Aleister Crowley, born Edward Alexander Crowley, was an English occultist, philosopher, ceremonial magician, poet, painter, novelist, mountaineer, and self-proclaimed prophet who founded the religion of Thelema. He remains one of the most influential figures in Western esotericism and counterculture, having popularized the movements with themes of Gnosticism, mysticism, egyptology, and more. Some of those themes made their way into the Latter Rain movement through William Branham and others, making Crowley as much of a grandfather to Latter Rain as was Illinois cult leader John Alexander Dowie.
One of Crowley's central themes used for Thelema was the notion of "celestial bodies." Crowley claimed that he, as the central prophet of Thelema, was entrusted with guiding humanity into the Æon of Horus. In his book, The Book of the Law, Crowley described the "unveiling of the company of heaven," wherein "Every man and every woman is a star, every number is infinite; there is no difference." Thelema described prophecy as progressive revelation, a theme that would become the core philosophy of Latter Rain "prophets." According to The Book of the Law, "All words are sacred and all prophets true; save only that they understand a little; solve the first half of the equation."
Latter Rain converts believed that celestial bodies were "watching the character" of the physical bodies of humans. William Branham, leader of the Revival, taught converts that the Zodiac was a Bible and that stars in the heaven were actually "messengers" declaring God's "Message."
Central to the "celestial bodies" doctrines of Crowley and Latter Rain was the notion that the human form was a "body of light," also called "astral bodies." The concept was not new to Crowley; it was a widespread belief among esoteric, occult, and mystical cult religions and found in the philosophy of Plato. According to this doctrine, the "astral plane" was made of "seven heavens" and physical bodies would ascend to the heavens to unite with the "bodies of light." According to Thelema, the bodies of light were "reincarnating" through "metempsychosis" — "the transmigration of a soul from one body to another after death."
Leaders of the Latter Rain movement used the term "light meters" to describe the human form of the "celestial bodies." According to Latter Rain, human bodies were filled with "cosmic light," some having a greater "light" and some having a lesser. This, according to the doctrine, was due to the amount of "God" in the human form. Lights that were nearer to the earth such as the flying saucer craze of the late 1940s through 1960s, according to Latter Rain, were "investigating angels" that would one day lift the "bodies of light" into the heavens as a "Rapture."
For Latter Rain and Thelema converts alike, the "watchers" on earth were used as angelic "spirit guides" to leaders of both movements. "Prophets" of the movements had the power to invoke spiritual "messages from God" by communic
