In April 1920, Aleister Crowley, the self-styled Great Beast 666, To Mega Therion, and prophet of Thelema, moved into a dilapidated farmhouse in Cefalù, Sicily, dedicating it as his Abbey of Thelema. This was named after the Abbaie de Thélème in the 16th-century scatological satire Gargantua And Pantagruel by French writer François Rabelais, the motto of which was ‘Fay ce que vouldras’ (‘Do what you will’), a clear influence on Crowley’s Thelemic creed of ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law’. Accompanying Crowley were an American woman, Leah Hirsig (who had a few colourful titles of her own – First Concubine Of The Beast, The Scarlet Woman, The Ape Of Thoth, Soror Alostrael, and Virgin Guardian Of The Sangraal), her two-year-old son Hansi, and Anne Leah, nicknamed Poupée, her baby daughter with Crowley. In addition, there was a Frenchwoman named Ninette Shumway – Second Concubine Of The Beast, Soror Cypris – and her young son Howard.

Crowley envisaged running the Abbey as a magickal training centre, but his time there was not an unmitigated success. There was, predictably, constant squabbling and jealousy between the First and Second Concubines. Tragically, baby Poupée died in hospital in October 1920 of a mystery illness. Her mother Leah, who was pregnant again, miscarried six days later. Ninette, who was eight months pregnant herself, was expelled from the Abbey at Leah’s instigation.

Over the following few years, a stream of Crowley acolytes and curiosity-seekers spent time at the Abbey. There were daily ceremonial observances and magick rituals. There was sex, lots of it, and much of it unorthodox. There were drugs, lots of them, including heroin, cocaine, hashish and mescaline. Crowley suffered from asthma, which he took heroin to alleviate, and it was during this period that he became a heroin addict. He eventually conquered the habit in the late 1920s, but became addicted again through medical prescription in the 1940s, and was an addict at the time of his death in 1947. Ironically, in 1922 he published a potboiler novel entitled Diary Of A Drug Fiend, which features an idealised portrayal of the Abbey of Thelema and advocates Thelemic principles as a cure for drug addiction. In the same year, the Abbey became the subject of lurid accounts in the English press, notably the Sunday Express and John Bull, who accused Crowley and his disciples of all sorts of evil practices, including bestiality, cannibalism and human and animal sacrifice. It was at this time that Crowley’s reputation as ‘The Wickedest Man In The World’ – or, as John Bull put it, ‘A Man We’d Like To Hang – was cemented.

Further tragedy ensued in February 1923, with the death at the Abbey of a young man, Raoul Loveday, apparently from enteric fever as a result of drinking contaminated water. The Abbey’s coup-de-grace came two months later, when Mussolini’s Fascist government expelled Crowley from Italy, as part of a crackdown of secret societies. Crowley and Leah Hirsig decamped to Tunis, leaving behind a farmhouse covered in Crowley’s erotic and blasphemous murals, which were painted over by local villagers. In the 1950s, underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger spent a summer at Cefalù uncovering these murals. The Abbey stands in ruins today, with fragments of Crowley’s paintings still visible.

K 11 is a project of Italian sound installation artist and philosopher Pietro Riparbelli, who travelled to Cefalù in 2007 to make recordings among the ruins of Crowley’s abbey. Riparbelli has also made a number of releases under his own name and as PT-R, but the project name K 11 is reserved for work made using ‘only sounds from the atmosphere and from invisible, unknown sources.’ He describes Voices From Thelema as ‘an instrumental trans-communication action with short wave radio receivers realized inside Thelema Abbey in Cefalù, October 14, 2007’ – which makes me wonder why he didn’t make the recording on October 12, which is the anniversary of Crowley’s birthday.

Voices From Thelema contains three tracks, totalling just over an hour of playing time, and entitled ‘156’, ‘418’ and ‘666’ – all these are numbers which are of numerological significance within the Thelemic system. 666, as any fule or Iron Maiden fan kno, is the Number of the Beast, but 418 represents the word Abrahadabra, which according to Crowley is ‘the Word of the Aeon, which signifieth The Great Work accomplished’, as well as being a possible value of Aiwass, Crowley’s Holy Guardian Angel, and 156 is the numerical value of the word Thelema (Greek for ‘Will’).

The exact methods employed by Pietro Riparbelli on these recordings are far from clear to me, but what this absolutely doesn’t sound like is somebody twiddling with a load of radio sets, which I’ve heard many and many a time. Instead, this music is dense, absorbing ambient, with multiple shifting layers of sustained tones, drones and resonances, and fugitive passages of orchestral music occasionally interspersed with broken fragments of spectral, distorted voices. With the use of radio equipment at a location with such a notorious history, I guess that Riparbelli was intending to capture EVP (‘electronic voice phenomena’) communications from departed spirits, and it’s not hard to imagine them forming part of this sonic mix. ‘156’ opens with a quite mellow, expansive atmosphere, but grows steadily harsher and more unsettling, introducing waves of abrasive feedback and engulfing noise around the 15-minute mark, reaching a deafening crescendo at around 23 minutes before ebbing away into silence. ‘418’ has a thinner, more drone-based sound, with pure, modulated singing bowl-like tones stretching out over a backdrop of cold industrial ambient. ‘666’ opens with a heavy, oppressive wall of angsty, textured buzz like a hive full of agitated bees, subsiding over time into thin, abstract drones and white noise, with a sluggish rhythmic undertow discernible in the background. Of the three pieces, ‘156’ is the one I found most interesting – certainly, it offers more incident and variation than the austere, clinical minimalism of ‘418’ and ‘666’.

Andrew, the head honcho at Aurora Borealis, offers the opinion that ‘to my mind it sounds akin to some of Tim Hecker and similar Kranky artists’, but to be honest, I have no idea who he’s talking about. I offer this comparison in the hope that it means something to someone out there. Surely he doesn’t mean the Krankies? Fandabidozi! To my ears, K 11 sounds quite similar to some TenHornedBeast, Vidna Obmana, Hati or Z’EV material. Whether or not Voices From Thelema totally succeeds in its intention of capturing the ‘genius loci’ of Cefalù, this is a high-quality ambient release with an intriguing concept.

The packaging of Aurora Borealis releases is always pretty special, and Voices From Thelema is even more special than most, with the album coming in a digipack sleeve containing a 32-page full colour booklet full of haunting photos of the ruins of the Abbey. There’s also a Quicktime video on the disc of a walk around the Abbey and its surroundings, which is quite interesting, though it would have been more effective with some kind of soundtrack. These bonus features by themselves should make this album a tempting acquisition for Crowley buffs and Thelemites. Crowley’s paintings look like fragments of ancient Roman frescos – the Aeon of Horus has passed into the realm of archaeology. Pietro Riparbelli will be bringing K 11 to London for a live performance as part of the occultural Equinox Festival in June 2009. I for one intend to be there.

www.pt-r.com

www.myspace.com/pietroriparbelli

www.aurora-b.com

www.myspace.com/auroraborealisrecords