Mr. Crowley

This song is about Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), a British practitioner of black magic. Known as "The Wickedest Man Alive," Jimmy Page based some of the Led Zeppelin album covers on his work. The song helped Ozzy play up his mock-Satanic image, which he often did for effect. This his something he did in his band Black Sabbath, who likened their music to horror movies.

Ozzy mispronounces Crowley's last name in this song. It is in fact pronounced with the first syllable sounding like "crow" in English.

Bob Daisley, who was the bass player on the album, wrote some of the lyric for this song. In a Songfacts interview with Daisley, he explained: "I wanted to look at the darkness and question Aleister Crowley. 'Aleister, what were you thinking?' You know. All this darkness and negativity. So that was a snag that I put on it."