Aleister Crowley is one of the 20th centurys most infamous characters.

The self-styled Great Beast also dubbed The Wickedest Man In The World was a leading occultist, linked to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and black magician.

Crowley lived his sexually freewheeling life very much by his own edict of "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law".

He visited west Cornwall and it is said by some that he summoned up the very Devil himself in Carn Cottage, which led to a womans death, and performed a black mass down the hill in Zennor church.

What many may not realise is that in 1934, Crowley, then aged 58, was introduced to a 19-year-old from Newlyn named Patricia Doherty.

Three years later she gave birth to the boy Crowley considered his son and heir, Randall Gair Doherty, who was nicknamed Aleister Ataturk.

Ataturk, who was based in west Cornwall for many years, lived a life that was both colourful and tragic; blighted by schizophrenia and the pressure of being Aleister Crowleys son.

Also known as Aleister Macalpine and Count Charles Edward D'Arquires (or D'Arquies), he was best known for considering himself the Adjudicator of the Supreme Council of Great Britain.

According to the Cornish writer Des Hannigan, who knew Aleister Ataturk, the Supreme Councils Acting Private Secretary, Peter Bishop, believed that everyone should sit at the bottom of Cornish mine shafts and be transformed into super beings when a shaft of sunlight struck them.

Writing on the Art Cornwall website, Mr Hannigan said: I was walking down Madron Hill one day when Aleister stopped in a fairly smart car. I was delighted to see him although he had become very pompous and even more otherworldly.

He gave me a lift into town and right there and then offered me the job of Fisheries Minister in his 'Government'. 'You would be ideal, Hannigan', he said, 'not just because of your fishing background but because you have the right appearance. Blond hair and blue eyes...' I decided that Aleister, who was always right of centre to say the least, had tipped over into the (fascist Oswald) Mosley mindset. I declined the exalted position.

Ataturk was very serious about taking over the UK government by persuasion.

In 1976 he hired a posh limousine, complete with Supreme Council pennants, and was chauffeur-driven to London with Bishop alongside him.

Always renowned for his dress he was often seen around west Cornwall in jodhpurs, riding boots and sunglasses Ataturk left Madron for 10 Downing Street, dressed in uniform with gold trimmings, epaulettes and velvet cape.

The colourful pair tried to get into Downing Street for an audience with Prime Minister Harold Wilson in order to persuade him to join their Supreme Council.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the PM refused their offer after receiving their message. Ataturk and Bishop stayed in the Dorchester Hotel all the same.

In the 1960s, Ataturk lived in a caravan in the grounds of his mother's house Wheal Betsy at the top of Chywoone Hill in Newlyn.

Later he lived in the imposing former Madron Workouse, which was built in 1838 and intended to accommodate 400 inmates.

It was while living there that Ataturk started a family and styled himself Count Charles Edward D'Arquires (or Darquies), a title given to him by his father when he was young.

The Cornishman newspaper reported how he was asked to quit the property by bailiffs in 1976. A crowd gathered to see him leave, in full regalia, as he set off in a chauffeur-driven Austin Princess for London where he was planning to meet the French ambassador to see if our granite heritage can be saved.

The newspaper reported: The Supreme Council aims to save the nation from its dilemma and darkness and in a bid to save his home, a former isolation hospital now known as Mount View Flats, he decided to appeal to France for help.

The Tricolour of France was hoisted to fly alongside the Union Jack, and he asked for the protection of the Republic of France, and wrote seeking the support of the President, M Giscard DEstaing.

I have done this because I am a French count and also because this was built by French prisoners of war in 1836, he said.

His bid to create a Supreme Council fizzled out and in the ensuing years Ataturk became deeply religious and, sadly, his mental health deteriorated. At one point he was found living on a park bench, just off Talbot Road in London with his suitcases neatly organised beside him.

He died in a car crash in Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire, in 2002 aged 65.

Many people in west Cornwall still remember the tall, formidable man and his outlandish dress and behaviour.

The son of a devout Christian couple, Edward Alexander Crowley was born in Leamington Spa in 1875. His father was a preacher, but after his dad died of tongue cancer when Edward was just 11, he turned to the dark side.

After Malvern School and Tonbridge College, he read Natural Sciences at Trinity College, Cambridge. He would outright defy all Christian morals by smoking and having sex with prostitutes. For his behavior, his mother referred to him as the Beast, a title which he reveled in.

On a visit to Sweden, he experienced a life-changing vision which persuaded him of his spiritual vocation, a calling which he marked by changing his name to Aleister.

In 1889, Crowley met a chemist named Julian L Baker, a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which he subsequently joined. The order was devoted to studying paranormal activity and all matters of the occult.

Crowley continued to experiment with his bisexuality and sex with prostitutes. However, while the lifestyle for him was eye-opening and spiritual, the higher level members of the Golden Dawn considered it too libertine and refused to allow him entry into the upper levels, writes All That's Interesting.

Crowleys interests combined the erotic and the esoteric. He published poetry, including a volume of verse described by one critic as the most disgusting piece of erotica in the English language'.

Gradually he evolved his own set of beliefs which drew on Oriental, ancient Egyptian, and an assortment of other traditions. His sexual preoccupations were equally various. He took many lovers both male and female and practised a form of sex magic.

A brilliant climber, big game hunter, and inveterate traveller, Crowley explored Mexico, India, Egypt, America, and much more besides. In the first two decades of the 20th century, he wrote a series of tracts outlining his philosophy.

The Law of Thelema a word taken from the Greek for Will was, he claimed, dictated to him by an ancient Egyptian spirit. It laid out the key principle of life, as Crowley saw it: the pursuit of each individuals will, unconstrained by popular opinion, law, or conventional ethics.

In 1920, he moved to Sicily, where he established the Abbey of Thelema as the headquarters for his new religion. Here he pursued spiritual enlightenment, declaring himself Ipssissimus beyond the Gods in 1921.

He also experimented with sex and drugs. In 1923 an Englishman died in mysterious circumstances after a ritual during which he was said to have consumed the blood of a cat. The British press and the Italian fascist government were equally appalled. Crowley was expelled from Sicily, the Abbey closed, and the group dispersed.

During the Thelema Abbey scandal, one newspaper referred to Crowley as the wickedest man in the world. He would have denied this, claiming that his work was truly good because it freed men from earthly rules and opened up truly spiritual experiences.

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Although impoverished, disgraced, and a near-skeletal heroin addict, Crowley never lacked followers.

He fathered several children (including Cornwall's Aleister Ataturk), most of them illegitimately, and was still in demand as a medium and a magus to the end, designing a new sequence of tarot cards and commentating on it at some length in his Book of Thoth of 1944. He died, in Hastings, in 1947.

His fame only increased after death. There are still groups who call themselves Thelemites, and his tarot cards and books are still popular.

He was taken up by the counter culture of the 1960s and can be seen on the cover of the Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album and featured in David Bowie's song Quicksand.

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Legendary occultist Aleister Crowley's son from Cornwall who tried to take over the government - Cornwall Live