He was a poet, magician, mountain climber and drug fiend but what the name Aleister Crowley conjures up is a shadowy figure synonymous with the number of the beast.
From boyhood stories of torturing a cat to test the nine lives theory to tabloid reports of rituals involving sex with goats, this was a man who courted controversy and still fascinates people today.
His obsession with strange powers kept him dancing on the mad side of genius for most of his life and he spent years practising rites all over the globe.
He first hit the headlines in the late 19th Century when he made perilous ascents off Beachy Head.
But it was in the Twenties, when he set up the notorious Abbey of Thelema in Sicily, he was branded the wickedest man in the world.
Loveday, one of his brothers at the centre of occult and sexual magic, died when he killed a cat and drank its blood (although some blame impure water).
His widow ran to the English media with scandalous stories and the tabloids went wild.
Under headlines such as The King Of Depravity and A Human Beast Returns, accounts of sacrifices, promiscuous sex and drug abuse rocked the world.
Crowley spent his later years as a hated figure rotting in a deckchair in Hastings, riven by poverty, poor health and an addiction to heroin.
Yet, despite the horror with which this enigmatic man was received in his lifetime, many have since admired his work which lives on in books and a tarot pack.
Many have also debated how much was truth and how much media-fuelled fiction.
Crowley's writer/actor Damien Wright says it was a fantastic case of tabloid journalism picking on a character and exploiting that image.
He was living in a time of Hitler, Stalin and the Second World War.
People were being slaughtered in their masses and, yet, all the wickedest man in the world did was sacrifice a cat.
The play is the last part of a trilogy, Magickal Sickness, by the Periplum Tree Theatre Company, which explores the lives of historical figures who dealt in magic.
The first two plays featured Artaud and Rasputin and premiered at The Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Crowley blends biography with artistic licence, delving into his spectacular life story.
Starts 8pm, tickets £8/£6. Call 01273 647100.
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