Aleister Crowley Pendant Turned Me Evil

In news from the UK comes a sinister tale of a pendant allegedly once owned by occultist Aleister Crowley. As a student of Crowley's works myself, I don't recognize anything specific about the design, shown above. It looks like a brass rod with a chain on one end and a knob on the other running through bone that has skulls and bones carved into it. If I were trying to sort the symbolism, brass is Mercury and bones are related to death, so some sort of psychopomp energy? But even that's kind of a stretch.

The self-styled 'Great Beast' has been alleged to have owned the now derelict building in west Cornwall and it has been suggested he might have used it as a base for his occult practices after an unusual death took place there in the 1930s.

Now I know nothing about Crowley working in Cornwall, or anything about a suspicious death connected with him that took place there - and I've even read John Symods' The Great Beast, which is chock full of made-up evil that Crowley allegedly committed. Maybe one of the Crowley historians out there can correct me, but as far as I know none of that story is true.

At any rate, the pendant was purchased at auction by Candice Collins, a collector of occult and paranormal memorabilia, who jumped at the chance to add an item owned by Crowley to her collection. She hoped to open an occult museum in the future, and such a piece would be a great addition. But once the piece was in her possession, she felt it calling her to wear it all the time and never be away from it.

Not put off by this though, mum-of-three Candice said she is delighted to have acquired the "once in a lifetime piece" but having it around her house has not been without its challenges. "When I received it we'd had a couple glasses of wine and I thought I'd get it out, have a look at it and hold it and it turned me quite bizarre," she said. "My curiosity gets the better of me sometimes and I just picked it up and was holding it for ages and felt like I didn't want to let it go. I just wanted to wear it all the time." She claims this spurred her on to say "weird things" about worshipping the devil and says despite now having taken it off and put it away that she feels it "calling her" and feels drawn to put it back on.

"My partner said I started saying some really weird things that I don't even remember like 'it would be really cool to worship the devil' and some other really dark things and I wouldn't give it back. "After he'd taken it off me for four or five days I was feeling depressed and suppressed and just very dark from it all," she added. "The objects draws you to want to hold it and I think that's the energy attached it." Her partner Nick Pearse, 54, said he was confused about what was going on describing how Candice started kissing and stroking the pendant. Consequently it has had to be put away out of the house, and out of her reach.

So a couple of points here. "Evil" is not a metaphysical force, and neither is "Good." Magick is a technology, and it makes about as much sense to talk about black and white electricity as it does to talk about black and white magick. It all has to do with how it's used. A correllary to that would be that objects don't become "evil" by being around someone "evil." Just the fact that something was owned by Crowley doesn't mean it is necessarily empowered to do anything but sit there.

And Crowley did not "worship the devil." Thelemites don't do that. We work towards the accomplishment of our True Wills, which represent our innermost spiritual truths. If it's really true that the pendant wasn't just owned by Crowley, but specifically enchanted by him, it probably would do something along those lines. Anything that resonates with your True Will is going to feel welcoming and harmonious. But all it does beyond that is bring out your true self. So maybe Collins' True Will is to worship the devil?

That's about the best I can do if we assume this is a real paranormal incident connected with Crowley. If you dispense with that, a lot of other possibilities emerge. It could have been owned by a different magician, and maybe the strange death attributed to Crowley was actually the work of whoever that magician was. It's completely unclear what a random occultist might have enchanted the pendant to do. Or maybe, just maybe, this is nothing more than a highly effective operation undertaken with the goal of getting Collins' name in the news. Succes is your proof, and it clearly has worked.