“Child of Earth,” commanded the man beside him, “arise and enter the Path of Darkness.”
Blindfolded and bound, Crowley staggered awkwardly to his feet, advancing but a step before the sensation of a sharp rap striking the floor in front of his feet froze him in place. A voice from the doorway replied, “Very Honored Hierophant, is it your pleasure that the candidate be admitted?”
“It is,” the Hierophant intoned solemnly from the room beyond. “Fratres Stolistes and Dadouchos, assist the Kerux in the admission.”
The one blocking the doorway, evidently the Kerux, addressed Crowley in a loud clear voice. “Child of Earth, unpurified and unconsecrated, thou canst not enter our Sacred Hall.”
A wet finger reached under the hoodwink and traced a cross on his forehead as a new voice declared, “Child of Earth, I consecrate thee with water.” Next, smoky incense, sweet and thick, wafted over his masked face. “Child of Earth,” another announced, “I purify thee with fire.” Once the officers Stolistes and Dadouchos finished these appointed tasks, an unknown hand pulled him forward and led him stumbling blindly through the room. Finally, he heard the voice of the Hierophant entreat him with grave authority. “Child of Earth, why dost thou request admission to this Order?”
Prompted by his guide, Crowley stammered, “My soul is wandering in darkness, seeking for the light of occult knowledge.”
“Thou wilt kneel on both knees. Give me your right hand, which I place on this sacred and sublime symbol.” The Child of Earth heard several others step close as the Hierophant guided his hand onto a wooden triangle on the table before him. “Place thy left hand in mine, bow thy head, repeat thy full name at length, and say after me.”
He swallowed dryly as the achievements of his short life—from publishing his first book of poetry to setting records for sea cliff and mountain climbing—paled in comparison to the weight of this moment. Crowley parted his lips and spoke. “I, Aleister Crowley, in the presence of the Lord of the Universe and of this Hall of Neophytes of the Order of the Golden Dawn in the Outer, do of my own free will and accord hereby and hereon most solemnly pledge myself to keep secret this Order, its name, the name of its members, and the proceedings which take place at its meetings, from all and every person in the whole world who is outside the pale of the Order. I furthermore promise and swear that I will divulge nothing whatsoever concerning this Order to the outside world, in case either of my resignation, demission, or expulsion therefrom, after the completion of my admission.
“I will not suffer myself to be hypnotized, or mesmerized, nor will I place myself in such a passive state that any uninitiated person, power, or being may cause me to lose control of my thoughts, words, or actions. Neither will I use my occult powers for any evil purposes. These points I generally and severally, upon this sacred and sublime symbol, swear to observe without evasion, equivocation, or mental reservation of any kind whatsoever; under the no less penalty on the violation of any or either of them of being expelled from this Order, as a wilfully perjured wretch, void of all moral worth, and unfit for the society of all right and true persons.”
Parched, he whispered the oath’s solemn and stunning conclusion. “And in addition, under the awful penalty of voluntarily submitting myself to a deadly and hostile current of will set in motion by the chiefs of the Order, by which I should fall slain and paralyzed without visible weapon.” A sharpened steel blade pressed against the nape of his neck as he spoke these words, then withdrew just as suddenly. “So help me the Lord of the Universe and my own higher soul.”
The Hierophant commanded, “Let the candidate rise.” He did. “Child of Earth, long hast thou dwelt in darkness. Quit the night and seek the day.”
Someone whisked the hoodwink from his head, and amid the images that burst onto his vision, he saw the scarlet-robed Hierophant. He was in his mid-forties, but clad in mystic robes and insignia, he might as well have been immortal. He fixed the young man with his eye, raised his staff above the candidate’s head, and proclaimed, “Frater Perdurabo, we receive thee into the Order of the Golden Dawn.” Perdurabo was the Latin motto Crowley had chosen to describe his spiritual aspirations in the order. It was Latin for “I shall endure to the end,” from Mark 13:13: “but he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.”
