O thou who hast sucked my soul, lord of my nights and days,
My body, pure and whole is merged within the ways
That lead to thee, my queen [ … ]
In late September, Neuburg went off to visit relatives, while Crowley returned to Paris. They would reunite in London the following year. Prior to their parting, Neuburg took a Vow of Holy Obedience to study as a chela (student) under the direction of Crowley. This would constitute—in the years to come—a most painful and arduous course.
For now, however, Crowley had a more solitary project in mind. As with his practice in China in 1905–1906, Crowley resolved to experiment with the very concept of a Magical Retirement. In particular, he sought to establish that a trained adept could pursue such a Retirement in conditions exactly opposite to the cloistered quiet specified by Abra-Melin. His choice of locale was Paris; the timeframe was that of a typical two-week vacation. He would stay in a fine hotel and live the life of a gentleman—and invoke his Angel all the while. He would eat fine foods, drink wine, even take a lover—and devote himself throughout to that Angel. He would, further, keep a diary which would record his every action and serve as a model to others—a proof to them that they did not have to go off to the Himalayas or like fastnesses to gain enlightenment. This diary he entitled John St. John (his name for his human—as opposed to enlightened—self during the Retirement, with a play on St. John, the traditionally ascribed author of Revelation); it was published the following year in The Equinox.
For Crowley, the practice of magic was revelatory of the nature of mind itself. To disbelieve the possibilities of magical ritual was to place unjustified limits upon the powers of concentration and imagination—and to place too great a trust in so-called objective reality. As Crowley put it tersely in his Preface, “The Universe of Magic is in the mind of a man: the setting is but Illusion even to the thinker.” If magic is no more and no less than mind, then the notion of higher divine intelligences becomes either unnecessary or merely subjective. Thus, on the eleventh day, Crowley declared his “Atheism”:
I believe that all these [magical] phenomena are as explicable as the formation of hoar-frost or of glacier tables.
I believe “Attainment” to be a simple supreme sane state of the human brain. I do not believe in miracles; I do not think that God could cause a monkey, clergyman, or rationalist to attain.[ … ]
I believe in the Law of Cause and Effect—and I loathe the cant alike of the Superstitionist and the Rationalist.
Similarly, in his essay “The Soldier and the Hunchback” (written in December 1908) Crowley posed, as a metaphor for the dialectical progress of human consciousness, the interplay between doubt (“?”—the hunchback) and realization (“!”—the upright soldier). Doubt always follows on the heels of insight, which in turn supersedes doubt—!?!?!?!?!?—and so forth ad infinitum.
The Magical Retirement recorded in John St. John began on October 1, 1908. The interplay of sex and spirituality—theoretically familiar to Crowley both through Indian Tantric writings and his studies in alchemy—was still largely foreign to him in practice. Thus sexuality is treated either as a distraction or as a perplexing unknown in John St. John. On the first day of the Retirement, Crowley recorded a late-night lovemaking with a young woman introduced to him by an obliging Nina Olivier. He gave her the name “Maryt”; she was a Polish Jew studying in Paris. But on the third day, Crowley noted that he had fallen “shockingly under the power of Tamas, the dark sphere.” Tamas is the Hindu term for a state dominated by animal desires. Crowley recorded the erotomystical fantasy that enveloped him in his Tamas state, even as he was reciting his mantra:
I am so far from the Path that I have a real good mind to get Maryt to let me perform the Black Mass on her at midnight. I would just love to bring up Typhon, and curse Osiris and burn his bones and his blood![ … ] I want trouble. I want to say Indra’s mantram till his throne gets red-hot and burns his lotus-buttocks; I want to pinch little Harpocrates till he fairly yells … and I will too! Somehow!
