mountains in Mexico and later in India. While in India he developed an interest in yoga and meditation.

After two years abroad, Crowley returned to Europe, to Paris, where he joined a friend from Cambridge, Gerard Kelly, who eventually became a famous painter. During his time in Paris, Crowley met and fell in love with Kelly’s younger sister, Rose. He married her initially to save her from an arranged marriage she did not want, but later they fell in love with each other.

Rose enthusiastically shared Aleister’s beliefs and bizarre sexual preferences. They traveled together and she helped create and develop Crowley’s new Religion, Thelema, which had been partially inspired by Golden Dawn. They wound up having two daughters, one of whom died of typhoid. Apparently because of grief from this loss, Rose started drinking heavily. A few years later, Crowley and Rose divorced and by 1911, Rose was institutionalized.

Crowley continued to develop his religion.

Around 1920 Crowley and several followers traveled to Sicily and set up his Abby of Thelema at Cefalu. He and his acolytes remained at the Abby engaging in their depraved sexual and occult practices until Benito Mussolini caught wind of what they were doing. Mussolini was so disgusted he ordered Crowley and his followers all deported.

After travelling in North Africa for a time, Crowley eventually returned to England where he concentrated on writing. In his books and articles he promoted the occult, sexual excess and sexual liberation, and a no limits anything goes lifestyle. Crowley believed in and engaged in unfettered sex with same and opposite sex partners, even with children and teens. His followers followed suit.

It was about this time that the British press labeled Crowley the “wickedest man in the world.” That’s pretty bad considering all the evil going on in the early 20^th century—the rise of organized crime, the emergence of Fascism, the slaughter of the Russian Revolution . . . the horrors perpetrated by the architects of World War I.

Undaunted, Crowley continued to promote his religion, Thelema, and pleasure seeking lifestyles that recognized none of the boundaries of civilized society. His followers were encouraged to do whatever they wanted which was the first principle of Thelema: “’Do What Thou Wilt’ is the whole of the law.” The original list of foundational obligations for Thelemites were:

• To discover and express one’s own Will.

• To abstain from knowingly restricting others from discovering and expressing their own Will.

• To attempt to eliminate those forces that restrict the discovery and expression of Will (i.e. Tyranny, Superstition, and Oppression).

There are dozens of Thelemic orders throughout the United States and Europe today. “Do What Thou Wilt” remains the first principle, but over the years the original “obligations” have been expanded and clarified as follows:

• Each individual has a Will (or ‘True Will’ to distinguish it from one’s wants, wishes, and desires), their purpose on Earth, a Nature to fulfill, and each person’s sole right and duty is to find that Will and to do it.

• Each individual is Divine, the center of their own universe. This is one central meaning of the phrase ‘Every man and every woman is a star.’

• Each individual therefore has their own unique Way in the world, with their own unique ‘good’ and ‘bad’ suitable to their Nature.

• Each individual has the right to be who they are, especially in terms of sexual and gender identity. There is no ‘preferred’ gender identity in Thelema except the one that is the best fulfillment of your nature. As it is said, ‘Take your fill and will of love as ye will, when, where and with whom ye will?’

• Thelemites engage in various spiritual practices, often those of Magick (sic) and Yoga, to try to deepen their understanding of their true nature and Will.

Prominent people took an interest in Crowley in increasing numbers after he died at age 72 in 1947. One of his admirers was Alfred Kinsey. After publishing his two earth changing books, “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male,” and “Sexual Behavior in the Human Female,” Kinsey traveled to Crowley’s home, to locations of the orders of Thelema, and to the Abby of Thelema in Sicily. He was looking for original material on the sexual practices Crowley engaged in, especially for Crowley’s diaries on sex magic. Kinsey was unsuccessful.

Others, too, became enamored with Crowley’s teaching. The Beatles included a photo of Aleister Crowley on the cover of their album, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” and John Lennon said the Beatle’s philosophy was the same as Crowley’s, asserting “[t]he whole Beatle idea was to do what you want, right?  To take your own responsibility.” David Bowie, wrote Crowley into his song, Quicksand,

“I’m closer to the Golden Dawn, Immersed in Crowley’s uniform, I’m not a prophet or a stone age man, Just a mortal with potential of a superman”

Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin bought Crowley’s former home in Scotland, and Timothy Leary was inspired by Crowley when he encouraged his 60’s followers to “turn on, tune in, and drop out.” Leary believed he was carrying on what Crowley started.