Standing in this temple of the Order of the Golden Dawn, beaming with relief and joy, he knew he had discovered the Secret Sanctuary. On Friday, November 18, 1898, Aleister Crowley—mountaineer, poet, and Seeker of the Light—was reborn as Frater Perdurabo.1
Four generations before Aleister Crowley was born, his great-great-grandfather Thomas Crowley (c. 1713–1787) rebelled against his parents’ religion, self-published his tracts and poetry, and sought to avert the American Revolution by pitching his political schemes to Benjamin Franklin. Thomas was a general merchant who lived in London with his wife and seven children at 73 Gracechurch Street, with a country estate in Walworth. As a “religious controversialist and political writer,”2 Thomas Crowley penned over thirty books, booklets, and broadsheets, many criticizing his Quaker faith and its opposition to tithes and taxes. Works like Dissertations on the Pecuniary Testimonies of the People Called Quakers, Relative Their Refusing to Pay Tithes and Church-Rates, as also Fines or Assessments Respecting the Militia or Military Service (c. 1773) and To the Superstitious Priests, Lovers of Their Own Power, and to Their Silly Tools of Priestcraft, Quacks and Money-mongers, among the Misled People Called Quakers (no date) did not endear him to church leadership. Indeed, Smith’s bibliography of Quaker-authored works disclaimed that “Few (if any) of the publications of this Friend were approved of, but rather disapproved of and testified against;”3 in February of 1774, Thomas Crowley was disowned by the Devonshire House monthly meeting.4 That same month, his daughter Ann (1757–1774) died short of her seventeenth birthday after a prolonged illness; inspired by her pious sickbed statements, Thomas published these as Some Expressions of Ann Crowley.5 He blazed his own religious path, although “regretting that his unorthodox tendencies made life difficult for his family, who maintained their Quaker association.”6
Many of his political writings, appearing under the nom de plume “Amor Patriæ” (Latin, “a lover of his country”),7 addressed the taxation without representation disputes between the crown and the American colonies. Despite disparaging the colonists’ protests as shortsighted, he agreed in principle with their objections, and urged giving parliamentary seats to colonial representatives lest war result. He advocated this message through works like Observations and Propositions for an Accommodation between Great Britain and Her Colonies (1768) and Dissertations, on the Grand Dispute between Great-Britain and America (1774). He also corresponded with Benjamin Franklin in an effort to mediate the escalating political tensions.8 Franklin ultimately dismissed him as hopelessly obsessed, even though his concerns about war proved prescient. After the Revolutionary War, Crowley’s political writing ceased.
Thomas Crowley died a widower at Walworth on December 17, 1787, leaving his children an estate in land, buildings, stocks, and cash valued at several thousand pounds.9
Although his son Thomas has been described as “a successful business man,”10 Aleister’s great-grandfather Thomas Crowley (1753–1809) first appears in London’s business directories in 1777 in the decidedly unpleasant and hazardous trade of currier, tanner, and leatherworker at 35 Camomile Street. Eleven years later, in 1788, he became bankrupt; 1790 was his last appearance in the directories.11 From these humble beginnings, four of Thomas Crowley’s eight children would establish the family fortune that would be such a formative influence on Aleister Crowley’s life.12
Three of his sons—Abraham (1795–1864), Charles Sedgefield (c. 1798–1868), and Henry (1793–1857)13—followed very similar paths. Like their father, and his father before him, they supported the abolition of slavery.14 All three married into the Curtis family of Alton: Abraham married Charlotte Curtis (1801–1892) in 1822; Charles took her younger
sister Emma (1804–1845) as his second wife in 1838; and Henry married their sister Elizabeth (1806–1900) in 1845.15 Together these brothers formed a business partnership to purchase, on August 28, 1821, the Brewhouse in Turk Street, Alton; it had been founded in 1763 by James B. Baverstock (1741–1815), who pioneered the use of scientific instrumentation in brewing (he was the first person to use a hydrometer) and laid the foundation for saccharometry (measuring the amount of sugar in a solution).16 The Crowley family’s Quaker faith opposed the production and consumption of hard spirits and intemperance through any kind of liquor, but there were no prohibitions against brewing, and at least a dozen Quakers in the eighteenth century were prominently involved in the industry.17 Indeed, Grey notes that the family already owned a brewery at Waddon, near Croydon, Surrey, which had been in operation for two hundred years.18
