Aleister Crowley in America

by Tobias Churton

  Unfortunately, the chief source for the “dirt” is journalist William B. Seabrook, who dramatized—well, what?—Crowley and Engers’s alleged falling out in a salacious, over-the-top slush tale published, with lurid illustrations, on Sunday, April 8, 1923, in the Indianapolis Star under the sensational title ASTOUNDING SECRETS OF THE DEVIL-WORSHIPPERS’ MYSTIC LOVE CULT. Had Crowley wanted this kind of reputation, meeting Seabrook would have been the fulfillment of his life: Shock! Horror!

  Seabrook’s observation, drawn from the man he knew in Washington Square in 1919, was of “the most amazing mixture of good and bad that has ever existed in human form.” Crowley was as capable of compelling admiration as repulsion. Seabrook describes a highly entertaining scene in Crowley’s studio, with the Beast giving an affable lecture on Egyptology while Kitty Reilly caught his eye. Engers shouts out, “Her aura is turning red!” to which Crowley replied, “It’s always been red, you fool.” Crowley then told Engers he should stop losing himself in auras he imagined and get himself into the real Kitty Reilly. He should marry her and have babies and then paint as many psychochromes as he liked; but marry the girl and make her happy first. She did not want to be spiritually adored, just loved. “But no!” cried Engers, “You don’t understand; she’s a spiritual soul. Her aura even now is turning blue again.” Crowley more or less said we’ll see about that, and offered her the Mark of the Beast to make her red again, whereupon he sank his teeth into Kitty’s neck and gave her the Crowley-brand “serpent’s kiss” he’d given to Helen Westley in 1915, and which he’d give to Nancy Cunard on her right wrist in the 1920s. Kitty became red with rage, hurling foul abuse at the man who had the temerity to make her neck bleed. Engers was outraged, disgusted, but did nothing to Crowley.

  Fig. 33.13. “Mrs. Engers” (Kitty Engers) by Frieda Gertrud Reiss-Berlin (1890–ca. 1955)

  Fig. 33.14. William Seabrook’s lurid account of Engers allegedly attacking Crowley in 1919; Indianapolis Star, April 1923 (image courtesy of Frank van Lamoen)

  Seabrook describes the scene’s denouement as taking place at his own apartment at 23 Christopher Street. Kitty was watching Engers playing chess with Seabrook when Crowley arrived, intoning the familiar Thelemic greeting with the caveat aimed at Engers, “that is, if you have brains enough to know what you really wish.” Engers flew into a white rage, telling Crowley he knew what he wanted, and that was for Crowley to leave Kitty alone, or else he’d break every bone in Crowley’s body. Engers tried to go back to the chess game but was seething. Crowley puffed his cigarette until it glowed, then jammed it down Engers’s shirt collar, saying, “All you both need is stirring up.” Engers leaped like a wild thing onto Crowley, and they started rolling over the floor, “pounding and choking each other.” Over went Seabrook’s center table, down fell a mirror, with the struggle ending, with Seabrook’s intervention, in deadlock.

  Leaving Seabrook’s, Engers and Crowley apparently hated each other, but soon after Engers took Crowley’s advice and married Kitty. Happy together, they went to Holland, and Seabrook’s article’s postscript was that he’d just received a postcard from the loving couple, sending “kindest regards to everybody.”24

  Shocking!

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Summer in Montauk—and a Thousand Years Ago

  Why Crowley chose Montauk at Long Island’s east end for his 1919 summer retirement is a question Spence felt might be answered by considering the area as one of the most militarized on the East Coast.1 The U.S. Navy pursued experimental operations there, and the remarkable physicist Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) had already been experimenting with the idea of electronic warfare and harnessing the Earth’s magnetism to supply free electricity—at which notion his funding sources, predictably, dried up. Tesla had built a tower as part of his experiments, but the military demolished it, fearing it could assist German spies in sending messages across the Atlantic. No doubt Britain’s N.I.D. would be interested in anything on these lines, but whether Crowley was, on its, or anyone else’s behalf, is impossible to say; there is no evidence for any such thing. He was probably not the first person to pitch up a tent near Montauk, despite the plagues of flies that often erupt in summertime. It was conveniently situated at the end of the railway line and was his kind of place. As far as we know, the sole current to which 666 was connected was what he called “the magical current,” and, according to the Confessions, it was during his summer retirement at Long Island’s extremity that he concluded “the current was exhausted. I had finished my work in America and began to prepare my escape.”2

