Aleister Crowley: Magick, Rock and Roll, and the Wickedest Man in the World

by Gary Lachman

  The marriage in any case could not last much longer. As the word of the aeon, Crowley could no longer live along conventional lines, insofar as he ever had. He was in the service of the gods, the “Chosen One,” singled out to accomplish the Great Work of “emancipating mankind,” and such matters as having a home and family were negligible.2 He renewed his friendship with George Cecil Jones and went through a ritual crucifixion, dedicating himself to a pure and unselfish life and identifying himself with his Higher Self. Oddly, Crowley’s oath referred to himself as a “member of the Body of Christ.” He may have been hedging his bets, just in case Christianity proved true, or displaying sheer perversity in including a Christian reference in an oath that more or less announced his identification with his Holy Guardian Angel.3

  Crowley declared that he had completed the Abramelin magic on October 9, 1906, in the Ashdown Park Hotel in Surrey, a few days before his thirty-first birthday. Rose was in attendance. His consciousness, he claimed, had been absorbed into that of his H.G.A.; his success was aided by his use of drugs, hashish in particular. Yet Crowley was ambivalent about using drugs in mystical pursuits—at least at this time. He wasn’t sure if the altered states he experienced were the result of the hashish or the invocations to the Augoeides. He had experienced Atmadarshana, a “consciousness of the entire Universe as One and as all,” and Shivadarshana, the opening of the eye of Shiva that had so troubled Mathers, but was unsure if this was simply the effect of the drug. This was a problem; Aiwass had counseled him to take “strange drugs,” saying they would not hurt him—erroneously, as he was to discover. He wanted to follow Aiwass’s teachings, but he also wanted his mystical experiences to be independent of a drugged state.4 Crowley eventually overruled any hesitation about the value of drugs.

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  TO PROMOTE THE SALE of his Collected Works (volume 3 was published in 1907), Crowley offered a £100 prize for the best critical essay on his work, announcing the competition typically as

  The Chance of the Year!

  The Chance of the Century!!

  The Chance of the Geological Period!!!

  He had by this time received a bit more critical attention. G. K. Chesterton had called Crowley a “good poet,” and complained only about his excessive hatred of Christianity.5 Even Florence Farr, his former enemy among the Golden Dawn, spoke out against the universal condemnation he attracted, writing about his work in A. R. Orage’s New Age.6 But Crowley was still not as well known as he would like, and in the Confessions he fantasized that “columns of eloquent praise” about his work were being written at the time by “the most important people in the world of letters,” who “acquiesced” in him as the “only living poet of any magnitude.”7 Yet even with this imaginary praise hardly anyone read his work, and those who did failed to “get” it. His point of view was “so original,” his thoughts “so profound,” and his allusions “so recondite,” that superficial readers were “unable to penetrate to the pith.”8

  Such was not the case with at least one reader. Captain John Frederick Charles Fuller of the First Oxfordshire Light Infantry had served in the Boer War and had been stationed in India, from where he had corresponded with Crowley about his work. Crowley’s satire Why Jesus Wept (1905) especially moved him. Fuller’s father was an Anglican cleric, and Fuller, a Social Darwinist, had been published in the Agnostic Journal. He was nicknamed “Boney” because of his admiration for Napoleon. He now announced his entry into the essay competition about Crowley’s writings. Fuller was one of the few people who appreciated Crowley’s poetry; but even more important, he was an early convert to “Crowleyanity,” the religion Crowley promoted before accepting the law of thelema. The fact that Crowley presented himself as a kind of modern Christ before he heard from Aiwass seems to undermine the idea that he accepted his role as word of the aeon reluctantly. Crowleyanity is to thelema much as Dianetics is to Scientology.

