Aleister Crowley in America

by Tobias Churton

  On November 21 he concluded that there might have been something to Opus III, performed in London on October 14 with Violet Duval and Leila Bathurst for “health.” “The most anxious solicitude fails to discover any fault in the leg. This is a month earlier than the doctor’s prognostic.” Eight days later he again considered his health in terms of Opus III. “Not perfectly well, this leg. But general health throughout better than I have known it for years.” Crowley seems to have had most success with sex magick, as he perceived it, with rites relating to health.

  Money was another thing. People who knew Crowley well recalled how he always seemed to get just enough money to survive when hope seemed vain. On November 23, Opus VIII introduced the idea that perhaps operations should be done when the planets looked propitious. His partner this time was a “low” prostitute, a mulatto with strongly “negroid” features named Grace Harris, aged twenty-two and a “Venus in Crab type.” The Object: “Immediate money. (Interpreted as from an unexpected source before Sunday; a wish contrary to all probability.)” Two days later, “a letter came saying £800 was being found for me. But does this count [implying it was from an expected source]?” From whom this letter came or what became of the very large sum mentioned, we know not. He would remark on December 1 regarding the opus, “Not a cent! Yet I seem to be swimming in gold. I have a flat, and bought £150 furniture &c &c &c. [as we shall see shortly]. And Jones from Vancouver [Charles Stansfeld Jones, running an O.T.O. Lodge in British Columbia] sends twelve people ready to take III° O.T.O.” That meant some fees forthcoming. On December 6 he noted there was only “$15 between me and the work’us.*73 And I owe $200.” On December 15 he could only make the weak point that despite debt, he had obtained credit, concluding, “I shall call this doubtful.”

  Doubtful indeed. Crowley’s immediate financial concerns were tied up with arrangements made or supposed with John Quinn. Crowley’s expectations undoubtedly overreached what Quinn was actually offering. For a start, Quinn expected the shipping costs for the manuscripts Crowley ordered over from England for his perusal to be borne by Crowley, and the money paid to Crowley was intended as an “advance,” technically to be repaid if Quinn chose not to buy after inspecting the goods. Crowley, meanwhile, had already moved from the St. Regis to the cheaper Hotel Wolcott at 4 West 31st Street when Quinn wrote to him on December 1.

  Dear Mr. Crowley,

  I received your letter of this date enclosing key of the hamper containing the manuscripts and a list of the manuscripts. I am sending the key to Messrs. Pritchard & Company, together with a copy of the list of contents. I will let you know when the hamper is cleared and ready for delivery.

  Very truly yours,

  John Quinn3

  Ever optimistic, Crowley rashly considered the advance a sign of fortune justifying his taking on a rented apartment at 40 West 36th Street, to which address Quinn’s secretary, John Watson, sent a confirmation of Crowley’s apparent debt to Quinn on December 18.

  Dear Mr. Crowley,

  I have today sent Messrs. Pritchard & Company Mr. Quinn’s check for $28.40 in payment of freight, insurance, broker’s charges, custom house entry, etc., in connection with shipment of MSS recently received by you. This makes your indebtedness to Mr. Quinn $258.40. Mr Quinn sends his kind regards.

  Yours very truly,

  John Watson4

  Crowley also used John Quinn’s name as a credit reference for bills he was running up for furniture and other goods for the apartment, as is shown by two letters sent from Quinn’s office on December 4. The first addressed a Mr. Perry at the credit department of the big department store B. Altman & Co., at Fifth Avenue and 34th Street. Quinn sent the same letter to the Globe Wernicke Co. at 380 Broadway, flagship retailer of bookcases and office furniture.

  Dear Sirs,

  I have received yours of December 3rd.

  I have known Mr. Crowley for some little time, particularly as a poet and man of letters. I do not personally know of his financial means or resources. I believe him to be honest and I believe that he would not undertake an obligation that he did not expect and feel competent and able to pay.

  Yours very truly,

  John Quinn5

  Having attempted to improve his finances by sex magick, Crowley next thought he’d dedicate Opus IX on November 25 to “Eloquence,” as he had to give a lecture on Buddhism on Sunday 29th. Circumstances were peculiar and written details were “prohibited,” as a form of XI° or homosexual magick was employed, the occasion being completely unexpected. As for the result: “I was certainly fluent [at the lecture], and not self-conscious. On the whole much better than I had hoped. Yes: I will call this Success.” But surely Crowley could have made a good stab at the lecture without resorting to magick? One gets the sense that he was using magick for “performance enhancement,” to cope with anxiety and a dip in self-confidence: something that could, unfortunately, become habitual—though he might argue that he would have wanted sex anyway, and it was his true will to raise it to the “Great Work.”

