aleister crowley: the man, the myth, the shadow
back from the borderline
mollie adler
4.8 • 602 Ratings
🗓️ 7 October 2025
⏱️ 121 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Aleister Crowley is one of the most mythologized figures in modern history. He’s been called a prophet, a fraud, a genius, a junkie, a saint, and a monster. His face shows up on a Beatles album cover, his words show up in Led Zeppelin’s lyrics, and his fingerprints stretch across Wicca, Scientology, chaos magic, and the counterculture. Crowley set out to make himself a legend, and it worked.
This episode breaks down his writings, rituals, and the birth of Thelema. We track how his ideas split into factions, how Gerald Gardner lifted from him to launch Wicca, and how L. Ron Hubbard borrowed from his playbook before developing Scientology. We look at his phallic obsessions, the trail of broken relationships he left in his wake, and all the mystical highs and lows. We also delve into the parts of Crowley that still disturb even modern Thelemites.
In this episode, our goal is neither worship nor outright condemnation. That would be far too easy. My hope is listeners will leave with a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the influence Crowley had on the spiritual underground and the mainstream that followed. By the end, you’ll see why his work keeps resurfacing and why his name still divides people to this day.
Many people encounter Crowley’s name early in their spiritual search and either run from him or romanticize him. This episode aims to gives you what I wanted for myself at the start of my own journey with inner work: the tools to read Crowley critically, take what resonates, and leave the rest.
UNLOCK BONUS EPISODES, VOICE NOTES & THE FULL ARCHIVE
Join the BFTB Patreon community and become a Premium Submarine, where you’ll unlock hundreds of hours of paywalled content I’ve been building since 2021.
⟁ Visit backfromtheborderline.com for free resources, updates, and everything else I offer.
⟁ Or go straight to patreon.com/backfromtheborderline to join now.
Once you’re in, you’ll get a private feed you can add to Spotify, Apple, or your favorite podcast app, so you can listen to every episode I’ve ever released, all in one place.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Long-term listeners of this podcast know that I've spent the last five years talking about the dark. |
| 0:06.5 | Now I've built a flashlight, and it's called Moods. |
| 0:10.4 | It's an instrument for serious, private inner work designed to dismantle your excuses and never |
| 0:15.7 | inflate your ego or assume the role of a sycophantic companion. |
| 0:19.6 | And the wait list is finally live. |
| 0:21.7 | Access is granted in the exact order you sign up. |
| 0:24.8 | Lock in your spot now at moods.world. |
| 0:28.8 | Welcome to the new era of inner work. |
| 0:41.2 | Welcome to Back from the Borderline. |
| 0:46.6 | I'm your host, Molly, and I don't want to talk to your personality. I want to talk to your soul. |
| 0:55.3 | This isn't your typical mental health podcast. Here, we are dismantling the system, stories, and cultural scripts that keep us stuck. |
| 1:03.9 | We talk about radical sovereignty, philosophy, toxic shame, spirituality, emotional alchemy, culture, and AI, |
| 1:08.2 | and how all of that collides at the center of the human experience. |
| 1:12.6 | This space is for anyone who's tired of feeling reduced to a diagnosis, |
| 1:18.8 | a label, or a role they never consciously chose. I don't believe your pain is a pathology or that your struggles are signs of disorder. I reject the idea that your distress is something broken |
| 1:23.9 | that needs to be fixed with a pill or a label. What I do here is deeper. Together, |
| 1:30.3 | we learn how to unhook from toxic programming, from society, dysfunctional family systems, |
| 1:35.3 | and from the parts of ourselves that learned to survive instead of thrive. You might be wondering |
| 1:40.3 | why a podcast like this includes the word borderline. That's intentional. |
| 1:45.0 | I'm reclaiming this word from psychiatry, pulling it back from the world of stigma and diagnosis, |
| 1:50.7 | and turning it into something sacred, because the truth is we all have to go to the edge to find ourselves, |
| 1:57.0 | into our darkest corners, and we all have them. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from mollie adler, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of mollie adler and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.