Even Jack Parsons, a rocket scientist who founded NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab was a devoted follower of Crowley. So it was not just members of the counter-culture who were enamored with Crowley’s vision of a hedonistic lifestyle.

Many of Crowley’s  books remain available on Amazon today. And his philosophy has become infused throughout Western culture.

Does this make him a great man? There is no objective measure by which he could be considered great. Yet he has had a profound influence on us, starting with the counter-culture of the 60’s and 70’s and extending right into the 21^st century. The occult, the new age religion, the bondage to pleasure, the desire to ever expanding sexual boundaries, his shadow envelopes it all.

No. He was not great. Evil is the more appropriate term.

But what does this say about us? How can a man go from being considered the wickedest man on earth, someone so depraved Mussolini couldn’t allow him to remain in Italy, to being considered one of the greatest men in the history of Great Briton, a nation whose empire once spanned the entire globe? How did this happen?

Darkness is now viewed as light. Evil is now seen as good.

Where is the church?

Written by Dr. Everett Piper

Students are taught self-esteem and sexual promiscuity more effectively than science and civics

Hardly a day goes by that you don’t hear the question: How did we get in this mess?

Where did this lunacy come from, and how did it all happen so quickly?

Well, let’s play a game. Let’s play “imagine.”

Imagine that we live in a day where we intentionally sever a man’s arm from his body and then expect him to win a fight.

Imagine that we live in a country where it’s common practice to remove a woman’s eyes from her head and then ask her to paint her portrait.

Imagine that ours is a time where we surgically alter a child’s frontal lobe and then demand he explain an algebraic formula.

Imagine that we live in such a world; a world where, as C.S. Lewis warned, the elite among us claim it makes sense to “remove the organ and demand the function;” a time and a place where we “geld the stallion and then “bid him be fruitful.”

Just imagine. As John Lennon said, “it’s easy if you try,”

How did we get in this mess?

One answer: As Richard Weaver said, “Ideas have consequences.” Education matters.

Why would we expect decades of teaching sexual promiscuity in our schools to result in sexual restraint in our students? Why are we surprised at the selfishness of our culture when we have immersed several generations of our children in a curriculum that teaches self-esteem more effectively than it does science and civics? How can we possibly think that teaching values clarification rather than moral absolutes will result in virtuous people?

Where is there any evidence in all of human history that the subordination of a child’s right to be born to an adult’s right to choose ever resulted in the protection of any individual’s unalienable right to life? And why would any culture ever think that after decades of diminishing the value of marital fidelity that the same culture would then be able to mount a vigorous defense for the meaning of marriage and morality, or anything else for that matter?

This list could go on and on. The evidence is clear. All you need to do is Google the daily news to see the proof. When you have schools that revel in separating fact from the faith, head from heart, belief from behavior and religion from reason, the result will never be liberty. It will always be licentiousness.

Severing things that should be united has a very predictable result. “Removing the organ while demanding the function” gives us “men without chests,” an electorate of those who have nothing but a gaping cavity in the center of their being; a callousness of mind; an emptiness of conscience; vacuity where there should be virtue. As the wisdom of Solomon tells, cutting babies in half always results in dead babies.

Ours is a day of delusion. We destroy ourselves by our dishonesty. We boast of freedom and yet live in bondage to deception. We champion human rights, yet we ignore the rights promised to us by reason, revelation and our own Constitution. We march for women while denying that women are even real.

We claim to stand for the dignity of children but remain silent while their dignity is mocked in the ivory tower’s grisly game of sexual nihilism. We are what M. Scott Peck called “people of the lie.” The road to hell is before us, and we enter its gates strutting with the confidence of an emperor with no clothes. And, when we are challenged, we belittle the “incredulous rubes” and the “deplorables” who dared shout out of our nakedness.

Santayana once said that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Well, here is one irrefutable lesson of the past: Ideas always have consequences. Education matters. It will always lead somewhere. Our schools will either take us toward the liberty found in that which is right and just and true and real or toward the slavery made of our own dysfunction and lies.

Why are we in this mess? It is because of our local schools, colleges and universities. When you relentlessly work to remove the next generation’s soul, you should not expect your culture to stay out of hell.

