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

by Gary Lachman

  It was not easy work. On December 3 the two climbed Mount Dal’leh Addin, near Bou-Saâda, intent on entering the fourteenth aethyr. But something was wrong and all Crowley saw was darkness. Deciding it was a washout, they scrambled down but suddenly Crowley heard a command to perform a magical ritual on the mountaintop. They scrambled back up, built a circle of stones, and erected an altar upon which Crowley “sacrificed himself.”38 This euphemism camouflages the magical sodomy dedicated to Pan that took place, with Crowley as the passive partner. Every particle of his personality, he said, was consumed. (Crowley often remarks that his ego is obliterated or destroyed after some magical act.) Crowley remarks that certain “conceptions of conduct” were inimical to his initiation, and had to be eradicated. One assumes he means some hesitation about his homosexuality. As he had been a practicing bisexual for some time by then, it is difficult to understand why he needed this lesson, or how humiliating something he had been quite familiar with could be.

  Crowley repeated the experience of insanity he had in 1905. “All things had become alike; all impressions were indistinguishable.” This is Crowley’s favorite state of mind. It is Aiwass’s command to “let there be no difference made . . . between any one thing & and any other thing.” It is the lesson of the Abyss. Back in Bou-Saâda he again experienced an episode of dissociation, which he again interpreted as a mystical initiation. “I did not merely admit that I did not exist, and that all my ideas were illusions . . . It seemed incredible that I should ever have fancied that I or anything else had any bearing on each other. All things were alike as shadows seeping across the still surface of a lake . . . ”39 It’s not an exaggeration to say that this is not altogether different from states of mind associated with schizophrenia.

  But the sacrifice seemed to have worked. That evening, Crowley tried to enter the fourteenth aethyr again and this time was successful. He received a vision in which he was admitted to the company of the Masters of the Temple. He saw a circle of rocks that he soon realized were his fellow Masters. They had become as rock because they had sacrificed all—their very life, their desire for power, fame, wealth, pleasure, everything Crowley himself had desired. But that desire had died in him, too, and so, at least in a magical sense, had he. To be sure, Crowley the man continued to want power, fame, and all the rest. But Crowley the man was not V.V.V.V.V. “He” did not exist. His name was now Nemo (No One) and he had joined his fellow adepts in the City of the Pyramids under the Night of Pan. One other thing came from Crowley’s sacrifice. It was his first indication that his two favorite activities, sex and magick, worked well together. It was an insight he did not forget.

  The other major event of their Enochian working was their confrontation with Choronzon, the demon of dispersion. This they achieved by opening the tenth aethyr called ZAX. Crowley needed to cross the Abyss consciously in order to confirm his initiation and a face-off with Choronzon was necessary. Kelly had called Choronzon “that mighty Devil,” but Crowley says he is not an individual but a chaos of meaningless and malignant forces desiring to become real. We can think of Choronzon as something like the “Shadow” in Jungian psychology or the “Guardian of the Threshold” in Rudolf Steiner’s system of spiritual development.40 Confronting all that is weak, corrupt, vile, yet also powerful in oneself is a well-known necessity for anyone concerned with spiritual growth.

  Crowley entered the tenth aethyr on December 6. In Turn Off Your Mind, I remark that the Rolling Stones’ disastrous concert at Altamont, when Hell’s Angels murdered one individual and terrorized a small hippie city, also took place on December 6, 1969, sixty years after Crowley’s meeting with Choronzon. There’s no causal link, but given that the Stones were being tutored in magick then by the filmmaker Kenneth Anger, a devotee of Crowley, one wonders if there was any connection. In any case, Crowley knew what he had to face. Although he himself was a dark knight of the soul, Choronzon was a tough customer, and Crowley likened himself to Christ on the cross; in the Confessions he even repeats Christ’s cri de coeur “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani.” Accounts of what actually happened in the desert that day differ, but the following seems the essential outline. Rather than evoke Choronzon to physical appearance, Crowley himself would become possessed by the demon. To do so, he had to place himself within the traditional triangle of evocation—a magical first, according to Francis King.41 The Kabbalistic names of God—Tetragrammaton, Shaddai el Chai, and Ararita—were traced in the sand around the magic circle that would protect Neuburg. Three pigeons brought from Bou-Sâada were sacrificed, their blood supplying the subtle energies needed for the manifestation. Animal sacrifice did not put Crowley off, and he resorted to it on several occasions.

