At your home the landlady swore you had gone; but I refused to believe it so silently and so forcefully that she suddenly changed her mind, took me upstairs, and knocked. You flung the door open. You had a loose nightdress on, and your hair was down. Your first impulse was to shut the door, but you were afraid (I think) and I have little chance for I came in with determination.
On the bed sat Sidney Carlisle (Doris’ [Gomez] worm husband) with some thin brown sack-like thing on; under it I could see an enormous F[phallus] in erection—at least 18 inches long. Behind the door Neuburg, or Lapère, or a mixture of the two, was squatting on the floor.
It was of course evident that you were the last word in horror. I said “All right; I accept the situation, and I love you; and now I can do it without scruple or diffidence.” I caught you in my arms, and we began to dance voluptuously, madly, our mouths locked. S. C. [Carlisle] used his F as a violin, with some curious object (I can’t remember exactly what) as a bow, while Neuburg chanted a mantra. The dance got madder and faster.
Bye and Bye I threw you down tempestuously on the bed B [reference to a drawing of the room], and thrust my head where it is happiest. Then after awhile I came up and began to make love to you in the usual way.
I woke, finding myself about to end, and believing the dream to be true. With horror: yet I summoned all my strength to cry “Thank God for Hilarion” and it then seemed to me that the dream was not evidence, that she was in a railroad car two hundred miles away, but that she had taken this way of coming to me to wake me on my birthday!10
Apart from the suggestion that Jeanne and her husband may have gone on ahead without Crowley to Vancouver (where we know Crowley and Jeanne were next together), two names mentioned in the dream show us again how tantalizingly little we know of what precisely Crowley had actually been up to in pursuance of his various schemes.
The dreamed “Harré” is almost certainly dime novelist T. Everett Harré (1884–1948)11 who released a booklet in 1918 to alert America to “the enemy within”: I.W.W., an Auxiliary of the German Espionage System: History of the I.W.W. Anti-war Activities, Showing How the I.W.W. Program of Sabotage Inspired the Kaiser’s Agents in America.
Founded in 1905, the I.W.W. (Industrial Workers of the World) advocated revolutionary industrial unionism supported by socialist-anarchist groups. In London in 1913, Crowley heard radical Irish trades unionist Jim Larkin, who would join forces with the I.W.W. in America (see here). Between 1915 and 1917, the I.W.W.’s “Agricultural Workers Organization” (AWO) organized more than a hundred thousand migratory farmworkers throughout the Midwest and western United States, recruiting members in rail yards and hobo haunts. This resulted in I.W.W. members being identified with hobos riding the rails and migratory farmworkers struggling to get to the next jobsite: the meat-and-potatoes experiences that inspired later “beat poets” and folksingers, such as Bob Dylan.
I.W.W. intrigues with agricultural labor provide the context for Crowley’s remarkable claim that “I was fortunately able to break up a most formidable spy system, disguised as the ‘Agricultural Labor Bureau.’”*10812
The “Raynes” of Crowley’s Chicago dream is undoubtedly Maitland Ambrose Trevelyan Raynes (1879–1944), model for “Keynes Aloysius Wimble” in Crowley’s Simon Iff adventure What’s in a Name? whom we encountered in chapter 11 (pp. 194–95) in fictional form, meeting Iff (Crowley?) off his ship at New York’s Cunard Pier in October 1914. As noted then, Raynes may have been a British agent or intelligence asset.13
At 4:15 p.m. on the afternoon of his fortieth birthday, Crowley fell asleep in the passenger car taking him some 300 miles northwest of Chicago to Minnesota capital St. Paul, on the Mississippi’s eastern bank. He dreamed of Hilarion, his very own obsession. Awaking, he felt impelled suddenly to tear off the seal from the magick ring made for the grade of “Master of the Temple” 8° = 3▫. He then noted boldly in Greek letters EΓΩ ΛΟΓΟΣ AIΩNΟΣ 9° = 2▫ AA—“I am the Word of the Aeon.” He was the Magus, and his “Word” was Thelema. He was now to identify himself wholly with that Word. He took as the omen of the moment a line from his AA Order collection ΘEΛHMA (“Thelema”): “Therefore is the seal unloosed, that guarded the Eighth Abyss; therefore is the vast sea as a veil; therefore is there a rendering asunder of all things.” One wonders what the Roman Catholic bishop of the grandly imposing, domed St. Paul’s Cathedral of St. Paul would have thought about that. Crowley could hardly have avoided noting its almost anachronistic dominance of the otherwise thoroughly commercialized capital.
