Aleister Crowley in America

by Tobias Churton

  THELEMA IN DETROIT

  Charles Stansfeld Jones, having for the time being recovered his equilibrium, made for Detroit to work in Ryerson’s Universal Book Stores and to establish the O.T.O. in the city through measured Monday-night lectures at the bookstore and at Theosophical meetings, billing himself as “Frater Arctaeon.” Not everyone gets to be named by an otherworldly wizard.

  The night before commencing work at the bookstore, Jones addressed a small gathering at the offices of Most Worshipful and Illustrious Brother Frank T. Lodge, 33rd degree. Worshipful Brother Lodge led a group of esoterically minded Freemasons who eagerly anticipated that all manner of secrets were about to be shared with them, encapsulated for the cognoscenti in the strikingly blue, embossed cover of The Equinox, volume 3, no 1. The “Universal Publishing Company of Detroit” took printed and bound copies from New York’s DeVinne Press on March 21, and their ad appeared in the May 10, 1919, issue of Publisher’s Weekly.

  Fig. 33.12. Frater Achad (Charles Stanfeld Jones) on the street

  “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.” “Love is the law, love under will.”

  THUS WRITES

  THE NEW WORLD-TEACHER

  IN

  THE EQUINOX

  Price 666 Cents

  (Devinne imprint. Over 400 large pages)

  The only book on Occultism and Mysticism giving the Law of the New Aeon to Humanity

  Sole Distributors

  The Universal Book Stores

  57 Grand River Avenue, W.

  Detroit, Michigan

  Agencies Given Trade Discounts

  Readers opened the handsome volume—reviewed whimsically by the New York Times on November 23—to see two paintings. The first was Engers Kennedy’s portrait of Crowley’s full-body profile making a mystical gesture “in His holy meditation,” attributed to Frater T.A.T.K.T.A. The second was the aforementioned Crowley cartoon “May Morn.” I don’t say cartoon in the sense of a sketch by da Vinci but in the Disney sense, in that the technically naive image encapsulates the essence of an animated picture in its own world of symbolic representations.

  Having crossed the visual rubicon, the reader is addressed by one of Crowley’s best poems, “Hymn to Pan,” composed in Russia in 1913. Crowley regarded it as the most powerful enchantment ever written. It works, anyhow, through its gathering pagan, rhythmic, incantatory force.

  Give me the sign of the Open Eye,

  And the token erect of thorny thigh,

  And the word of madness and mystery,

  O Pan! Io Pan!

  Io Pan! Io Pan Pan! Pan Pan! Pan,

  I am a man:

  Do as thou wilt, as a great god can,

  O Pan! Io Pan!

  Io Pan! Io Pan Pan! I am awake

  In the grip of the snake.

  And so on, but not for too long: an echo of an ideal scene in Crowley’s classically infused imagination—and a long way lyrically from the burgeoning ragtime-to-jazz movement beginning to sweep America with its own Panic, bluesy beats.

  Just time for a quick “editorial” before moving into the incessant meat of the book, with its paean to the successful magical career of Charles Stansfeld Jones, model of devotion soon to go to Jones’s perhaps over-inspired head.

  THE WORLD NEEDS RELIGION. Religion must represent Truth, and celebrate it. This truth is of two orders: one, concerning Nature external to Man; two, concerning Nature internal to Man. Existing religions, especially Christianity, are based on primitive ignorance of the facts, particularly of external Nature.

  Celebrations must conform to the custom and nature of the people. Christianity has destroyed the joyful celebrations, characterised by music, dancing, feasting, and making love, and has kept only the melancholy.

