Aleister Crowley in America

by Tobias Churton

  Such would have to occur pretty soon with regard to Matlack Foster, for things had obviously got well out of hand. By November 10, Jeanne had moved south to join the throng that converged on San Diego’s competing Panama-California Exposition in a magically transformed Balboa Park. Like San Francisco’s exhibition, San Diego’s phenomenal Moorish-flavored site—resembling an extended version of William Randolph Hearst’s extravagant Pacific coast pile at San Simeon between Monterey and Santa Barbara—was billed to celebrate the completion of the Panama Canal but was primarily intended as an advertisement for California’s confidence and as an open-door vision for the seaborne opportunities that San Diego’s magnificent harbor provided. Opened by President Woodrow Wilson in January, Teddy Roosevelt and his wife had visited it in July. And if that wasn’t enough, Hollywood superstar Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle had been mobbed with costar Mabel Normand too on their visit. The message was plain: San Diego was open to the world, ready and willing to accommodate all shapes and sizes.

  Fig. 19.7. Bird’s-eye view of Panama-California Exposition, 1915, San Diego

  Jeanne was struck not only by its display of Mayan treasures but also by the Welfare Exhibit. Her later life would be distinguished by devoted service in the cause of public welfare, and the San Diego exhibit impressed on her again, after experiences in Ireland and elsewhere, how child labor destroys human happiness and corrupts society. One can only imagine, as she made her way about the massive site, Jeanne’s thoughts and emotions going through a maelstrom from which established interests offered fleeting escape.

  On November 11, perhaps because Jeanne was a sometime Theosophist, Crowley asked her to deliver a letter of “Pure Love” he’d written to Katherine Tingley, who with William Q. Judge had formed a breakaway society when Annie Besant took over the TS. Crowley was at odds with Besant over her and her followers’ belief that young Jiddu Krishnamurti was the “Coming One,” a new spiritual messiah for the world, and Crowley expected his loving approach to be received gracefully by Tingley at her Raja Yoga Academy and Temple of Peace at Point Loma, San Diego. Convinced that the TS needed what he, and only he, had got, Crowley dreamed of an alliance, as he never stopped dreaming of becoming Annie Besant’s successor.

  Either before or after delivering the letter, Crowley and Jeanne performed Opus CXXIII with the same Object as Crowley’s rite with Myriam Deroxe: “well-conceived from the Goetic [daimonic] and Panic [of “Pan”] standpoint, considering the relation of H. to the person in question [M. Foster], and Her views on ‘living in the sunlight.’ However, I don’t think it worked.”15 Clearly not.

  For some reason Crowley blamed himself for asking Jeanne to deliver the letter to Tingley. Perhaps she had found the experience upsetting for some reason, or he regretted not bringing to bear on the Theosophists his “Magic Power.” Impatient, Crowley took himself to Tingley’s flower garden overlooking the Pacific on the twelfth. There, one “Brown” brusquely seized Crowley’s greeting card. The Magus, full of Pure Love, as he put it, was thrown off guard by Brown’s aggressive provocation. The Beast was not welcome. Waiting for his automobile lift, Crowley witnessed what he called their “soulless devilries for awhile”—perhaps outdoor yoga sessions whose spirit he discerned as inappropriate or anemically ill directed. As the light began to fade, a young man rushed out and took photographs of him, which Crowley thought “extraordinary.”

  There was a denouement. In the early hours of the next morning, Crowley dreamed he was in a photographer’s attic where a beautiful boy of twenty kissed him, then seized his genitals so hard that Crowley awoke in pain. Wide awake, Crowley recorded seeing a “shapeless half-human being with a pig’s face” rise through the bed and bite his right breast while trying to copulate with him. He seized it and, with desperate effort, strangled it, so he wrote, commenting, “Nothing of this sort has occurred since the summer of 1899 E.V. [era vulgari = common era] when W. B. Yeats sent his vampires after me. I think it argues great weakness in me as well as great strength in the Tingley witch.”