It is likely that Crowley stayed at the stately thirteen-story Hotel St. Paul on West 5th Street. When he got there he realized he had lost the lapis lazuli, engraved with the V.V.V.V.V. motto and “Eye” from his platinum-lidded seal ring, itself studded with pyramids to represent the city where dwelled the Master of the Temple. Next morning at 10:00 a.m., Crowley returned to makeshift facilities inside a crowded warehouse on East 4th Street that served as a temporary station for the two hundred daily trains. The once impressive, now blackened and partly demolished old Union Depot of 1881 had burned down two years previously; citizens were anxious for its replacement. Close to the rubble of the old, Crowley found the lapis lazuli on the platform in seven pieces. The figure seven he found spiritually significant. He put the pieces, in a packet, into his traveling safe, intended for distribution to seven representatives after his death. A year later he checked for them; they were gone. Crowley associated such unaccountable losses with a kind of payment to, or sign from, inscrutable lords of destiny.
With thoughts of that nature occupying his mind, it is little wonder that he found St. Paul and Minneapolis “merely magnified markets always open” with “no life of any kind outside business.” He imagined the populus as “poor damned souls” sweating to find a way out “somehow, somewhere.”14 He could barely understand how people could live such closed lives when all about them the elemental grandeur of nature cried out for celebration and spiritual participation. People’s religion went on with interminable proscriptions and moralizing inside European-style buildings, unrelated to the divine creation about them. The cities were colonies, alien and imposed on an environment that had sent its denizens into themselves, concentrated only on business at hand.
What business had Crowley at hand? He maintained to Viereck that his investigation of “hyphenated Americans” and nonhyphenated Americans revealed to him that the Midwest had no interest in the war and could not see it had anything to do with them (oblivious to their economic relationship to the coasts), while German-Americans, he lied, were ready for insurrection and civil war at the right signal. In fact he found non-German-Americans generally against the German cause but unwilling to consider doing anything about it, while German-Americans were generally not roused to assisting their old homeland’s struggle with the world. It should all be left to Europeans to sought out on their own territories. As John Butler Yeats would observe in 1916, Americans would never vote for war, though they might be plunged into it.
In himself, Crowley longed to get through the Rockies where “there was a semblance of resurrection,” for being in touch with the Pacific archipelago and Asia, the West Coast had “caught a little of their culture.”15
VANCOUVER
Between Wednesday the thirteenth and Saturday the sixteenth of October, Crowley covered the two thousand or so miles of railroad between St. Paul and Vancouver in British Columbia, rumbling on west through what he considered a cultural vacuum in North Dakota and Montana toward Washington State and the Canadian border, during which period British readers heard of the execution by firing squad in Belgium of nurse Edith Cavell, an event that stirred Crowley to pen one of his most savage propaganda articles (published in the International in January 1916) in the hope that its sickening arrogance would turn off Americans.
The ostensible reason for Crowley’s arrival in the neat, spacious, colonial-style, coastal city of Vancouver was to inspect new recruits to the city’s O.T.O. lod
ge, led by his North American viceroy Charles Stansfeld Jones, assisted by fellow Englishman Wilfred T. Smith.16 News of Crowley’s coming had stimulated palpable anticipation among the fifteen or so members. They were to greet their Very Illustrious Brother Sovereign Grand Inspector VII° under the assumed name of “Clifford” as he was involved in “a matter touching the welfare of the Empire.”17
It may be that Jeanne Foster did not meet up with Crowley until the nineteenth, for she does not appear to have been present when Crowley’s train came in at the still-under-construction (and now sadly demolished) Great Northern Vancouver Station at 9:25 a.m. on the Saturday morning. V.I. Bro “Clifford” in a gray overcoat with Malacca cane (was he still suffering from the previous year’s phlebitis?) greeted Jones at the station, then, wasting no time, spent all day with Jones, talking O.T.O. and AA business nonstop at Crowley’s billet, the massive chateaulike, eighteen-story-high Hotel Vancouver on Howe Street. Now gone forever, we may imagine in another time, Crowley in his suite there, testing Jones on astral projection. Crowley himself had been testing his own skills. Around mid-night on the twelfth he had visited Hilarion astrally, as a golden snake that turned into a great “Rood Cross” within her body “for many hours.” She in turn visited him via the same channels on October 18, around lunchtime, and knew that she had (for I’m informed that an astral body might loosen off from its source by itself).18
At 4:30 p.m. on the Saturday, Crowley was briefly introduced to the awe-struck Smith. Smith regretted not putting more feeling into his hand-shake, but he had not recognized Crowley “on the instant.” Was “Clifford” sporting additional disguise, or was Crowley in his “invisible” mode? After all, the Fatherland was a proscribed magazine under Canadian Special Measures legislation, and lodge members were instructed to maintain silence about the inspector general’s whereabouts.19 It may be that Smith entertained a visual ideal of Crowley of his own imagining and wasn’t ready for the incarnate being.