  And well he might do, if we account as significant motivation that summer’s flurry of investigation into Crowley’s activities undertaken by B.I. agent Frank X. O’Donnell. Trouble with the B.I. flared up after letters from several of Crowley’s opponents arrived at Washington’s Department of Justice. On June 4, 1919, an anonymous letter addressed to “Attorney General Palmer” was sent from New York.

  Dear Sir:

  If you desire to find the master mind that is secretly directing the bomb outrages, request the police force to look into the doing [sic] of Aleister Crowley, 1, University Place, this City. He is an Irishman, a college man, poses here as an Englishman; was, at one time, associate editor of the Fatherland. Much too clever and cunning to ever himself be caught doing unlawful acts, but the directing and planning mind behind men of lesser intelligence. A man, who, for his crimes of moral turpitude alone, should be imprisoned as was Oscar Wilde, or else deported. He cannot return to England, though—a warrant is waiting for him there.

  It will take one of the cleverest detective [sic] many months to get evidence against him, for the man is far more shrewd than any living being. A real power for evil among men such as can scarcely be conceived of.

  Terror of what he may do makes me fear to give my name and address, but do not consider this information lightly. I know absolutely wherof I speak.3

  A photostat of the letter was sent by Washington’s B.I. “Acting Chief”*194 to Captain W. M. Offley, Box 241, City Hall Station, New York, on June 6 with the comment, “This is for your information and such attention as you deem advisable.”4

  A few days later Washington’s Justice Department received another curious letter about Crowley, this time sent on June 9 from Joseph Norwood, prominent Kentucky Freemason and contributor to the Masonic magazine The Builder, writing on behalf of “The International Magian Society,” based at 815, Republic Building, Louisville, Kentucky. Norwood informs the “Chief of Intelligence Bureau” that he (Norwood) is investigating Crowley for the sake of a society “composed mainly of Freemasons” interested in “modern researches connected with the welfare of the Masonic order. . . . We are gathering,” he says, “information relative to certain propaganda—pro-German, Sinn-Fein, Bolshevist and I.W.W. etc. which we believe to be inimical to our country as well as to the order of Masons, and a good deal of which seems to be carried on by fakirs professing great love for both.” This interest, he claims, led them to look into “this man Crowley.” Norwood then quotes “from a letter written us in answer to queries made of him to one of his friends.” The quote relates, he says, to Crowley’s connections with Viereck and the “proclamation of Irish Independence” where he proclaimed himself, Norwood assumes, “president of the Irish Republic, which he denies.” Then comes the alleged quote from Crowley: “I was employed by the Secret Service, my main object being to bring America into the War, my main method to get the Germans to make asses of themselves by increasing their Frightfulness until even the Americans kicked.” Norwood concludes: “Crowley does not seem to have done any great amount of actual harm, but we should like to complete our records in his case if you can favor us. His work has chiefly been carried on under the guise of various ‘occult orders’ of his peculiar manufacture. We have written Scotland Yard a similar request.”5

  The background to this informant’s gripe is made clear in Richard Kaczynski’s biography of Crowley, Perdurabo, wherein we learn that the Lou
isville, Kentucky, distributor of the Blue Equinox was reconsidering handling it. Ryerson blamed fellow Mason Joseph Norwood, who he said was concerned with evil reports “circulated,” maintained Ryerson, “by our enemies.”6

  Washington’s acting chief of the B.I. replied to Norwood on June 18, 1919, to the effect that it was not the department’s policy to open files to other than federal officials, nor was he at liberty to say whether inquiries concerning Crowley had been made.7

  It is clear Washington’s passing the matter over to newly reappointed B.I. superintendent William M. Offley in New York led to agent Frank O’Donnell undertaking his investigation into Crowley of July 1919, which investigation would eventually furnish the basis for J. Edgar Hoover’s intelligence concerning the Mage.