  With the magic circle fortified, Crowley instructed Neuburg to resist any attempts by Choronzon to draw him out of its protection. Neuburg then took a magical oath, promising to defend the circle, and swearing upon his Holy Guardian Angel, he performed the Banishing Rituals of the Pentagram and Hexagram with his magic dagger. His head hooded, Crowley adopted the Thunderbolt asana—otherwise known as the Diamond Pose—and peering through his eye slits he intoned the invocation. Some words about the Abyss came through, then Neuburg heard “Zazas, Zazas Nasatanada Zazas,” the words with which Adam is said to have opened the gates of hell. The Abyss yawned wide and Choronzon appeared.

  Crowley/Choronzon uttered blasphemies, many against Crowley himself. What happened next depends on how much you believe in magick, or in Crowley or Neuburg. Choronzon did his best to lure Neuburg out of the circle. He appeared as a courtesan Neuburg knew in Paris. He pandered to his vanity, offering to sit at his feet and be his slave. The courtesan became an old man, and then a snake. In the form of Crowley, Choronzon pleaded unutterable thirst and begged for water. He blasphemed against Aiwass, saying their dealings with him are “but a cloak for thy filthy sorceries.” True to his oath, Neuburg resisted. Eventually Crowley/Choronzon tore off his robe and threw himself on Neuburg, attempting to tear out his throat with his fangs. Neuburg flashed his magic dagger and prevailed, and the demon retreated to the triangle. He became the beautiful woman again, and again attempted to seduce Neuburg. Naked and ashamed, Choronzon pleaded to be released from the triangle to retrieve his clothes. After an attempt to get Neuburg to admit that magick was nonsense, Choronzon departed, leaving a naked Crowley squatting in the sand. The operation was over. The magic circle and triangle were erased, and a fire was started to purify the air. Crowley and Neuburg called it a day.

  —

  CHORONZON WAS A DIFFICULT act to follow, but Crowley discovered fresh tribulations back in England. The Equinox no. 2 included an article outlining several secret Golden Dawn rituals and announced that future issues would reveal even more. Crowley had sworn to keep these rituals secret and Mathers, who claimed copyright on the rituals, was outraged. But rather than launch a magical attack, he sought justice through the law. Mathers succeeded in getting an injunction halting publication. Crowley fumed; the judge granting the injunction, he said, was a Mason who believed secret rituals should stay secret. But a new aeon had begun and everything had changed. “Abrogate are all rituals, all ordeals, all words and signs,” Aiwass had said, and Crowley felt he no longer had to honor his Golden Dawn vows. Crowley appealed and was successful, one of his few victories in the legal world. Equinox no. 3 was published and for once Crowley appeared in a good public light. The London Evening News ran a story, “Secrets of the Golden Dawn,” and admitted that “the revelations of Mr. Crowley have created utter consternation in the ranks of the Rosicrucians.”42 One consternated Rosicrucian was Mathers, who at this point recedes from view; little more is heard from him and he is thought to have died during the influenza pandemic of 1918. Crowley’s old life was rapidly fading and a new one was opening up. The victory over Mathers brought him commendation from other occultists; he was, he said, showered with titles and several secret societies claimed him as one of their own. The ranks of the Silver Star swelled. But not all was well.
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  A bothersome fly appeared in the ointment in the form of Horatio Bottomley, a wealthy Liberal member of Parliament, fraudster, jingoist patriot, and, like Crowley, tireless self-promoter.43 Bottomley owned John Bull, a right-wing tabloid, and in its April 2, 1910, issue he published an open letter to Crowley, congratulating him on his legal victory, but also mentioning that it was “a fine advertisement” for The Equinox. He also asked Crowley to teach him to become invisible, turn his enemies into black dogs, and find the treasure of the Djinn. Bottomley had targeted Crowley and was waiting for a chance to bring him down. If Crowley had the slightest bit of prudence, and a considerably smaller ego, he would have seen the trap and altered his course accordingly. It was, however, in his character to persist. The way was clear and he was about to take his first step in becoming the Wickedest Man in the World.

