Requiem Vampire Knight 6: The Great Beast 666

Anyone researching Crowley can go down endless rabbit holes. The one that interests me is his connection to the paedophile Tom Driberg.

This volume has some of the most splendid art so far. It’s absolutely amazing – from the medieval battle on the ice which opens the story to the baroque splendour of the Hellfire Club. I believe Olivier told me he based the architecture on the Vatican.

The character who dominates this episode is Black Sabbat, Aleister Crowley, ‘The Great Beast’. I researched him carefully, read everything I could find on him, and his own paintings feature in the story. He is romanticised in popular culture and seen as an icon, but that’s not a view I share. I loathe him because he glamorises evil and makes it attractive to the gullible, and I don’t think there’s any glamour in my or Olivier’s portrayal of him. He is living in Hell, after all. The speech by the demon Aiwass was largely inspired by Crowley’s writings.

I first came across him as a kid, reading Dennis Wheatley occult novels, which I found totally enthralling. I believe Wheatley based the black magician Mocata in The Devil Rides Out on Crowley. Crowley also wrote the Gnostic Mass, which I believe inspired a local group of Ipswich occultists that I encountered in my youth.