The following Tuesday, Very Excellent Soror Hilarion and Very Illustrious Bro Clifford were expected to inspect the lodge. Before doing so, they met up in the profoundest sense in the Hotel Vancouver at 5:30 p.m. for an Object Crowley noted as “Thanksgiving for my sister and bride, Hilarion.” No other Scarlet Woman would ever again extract this much thanksgiving from Crowley’s amorous heart.
British Columbia Lodge Number 1 was duly assembled at an old Chesterfield schoolhouse at 1532 Lonsdale Avenue, across the “First Narrows” in North Vancouver, which also provided a home for Jones and his family.*109 Crowley and Jeanne observed the initiation into the Minerval and 1° of Smith’s candidate Reginald W. Shaw, and Crowley’s recommendation Horace Algernon Sheridan-Bickers (1883–1957). Sheridan-Bickers, whom Crowley had known as painter and dramatist in prewar London (he was born in Balham), would go on to screenwrite in Hollywood, while Betty, his wife (not present at the inspection), had already earned Crowley’s attention.
Crowley gave a brief congratulatory speech. He was impressed by the ritual performance and by the well-made furniture and ornaments. Minutes recount that Soror Hilarion also offered her appreciation of the evening’s events.
Jones offered his hospitality for the night, but Crowley had to refuse, writing, “your lodge, beautiful as it is, has not got a Red Room; and I had to hold some chapters.”20 Unwitting Rose-Croix Knight-Masons might imagine that Crowley was referring to the “perfection” chamber of the 18° Rose-Croix grade of the Ancient & Accepted Rite. But the “Red Room of the Rose-Croix” had to do with the mystic rood and the mystic rose, and these components came together for the twenty-eighth occasion “to the glory of God” on October 20 at 1:10 p.m. in Vancouver, British Columbia. According to notes in the Rex de Arte Regia record made three days later, the rite was unfortunately “done without proper O.T.O. devotion, in fact it was perfectly human.” It seems Crowley simply made love to Jeanne, such was his impatient, frustrated excitement at having occasional congress with the “wife” of all he owned who was nipping off at intervals with her husband. The results of this magical faux pas were, he wrote, “disastrous”: “(1) No opportunity [presumably for seeing Jeanne] (2) mental disturbance and irritation all last night.”21
Thursday, October 1, marked the last occasion Smith would ever see his master again, but he struggled on and remained an active devotee for life; indeed, without W. T. Smith (1885–1957) it is hard to imagine the O.T.O.’s surviving and ultimately growing in America to this day. Smith wrote:
Brother Clifford, A.E.C., Baphomet [Crowley’s O.T.O. title as Head of the British Order], has left Vancouver told for Victoria. But I am inclined to think somewhere else, first at least. One can certainly feel him even so thick a person as myself. Should like to have had a bit of a talk to him. However it was hardly worth his while to bother with such a beginner. I have not made much showing. May come in for a little more of his attention another time. I understand he is very busy on important business with the war.22
There was a Southern Pacific steamer connection westward across the waters of the Inside Passage, then south to Victoria, at the southernmost tip of Vancouver Island. Spence, however, perhaps taking a tip from Smith’s doubting that Crowley would head straight there, suggests that Crowley got off the ferry at the mining town of Nanaimo, sixty miles north of Victoria, also on a very chilly Vancouver Island. Alvo von Alvensleben, “reputed head” of Chicago espionage, had lived at Port Alberni, less than forty miles west of Nanaimo, and Crowley could apparently do what Alvo could not: cross the border with valuables. Even if this imaginative hypothesis were true, it is very unlikely Smith would have doubted Crowley’s intention to go straight to Victoria for such a purpose. Another possibility may explain Smith’s doubt. Near the Victoria end of the Victoria–Nanaimo rail line nestled the village of Shawnigan. Shawnigan Lake was home to Sheridan-Bickers and wife, Margaret (“Betty”), who had not come to the O.T.O. meeting. As Crowley had enjoyed a brief affair with her before the war in London, perhaps a friendly reunion with her was what sex-conscious Smith was thinking about.
