About
"La Chambre Des Cauchemars," Aleister Crowley's "Chamber of Nightmares," is where he taught magick.
In 1919, Aleister Crowley, the mystic and occultist also known as "The Great Beast," had a revelation. He told his followers that they must create an ideal temple - the Abbey of Thelema - in Cefalù, a small fishing town located on the Sicilian coast. This anti-monastery was intended to be a place where they could live by Crowley's Law of Thelema every single day. Crowley had been renown for introducing sex and drugs as ritualistic practices within the syncretic system he called Magick; and his philosophy of finding one's "True Will" would later be summarized through his famous slogan "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law". This call for individual freedom from society's conventions and norms influenced much of 1960s counterculture, ultimately cementing Crowley's status as a pop icon in esoteric studies--the so-called Oscar Wilde of esoterica. Fifty years before they reached this level of fame, however, Crowley was busy setting up his very own occult temple in Sicily.