  So writes Crowley as if a town fixated on rodeo, Roscoe Arbuckle, Mabel Normand, Norma Talmadge, Charlie Chaplin, with Sunday’s hellfire preachin’ from the local Baptist minister good n’ true—and for whom the ideal of art was embodied in Norman Rockwell—was about to turn over to Attic philosophy and country rituals of ancient Anatolia, with feasts for wine, Bacchanals, seasonal copulations, and oracular priestesses. “The World needs religion.” Well, this was like bringing coals to Newcastle where America was concerned. What Crowley meant was “the world needs a new religion.” But in the historic time scheme of the evangelists, insofar as the masses were tempted into self and socially destructive sin, the new religion to replace the bad old ways of murder, drunkenness, slavery, and prostitution was Christianity, which signaled the end of pagan cruelties and persecution and oppression, as was understood, and was ever new when experienced as salvation by the redeemed sinner. It was all a bit late for a resurgence of the mind of Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate, who, like Gore Vidal, wished to turn the tide of imperial religion back to an enlightened and civically responsible paganism. Crowley was in fact preaching only to the deconverted, those who were already frustrated with conventional religion for whatever reason.

  Still, Crowley persisted with a vain effort to turn Freemasons on to the mysteries and secrets regular Masonry frequently alluded to, but never seemed to deliver. In his innocence, Crowley was soon to find out what really drove so many of those who claimed to embrace Freemasonry’s elementary principles of “Brotherly Love, Charity, and Truth.”

  The fact is that The Equinox was not an easy read. The English was impeccable, which only made it seem more remote to nonscholars. There was Crowley’s commentary on Blavatsky’s The Voice of the Silence that he sincerely believed would shake the Theosophical Society out of its “Gentle Jesus meek and mild” state into waking up to the Aeon of Force and Fire. There were many erudite pleas for the establishment of the Thelemic principle; there was poetry; there was even the Gnostic Mass reproduced in full, and delightful to those who valued ritual (which discounted most of the Protestant tradition!); but it was short on laughs, and the life of “Light, Love, and Liberty” looked like not a little hard work, and all for what?—To surmount the doctrine of Original Sin? Many Christian believers already took it that Jesus had “dealt with that” by taking the rap on Golgotha. As Crowley knew perfectly well, it was the Pauline influenced Christian St. Augustine who had encapsulated the state of the redeemed as “Love, and do what you will.” Had Crowley argued squarely for a refinement and enrichment of existing religion he might have got somewhere as a progressive reformer, but the anti-Christian tone of his arguments looked to “Old Aeon” mentalities suspiciously unhealthy, with his equal tolerance for Neoplatonic Theurgy, sexual liberty, and subtle doctrines about Satan and solar phallicism. But of course, the Decadent Crowley wanted to splash cold water in the face of oppressive evangelicalism, and épater les bourgeoises at the same time, for he firmly believed he was living in a decaying culture whose neurotic corruption had been made vividly, agonizingly evident in the last four and a half years of world war. And he did believe The Book of the Law held the formula of the New Aeon. And all he could do was trumpet it and let the gods take the strain. They didn’t; he did.

  On April 13, 1919, fired up by Jones’s message and Ryerson’s accounts of his meetings with the Magus, senior Detroit Scottish Rite Freemasons agreed to form an O.T.O. Supreme Grand Council.12 The beginnings of such was assembled at the exclusive Athletic Club in downtown Detroit. District Attorney Frank Murphy described the members of the tentative Council as such: “They are big men. The mention of their names would immediately bring on a scandal.”13 However, they would only proceed on condition Crowley rewrite the O.T.O. rituals to remove too-overt crossovers with regular “Blue” Masonry, to avoid offending existing Masonic jurisdictions. This referred in particular to the first three degrees, whose third referred to the murder of Hiram, Solomon’s temple builder. Crowley substituted the Sufi saint Al-Hallaj, who was crucified by orthodox Islamic authorities in 922 CE for declaring (among other things), “I am Truth.”

  Crowley, his fare to Detroit paid by lawyer and “spiritualist” Frank T. Lodge, affiliated seven
men into the O.T.O. at the Detroit Athletic Club: seven members of the Ancient & Accepted Rite’s Supreme Grand Council, and Albert Ryerson. They were not initiated; members paid dues and recognition was granted that they held O.T.O. rank consistent with Masonic rank. Crowley, trying to maintain Masonic decorum and his sense of the dignity of O.T.O. grades ended up giving offense to Ryerson’s partner and president in the Universal Book Store, Dr. Hill. Ryerson was also miffed by Crowley’s refusing to allow them onto the O.T.O. Supreme Grand Council. As Ryerson would later testify:

