Aleister Crowley was born Edward Alexander Crowley on October 12, 1875, in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, into a wealthy and intensely religious Plymouth Brethren family. His father, Edward Crowley, was a successful brewer turned lay preacher whose death in 1887 profoundly affected the young Crowley, fostering both a lifelong rebellion against evangelical Christianity and an obsessive engagement with religion in transformed, esoteric forms.