  In the summer of 1906 Crowley, Rose, and Fuller met at the Hotel Cecil on the Strand to discuss the idea. By October Fuller’s The Star in the West was finished; it was published the following year. It makes no mention of The Book of the Law, but this wasn’t necessary for Fuller to express his hero worship. According to Paul Newman, The Star in the West “surges along on a rousing swell of purple foam,” and does not mince words.9 Crowley is “more than a new-born Dionysus, he is more than a Blake, a Rabelais, or a Heine”; he is a “priest of Apollo.” “It has taken 100,000,000 years to produce Aleister Crowley. The world has indeed labored, and has at last brought forth a man.”10 These are some of Fuller’s more sober remarks. Crowley agreed with Fuller’s assessment—he did admit it was a tad over the top—and as Fuller was the only reader to grasp the chance of the geological period, he won the competition hands down. Crowley, however, failed to pay him the prize money. Exactly why is unclear, although by now Crowley’s fortune had shrunk considerably.

  Fuller’s admiration for Crowley survived this disappointment; his real connection was their shared detestation of Christianity and their mutual recognition as individuals apart from the herd, as, indeed, born leaders. Fuller’s admiration for leaders was not limited to Crowley and Napoleon. Years later, after falling out with the priest of Apollo, Fuller became infatuated with Adolf Hitler. Fuller wrote a book on tank warfare that inspired the blitzkrieg and earned him the honor of being invited to Hitler’s fiftieth birthday party, on the eve of World War II. After rising to the rank of major-general and retiring from the military, Fuller later turned his admiration to Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists.11

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  CROWLEY CALLED 1907 and 1908 “years of fulfillment.” His poetic powers, he felt, were at their height, but his satisfaction in his work was not mirrored in his life. His “domestic tragedy” had become more and more “acute.”12 Rose sank deeper into alcoholism, which Crowley’s frequent absences and erratic lifestyle surely could not have helped. From the start he had confided in his brother-in-law that he suspected Rose of being less than stable. But what stable personality would marry an acquaintance at the drop of a hat? Crowley himself wouldn’t have been interested in Rose if she had been stable; throughout his life, he unerringly attracted women who were “on the edge.” It was precisely their liminal character that drew him. In any case, Crowley blamed her parents. Rose’s father was a vicar, which put him immediately in Crowley’s bad books, and Crowley blamed Rose’s alcoholism on her mother, who, he said, allowed her children to drink champagne at too young an age.

  Crowley showed his feelings for his mother-in-law when his newborn daughter Lola contracted bronchitis and came close to death. The doctor allowed only one person in the room with the baby at any time. Crowley claims his mother-in-law broke this rule, and so he threw her out of their flat, “assisting her down the stairs with my boot.” Crowley blamed Lola Zaza’s poor health on Rose’s alcoholism, and he did take steps to try to stop it, putting Rose into a clinic to dry out and getting her out into the open air, hiking and rock climbing. On one occasion he saved his daughter’s life by ensuring that oxygen was on hand when a nurse failed to supply it. He was rightfully proud of his quick action, but he had no interest in the practical, day-to-day work of raising children and wanted the freedom to do as he wilt. By the spring of 1907 he and Rose separated. Crowley took a flat on Jermyn Street in London’s Mayfair district, where he entertained mistresses and wrote another pornographic work, Clouds without Water (1909), in which some of his lovers appear. One, called Lola, he had known previously, and named his daughter after. Typically, the book recounted the “blasphemous litanies of their fornication.” It was written under a pseudonym—the Rev. C. Verey—and privately printed for circulation among “Ministers of Religion.”

  In the 1920s, during a difficult time, Crowley considered these years of fulfillment and reflected that it was then that he “went wrong,” a verdict he rescinded when his spirits lifted. Symonds suggests that Crowley could still have salvaged something of his life then, and sett
led down to some version of normality, a belief shared by his great friend Allan Bennett, who remarked to the writer Clifford Bax that Crowley could have done much good but took a wrong turn in life.13

