I suddenly want the next album to a concept album based on the works of Aliester Crowley. I want it to have an Eddie dressed as Satan on the front cover and for the album to contain at least one backwards message like on piece of mind except rather than it be Nicko farting around I want it to be Bruce reading a passage from the satanic bible!
Now if Maiden did that,
I'd boycott them. Crowley wasn't a Satanist, but a self-proclaimed Magus. His philosophy has absolutely nothing to do with Satan, and the overlaps in symbolism, terminology and practice between Thelema and Satanist movements are incidental and almost always superimposed by the latter on the former. Crowley interpreted a few Biblical terms for the sake of provoking the Victorian public, but he had no interest in devil worship or sectarian promotion.
The Satanic Bible was written by Anton LaVey, whose inspiration from Crowley was at best passing; the two had nothing to do with each other.
Maiden already have a few songs based on Crowley's writings, most notably Revelations and Moonchild. They also have a song called Lord of Light which any self-respecting Evangelical fundamentalist should hate with a passion.
It is worth noting that the depiction of Eddie as he appears in the LOTB artwork has only a
very passing resemblance to Éliphav Lévi's famous depiction of Baphomet. Lévi used the traditional name of an idol that a Templar said he worshiped while under torture, and re-interpreted it as a spiritual version of himself adorned with what he thought to be pagan symbols. He didn't mean to inspire people to worship the devil, but to make them seek out forms of spiritualism beyond Catholic dogma. This is one of the main roots of modern Occultism and all the bullshit it contains. Crowley considered himself a reincarnation of Lévi, and LaVey basically grabbed whatever he liked from books he didn't read thoroughly and pictures he didn't understand.
Nothing of the symbology of the Baphomet drawing is in the Eddie, and not even the horns are right. Just about the only thing you could match the two with is the pentagram on the forehead. Lévi is indeed the originator of the inverted pentagram as a popular occult symbol, but on his Baphomet drawing, it stands on two feet, while the Eddie drawing it is inverted. The guy who drew this obviously knew about the symbol, less so perhaps its meaning, and may have seen that Baphomet thing long ago, but it's clear that he didn't really think much about it.
I'm not a fan of Crowley, LaVey, Occultism or Satanism. It's all a lot of bullshit that some highly erudite scatterbrains randomly assembled from whatever sources they felt like. But I want to set the record straight, because there is very much misinformation about it. Many people to this day believe these people sacrifice virgin babies and have sex with the devil, when they are just a bunch of weirdos who think they have it all figured out. What's crazy is that I've even known some Christians who actually believe that there are dark forces summoned somewhere.
Bottom line: Get your Occultism right if you're going to talk about it, and then take it easy.
