In this episode, Troy the Devil-Man sits down with longtime friend and returning guest Lon Milo DuQuette to discuss his long-awaited new book "Young Aleister Crowley and The Magician's Revolt" published by Weiser Books.
Lon reveals that this project has been nineteen years in the making, born from a 2007 conversation with O.T.O. brother and film writer Jim Bukowski, who believed a fantasy treatment of Crowley's early life had real potential as a feature film. What followed was a remarkable series of transformations: screenplay to book, back to screenplay, then into a twelve-episode television format, and finally into the expanded novel Weiser has now published, the first work of fiction the press has ever taken on.
The conversation explores the specific period Lon chose to focus on, Crowley's entry into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn as a young, wide-eyed initiate. Far from the legendary Beast of later years, this Crowley is naive, brilliant, and outrageous in equal measure. Lon explains that Crowley's arrival was the catalyst that fractured the Golden Dawn entirely, giving the story genuine dramatic stakes with real historical roots and room for invention.
Lon walks Troy through the book's narrative structure, a device inspired by The Princess Bride in which the framing story opens at Crowley's 1947 funeral. A young Hollywood screenwriter and O.T.O. initiate interviews the fictional film director Sir Francis Bendick (drawn from one of Crowley's own pen names) in the days before his death. The old man insists the only way to tell this story truthfully is as a fairy tale, because fairy tales and myths outlast objective history. From there, the narrative travels across multiple lifetimes and dimensions, weaving in actual magical rituals from Crowley's own published works.
A pivotal sequence involves the Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage and the story of Abraham the Jew seeking out Abramelin in the Egyptian desert. Lon describes a confrontation with four Djinn that humbles Abraham before they transform into guides, leading him to the mage who tells him the only teacher he hasn't met yet is himself. The conversation explores how this concept of the Holy Guardian Angel, of self-realization as the prerequisite for any genuine magical work, runs as the central thread through the entire book.
Lon connects this theme to the briefcase in Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, the MacGuffin whose contents are never shown but whose light illuminates every face that looks inside. The Holy Grail, he says, is always the Holy Grail, regardless of who is searching for it or what they've done to earn the quest.
The episode also touches on the book's multimedia journey. Lon describes the audiobook as closer to an old-fashioned radio play than a standard reading, and mentions early positive reviews from figures including Alan Moore, whose own The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic name-checks Lon's work. He also recalls that during an earlier stage of the project, playwright Snoo Wilson connected him with Alan Rickman, who had always wanted to play Crowley and signed a letter of intent before the project stalled.
Troy and Lon discuss Strange Angel, the television series about Jack Parsons, and the theory that writing L. Ron Hubbard into the show so early made the production legally untouchable for completion. They reflect on what the public appetite for this kind of transgressive, esoteric content in popular formats really signals, and what it means for a project like this one.
Coming up for Lon: a three-day Chicken Kabbalah workshop in Joshua Tree, California, next spring, hosted by Magical Retreats. Rabbi Lamed Ben Clifford is expected to make a rare appearance.
Previous Scholomance appearances by Lon Milo DuQuette:
- Constructing Yourself with The Tarot Architect
- Is Freemasonry Esoteric with Bro. Lon Milo DuQuette, EFC 2022 Keynote
- Ask Baba Lon with Lon Milo DuQuette
Find Lon online: londuquette.com
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