Controversies

The historicity of Crowley’s reception of The Book of the Law is, by its nature, not externally verifiable. Crowley himself oscillated between framing the event as the dictation of a real discrete intelligence and as a phenomenon of his own deeper consciousness; the modern Thelemic communities differ on which framing they accept.

The British press persistently attacked Crowley personally throughout his life, often inaccurately. Some criticisms were grounded: the Abbey of Thelema in Cefalù was closed and Crowley expelled from Italy by the Mussolini government in 1923 following the death of one of his followers, Raoul Loveday, from contaminated water and the resulting press coverage of practices at the Abbey.

The relationship between Thelema as an open religious system and the institutional bodies (O.T.O., A∶A∶) that claim particular authority within it remains a source of internal disagreement.