In 1920 he established the
Abbey of Thelema, a religious commune in Sicily where he lived with various followers until his libertine lifestyle saw him evicted by the Italian Government three years later.
The so-called sinister
Abbey of Thelema turned out to be a whitewashed bungalow!
Koester's silent film Morning of the Magicians, 2005, recounts his visit to the
Abbey of Thelema, a dwelling in Cefalu, Sicily, named as such by Crowley and his followers in 1920, where until mid-1923 they practiced an unusual philosophy that mixed communitarian living with magic.
He travelled widely, settling for some years in Sicily with a group of disciples at the
Abbey of Thelema. Rumours of drug abuse, orgies, and magical ceremonies led to his expulsion from Italy.
While Crowley claimed his signature phrase was dictated to him via a disembodied entity called Aiwass, it can be traced back to both Rabelais (whose
Abbey of Thelema in Gargantua and Pantagruel had a similar slogan) and St.