This definitive work on the occult’s “great beast” traces the arc of his controversial life and influence on rock-and-roll giants, from the Rolling Stones to Led Zeppelin to Black Sabbath. When Aleister Crowley died in 1947, he was not an obvious contender for the most enduring pop-culture figure of the next century. But twenty years later, Crowley’s name and image were everywhere. The Beatles put him on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The Rolling Stones were briefly serious devotees. Today, his visage hangs in goth clubs, occult temples, and college dorm rooms, and his methods of ceremonial magick animate the passions of myriad occultists and spiritual seekers. Aleister Crowley is more than just a biography of this compelling, controversial, and divisive figure—it’s also a portrait of his unparalleled influence on modern pop culture.

The Book of Lies was written by English occultist and teacher Aleister Crowley under the pen name of Frater Perdurabo. As Crowley describes it: "This book deals with many matters on all planes of the very highest importance. It is an official publication for Babes of the Abyss, but is recommended even to beginners as highly suggestive." The book consists of 91 chapters, each of which consists of one page of text. The chapters include a question mark, poems, rituals, instructions, and obscure allusions and cryptograms. The subject of each chapter is generally determined by its number and its corresponding Qabalistic meaning.

Growing up in Southern Illinois in the 1960s, Addison Albright appears to be a typical mischievous teen - even though the manner in which birds flit from branch to branch in the placid suburb troubles him. Oddities in his childhood memories also cause him to wonder if things are really as they seem in "Little Egypt"? The one person who might know is the town villain, Maxx "Molewhisker" Schaufler - a former undertaker with a hotrod hearse who Addison encounters in a private cemetery with curious grave markers. Not only is the old codger's appearance unusual, there's something peculiar about his ramshackle Victorian that Addison soon comes to realize. As a series of perplexing events has him teetering on the brink of insanity, someone else is attracted to Molewhisker's afflicted mirror: a scholarly biker named Zerrill who claims to be a member of an epigraphic society. After involving himself in the strange relationship between the enigmatic Schaufler and the boy struggling to free himself from his mysterious control, his true agenda is called into question. Exploiting the town folk to achieve his cryptic objective, the narrative darkens when Addison becomes infatuated with a gorgeous college girl with esoteric interests. As the three match wits while attempting to unravel a local legend that could revise world history, their lives will be forever changed when they discover the shocking truth revealed in the othering.