  SIX

  SEX AND MAGICK

  The idea of putting on public performances of magical rituals came from Commander Marston, a senior officer in the Admiralty and probationer in the A...A ..., although Crowley had already seen Mathers’s Isis ceremonies in Paris. Marston had a thing for tom-toms; he believed their primitive beat increased women’s sexual excitement, an idea that endeared him to Crowley. In Marston’s house in Dorset, Crowley, Neuburg, and Crowley’s new mistress, Leila Waddell, had evoked the demon Bartzabel through poetry, dance, and music, and Marston was impressed. Although Waddell—Soror Agatha of the Silver Star—played a major role in Crowley’s life, she did not become his Scarlet Woman. She lacked the required psychic gifts—or instability—and was one of the few who dallied with the Beast and walked away unscathed. Her Australian accent did not go well with the ceremonies, Crowley thought, so that may have had something to do with it.

  Marston suggested that the group bring their magic to the public; the result was the Rites of Eleusis described in the last chapter. After a few performances at Victoria Street, Crowley decided on a bigger venue. Seven rites, one for each of the ancient planets, were devised and on Wednesday evenings in October and November 1910, Crowley’s troupe performed them at Caxton Hall in Westminster.

  Attendance of the Rites was good, and the performances garnered some positive press. But John Bull was not impressed and even less so was another scandal sheet called The Looking Glass. Its editor, West de Wend-Fenton, saw himself as a defender of public morality, and Crowley’s rites offended him. They did not, apparently, offend anyone else; Fuller even took his mother to one, and by today’s standards they were probably mild fare. But The Looking Glass disapproved and launched an attack. Their critic wrote of being met at the door by a “dirty looking person” in an “imitation robe” (Neuburg) and led into a dimly lit room filled with people and someone beating a “monotonous tom-tom.” “A blue-chinned gentleman” in a “Turkish robe costume” (Crowley) read some “gibberish” while others did a “Morris dance.”1 The climax of the evening came when “the Master” told the audience that there is no God, so they can do what they please and enjoy life. The critic also suggested some irregular sexual goings-on between the Master and the violinist; a photograph shows Waddell kneeling on Crowley’s chest and The Looking Glass made much of that. De Wend-Fenton was known as a blackmailer. He would start off lightly but more dirt would hit the newsstands unless a certain palm was greased. Both he and Bottomley were later brought up on charges.

  In December Crowley took a holiday, and The Looking Glass was quick to congratulate itself on running “one of the most blasphemous and cold-blooded villains of modern times” out of town. It was a kind of poetic justice. Ever since 1898 and Aceldama Crowley had painted himself as a satanic rebel and had blasphemed left and right. Now the chickens were coming home to roost. Back in North Africa, Crowley and Neuburg tried to encore their honeymoon, but things didn’t go right. Crowley enjoyed himself, smoking hashish and watching dancing girls, but Neuburg was out of sorts. Crowley left him in Biskra to “recuperate,” but Neuburg was simply abandoned. Next stop was Paris, then a quick visit to his mother in Eastbourne—one biographer suggests he went there to torment the old girl—and then back to England.

  Crowley arrived to discover that The Looking Glass had done its homework. It’s very likely that Mathers had tutored them, providing a racy backstory to Crowley’s occult order. They had dug up everything they could on Crowley’s past—his divorce, adultery, the Golden Dawn debacle. Any skeletons Crowley had were pulled out, including the one from Chancery Lane, where Crowley had lived with the “rascally sham Buddhist monk Allan Bennett.” Bennett had achieved some notoriety by leading the first Buddhist mission to Britain, but such rascals were not wanted in England. Bennett’s Buddhism, however, was not the problem. It was suggested that he had participated in “unmentionable immoralities” with Crowley. The Looking Glass knew its stuff and stopped short of saying anything explicit. But the implication was that Bennett, Fuller, Jones, and nameless others had had sex with Crowley. Bennett was in Asia and in any case couldn’t be bothered, and Fuller wasn’t mentioned directly. Jones, a married man with a family, was. He decided to sue.