The attainment of Adonai, the Holy Guardian Angel, took place on the twelfth day—October 12, Crowley’s thirty-third birthday, the age of the crucified Christ. (Christ is, under Christian kabbalistic tradition, an archetype of the adept as he encounters Adonai.) Intense invocation, coupled with the recital of one of Crowley’s own Holy Books, Liber Ararita, served as the prelude to the attainment. “Ararita” is a kabbalistic name for God; its letters stand, in the original Hebrew, for the sentence “One is His beginning, One is his Individuality, His Permutation One.” The aim of Liber Ararita is to express the identification of all human conceptions with their opposites, so as to point to an ultimate unity. It was the attainment of this unity which Crowley sought to express in his diary:
Then subtly, easily, imperceptibly gliding, I passed away into nothing. And I was wrapped in the black brilliance of my Lord, that interpenetrated me in every part, fusing its light with my darkness, and leaving there no darkness, but pure light.
Also I beheld my Lord in a figure and I felt the interior trembling kindle itself into a Kiss—and I perceived the true Sacraments—and I beheld in one moment all the mystic visions in one; and the Holy Graal appeared unto me, and many other inexpressible things were known of me.
Also I was given to enjoy the subtle Presence of my Lord interiorly during the whole of this twelfth day.
Then I besought the Lord that He would take me into His presence eternally even now.
But He withdrew Himself, for that I must do that which I was sent hither to do; namely, to rule the earth.
The thirteenth and final day of the Retirement was but briefly noted; such heights required a relative silence. As for its lasting impact, Crowley declared: “I not only achieved my stated object, but obtained access to a reserve of energy which carried me on for years, performing Herculean labors without conscious effort.”
One matter required Crowley’s prompt attention after the John St. John Retirement, as it challenged his status as a gentleman, that “most important point” resolved upon during the trek to Morocco with Neuburg. In late 1908, Crowley read the just-published Somerset Maugham novel The Magician. The portrayal therein of the villainous Oliver Haddo—inspired by Crowley—was discussed in Chapter Three, in connection with the encounter between Crowley and Maugham in Paris in 1903. Crowley bristled at the mélange of fact, rumor and fiction in the novel:
Maugham had taken some of the most private and personal incidents of my life [ … ] He had added a number of the many absurd legends of which I was a central figure.[ … ] I was not in the least offended by the attempts of the book to represent me as, in many ways, the most atrocious scoundrel, for he had done more than justice to the qualities of which I was proud; and despite himself he had been compelled, like Balaam, to prophesy concerning me. He attributed to me certain characteristics which he meant to represent as abominable, but which were actually absurd.[ … ] The Magician was, in fact, an appreciation of my genius such as I had never dreamed of inspiring.
These “characteristics” included, first and foremost, Crowley’s single-minded will to spiritual knowledge. The vividness of this trait appealed to Crowley sufficiently to place The Magician on his list of recommended reading for A∴A∴ members.
But Crowley could not leave The Magician unavenged. In truth, Maugham had plagiarized in the novel; sources from which he transcribed or paraphrased at length included The Kabbalah Unveiled by Mathers and other occult texts. This was documented by Crowley (under the pseudonym “Oliver Haddo”) in the journal Vanity Fair on December 30, 1908; its editor, Frank Harris (later to gain fame for his sexually frank My Life and Loves), admired Crowley and provided the first broad outlet for his writing. According to Crowley, Maugham acknowledged the plagiarisms with good grace at their next encounter—“he merely remarked that there were many thefts besides those which I had pointed out.” At that point, Maugham was not yet established in his fame; decades later, in its glow, he c
onceded discreetly that The Magician “was all moonshine. I did not believe a word of it. It was a game I was playing. A book written under these conditions can have no life in it.”
As 1908 came to a close, Crowley felt that his path had grown clear. He would declare his new teachings and new Order through his founding of The Equinox. He would assemble the army of supporters envisioned in his Preface to The World’s Tragedy. And he would seek, for the first time, to influence his homeland and the world.
It would be a campaign filled with brilliant triumphs and bitter defeats.
CHAPTER SIX
The Creation of The Equinox, the Rites of Eleusis, and a Confrontation in the Sahara with the God of Chaos (1909–14)
In conception, form, and scope, the ten book-sized “numbers” that comprise the first “volume” of The Equinox constitute Crowley’s grandest publishing achievement—and that in a lifetime of exorbitant publishing projects. It was published biannually at the spring and fall equinoxes from 1909 to 1913—a total in excess of 4000 pages that aimed to present the essence of Western esotericism.