  Because of the book store’s officers [not] being a part of it, Dr. Hill took great exception and thought that inasmuch as we were going to market the literature of the Order, someone of us ought to be represented, and he made some very terse comments about it and Crowley in the store here. And the result of it all was that Dr. Hill said, “Well, we won’t handle your books” and he then tried to cancel the order, and made a mess of it generally, and that started the fuss between them.14

  Meanwhile, Ryerson, influenced by the life, love, and liberty of Thelema, incurred his wife’s filing for divorce when he found new lover Bertha Almira Prykyl née Bruce, owner of a rooming house at 381 West Grand Boulevard. According to a scurrilous C. F. Russell, seeking to sell out Crowley in 1922, Bertha was also charmed by Crowley’s rouged cheeks and the kohl on his eyelids.15 Russell asserted that Crowley was encouraged by Ryerson to make love with Bertha so Ryerson that could learn the secrets of the IX°, and the three allegedly took ether and hashish before Crowley had his ritual way with Bertha, while Ryerson allegedly slumped out of his mind on a bed claiming to be “Amoun.” Crowley’s story was different.

  Bertha lent money for the production of The Equinox, and, on Crowley’s visit in April, became Crowley’s lover also.*192 So smitten was the Beast that he seriously considered her an alternative to the Ape of Thoth until mid-1920. Crowley’s account was that Ryerson was so obsessed with finding the secret of sexual magick he knew Crowley possessed, that he listened at the keyhole of Crowley and Bertha Bruce’s love nest in the hope of hearing something to clue him in to the great mystery. This all gives a flavor of the craziness that soon filled the Detroit would-be O.T.O. scene like smoke from a genie’s bottle. Commenting on events decades later to Martin P. Starr, biographer of Vancouver O.T.O. deputy leader W. T. Smith, C. F. Russell reflected: “You’ll never know what happened in Detroit.”16 The trouble is that we can’t be altogether sure that Russell knew everything either. Russell didn’t join Jones in Detroit until mid-May, when he participated in Jones’s lectures. By 1920, Jones and Russell shared accommodation at Vinewood Avenue in the city.

  Crowley had returned to New York in April. Within ten days of the athletic club meeting he’d revised initiation rituals ready to hand on to Jones. Jones, in turn, informed Frank Lodge that the O.T.O. Supreme Grand Council should hasten to establish the O.T.O.’s Detroit “Oasis” and prepare for performing initiations.

  Crowley turned his attention to Russell, who was already showing signs of willful wildness, and “rushing in,” both in sexual matters and in forming judgments of people. Crowley wrote to him on May 27:

  The main point is that your courage is greater than your discretion. Witness your little experiment at the hospital [Annapolis Naval Hospital]. It’s the best fault a man can have but it certainly gets him into more hot water than most of the vilest vices. You are very young and I don’t want to see you in a mess, as I have seen so many. I should like to see your [magical] record but not until Jones has commented upon it. I should like to be able to comment on his comments, thus killing two magicians with one memorandum. Tell Jones that that is my idea. . . . Incidentally, you are in a rather privileged position with regard to hearing things and it is perhaps no harm, in your case, but at your age you have not the experience to estimate such things with due balance. A person may state an opinion not because he holds it but because he wants to hear it discussed.17

  Crowley got on with the job of finding agents to spread the Law through The Equinox. One of the many scandals that erupted out of the whole Equinox-Detroit affair, especially after the Beast left America, was how it came to be that so many copies of The Equinox turned up in Hollywood, where yellow-press journalists tried to implicate the O.T.O. in sex, drugs, and murder scandals, treating the book as if it were an incendiary Mein Kampf, whoever touched it being driven to sociopathic excess. The agent Crowley chose for dissemination in Hollywood was none other than Betty Bickers, wife of screenwriter Sheridan Bickers, both of whom Crowley had met in British Columbia at the end of 1915: Betty, as likely as not, intimately. He wrote to Betty:

  My dearest Betty,

  . . . I wish you would take up definitely the work of the Equinox. You could do a great deal in Los [Angeles] to prepare the way for me to come down there one day.