  The reference to the Buddhism lecture is interesting because shortly afterward the name of thoroughly remarkable multimillionaire Aimée Gouraud (née Amy Crocker 1864–1941) entered Crowley’s sex magick diary.

  Returning from many an adventure in the Far East in the 1890s, the delightfully “unmoral” (not, by her own estimation, “immoral”) Aimée would marry for the second time Jackson Gouraud amid a Buddhist community she founded—apparently the first—in New York in the 1890s, the heyday of intellectual occultism and Parisian interest in Far Eastern religion. The very colorful Aimée, sometime friend of Oscar Wilde, seems to have already known the very colorful Crowley and his reputation as an occult scholar and steamy practitioner of disturbing magnitude, responding to his magnetic appeal in her own suck-it-and-see fashion. The Buddhism lecture then may have been her doing. It is also possible that Crowley had at some point initiated Aimée Gouraud into the O.T.O., because he refers to her as a IX°.

  Fig. 13.1. Aimée Gouraud (Crocker) with snake

  Fig. 13.2. Aimée Gouraud (née Crocker, 1864–1941)

  The Buddhism lecture set for November 29 was preceded the day before by another magical rite, Opus X, this time for Babalon “made flesh,” a rite performed with “full hands” to obtain the Scarlet Woman. Next morning Crowley received a letter from a Stanford lady seeking employment as private secretary (more expense!). On February 2, 1916, he reflected that her description, “hair ashen and greying,” was surprisingly applicable to she who did in fact secure office as Scarlet Woman: Jeanne Robert Foster. In 1920, Crowley claimed that Jeanne’s dyeing of her hair to maintain the lustrous red and gold of her youth had deflated him somehow: a niggling fissure between his yearnings and the ideal.

  On December 1, Crowley finalized arrangements for moving from the Wolcott to 40 West 36th Street—a couple of blocks from the Morgan Library. Whether Opus XI for “Magnetism” was performed around 10:45 p.m. at the Wolcott, or at a room held by prostitute Grace Harris, is unknown. Crowley’s Object was “that concentration and radiation of magical force which draws men after one.” “The work was lacking in orgiastic quality,” wrote Crowley, “but good as to sacramentalism and concentration. Latter very good; the mind faltered once only.” As to result, he noted the rite was followed by a “bad night,” so he used the time packing, which suggests he was still at the hotel.

  Quite without thinking—the ideal magical state it would seem—he picked up Magnetism by Jules Denis, Baron du Potet (1796–1881), a gift from the late John Yarker. Yarker had introduced Crowley to the Ancient & Primitive Rite of Freemasonry and, thereby, to the Ordo Templi Orientis. Praised by Éliphas Lévi for applying Mesmerism to occult research, sometime London homeopath du Potet was a favorite of Theosophical Society founder Helena Blavatsky. She drew on his Introduction to the Study of Animal Magnetism (1838) and Magic Unveiled and Occult Science (1852), the latter work also favored by Victor Hugo, perhaps for its accommodation of spiritism.
What fascinated Crowley was simply the link between rite and the phenomenon of the book coming to hand.

  On December 4 he reckoned the rite had worked all right—but “the wrong way round”! He was either a turn off, or else it was a woman he’d attracted! “Everything that depended on that went wrong. But I see signs of change this morning.” While he would conclude on December 13 that the operation had been “thoroughly bad” due to lack of “proper orgia”—“The ‘calm mind’ is no good at all for Magick”—he would find himself praised by the luscious Aimée Gouraud, Ernest Simmons, and Mitchell Kennerley for precisely that glamour of “Magnetism” on December 6.

  The occasion was a dinner party in connection with a lecture on Magick at 32 West 58th Street, close to Central Park, now demolished. The event rather opened up the Christmas rush in New York society and good will was plentiful. Who would not desire to hear the voice of one of the magi at the cradle of a new aeon at such a time?

