Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) was known by his enemies as “the wickedest man in the world” and by himself as “the Beast 666”. A bisexual, recreational drug user and self-styled prophet, he shaved his head bald, filed his incisors into points and invented a new religion, which he called Thelema, the libertinist tenets of which had been revealed to him by “preternatural intelligences” in 1904. He transcribed their message into his sacred text The Book Of The Law , and subsequently appointed himself Outer Head of the Order of the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), a movement thought to have begun in Germany towards the end of the 19th century which Crowley remodelled around his new religion.