  O’ Donnell’s reports began after the first week of July with the statement that the New York office had received a photostat letter from the acting chief, initialed D.M.D., dated June 6, indicating that the “subject” was a “dangerous radical type” and should be carefully investigated. O’Donnell commenced the task under instructions from Assistant Superintendent Baker. His first deposition was a “confidential report” dated July 8, 1919, from the “British Secret Service Bureau,” quite likely coming out of Frederick Hall either at 44 Whitehall or from one of the British Military Missions (on Broadway or in Washington); that is, post-Gaunt British intelligence that did not trust Crowley, found his Statue of Liberty stunt inflammatory, and regarded his Fatherland submissions as pro-German propaganda, even if absurd or, as Crowley claimed, deliberately detrimental to the German cause.

  ALESTAIR [SIC] CROWLEY

  The above came to the attention of the police in 1900, when he held a series of meetings at which so-called mystic rites were performed and at which improper activities were alleged to have occurred. These meetings were held in London [it is unclear what “meetings” are referred to], and he has devoted most of his time before coming to this country to the same pursuits which every now and again caused the police in England to investigate him.

  Since Crowley has been in America, he has claimed to be on a British Mission, whereas he left his own country because he feared arrest. He joined George Sylvester Viereck, latterly editing the publication known as The International.

  In July 1915, Crowley, one Leilah Waddell, J. Orr [the New York Times had “Dorr”], an editor, Patrick Gilroy, an agitator, and several others, went to the Statue of Liberty. They described themselves as members of “The Secret Revolutionary Committee of Public Safety of the Provisional Government of the Irish Republic”. They announced they were going to declare Ireland’s independence. Crowley took the lead—by tearing up his passport, and after reading a lengthy, strange, incoherent document, he renounced allegiance to the “alien tyrant”, and took an oath to fight to the last drop of his blood for Ireland. An Irish flag was hoisted.

  The Attorney-General of the state of New York caused Crowley to be examined in the Murray Hill Hotel on October 11th 1918.

  Crowley is distinctly fond of appearing in print, and when he does so tells his interrogators for the newspapers that he was wounded and came here on a special mission. He has never been in the army and could be [my italics] detained if he returned to England.

  His claim also has been that he joined up with Viereck in order to obtain information for the British government. This is of course absurd. He is at present living at No. 16 or 60 Washington Place [incorrect] and is supposed to have started a so-called “Ordo Templi Orientis”, of which he claims to be a grand master, in Fifth Avenue.

  Crowley has written a lot of queer books and poems. He is about 46 years old and is a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge.

  Investigation will be continued.8

  It is not clear from the report which parts of the above came from British Intelligence verbatim and which might have been O’Donnell’s incorporation or paraphrases from other sources. One would hope that British Intelligence sources could have been more accurate than to misspell Crowley’s name and include other plainly prejudicial elements and distorted facts. Crowley never claimed to have been wounded in the army, for example, and the source’s view of Crowley’s books was irrelevant. It is a damning exercise, defamatory and, one supposes, deliberately so. It was, I might say, unimaginative mismanagement to dismiss Crowley and his talents as those of a quack.

  Spence’s view is that Crowley had nonetheless been related to a spookloop that went direct to Captain Reginald “Blinker” Hall (1873–1943), director of the admiralty’s Intelligence Division from 1914, who had his own priorities. The evidence at present is that Crowley indeed submitted information to the director of Naval Intelligence, through Everard Feilding, initially at least, but that Naval Intelligence did not regard Crowley as a formal asset, on account of the information’s weaknesses, but that does not preclude an “understanding” of his potential value, or knowledge that he was not, as he appeared, a traitor. As Crowley himself maintained, had he been encouraged, he believed he was in a position to have obtained considerably more in the way of strategically significant secrets but that naval liaison officer (from 1917) Gaunt (naval attaché 1914–1917) considered Crowley an unnecessary, untrustworthy obstruction, an annoying loose cannon whom he could not stomach. It seems on the evidence reasonable to assume that home intelligence MI5’s director Vernon Kell and Mansfield Smith-Cumming, head of foreign intelligence, had their own assessments of Crowley’s value, informed by Crowley’s prewar reputation and, above all, his fateful, freelance Statue of Liberty stunt, implicating him with Irish Republicanism, a priority issue for Britain’s home and foreign intelligence services. The last thing an intelligence service wants of its agents is notoriety, which of course attracts attention and investigation. Crowley’s view was that glamour makes excellent cover, deflecting attention from the real.