Consider the physical product itself: There were 1050 copies printed for each number, 50 subscription copies bound in cloth, the remaining 1000 in white-and-gold boards featuring the astrological sigils of the Sun, Aries and Virgo—with reference to the solar focus of Crowley’s teachings and the signs of the spring and fall equinoxes. Crowley spent his inheritance unstintingly on The Equinox during these years. Sales could not possibly cover costs, as copies were priced below cost for the sake of affordability. In addition, the odd format of The Equinox—a periodical in the form of an outsized bound volume—made booksellers reluctant to distribute it. “In this way,” Crowley later wrote, “I satisfied myself that no one could reproach me with trying to make money out of Magick.” As Fuller would later observe, “like so many of his [Crowley’s] projects, the aim was protean and the method erratic [ … ] It sold like hot cakes, and, in spite of its expensive production, had he not been so prodigal, it might have provided him with a modest income.”
The two central purposes of The Equinox are reflected in its two subtitles: The Official Organ of the A∴A∴ and The Review of Scientific Illuminism. The Equinox was to promote public awareness of the new magical order and its methodology: Mysticism pursued through methodical experimentation (documented through ongoing written records) with the powers of the mind. The motto of The Equinox was emblazoned on its title page: “The Method of Science—The Aim of Religion.” Quite naturally, much of The Equinox was devoted to magic, yoga, and other mystical disciplines. Most of this material was written by Crowley in the forms of “holy books” and other instructional texts. There were also nine installments of The Temple of Solomon the King, a spiritual biography of Crowley, written largely by Fuller under Crowley’s close supervision. Temple included texts of the central Golden Dawn rituals written by Mathers, for the New Aeon proclaimed in The Equinox—number VII of which included The Book of the Law—abrogated prior vows of secrecy by Crowley with respect to Old Aeon rituals. In 1900, the London revolt had wrenched practical control of the Golden Dawn from Mathers; ten years later, Crowley finished the job by wresting his teachings away.
But The Equinox was not solely devoted to esotericism. Crowley’s view of magic held that artistic expression was one measure—a fitting one—of true attainment. As a result, The Equinox was a literary journal as well, featuring short stories, poems, plays—again, mostly written by Crowley (other contributors included Lord Dunsany and Frank Harris). Crowley had long chafed at the public indifference to his creative works; The Equinox allowed him a free venue in which to display his talents. There was one outside contributor to The Equinox who falls in a class by himself. This was Crowley’s old friend Ananda Metteyya (Allan Bennett), who had briefly returned to England in 1908 to continue, in his homeland, work on behalf of the International Buddhist Society. Crowley published in The Equinox Bennett’s essay on Buddhism, “The Training of the Mind,” an act of admirable editorial objectivity, given the treatment that Crowley’s esoteric compendium, 777, received in Bennett’s journal, The Buddhist Review. 777, which derived in part from tables of symbolic correspondences taught to Crowley by Bennett during their Golden Dawn days, was now treated with disdain: “No Buddhist would consider it worth while to pass from the crystalline clearness of his own religion to this involved obscurity. Some of the language is extremely undignified.” Crowley tried to rekindle the bond that had been so vital between 1899 and 1905. What had changed is unclear, but the reluctant party was clearly Bennett. In a 1908 letter to Fuller, Crowley exhorted: “I hope you’re sitting down to the siege of Allan & picking his brains.” The use of “siege” is telling; the friendship was now at an end.
If Crowley had lost one longstanding ally, he was also gaining new ones for the A∴A∴, launched publicly in England in 1909. Fuller, with his esteemed military status, was primary amongst them; he now regarded The Book of the Law as “the utterance of a Master.” Fuller’s organizing intellect, floridly elegant literary style, and gifts as an illustrator for The Equinox afforded Crowley a trustworthy second-in-command.
