Controversies

Crowley was the subject of sustained tabloid hostility in the British press during his lifetime, much of it inaccurate but some of it grounded in incidents at the Abbey of Thelema in Cefalù, from which he was expelled by the Italian government in 1923.

Modern O.T.O. has been involved in extended litigation over its name, copyright in Crowley’s works, and competing lineage claims, most prominently against the body originally known as the “Society Ordo Templi Orientis” (SOTO) in the late twentieth century. The order’s position on which competing line is the legitimate continuation of Crowley’s order remains disputed by other claimants.