Under the name A. C. S. & H. Crowley, the new brewery established itself in Croydon and Alton and boomed with the opening of its Alton ale houses. By offering a glass of ale and a sandwich (ham was a specialty) for four pence, the Crowleys not only competed with the four-penny ale offered by brewers like Mann of Mile End Road,19 but in doing so they also essentially invented the pub lunch. Their shops were “for the most part open-fronted with a clean marble counter with four or five handsome brass engines; small plates and glasses were provided with a display of bread, biscuits, cakes, etc.”20
No less than Charles Dickens noted the growing popularity of Crowley’s ale houses, writing that Alton’s growth boom included “a feeding place, ‘established to supply the Railway public with a first-rate sandwich and a sparkling glass of Crowley’s Ale.’ ”21 Similarly, the 1863 article “Tales out of School” recounts a sixteen-year-old’s first visit to the shop:
The libation was obtained at a little shop hard by, where ‘Alton Ale’ was advertised in large black letters on a ground of white canvas, with a further announcement that you might have a glass of ale and a sandwich for four-pence. It arrived in two bright pewter pots with spouts, and was accompanied with three tall and narrow glasses, three to a pint, which would give four glasses of ale to each of us.22
Yates’s Recollections and Experiences recounted lunching at Crowley’s Alton ale house, whose shops were “exceedingly popular with young men who did not particularly care about hanging round the bars or taverns.”23 Crowley’s pub lunches offered high-quality food, and in time added other items like Banbury cakes. This prompted competitors to introduce the “Melton Mowbray Pork Pie,” and ultimately the luncheon counter and grill room.24
The tremendous success and spread of the Alton ale houses also inspired parodies, with a beer shop in City Road announcing “A Glass of Ale and an Electric Shock for Fourpence.”25 In response to their imitators, the Crowleys ran the following notice in the Times:
CROWLEYS’ ALTON ALE.—Being desirous that the public should not be deceived in purchasing a spurious article for their Alton ale, A.C.S. and H. Crowley beg to inform them that they have no Alton ale stores or any agent in London, except at their ALTON ALE WHARF, Upper Fore-street, Lambeth. And whereas houses have been opened in imitation of their customers on the new “ale and sandwich plan,” they further state that they do not supply ale to any such house unless the name of Crowley is conspicuously written up.—Alton, June, 1843.26
In subsequent years, Crowley’s ale stores expanded into London locations like Bishopsgate, Kensington Park Terrace, London Bridge, Kingston, Fenchurch Street, and Wandsworth Road,27 with distribution channels to match. Their barge Amelia carried product along the Thames, while In Praise of Ale declared “the LSWR [London and South Western Railway] transports ‘Alton Ale’ in large quantities to London.”28 Indeed, their commercial success was so great that one city newspaper joked:
Some sensation was excited in the city towards the close of the day (yesterday), in consequence of a report that government intends to legalize the sale of the Bank of England, and that a celebrated purveyor of ham and beef had made the directors a liberal offer on behalf of an Alton ale brewer; but we think the rumor is premature.29
The British census provides a fairer picture of the company’s growth: In 1851, Abraham Crowley described himself as a “brewer and maltster employing forty-six men.”30 A decade later, he employed three foremen, eight maltsters, and forty-nine laborers (or sixty men in all).31