  Love is the law, love under will.18

  On April 20, Crowley wrote to Jones about Mrs. Bickers.

  Betty Bickers is free of her crazy husband for the time being at least and she too might act as Equinox agent &c. Her address is 302 Formosa Apt. Hollywood Boulevard, Hollywood, California. I myself got it on Wednesday night.19

  He also wrote to Marie Lavroff (who had pneumonia) about fallout in Detroit.

  I am very sorry indeed to hear of your being ill. . . . We have all of us got it, in one way or another. Nearly everybody in Detroit connected with us had some trouble. A magical gesture like the publication of the Equinox gets all the black magicians going. Roddie and the Dead Soul [Leah] have both been in trouble and even I had a sensitive spot, as I discovered Wednesday, when I was quite badly burnt in an extremely mysterious manner. . . . Please write as often as you feel able.

  Love is the law, love under will.20

  Crowley maintained contact with Helen Hollis in Maryland, writing to her from 63 Washington Square South as his “Darling sweetheart baby girl,” signing off as “Ever your own true sweetheart.” He wanted Helen to spend time in the studio, as he had written on April 5.

  My dear sweet purple baby girl,

  . . . Send picture of yourself you promised. The Queen of the dead souls [Leah] wants to see it too. You will have to meet her of course. It ought to be all right, you are such a perfect little plum-pudding, and if so, there will be no reason why you should not stay in this luxury apartment. . . . Good thing if you had a crimson and ochre kimono to lend a touch of colour to this drab studio.

  Love is the law, love under will, Ever your eager sweetheart, A21

  It seems that Crowley was able to get Leah to accommodate Helen at No. 63 on the basis of Helen’s playing studio assistant and nanny to Leah’s baby, Hansi, who was otherwise cared for in Florida. Helen Hollis received a letter dated May 6 from “L. Carter”—Leah had been married to Hansi’s father, a Mr. Carter—containing Helen’s fare and expenses so she could come to Washington Square to “take charge of my studio and my baby.”22 How very New Aeon, Leah!

  Crowley meanwhile regarded his studio as a place to gather people, talk, and generally stir things up. He issued a satirical invitation: Crowley’s spin on the intensifying clamor of the Temperance Movement for the complete prohibition of the sale of alcohol in America. Crowley fought against restriction by example and invited others to join him, suggesting that you could get more narcotic poisoning from the streets of New York than a kick from drinking or drug taking, the slang for which effect was a jag.

  JULY 1ST. JOYFUL CELEBRATION!

  The Grand Master invites the representatives of the Press, the Prohibition Movement, the Pulpit, Poetry, and the Police to join in the inaugural festival of the BENZINE JAG. 9 p.m. July 1. No. 63 Washington Square. Love is the law, love under will.

  One journalist left the following account of a pioneering experience akin to the public demonstrations of Situationists, Dadaists, and Surrealists in Europe in the 1920s, or the Acid Tests of the 1960s.

  Once out in Washington Square, the visitor took several deep breaths, caught benzine fumes, walked a strait path, thou
ght normally and wondered, “Where is the benzine jag?”

  Yet unquestionably, he had been under the influence of the benzine because, for three hours, he had been glibly conversing on his “inner self” and a rare variety of subjects with which he had heretofore been slightly acquainted. And furthermore he had made several warm friendships under the influence of the benzine.

  Here is the prescription for the “benzine jag” which doctors say is not harmful if taken in small quantities, Mr. Crowley avers. “Buy an ordinary can of benzine, take a dropper, get capsules, put twenty drops of benzine in each capsule, and then take it as if it were a pill.”*19323

  On May 8, 1919, Leon Engers Kennedy married redheaded Irish American beauty Catherine “Kitty” Reilly, aged twenty-four, esteemed by photographer Arnold Genthe as one of the most extraordinary beauties he had ever seen. Crowley’s Confessions are not generous with regard to the marriage, one that Crowley, in retrospect and with a spiteful edge, opined would drag the aspiring artist down to mediocrity and that marked a nadir in their long-term relations, though not at all as bitter a breach as was Victor Neuburg’s quitting Crowley in 1914. There may be more to the story.