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  CROWLEY FREQUENTED a chemist’s shop on Stafford Street in the West End, run by an E. P. Whineray. Here he got ingredients for his rituals—incense, perfume, his Abramelin oil—and also most likely his drugs.14 One day Whineray introduced him to George Montagu, the seventh Earl of Tankerville. Crowley refers to Tankerville as the Earl of Coke and Crankum: Coke for his cocaine habit and Crankum because of his paranoia. The heavy-drinking, middle-aged earl believed his mother was trying to kill him via witchcraft and Whineray suggested that Crowley could help. Tankervilles’s paranoia was surely a product of his cocaine habit—Crowley could see that straightaway—but he nevertheless took on the challenge. One must fight fire with fire, Crowley thought, and so the witchcraft-bedeviled earl became Crowley’s first student in magick. Years earlier he said he could not pay Allan Bennett for his own magical instruction, but his attitude had changed and Crowley the mage was on the earl’s payroll. His fortune had dwindled and it was becoming increasingly clear that he would soon have to earn a living; as he himself admitted, his “affairs in Scotland had fallen into great confusion.”15

  Crowley’s assessment of the Earl in the Confessions reads like a case study: he “enjoyed magnificent health” and was “one of the best preserved men of fifty to fifty-five” Crowley had ever seen. Crowley had the Earl read the proper books and consult his tarot regularly. For a time the two lived aboard a yacht that Tankerville had chartered and moored on the Beaulieu River, near the New Forest; here Crowley coached him in developing his astral body. But the best way for Crankum to develop his magical powers was to take what Crowley called a “magical retirement,” an occult holiday, a practice Crowley would enjoy throughout his life. He had to break away from his family, and so, leaving Lola Zaza in the care of her alcoholic mother, Crowley set off with Tankerville, first for Marseilles, then North Africa, the earl picking up the tab.

  The trip was not a success. Coke was a difficult case, and Crowley endured a great deal of abuse. The Earl soon wearied of Crowley’s perpetual “teaching-teaching-teaching” as if Crowley was “God Almighty,” and he, a “poor bloody shit in the street!”16 Crowley’s pedagogical style grated on the Earl, but this shows that Crowley took his role as a teacher seriously. Yet his lessons—mostly getting Tankerville to throw off what Crowley saw as his sexual repressions—fell on deaf ears. When the Earl accused him of being in his mother’s employ, Crowley threw in the towel and enjoyed the rest of his stay on his own.

  Crowley donned a burnoose and looked for adventures in the souk, some of which most likely included young boys. On one solitary wander Crowley came upon a crowd of Sidi Aissawa—scorpion eaters—performing their secret dances. Crowley was immediately fascinated and began to chant a phrase he had learned from his sheik in Cairo: Subhana Allahu Walhamdu lilahi walailaha illa allahu—“the Great Word to become mad and go about naked . . .” Crowley drew his burnoose around him and moved closer to the frenzied dancers, who struck themselves on the head with ritual axes until their faces were covered with blood. Crowley wanted to toss off his turban and plunge into the festivities, shouting, “Allahu akbar!” But his presence of mind saved him; his spiritual voyeurism was an effrontery and after feeling himself “vibrating with the energy of the universe,” Crowley drifted away. He and the Earl reunited and left the desert sand for Spain and then England.

  Back home Crowley began a series of mystical writings, the “Holy Books of Thelema.” He had already compiled an early version of his Kabbalistic reference book 777 and a collection of magical essays, Konx Om Pax (“Light in Extension,” 1907), as well as a series of hymns to the Virgin Mary in which he “tried to see the world through the eyes of a devout Catholic,” in the same way that he viewed life through the lens of a decadent poet in White Stains. We may take this disclaimer with some grains of salt, but Crowley’s hymns earned the praise of some Christian critics, until they discovered the identity of the author.17 But these other works were different. Crowley claimed they were not wholly composed by him but also not entirely “inspired.” The two central ones are The Book of the Heart Girt with a Serpent (1909) and The Book of Lapis Lazuli (1910). Israel Regardie writes that Crowley wrote nothing of greater value after them, and that they display an “entirely different type of writing than he had ever done before,” a claim I find unsupportable.18