  Were things picking up for the man whose day began at 10:35 a.m. with a solo rite, concentrating on Babalon and taking the sun’s vice-regent on Earth into his hands, formulating the will whose Object was “Success tonight”—the lecture? It is not clear whether the dinner took place before or after the lecture. One might suppose after, on account of the magnetism perceived by Aimée Gouraud, Ernest Simmons, and Mitchell Kennerley. One tends to radiate more after a successful talk.

  Ernest E. Simmons (1884–1966) served as Elbert Hubbard’s secretary and business associate at the Roycroft organization, East Aurora’s ideal arts and crafts community referred to disdainfully by Crowley in his “Art in America.” Simmons’s employer, Hubbard, would die tragically in the Lusitania atrocity five months later.

  Fig. 13.3. Mitchell Kennerley (right, 1878–1950) with journalist Christopher Morley (1890–1957)

  John Quinn’s friend Mitchell Kennerley (1878–1950), correspondent of Frank Harris, Arnold Bennett, and D. H. Lawrence, migrated from Burslem, Staffordshire, to establish himself in New York as art dealer and publisher of works by Oscar Wilde, H. G. Wells, Walt Whitman, George Meredith, Henrik Ibsen, Edna St. Vincent Millay, but not—alas—Aleister Crowley. It seems, however, that Kennerley did get Crowley’s hopes up that night. The Yorke Collection, Warburg Institute, London, holds a set of proofs of Crowley’s poetry collection The Giant’s Thumb (1915), under the Kennerley imprint, which suggests something came of the encounter, though the project never reached fruition.*74

  As for Aimée Gouraud, one rather hopes her reputation energized collective enthusiasm at the dinner. It hadn’t been long since she’d hosted the wildest, luxuriant parties at her strikingly adapted, Eastern-styled house at 46 West 65th Street. In June she’d married fourth husband (so far) Russian aristocrat Alexandre Miskinoff and was officially living with him at a suite in the McAlpin Hotel, but by early 1915 they were effectively separated, so Aimée may have been well off the leash that night, keen to party.

  Result for Crowley: “Really a marked success. Pouring rain, and I had a bad cough. Yet this left me while I spoke and I was eloquent. (Yet this impression is mostly subjective.) I spoke without notes, yet never faltered. Truly say I, Let there be glory and thanksgiving to the Holy One! N.B. Abramelin demons did their utmost to stop this lecture. A 70-mile gale blew and they tried to upset me both physically and mentally.”

  Who were these Abramelin demons? One cannot be entirely sure that Crowley was in earnest in attributing meterological phenomena to such agencies. When working on preliminaries for the Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin the Mage at Boleskine in early 1900, the process of making talismans had released, he believed, negatively charged, so to speak, entities into the world, hell-bent on mischief. Such unruly spiritual creatures were supposed to be at his command, but Crowley infers a tendency among them to stir things up when he wasn’t “on the case.” He might well have been pulling legs, but there was a period in the 1940s when living in Jermyn Street, St. James’s, he couldn’t bear to have the Abra-Melin book in his room, so depressive and disturbing seemed to be the forces associated with the magic squares secreted within it. He was also suggesting that no serious positive occult event occurs without spiritually negative resistance of some kind, and he had plenty.

  Fig. 13.4. Aimée Gouraud with Prince Alexandre Miskinoff

  I’ve read the story of the “demonic” gale many times over the years and wondered whether Crowley had made up the whole story for effect. I consulted those oracles of unvarnished truth, the newspapers.

  The Sun’s forecast for New York State published early on Sunday, December 6, 1914, had only a hint of disturbance, with an afternoon temperature of 32°F predicted. “For eastern New York, rain or snow in the south, partly cloudy in central and northern portions today and tomorrow; strong northeast winds.” Note the winds forecasted! “New York, Dec. 6—The southern storm lost much of its force, and moving eastward was central off the coast of South Carolina yesterday. . . . In this city, the [previous] day was partly cloudy and colder, wind, brisk to high northeast; average humidity, 57 percent.” Monday’s Tribune was packed with war news: British and German gains and a pictorial magazine illustrated with ugly war photographs and images from “German war artists’ sketchbooks.” There was a lack of confidence in U.S. Secretary of the Navy Daniels, and many charming advertisements for Christmas presents of all kinds.