  Importantly his next comment (written on November 13) links the circumstance to Opus number CXXI with assistant Myriam Deroxe, where he had willed death on Matlack Foster: “I doubt almost whether Ops like CXXI are legitimate after all; whether indeed one should not ‘overcome evil with good’ in the world as well as in oneself.”16

  Jeanne also, he noted, had “similar unpleasant experiences, having a weasel coming to her.” Petting it, it bit her breast. She also got up in her sleep to telephone him, “not knowing it.” Such goings-on, imaginative perhaps, did not stop Crowley in his determination to “free” Jeanne from Foster. A note of November 16 indicates that he met Jeanne’s husband and put a magical death-sign on him, “astrally.” Also astrally came Hilarion to him that night around 11:00 p.m., “naked, slightly larger than life.” In astral embrace his “Phallus” entered her, filling her entire body until their combined aura was “an egg of fire-opal” giving off sparks of silver amid rainbow rays. He woke in the morning feeling all the symptoms of a night of drink and debauchery.

  It would appear from the record that Jeanne and Crowley’s paths diverged again after San Diego; they would not reconvene in the flesh until meeting at Chicago on November 22. In the meantime, Crowley found relief among the brothels, gambling halls, and drinking saloons of “Tia Juanta” on the Mexican border, which must have brought back memories of leaving Mexico in the early summer of 1901. He headed east toward Arizona’s Grand Canyon. Pondering its curious geology, Crowley decided that the prevailing theory of its being gouged out by water erosion over vast periods of time was unlikely; he, thinking for himself as ever, decided an earthquake had created an almighty crack that gave passage to the Colorado. Nimble-footed Crowley rushed down the “Angel Trail” in double-quick time to the river, where he cried the name of Hilarion so that Nature might echo it resoundingly.

  Three days before seeing Jeanne again in Chicago, Crowley found himself in Kansas City where he got “well done” by one Ruth “Hall,” German American prostitute (was she part of research?), excessively sensual, voluptuous, and eager, as he put it. She reminded him of London society hostess Gwen Otter. The Object was death (in code) for Matlack Foster “for the third and last time!!!” He appears to have heard that Foster’s health was failing so he wrote, “Please God this may finish the whole hellish business!”17

  Meeting together in Chicago, opus CXXV, their thirty-fourth sexual encounter, was dedicated to “Thanksgiving”—though not the Pilgrim’s holiday. They met again, at Buffalo on November 23. Object: Semper eadem!—“ever the same!” Was that thanksgiving or a death wish on Foster? The result suggests the latter, in its strangely halfhearted way, almost as if Crowley didn’t believe what he was doing. “This does not appear to have worked well. Vide infra!!!”18 When we do look on, as instructed, we find that Crowley is back in New York City, and all is not well. “The three previous operations had been unsuccessful, though some effect was evident. The return current may have hit us [a reaction effect reminiscent of “evil be to he who evil thinks”]. Soror H. has been very ill ever since leaving Buffalo, and I the day after I arrived in Chicago. We are still far from well. These Operations may be all wrong; but we had better go on if it kills us both. Mr. . . . [Foster, presumably] has become very violent and aggressive.”

  True to his intent, he persisted on December 4 in the wee hours of a bitterly cold night, by gaslight, with “Mierka”; that is, Floria Comtesse de Martinpré,*112 a “respectable married woman” and “drug fiend.” Mierka, with her jet-black hair and “beautiful, statuesque figure,” proved “astoundingly sensual, passionate, and voluptuous” and was exhausted by a partially rejuvenated Crowley. He had met the lady the previous evening at a soiree hosted by Elvira (or Elvera) and William McNeir, stockbroker of East 79th Street. They had kissed before three minutes of being alone had elapsed. After the operation, Crowley’s health cleared up suddenly, and he awoke without a cough and in “perfect condition,” but then,
that was not the Object, was it? With the original object in (his) mind, Crowley and the lady joined sexual forces three more times that week. After the fourth operation with Mierka in the small hours of December 7, Crowley concluded under “Result”: “These seven Operations [Th. MF] may have been wholly spoilt because I had to ο . . . του α wrong.” The two Greek letters and Greek word are a mystery as to meaning. Whether the fatal rites were abandoned for moral or technical reasons, we know not, but Matlack lived on until 1933. It might be argued that Jeanne made her deal with her own “devil” when she married for security. Keeping her soul came at a price for all concerned.

