Biographer Sutin describes the pivotal New Year's event as a homo-erotic experience (Crowley's first) that brought him what he considered "an encounter with an immanent deity." During the year of 1897, Aleister further came to see worldly pursuits as useless. By the next year, he began reading books by alchemists and mystics, and books on magic. In December 1896, following an event that he describes in veiled terms, Crowley decided to pursue a path in occultism and mysticism. His three years at Cambridge were happy ones, due in part to coming into the considerable fortune left by his father. In 1895, he went to Trinity College, Cambridge after schooling at the public schools Malvern College and Tonbridge School, and originally had the intention of reading Moral Sciences (philosophy, psychology, and economics), but with approval from his personal tutor, he switched to English literature, which was not then a part of the curriculum offered. He objected to the labelling of what he saw as life's most worthwhile and enjoyable activities as "sinful." As a child, his constant rebellious behaviour displeased his mother to such an extent she would chastise him by calling him "The Beast" (from the Book of Revelation), an epithet that Crowley would later happily adopt for himself. Daily Bible studies and private tutoring were mainstays in "Alick's" childhood however, after his father's death, his mother's efforts at indoctrinating her son in the Christian faith only served to provoke his skepticism. His father, after retiring from his daily duties as a brewer, took up the practice of preaching at a fanatical pace. He grew up in a staunch Plymouth Brethren household. Both of his parents were Exclusive Brethren, a radical wing of the Plymouth Brethren. His mother, Emily Bertha Bishop, drew roots from a Devon and Somerset family. His father, Edward Crowley, had maintained a lucrative family brewery business and retired before Aleister Crowley was born.
Joseph Hone, biographer of William Butler Yeats, claimed, "Mathers would shade his eyes with his hands and gaze at the empty chair at the opposite corner of the board before moving his partner's piece". MacGregor Mathers, who finalised the game's rules, was known to play with an invisible partner he claimed was a spirit. The four players would form pairs of two, with each player having a partner. The rules of the game were partially derived from shatranj and other historical forms of chess the queen is played like an alfil, with a two square diagonal leaping move. The chess board itself was also varicolored, and divided into four sub-boards in which each of one of the four elemental colors predominated. The main identifications of the pieces were:
The four sets of pieces were variously colored, and identified with Egyptian deities or "god-forms". The game was four-handed because each set of pieces corresponded to one of the four classical elements and their several watchtowers, and the game was used for divination as well as competition.
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