As discussed in the previous chapter, one of the recruiting sites on which Crowley pinned his hopes was his alma mater—Trinity College, Cambridge. Neuburg was a member of a newly formed club, the Pan Society, devoted to free discussion of spiritual topics. To this society, Crowley had read papers on “mysticism and kindred subjects” three times in the latter part of 1908. But disturbing rumors were afoot in Trinity administrative circles as to the thoroughly non-Christian ideas that Crowley had put forward, as well as his success in winning disciples. Aside from Neuburg, these included Kenneth Ward, who would later be initiated into the A∴A∴, and Norman Mudd, a gifted mathematics student form a lower-class family attending Trinity on scholarship. This financial dependence would render Mudd a weak link in the battle to come.
The Senior Dean of Trinity, the Reverend R. St. J. Parry, was convinced that magic was, in itself, an objectionable teaching. Still more dire was an anonymous letter sent to the deans of Trinity in 1908, which alleged that Crowley had been shadowed by police in various European nations, on suspicion of commissioning sexual acts with boys. The truth of this charge cannot, at this point, be confirmed or denied. But its impact upon the deans was plain enough; they pressured Neuburg and his fellows to break off all ties with Crowley and to cancel his invitation to speak to another undergraduate club, the Cambridge University Freethought Association (CUFA). The deans confronted Mudd with the anonymous letter in late January 1909, and threatened him with expulsion if he did not move to cancel that invitation. After further pressure from his father, Mudd acquiesced. The other students, after issuing a protest, tacitly gave way as well. By the end of February, both Crowley and Fuller were officially excluded from the Trinity grounds, and the porters were so notified. As for Mudd (who, unlike Neuburg, was never erotically involved with Crowley), shame over his surrender would endure for over a decade, until he overcame it and contacted Crowley once more.
A year later, in January 1910, Crowley was still attempting, by way of a polished and indignant letter to Parry, to reinstate himself. The opening paragraphs of the letter—addressed to Trinity College itself—constitute, in miniature, a remarkable apologia as to Crowley’s magical vocation:
For three years you stood to me in loco parentis, and that I was a worthy child is evidenced by the fact that I never suffered rebuke or punishment from any of the College Authorities.
To that paternity I now appeal for justice in the following circumstances.
Since leaving Cambridge in 1898, I have travelled all over the world on one single business, the search for Truth.
This truth [sic] I believe that I have found: it may be stated in the thesis following:
By development of will-power, by rigorous self-control, by solitude, meditation and prayer, a man may be granted the Knowledge and Conversation of his Holy Guardian Angel; this being attained, t
he man may safely confide himself to that Guardianship: and that this attainment is the most sublime privilege of man.
Crowley concluded by requesting a formal hearing, public or private, before an unspecified tribunal, with legal representation and rules of evidence to apply. There is no record of a response by Parry or other Trinity officials. As for the New Aeon announced by The Book of the Law, it is left unmentioned in the letter. Its absence is striking, as a most signal event had taken place in Crowley’s life in June 1909, a good six months before this letter was written. This was his full and final acceptance of his vocation as prophet of the New Aeon and of its ruling god, Horus, the Crowned and Conquering Child.
The event triggering this acceptance was mundane enough—an accident of the kind most persons have experienced—and yet it took on tremendous significance for Crowley. It will be recalled that, while still in Cairo in 1904, Crowley had several typescripts made of the Book, which he sent to fifteen friends and colleagues. Shortly thereafter, he lost track of the original manuscript.
The setting was Boleskine House in Scotland, to which Crowley had returned in the summer of 1909. He was joined there in June by two still-loyal Cambridge men, Neuburg and Kenneth Ward. Neuburg devoted his full attention to training with Crowley, whom he regarded as his “holy Guru.” Ward, enjoying a less rigorous summer, wished to ski, and Crowley tried to oblige him by hunting up one of his spare pairs. This led Crowley to explore the attic where, beneath the skis, lay the long lost manuscript. The sight was a stunning coup de foudre to his psyche. His diary entry for June 28 begins with an ecstatic paean to the divine triumvirate of the Book: “Glory be to Nuit, Hadit, Ra-Hoor-Khuit in the Highest!”
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