Londraville’s biography of Jeanne Foster refers to a diary entry of hers from 1915, placed at Victoria in “September.” The date must be an error as Jeanne was back East that month
—Night—
Moonlight on
Water black?
Lying hills—A.
Beneath that, two words: White nights. An entry follows that positively shouts out Jeanne’s confusion, and her determination to overcome it, over sex and love, and in references to the “Holy Guardian Angel” shows how intently she had been listening to Crowley’s vision of spiritual existence.
Oh the vanity of vanities that is called love. Oh the worms that creep in the flesh and the venom that lurks in the blood. The sacrifice . . . the spirit-mad seeker—how desperately must they strive against this most potent spell, this princely hallucination. It is a fever which runs its course—a disease that renders the victim weaker after each successive attack.
To love God—and God alone—to be consumed with His passion and His glory—to know the companionship of the Holy Guardian Angel, this is the only love that is not profanation and abomination.
Deliver me from the snare of the flesh. Deliver me from its sharp delights. Deliver me from its lures and its tender secrets.
If it be in God’s will that I shall find the love of God mirrored in a human being and that he loving God shall be God mirrored in me—then verily—holily we may love and even fearfully . . . love each other and forget God.23
Crowley related in his Confessions that he took a ship from Victoria to Seattle. By October 25 he was at Portland, Oregon, some 125 miles south of Seattle by Great Northern Railroad. There he again found himself with Jeanne. Matters with Matlack Foster were fast coming to a head. Crowley looked at the situation astrologically and, with Mars, Uranus, and Saturn in Jeanne’s seventh house, concluded that it looked “like destruction to the husband.” The Object of the sex magick was unequivocal: “Hilarion’s Freed
om. This is meant in a final sense; I had been thinking of nothing else for two days or more. I invoked all powers to aid. The Operation was excellent—for the first time (in 137 days) we found ourselves in a bed!”24
On that day Crowley made a serious entry in the “Royal Art” record.
It is now evident in all ways that I am indeed ΘHPIΟN (Therion = “Wild Beast”) Magus 9° = 2▫ AA This is to be proclaimed openly. The text is Liber Legis. SOROR HILARION The Scarlet Woman is to be with me in this work; for in her is all power given. I must therefore utter Truth, and perform Magick openly; and may They who have chosen me and brought me through the pylons, be with me also in The Work!
Chevalier O’Rourke would not have been surprised.
NINETEEN
California Welcomes the World
SAN FRANCISCO
It was a very different San Francisco from the one he left in May 1901. Crowley had just missed the earthquake in 1906, and since then much of the city had been rebuilt at lightning speed, such was the grit and confidence of the Californians who had made a golden gate to Asia and South America, backed to the hilt with money from Amy Crocker’s hugely wealthy banker relatives. Having secured half a continent for trade and settlement by railroad, they weren’t going to let an earthquake get in the way. And now San Francisco’s great show year had arrived. While the Allies faced long, painful casualty lists, bogged down on the ceaselessly bloody western and eastern fronts in a war unlike any other known to the species, San Francisco hosted the truly magnificent, incomparably spectacular Panama-Pacific International Exposition.
Opened on February 20 on a breathtaking 630-acre site in the Marina District, gilded souvenir booklets showed a fantasy scene of rainbow rays emanating from a pharos to rival ancient Alexandria’s, speckled with golden light and crystal waters at night. The artificial city’s domes, towers, cupolas, and pillared halls matched any wonderland ever conceived and exceeded most, and even though most of that splendor was wood and plaster and papier-mâché at its most gloriously sophisticated, there was no doubt that what was known generally as the World’s Fair was a dream made real, a vision of a future without “futurism,” if only for one magical year.
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