Budget $9.5m

Location Belgium

At the funeral of Lester Rowley, an young newspaper reporter is told Rowley’s life story by his old friend, Lord Greyhall. Greyhall recounts Rowley’s mischievous childhood, coloured by regular beatings from his Priest father, and an increasing interest in the occult as a young man.

Rowley rises through the ranks at the ‘Order of the Golden Dawn’, an occultist order attracting many of the celebrities and creative talents of the period, including Arthur Conan Doyle and W B Yeats. But soon Rowley his friend Macgregor Dathers try to take the Order over toward a new and darker level. When the Order’s leaders pressure Rowley and Dathers to leave their cult, Dathers and Rowley go to Paris to form their own new Order. They are concerned with the art of invoking and summoning spirits and soon build up notoriety as occultists.

During his travels in France in the1920s, Rowley encounters many young budding artists and writers of the period, some who are fascinated by his occult work, and others fearful and disgusted by it, these include Somerset Maugham and Ernest Hemmingway.

While staying at Dathers’ plush mansion in Paris, he and Rowley ask spirit’s guidance on how to proceed with forming their new Order. Then Dathers is visited by a beautiful young man called, ‘Horus’ who claims to be a reincarnation of occultist legend ‘Eliphas Levi’. Rowley is sceptical of ‘Horus’ and his wife’s claims, but Dathers takes their arrival as a sign sent from the spirit world, and invites them to move into his mansion with him. Rowley and Dathers argue about the couple and finally part ways.

Rowley returns to Scotland to his sprawling Estate Manor in the countryside, where he is visited by his old friend, an aristocrat and painter, Gerald Kelly, and his sister Rose. After dinner one night, Rowley is asked to demonstrate his abilities and invoke a spirit, which goes awry and ends up terrifying Rose, who becomes possessed by a demon. Rowley finally exorcizes the demon, and the experience marks the beginning of a romantic relationship with Rose that eventually leads to their marriage.

After marrying, on their honeymoon in Egypt, they spend a night inside the Cheops Pyramid where, under the effects of Opium, Rowley sees the spirit of Egyptian goddess ‘Aiwass’ taking possession of Rose’s body. Rose as ‘Aiwass’ in a trance beings to dictate to Rowley, ‘The Book of the Law’, an ancient text concerned with conjuring spirits, and how to live one’s life in grace.

Rowley returns to Paris and Dathers’ inspired, believing that his experience at Cheops marks the dawn of a new frame of thinking for mankind. However, Rowley finds Dathers in a foul mood, unwilling to put his faith in him after having just been conned by the young couple who he’s taken in earlier, stole all the jewels and money. He is also sceptical of Rowley’s revelations from ‘The Book of the Law,’ and jealous of his reputation, and ends his association with him. The friendship ends bitterly with Dathers and Rowley both unleashing curses and demonic attacks upon one another, until Dathers’ death.

Rowley becomes more and more eccentric as time passes, dabbling in drugs to help conjure spirits in his occult experiments. Rose is drawn into his hedonistic existence, and slowly becomes a full blown alcoholic. Rowley pushes on engaging in more and more daring and challenging pursuits, for example, climbing Mt. Everest. He climbs it with Lord Greyhall and at one point leaves Greyhall behind to continue his trek to the summit.

Rowley travels the world, running out of money, and ends up in Nepal in an opium den, when another old friend and accomplished writer, Alan Bennett, comes to the rescue. Alan gets Rowley back on his feet writing about the occult and his adventures, and a UK publisher buys his diaries. He uses the funds to set up his own cult in an old abandoned church abbey in Italy, where he proceeds to instruct students in the arts of spirit invocation involving the use of drugs and sexual freedom as aides. The abbey draws the attention of U.S. movies starlets, writers and celebrities from all over the world.

Rose by this time has been is confined to a sanatorium. He divorces her, favouring instead his new concubines in Italy.

Things finally go wrong at the abbey when a pair of young initiates attempt to invoke the Devil himself in the abbey’s basement. Rowley is forced to go down to their rescue and face his worst fears because the Devil knows his only weaknesses. But he must defeat the Devil to protect himself and the others in the cult. Rowley is nearly killed in the battle, but successfully banishes the gruesome spirit.

After rumours of sexual orgies and live sacrifices hit the Italian and American newspapers, Rowley is ordered to leave Italy by Mussolini, himself. His activities in Italy attract bad publicity and too much attention; he is branded as a ‘Satan Worshipper’ and sexual deviant.

He goes to America to write, but his publishers denounce him as a Devil Worshipper and he is once again destitute and broke, and now ravaged by the effects of drug addiction.

Rowley still possesses his powers but is unable to overcome the residual fear of his encounter with the Devil at the abbey.
In New York, he meets his old friend Alan Bennett again, and he demonstrates walking down the street, that he still possesses his magical powers, but it is clear that he is under the control of heroin -- the one demon he never expected would possess him.

At the ending, Lord Greyhall is sitting by on a gravestone finishing his narration of Rowley’s remarkable story to the young newspaper reporter. Then Greyhall gets up and vanishes into the mist, but after he’s gone the young reporter notices Greyhall’s name on the tombstone he was sitting on, and then in shock, he realises that he has been conversing with a ghost!