Jimmy Page

The collector who bought the house — homage and collecting documented, depth disputed.¹²³

Documented connection

Page bought Boleskine House, Crowley’s former estate on Loch Ness, around 1970, and in 1974 opened the Equinox Booksellers and Publishers in Kensington, an occult bookshop whose first title was a facsimile of Crowley’s 1904 edition of The Goetia. He was a serious collector of Crowley manuscripts, first editions, and robes. He also met Kenneth Anger — a fellow Crowley collector — at a Sotheby’s auction, scored part of Anger’s Lucifer Rising, and housed Anger at Boleskine.

Held-open — the depth, and the backmasking myth

The collecting, purchase, and homage are documented; whether Page was a practising Thelemite or a wealthy collector-dabbler is genuinely contested — Anger himself, after the two fell out, called him a “dabbler.” The claim that “Stairway to Heaven” hides Satanic messages played backward originates in a 1982 television broadcast and the era’s backmasking panic; it is an externally imposed reading, not an act of the band, and is carried only as that.

Role in the thesis

Homage at its most invested — a musician who bought the man’s house and books — and still, on the record, homage and collecting rather than documented initiation. The reverberation is dense here; the depth of belief is the open seam.

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1. Jimmy Page, interviewed by William S. Burroughs, 'Rock Magic,' Crawdaddy (June 1975) — Page in his own words on Crowley, magic, and Boleskine ↩︎

2. Boleskine House record — Page's purchase of Crowley's former estate c. 1970 ↩︎

3. The Equinox Booksellers and Publishers, 4 Holland Street, Kensington (1974–79); its facsimile of Crowley's 1904 The Goetia ↩︎

Referenced by. Where this entry is cited in the reading — hover any to read it in place.

• A Face in the Crowd — “The furthest anyone took it, while still on the record only taking it that far, was Jimmy Page.”