  CREATE IN ME A CLEAN BEAST, O GOD

  Jeanne was back with the Beast on a bitterly cold December 10, this time making her contribution to an operation for “Magical Energy.” He recorded “Instant Success,” though how this energy was manifested is not mentioned. Crowley obviously was in need of money again. A short story called “The Chute” had been published in the International in November, but work was thin on the ground.19 Twenty dollars appeared “right away” following another sexual rite for “gold” during a snowstorm with Jeanne three days later, but he counted the operation a failure, despite the elixir’s being “sweet beyond all manner of sweetness.”20

  Some time between then and the early hours of December 17, Crowley encountered a prostitute named Rita Gonzales, described as “a short sturdy whore—very sensual indeed—probably Virgo rising.” She was about twenty-six, very dark, and Spanish. This was the start of a wonderful relationship; though the Object of their first sexual experience was the “full awakening of Phallos in Hilarion” and its resultant Elixir nothing to be compared to that only Soror Hilarion could produce. By the end of the day, Crowley reckoned Jeanne’s response that day suggested the operation was successful.

  Fig. 19.8. Crowley’s story “The Chute” appeared in The International, edited in wooden fashion by Viereck in November 1915.

  At 10:00 p.m. on the seventeenth, Rita participated in a rite for Hilarion’s happiness. “This is to include the Freedom of her love from what may cling.” Astonished, Crowley wrote that the superb operation had “converted” Rita “from professionalism!” Rita had ceased to behave like it was her job and entered the spirit of the thing. There was something special about this girl. Crowley claimed immediate success for the operation. “The whole trouble cleared up the same night.”21

  Jeanne returned the following evening, the Object modest: “Power to continue The Golden Rose which had languished of late weeks.” Sure enough, Crowley began a sonnet and a lyric the next day.22

  The relationship with Jeanne turned peculiar after an operation with Rita, three days later. Perhaps this is not surprising, for Rita Gonzales had fallen “crazily” in love with Crowley, and this was no joke. The Object had been “The Whole of Hilarion,” and it would appear from the next night’s activity that the “whole”—a most unexpected whole—is precisely what he got. Crowley described the result of the sex magick with Rita as “wonderful,” an instant success. “I get the whore in her [Jeanne], previously masked.”23 Was not Babalon meant to be a whore, “loud and adulterous”? Apparently not . . . at least, not quite like that. Like what? The occasion proved a turning point, and its mystery needs a little unpacking, as it was somehow bound up with the precipitous decline in Jeanne and Crowley’s relations that cast a shadow over the first half of 1916 and that would affect the Beast, arguably, for the rest of his life.

  It was a cool, pleasant night when Jeanne and Crowley coupled under dim electric light at the winter solstice, 1915 (December 22). The Object attempted to clear the spiritual air of all the nastiness and fatal negativity of the previous two months or so: “Create in me a clean beast, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” In the record, the Object is followed by a kind of confession: “I have been going through an appallingly bad time spiritually, going straight to the Devil, in fact, all through not following out the formula ‘Keep on loving and trusting!’ Now I have repented, and been treated better than the Prodigal Son himself! I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes. If I can’t cure myself of suspicion, I’m no good. Therefore I will. It might help to start a ‘Liber III’ ceremony every time I have such a thought, or a thought of infidelity. Good; I’ll get the Sacred Burin out.”24 There then follows a paragraph whose cynicism increases with each word.

  The Operation was all-perfect; Oh my Lord, grant me Thy Light and Peace! My lady gave herself to me utterly of her own accord, and with extreme love; how can I be so vile as to argue that this was because she knew of Leila’s attempt to seduce me yesterday, or because she feared what I might do in my jealous fit? I won’t blaspheme the IX°, however, so shall write “wonderful success” against Operation CXXXVI!!!”25