  For the “Abra-Melin” effect one need only consult the Monday, December 7, Evening World final edition: the day after the lecture. The front page banner headline read: TERRIFIC GALE CAUSES GREAT DAMAGE ALL ALONG COAST. Below this headline was a huge photo-graph of Kaiser Wilhelm with his staff officers in spiked helmets next to the headline BIG GUNS RAKE ENTIRE GERMAN LINE; BATTLE ON FROM SEA TO THE ARGONNE—ALLIES ROLLING BACK KAISER’S GREAT ARMY, SAY PARIS OFFICIALS. To the left of the story of Germans seizing Lodz in Poland “by point of bayonet” was the second lead story: $25,000 SEAGATE COTTAGE SWEPT AWAY BY HIGH SEA; DAMAGE ALL ALONG COAST “Piers and Bulkheads on Coney Beach Smashed by Terrific Waves—Fight to Save Homes—Tide Near Record Mark Helps Gale in Destruction—New Storm on the Way. . . . Terrific seas, backed by a mighty flood-tide and twenty-four hours of a northeast gale, fell upon the nearby Atlantic coast today, sweeping away houses, flooding villages, wrecking big and small boats and tearing great gullies through waterfront streets, lawns, and parking. The storm, which is raging from Hatteras to Maine, has not yet blown itself out, according to the Weather Bureau at Washington; the only change predicted is that the direction of the gale will shift to the northwest. The city’s Seaside Park at Coney Island became a lake early in the day. . . . From Sixth Street to Ocean Parkway [in Seabright] houses stood in from one to three feet of water.”

  As if this pandemonium was not enough, turn to page 3: “Plain NOISE Killing Hundreds in New York; Causes Insanity and Deafness, Says Mrs. Rice.” Automobile horns made people close windows night and day, ruining their health. Clearly, the demons were out and about. Mrs. Rice was staying indoors.

  Fig. 13.5. Astrologer Evangeline Adams

  Five days later (December 11), another forthright, less febrile New Yorker Evangeline Smith Adams (born Jersey City 1859) was on the witness stand testifying at a fortune-telling trial. It wasn’t quite the Witches of Salem, but fortune-telling by astrology was bound by legal restrictions and was not a profession to be pursued freely, especially where money was involved. Miss Adams was about to enter Aleister Crowley’s universe, and taking risks for occult science was a good way to get past first post. She testified:

  I am writing a book on astrology. I am holding it over simply for future information. All the balance of the book is finished. I should have published it last year but I wanted to find more facts to give my colleagues about Neptune.6

  The judge was doubtless grateful. The jury, like most of society, definitely lacked facts about Neptune, but Miss Adams was not strictly relating the facts of the case, for the book she had been working on, apparently with psychotherapist Dr. David Seabury (1885–1960)
,*75 was very far from finished: for that she would need Aleister Crowley. And fate, through the magic of newspaper print, was about to bring them together.

  JOHN O’HARA COSGRAVE, EVANGELINE ADAMS, AND FRANK CROWNINSHIELD

  On the morning of Sunday, December 13, Crowley woke up to the delight of knowing a curious form of light relief from war news awaited readers of the New York World’s Sunday Magazine. An intriguing article began on page 9: MASTER MAGICIAN REVEALS WEIRD SUPERNATURAL RITES. New York World Sunday editor John O’Hara Cosgrave had first sent a regular features reporter (probably Marguerite Mooers Marshall) to interview the latest arrival to New York’s cultural high life. Marshall having been dismissed as a “sob sister” by Crowley, Cosgrave thought better of it. “He then sent Henry Hall,” Crowley recalled, “who had married a French wife and learnt courtesy. He had read a good deal of good stuff and possessed natural intelligence. I found him charming.”7

  Former London Times correspondent Henry Noble Hall (1872–1947) had wide journalistic experience in the United States, England, and France. Sympathetic to Zionism, he corresponded with Chaim Weizmann, and when America joined the Allies in 1917, Hall was accredited to the American Army, experience evinced in The Fourth Division: Its Services and Achievements in the World War, cowritten with Colonel Christian A. Bach. Its first chapter should engage anyone wondering why America entered World War I. The chapter focuses on the very field in which Crowley was, by stages, involving himself. Hall writes that

  German officials violated American laws, incited labor troubles in munitions plants and paid for the placing of bombs on vessels thus destroying American lives and property on the high seas. The German government fanned anti-American feeling in Mexico and fomented Irish revolutionary plots, against Great Britain, in the United States. It filled unsuspecting communities and even Government offices with spies.8