“All your life long you are slowly turning … either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, and rage … Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.” — C.S. Lewis “Mere Christianity”

Dr. Everett Piper, former president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, is a columnist for The Washington Times and author of “Not A Day Care: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery 2017). This article was originally published at the WashintonTimes.com.

Written by Austin Ruse

Matthew Shepard was the winsome young homosexual in Laramie, Wyoming who in October 1998 was tortured, killed, and left hanging grotesquely from a fence. He was discovered almost a day later and later died in the hospital from his horrific wounds.

On the night of October 6, Shepard met “two strangers” in the Fireside Lounge in Laramie. The two men offered Shepard a ride home but instead drove him to a remote area, robbed him, beat him with pistols, and left him splayed on a fence.

Cops found the bloody gun along with Shepard’s shoes and wallet in the truck of the two men — Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson.

McKinney and Henderson claimed the “gay panic” defense, that they freaked out when Shepard came onto them sexually and killed him in a rage. They made other claims, too, but were convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

Almost immediately Shepard became a secular saint, and his killing became a kind of gay Passion Play where he suffered and died for the cause of homosexuality against the growing homophobia and hatred of gay America.

Indeed, a Mathew Shepard industry grew rapidly with plays and foundations along with state and even national hate crimes legislation named for him. Rock stars wrote songs about him, including Elton John and Melissa Etheridge. Lady Gaga performed John Lennon’s “Imagine” and changed the lyrics to include Shepard.

Thanks to a new book by an award winning gay journalist we now know that much of this narrative turns out to be false, little more than gay hagiography.

As gay journalist Aaron Hicklin, writing in The Advocate asks, “How do people sold on one version of history react to being told that the facts are slippery — that thinking of Shepard’s murder as a hate crime does not mean it was a hate crime? And how does it color our understanding of such a crime if the perpetrator and victim not only knew each other but also had sex together, bought drugs from one another, and partied together?”

This startling revelation comes in The Book of Matt to be published next week by investigative journalist Stephen Jiminez, who over the course of years interviewed over 100 people including Shepard’s friends, friends of the killers, and the killers themselves.

According to The Advocate, one of the premier gay publications in the country, Jiminez “amassed enough anecdotal evidence to build a persuasive case that Shepard’s sexuality was, if not incidental, certain less central than popular consensus had lead us to believe.”

Even before Shepard died, two of his friends were peddling the narrative that he died at the hands of vicious homophobes. Within days the gay establishment latched onto what would drive the hate crimes story for years to come; even now, the Laramie Project, a stage play about the killing is performed all over the country. Indeed, it will be performed next week at Ford’s Theater in Washington DC.

But what really happened to Matthew Shepard?

He was beaten, tortured, and killed by one or both of the men now serving life sentences. But it turns out, according to Jiminez, that Shepard was a meth dealer himself and he was friends and sex partners with the man who led in his killing. Indeed, his killer may have killed him because Shepard allegedly came into possession of a large amount of methamphetamine and refused to give it up.

The book also shows that Shepard’s killer was on a five-day meth binge at the time of the killing.

As to be expected, Matthew Shepard Inc. is rallying to denounce the new narrative that his homosexuality had little or nothing to do with his murder. The Matthew Shepard Foundation released this statement:

Attempts now to rewrite the story of this hate crime appear to be based on untrustworthy sources, factual errors, rumors and innuendo rather than the actual evidence gathered by law enforcement and presented in a court of law. We do not respond to innuendo, rumor or conspiracy theories. Instead we recommit ourselves to honoring Matthew’s memory, and refuse to be intimidated by those who seek to tarnish it. We owe that to the tens of thousands of donors, activists, volunteers, and allies to the cause of equality who have made our work possible.

The agenda of the sexual left lives on lies. As we all know now, the back-story that brought us Roe v. Wade was a lie. And here we find the Matthew Shepard story was also a lie.

The sexual left approves of such lies because they get to what they consider to be an underlying truth. The author of The Advocate piece writes, “There are valuable reasons for telling certain stories in a certain way at pivotal times, but that doesn’t mean we have to hold on to them once they’ve outlived their usefulness.”

This article first appeared at the Brietbart.com blog. You can see the original article and comments HERE.