  The operation deemed a success was not that with Jeanne, but the previous night’s with Rita, the one whose Object was the “whole” of Hilarion. Crowley added a P.S. to the remark on December 26: “The extreme cynicism of above remarks never struck me till re-reading.” Suddenly—or perhaps it was not so sudden—the Beast saw that Jeanne only came back to him due to an “ordinary” woman’s ordinary sexual jealousy; that is, a sudden alarm that Leila Waddell might reclaim him otherwise, compounded by fear of what Crowley might do to mess up her respectable life in a fit of jealousy over the hold that Matlack Foster (and perhaps another?) still had over her. In other words, her sexual commitment to him (manifested with uncharacteristically whorelike fervor) was in the nature of a spiritually shallow seduction. Crowley had “seen through” her, and for that, he thanked the operation with Rita, the unpretentious whore, who had demonstrated to him at least, that Jeanne was not up to the role of Scarlet Woman to the Magus. Ultimately she was self-serving, tied to the bonds of the Bohemian’s and the Decadent’s greatest bugbear: respectability. As far as Crowley was concerned, he decided for his own sake that Jeanne had, if we may take an anachronistic phrase, “blown it.”

  This may explain the curiously mysterious “Result” that Crowley attributes to the rite of December 22 with Jeanne to make of him “a clean beast,” which in a sense meant the will to make a “clean breast of it.” The ceremonial weapon for such a cut with the past was the magical dagger, an affirmation of will, and this, it seems to me, may well explain a strange story that John Butler Yeats eagerly conveyed to John Quinn the following March.

  Crowley wrote the result as follows: “P.S. An XII [1916] [sign for the Sun] in sign for Leo. Result was that I tried [Word or symbol blotted out in MS.] of H[ilarion].!” Reflecting on the December 22 rite in about August 1916, Crowley reckoned its result was evident in something he did regarding Jeanne. Something of what he did may possibly be reflected in an irate letter about Crowley John Butler Yeats sent to John Quinn on March 16, 1916.

  Crowley sent at least one anonymous letter in late January 1916 to Matlack Foster, accusing Jeanne of living with a wealthy lawyer (she did not, apparently, know Quinn personally at the time) and further asserted that Jeanne intended to poison Foster. Failing to get a response, Crowley, according to John Butler Yeats, waited outside Jeanne’s office at closing time. When Jeanne emerged on the street, Crowley threatened her, wielding a “curious-looking knife.” The crowd’s closing in on the scene enabled Jeanne to escape.

  Something of this behavior may be reflected in Crowley’s incautious and somewhat pathetic statement in his Confessions that

  I had by this time been enlightened as to the falseness of the Cat; it therefore became my duty to slay her.*113 I had created truth by means of an untrustworthy material and must therefore no longer cling to the image of the ideal. I must destroy it, well knowing that it would never again be possible for me to delude myself with poetical puppets. I must face reality for good and all.26

  The melodramatic statement has a good five years of bitterness and emotional self-removal in it. What Crowley probably never knew was that John Butler Yeats had spilled the beans, as he understood them, on Crowley’s obsessive reaction to
losing control of Jeanne Foster.

  He boasts that he is not afraid because John Quinn will always find bail for him and protect him. She thinks he is a cocaine fiend. At the very start I had warned her, so that she has never let him get so much as a letter from her. He has some girl with him, and he sent this girl [Rita Gonzales?] to her with a message to say that she [JRF] must help him or he would destroy her. The girl wept all the time while giving the message. Mrs. Foster told her politely to go to the devil. The Government here and the English government are both busy watching him with detectives. The English authorities say he is a spy and that he has been to Canada.27

  According to notes made by Richard Londraville after interviewing Jeanne Foster on July 31, 1969, the “knife” scene was precipitated by Jeanne’s refusing to do mundane secretarial work for him (on the Adams astrology project, no doubt). Crowley described the work intended as “far more meaningful than any writing you might do for a magazine.” Failing to have his way, Crowley allegedly shouted, “If you refuse my orders, I will kill your mother. She is with you now, and I will kill her before your eyes.” Unable to subdue Crowley’s rage by her customary charm, Jeanne was deeply disturbed, according to her recollection, the more so because Crowley had no ordinary means of knowing that her mother was residing in New York with her at the time. Jeanne told Londraville that mother and daughter shared a bed that night, Jeanne intuiting “something might happen.” Sure enough, as the story goes, they were awakened at midnight by a hideous apparition at the foot of the bed, to which sight Jeanne allegedly recited a remembered white magic spell causing the demon to disappear. Explaining the situation to her mother, her mother could not comprehend how such a thing could ever have come about; the magician was obviously depraved.28 As 1915 came to its close, all this, or whatever really did happen, was still around the year’s corner.