User Profile

I was born Israel Regudy to Jewish immigrants in London, I moved to Washington D.C. with my family in 1921 at the age of 13. I developed an interest in occult matters early on and joined Societas Rosicruciana in America in 1926.

After reading a copy of Book Four by Aleister Crowley, I started a correspondence with Crowley, later moving to Paris to become Crowley's secretary in 1928. In his diaries, Crowley called Regardie "the Serpent." In 1932 we had a rather large falling out with snide words said on both sides, but later I made my peace with Crowley.

I was an initiate of Ordo Templi Orientis under Crowley, and after Crowley's death, I was sometimes seen as a neutral arbiter of claimants to the work of that Order.

I wrote a full-length biography of Crowley called The Eye in the Triangle. Crowley's magical theories and techniques are very evident in my magical textbook The Tree of Life. I also served as an editor for many of Crowley's posthumously published books, including Gems from the Equinox, The Law is for All, Magick Without Tears, and Roll Away the Stone.

In 1932 I joined an offshoot of the Golden Dawn called Stella Matutina and quickly found the order was starting to fall apart. In order to preserve the knowledge of the order, I took the bulk of the Order's documents and compiled the book, The Golden Dawn (1937), which earned me the enmity of the other former members and the reputation of being an oath-breaker. In this respect, I was following in Crowley's footsteps; the older man had published condensed versions of the Golden Dawn rituals and instructions in The Equinox two decades earlier. The greater accessibility of my book cemented the status of the order's work as a wellspring of occultism for 20th century practitioners.

The various occult organizations claiming descent from the original Golden Dawn and the systems of magic practiced by them owe much of their continuing existence and popularity to Regardie's writings. In 1983, I accepted honorary initiation to the 6=5 Adeptus Minor grade from one such group headed by Pat and Chris Zalewski in Wellington, New Zealand. In the following year, he finished The Complete Golden Dawn System of Magic, a book which featured full ritual texts and instructions from the original Golden Dawn, rather than the later Stella Matutina revisions.

In 1937 I moved back to America and took up the study of psychology and psychotherapy and later started up his own practice. I grew frustrated with the doctrinaire qualities of the various psychological schools, though I claimed a certain adherence to the work of Wilhelm Reich. I was disappointed by my own brief experience with the Jungian school.

Throughout my later life, i have been an outspoken critic of the therapeutic establishment in medicine and psychology.

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