Masters of Darkness

Aleister Crowley ; 12 October 1875 – 1 December 1947), born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, mystic and ceremonial magician, responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. He was also successful in various other fields, including mountaineering, chess and poetry, and it has also been alleged that he was a spy for the British government. In his role as the founder of the Thelemite faith, he came to see himself as the prophet who was entrusted with informing humanity that it was entering the new Aeon of Horus in the early twentieth century. Born into a wealthy upper class family, as a young man he became an influential member of the esoteric Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn after befriending the order's leader, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers. Subsequently believing that he was being contacted by his Holy Guardian Angel, an entity known as Aiwass, whilst staying in Egypt in 1904, he received a text known as The Book of the Law from what he believed was a divine source, and around which he would come to develop his new religion of Thelema. He would go on to found his own occult society, the A∴A∴ and eventually rose to become a leader of Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), before founding a religious commune in Cefalu known as the Abbey of Thelema, which he led from 1920 through till 1923. Crowley was also a bisexual, a recreational drug experimenter and social critic. In many of these roles he "was in revolt against the moral and religious values of his time", espousing a form of hedonism based upon the rule of "Do What Thou Wilt".Because of this, he gained widespread notoriety during his lifetime, and was denounced in the popular press of the day as "the wickedest man in the world." Crowley has remained an influential figure and is widely thought of as the most influential occultist of all time. In 2002, a BBC poll described him as being the seventy-third g

This provocative and emotionally unsettling video examines the realities behind the myth of the Marquis de Sade (1740-1814), the French author who, charged with numerous sexual offenses, spent half of his adult life in prisons or asylums. His obscene romances, such as Justine and The 120 Days of Sodom, written clandestinely during the French Revolution, argue that sexually deviant and criminal acts are natural since they exist in nature. Today his writings are felt to have foreshadowed much modern psychological thought and to reflect aspects of our own troubled society. But was he a prophet, or merely a pornographer? A misogynist or a founding father of feminism? Does he deserve his reputation as a major literary figure and revolutionary thinker? Featuring excerpts from several film adaptations of Sade’s work, plus interviews with scholars, critics, biographers and historians, including David Coward, Andrea Dworkin, Camille Paglia, Francine du Plessix Gray, Richard Seaver, and Neil Shaeffer, this video reveals the various and often conflicting interpretations of Sade and his writings.

Some say that Dr John Dee's genius led him to become deranged and deluded, others believe he was in league with angels and devils. He caused uproar in 16th-century Europe with his 'angelic conversations' - and he inspired the character of Prospero in William Shakespeare's The Tempest and the main character in Christopher Marlowe's Dr Faustus. But was Dee really 'a conjurer of wicked and damned spirits' or simply the dupe of a clever con man?

In the winter of 1903 a mysterious peasant with hypnotic eyes arrived in St Petersburg from the wilds of Siberia. 13 years later he had become “the dark force behind the throne,” one of the most powerful men in Russia, and the seed of its destruction. This is the story of Grigory Rasputin.