  Regardie also believes that on the strength of the Holy Books, Crowley cannot be judged as other men, an assertion Crowley certainly agreed with. The Book of the Heart Girt with a Serpent depicts the relationship between an adept and his Holy Guardian Angel, which, Regardie argues, is essentially passive. “The work of Augoeides,” Regardie writes, “requires the Adept to assume the woman’s part: to long for the bridegroom . . . and to be ever ready to receive his kiss,” a practice Crowley was prepared for by adopting the passive role in his homosexual relations, but also by his fundamentally passive attitude toward life.19 The Book of Lapis Lazuli was, Crowley said, inspired by his crossing the Abyss during his walk across China. Crowley did not formally adopt the grade of Magister Templi 80 = 30 until the end of 1909, having claimed the grade of Adeptus Exemptus 70 = 40 earlier that year, taking the names OU MH and then Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici (“By the Force of Truth I have Conquered the Universe While Living,” which Crowley usually wrote as V.V.V.V.V.) respectively. But he believed that by the end of his Asian trek, he had passed through the barrier and entered the sphere of the Supernals. He was indeed unlike other men, was, in fact, no man at all, but one of the Secret Chiefs.

  Crowley had exceeded Mathers in magical rank, and it was time to found his own esoteric order. At some point between 1907 and 1908, Crowley formed his magical society, the A...A... Crowley began to take on students, and did so for the rest of his life. We can regard Crowley’s mystical tutoring as merely a way to fill his increasingly empty pockets, but this would be doing him a disservice. Crowley was sincere. A look at the “required reading” at the back of Magick in Theory and Practice shows that, if nothing else, following it would provide the equivalent of a college degree. Nothing would be easier than to dismiss Crowley as an opportunistic fake, or to take him at face value as the champion of human liberation. Crowley was not wholly one or the other but a frustrating confusion of the two. Anyone serious about understanding him has to master the difficult art of sifting one from the other.

  At the beginning, recruitment for his new order was low. The first two members were Crowley and George Cecil Jones (Volo Noscere—“I Wish to Know”). Captain Fuller (Per Ardura ad Astra “Through Struggle to the Stars”) soon joined their ranks and he was to bring along a new recruit who would play an important role in Crowley’s life.

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  BY APRIL 1908 Rose’s condition had worsened. Crowley’s frequent exits for parts unknown didn’t help, but it was precisely this advice that Gerald Kelly, Oscar Eckenstein, and the family doctor offered: Crowley should go away and threaten not to return until Rose got on the wagon. Crowley didn’t need to hear this twice. He had kept his wandering ways and when not entertaining on Jermyn Street or sharing the Warwick Road flat with Rose, he was overseeing his precarious estate in Boleskine, visiting his mother in Eastbourne, or frequenting favorite haunts in Paris. It was to this last that he decided to repair. He took a room in the Hôtel de Blois at 50 rue Vavin in the Latin Quarter, an address he maintained for several years. In Paris, Crowley tried his hand at writing short stories, something he would return to a decade later during his years in New York with his Simon Iff detective tales. Crowley’s occult fiction has its admirers, but for my taste it doesn’t rank with other weird writers of the time, such as Algernon Blackwood or Arthur Machen, both of whom Crowley considered amateurs.20 But even Paris could not hold him for long and Crowley slipped out of the City of Light for forays into Venice.


  In 1908 Crowley published The World’s Tragedy, another attack on Christianity, couched in the form of autobiography. He wanted it to circulate among the young and “seduce the boys of England,” so they could “bring about the new heaven and the new earth” by joining him in the worship of Pan.21 Speaking of Pan at that time was fashionable; there was a veritable pandemic of writing then celebrating the randy Greek god (Arthur Machen had made his name in 1894 with “The Great God Pan,” and J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan had appeared in 1904). “Seduce the boys of England” suggests a double entendre, especially as part of the book is a defense of sodomy.

  But what is important is that Crowley is openly seeking followers. “You are not a Crowleian,” he tells his readers with a heavy-handed paradox, until you say “Thank God I am an atheist.” Again it is not thelema he is advocating, but himself. Crowley made recruitment drives for his occult movement in Oxford and Cambridge, but his most successful convert was practically handed to him on a platter.