  O’Donnell’s next report showed that he followed up the information about Crowley’s having been interviewed in October 1918 by a representative of the New York State attorney general and so went to that office, meeting a Mr. Simon, who told him they had a “more or less extensive file” on Crowley, but it was in Albany, and could be examined by O’Donnell within the week.9

  On July 24, O’Donnell called at 236 West 15th Street hoping to find a Miss K. Stevens, who had information about Crowley, but she was not there, so he went to the office of New York State’s attorney general at 51 Chambers Street, where Mr. Simon gave him their Crowley file, on condition that it be returned no later than August 1st. O’Donnell then went to the office of the “U.S.R.R. Administration [United States Railroad Administration] Secret Service Bureau in the Grand Central terminal,” where he interviewed a Mr. Flynn, who gave him a pamphlet, “The Reconquest of America,” regarding which O’Donnell was informed Crowley may have been the author.10

  Two days later O’Donnell spent time looking at the files he’d received from Mr. Simon and found additional material “of a British source” about Crowley.

  Crowley has never had anything whatever to do with any British official in this country. His offers of service here have always been rejected, and he has been regarded as a harmless neurotic. He was never taken seriously even in his efforts against his native country. It was known by the police and others that anything Crowley, and those associated with him did, could not sway any honest or clean opinion. His allegation that he was doing something for his Government while working for George Sylvester Viereck is absurd, as Crowley freely criticized his own country to help himself financially as soon as he landed in America. He found sympathy among the renegade Irish, and those of the Clan-Na-Gael or Sinn Fein element.

  An article published in the New York World on August 2nd 1914, gives a fair idea of Crowley and an alleged Black Mass which was celebrated by him in London. In the same paper in December 1914, Crowley denied that he had participated in such a ceremony, asserting that he had hypnotized the newspaper-man who wrote it. . . .

  Crowley wrote an article in the Rheinisch Westfalisc
h Zeitung [see here] purporting to describe a visit to England eighteen months or two years after the War started, and following his stay in America. The article was a reflection on English morale, and conditions in England, and yet it was known that Crowley had never returned to England since he set foot on American soil.

  Crowley, as head of his so-called Lodge, had rooms at 93, Regent Street, London. In June 1917, this place was raided, and a Mary Davies was arrested as a fortune-teller.

  Incidentally, Crowley claims that he became connected with Viereck through a man on a ‘bus. His story is:

  “A man spoke to me on a ’bus, asking me if I wanted a square deal for Germany and Austria. I replied no-comiittally that I wanted a square deal for everybody. He asked me to call at the “Fatherland” office. I did. I was there recognized by Viereck, who had once seen me in the office of the “English Review”. My airy attitude was construed by him as pro-German.”

  To be continued.11

  On July 26, O’Donnell met Miss Kate Stevens by appointment at the public library. Miss Stevens had in the past furnished information regarding people involved with radical activities, including material on Pearson’s Magazine editor Frank Harris. Miss Stevens said that she had never met Crowley and knew nothing of him. “The only point that she thought might be of interest to us,” wrote O’Donnell, “is involved in a theory of hers that it might be possible that Frank Harris and Aleister Crowley might be one and the same party. This, of course, is impossible and I so informed Miss Stevens.”12 Miss Stevens added that if she heard anything about Crowley she would not hesitate to report it. This gives us some idea of the paucity of hard information informants about Crowley could furnish the authorities. One wonders why O’Donnell did not seek out Crowley himself and save himself much trouble.