  Fuller insisted Crowley sue as well but V.V.V.V.V. balked. Fuller had a reputation to uphold—he was still a serving officer—and the mud slung at him was messy. Crowley should clear matters up. Crowley counseled “Resist not evil.” His non-resistance cost him Fuller’s friendship. Jones went ahead with a libel action but did not ask Crowley to testify; he believed that as a friend Crowley would offer to do so, and if he didn’t, it would be ungentlemanly to insist. Crowley had defended sodomy in The World’s Tragedy. He had sung its praises in poetry and had associated it with the highest spirituality. But it was illegal in England and that was a consideration. In any event, Crowley’s testimony most likely could not have helped Jones. Crowley would either have spoken the truth and admitted to homosexual relations—not with Jones or the others, of course, but with anyone was bad enough—or he would have to perjure himself, and the defense would surely find him out. So prudence said keep mum and he did.

  Jones accused The Looking Glass of libeling him as a homosexual and claimed large damages. The Looking Glass retorted that they had not said Jones was homosexual, that the language used did not imply this, and that in any case, anyone associated with Crowley had no reputation to besmirch. But the real figure in the dock was Crowley. Mathers had a last chance to get back at his usurper when he was called to give witness, as was a Dr. Berridge, a homeopathist and Golden Dawn initiate loyal to Mathers. Berridge testified that, years earlier, when told that some Golden Dawn members—possibly Yeats—accused him of being a sodomite, Crowley neither affirmed nor denied the accusation. This of course meant that it was true—which, in fact, it was. We can berate the legal system of the time for making a harmless sexual preference an illegal act, and The Looking Glass for its contention that anyone involved with Crowley deserved what they got. But Crowley had gone out of his way to give himself a bad reputation and now he reaped what he had sown. The clincher came when some Latin notes Crowley had included to an essay were submitted as evidence. The first letter of the words formed obscenities: piss, cunt, arse, and quim—English slang for female genitals.2 Crowley no doubt chuckled over these but they didn’t look good in court.

  In the end, Jones lost the case, Crowley lost friends, the A...A... lost members, and new recruits tapered off. The court found that the allegation of homosexuality was substantially true, a miscarriage of justice but perhaps inevitable. Fuller never forgave Crowley for what he saw as cowardice and their relations soon ended. He was already angry at Crowley over a letter he sent from Biskra that included a homosexual limerick about Neuburg’s pursuit of Arab boys, as well as a packet of obscene postcards.3 Fuller had a family. Had the letter been opened or been read by anyone else, it would have caused a scandal and he could have been charged with possessing obscene materials. Crowley never worried if his obsessions caused trouble for anyone else and his loss of Fuller marked a trend that continued throughout his life. Eckenstein had already di
stanced himself, as had Allan Bennett. He contributed an article on “The Training of the Mind” for Crowley’s Equinox that year and Crowley tried to renew their relationship, but Bennett had no time for thelema, explaining that “No Buddhist would consider it worthwhile to pass from the crystalline clearness of his own religion for this involved obscurity.”

  Crowley got out his frustration about the case with a self-justifying pamphlet entitled “The Rosicrucian Scandal”—using Leo Vincey, the hero of H. Rider Haggard’s classic She, as a pseudonym—in which he had a final fling at Mathers. The opening shows Crowley at his alliterative best.4 He was not a good loser.

  Around this time, Jacob Epstein, the famous sculptor, had completed a monument to Oscar Wilde in Paris’ Père Lachaise cemetery, where another “liberationist,” the singer Jim Morrison, is buried—it’s debatable whose grave is visited more. Epstein’s monument displayed Wilde’s penis and so the authorities covered it with a tarpaulin. Crowley was appalled and devised a plan to show them up. He distributed pamphlets announcing that something spectacular would occur on the site and encouraged the public not to miss it. He then hid in the cemetery, and after cutting through the ropes securing the tarpaulin, attached thin wires that could unveil the monument with a simple tug. Crowds gathered on the appointed day as Crowley hoped, but the authorities, disdaining to be made fools of, did not send the guards Crowley had expected. The press, too, didn’t turn up, and so his unveiling was a dud. When he later discovered that a compromise had been reached and a bronze butterfly now obscured Wilde’s privates, he once again hid in the cemetery and stole the offending insect. Crowley then appeared in the Café Royal wearing the celebrated codpiece. It was one time he didn’t want to be invisible. It’s reported Epstein did not think well of the stunt.