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Raking over the coals of Hell: the deviant philosophy of ‘do what you will’
How the dissolute ‘Hellfire Clubs’ of the 18th century fanned the flames of notoriety down to our own times
Having followed the career of the cultural historian Geoffrey Ashe over many years, I was delighted to see that a new edition was being published of his definitive study of the infamous 18th century ‘Hell-Fire’ clubs — the secret societies of libidinous rakes and dandies of the day — and their influence and legacy.
The Secret History of the Hell-Fire Clubs: From Rabelais and John Dee to Anton LaVey and Timothy Leary (Bear & Company, US $18.99 / UK £15.50, October 2019) is, in fact, the fourth edition of this work, first published in 1974 as Do What You Will: A History of Anti-Morality.
It traces the clubs’ origins to two key 16th century figures: François Rabelais, the French Renaissance writer, physician, monk and scholar, from whom the Hell-Fire motto ‘Do what you will’ is derived directly, and the magician John Dee, the occult philosopher, astronomer-royal to Elizabeth I, astrologer and mathematician.
The motto appears in Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–64, published in English 1693–94) as the only rule of his imagined utopian abbey of Thélème (from…