Abraham Crowley’s is the name most closely associated with the family brewing business. As a young man, he apprenticed to the Quaker brewer Thomas Ashby (1762–1841) of Staines, who was married to his cousin Kitty (1760–1796).32 On December 7, 1821—four months after buying the Baverstock brewery—Abraham and his brothers partnered with Thomas and Charles Ashby on a ninety-nine-year counterpart lease for the Barley Mow Public House in Alton.33 Abraham’s career branched out around 1839, when he became one of the first emigration agents employed by the newly founded New Zealand Company, which promoted the systematic colonization of British settlements in Wellington, Nelson, Wanganui, and Dunedin. New Zealand was a new and untested emigration destination at the time, but under Abraham Crowley’s agency, his hometown of Alton had the highest rate of applications in all of England.34 As a highly successful businessman, he gave back to his community by supporting both boys’ and girls’ schools.35 With the acquisition of expansive hops gardens near Alton, the family began to hold annual “hop parties,” a tradition that his widow, Charlotte, continued after his death.36
Abraham Crowley (1795–1864), founder of A. C. S. & H. Crowley. (photo credit 1.1)
His sons continued the family business, with Abraham Curtis (1823–1878) and Frederick (1825–1910) tending to the Alton brewery, while Alfred (1824–1876) and Philip (1837–1900) partnered in its Croydon location.37 Frederick attended University College, London; was a member of the Alton Local Board for thirty years, and chairman of the twelve-member Local Board of Alton (and its successor, the Alton Urban District Council) for thirty-seven years; and donated, on May 1, 1867, a school at the northeast end of High Street large enough for 150 children.38 Abraham’s son Philip distinguished himself through avid interests in, and generous patronage of, horticulture and natural history. His collections of exotic butterflies and over four thousand bird eggs were considered the world’s finest. He was also a writer on entomology, lecturer at the Society of Arts, president of the Croydon Natural History and Scientific Society, treasurer of the Royal Horticultural Society, master of the Gardeners’ Company, vice chairman of the British Ornithologists’ Club, fellow of the Linnean, Zoological, and Entomological societies, and a member of the Croydon Microscopical Club. He died on December 20, 1900, and was buried on Christmas Eve in Shirley, near Croydon. He bequeathed his bird egg collection to the Natural History Museum in South Kensington.39
Frederick Crowley (1825–1910. (photo credit 1.2)
Philip Crowley (1837–1900. (photo credit 1.3)
On March 24, 1877—when Aleister Crowley was seventeen months old—the family sold their business to Abraham Curtis Crowley’s future son-in-law, Harry Percy Burrell (1852–1938), who continued to run the family business as Crowley & Co.40 Watney Combe Reid & Co. acquired Crowley & Co. in 1947, the year that Aleister Crowley died.
The most relevant of Thomas Crowley’s sons, however, is Aleister’s grandfather, Edward Crowley (c. 1788–1856). He was Thomas Crowley’s first son, the third of eight children. He wed Mary Sparrow (1788–1868) of West Hill, Wandsworth, in London on August 21, 1823,41 and together they had four children: Jonathan Sparrow (1826–1888), Mary Elizabeth (c. 1828–1880), Sarah Maria (1829–1856), and Aleister’s father, Edward (c. 1830–1887).42
Together with his brother Charles Sedgefield Crowley, Edward Crowley Sr. diversified the family’s wealth into railways as early as 1836–1837.43 Throughout the 1840s and into the 1850s, both brothers served as directors of many emerging railways: Charles Sedgefield Crowley directed the Direct London and Portsmouth Railway; London and South Western Railway; Colchester, Stour Valley, Sudbury and Halstead Railway; London
and Croydon Railway; and its successor, the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway. Edward Crowley, meanwhile, was deputy chairman of the London and Brighton Railway, and a director of the Brighton and Chichester Railway and Brighton, Chichester and Portsmouth Railway. All three companies were part of the 1846 merger that formed the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway, which Edward directed along with his brother. In addition, he directed the Isle of Wight Railway and the Dublin, Belfast and Coleraine Junction Railway. He was also provisional director of three proposed railways: the London, Warwick, Leamington and Kidderminster Railway; the London Central Railway Terminus Company; and the Irish North Midland Railway.44 He even held shares in the Great Western Railway of Canada.45 A Private Bill Office list of 1846 railway subscribers reflects their wealth: that year, Edward Crowley had invested £97,408, while his brother had invested £56,850.46
Edward and Charles Sedgefield synergized the family brewing and railway interests. Mere days passed between Edward Crowley’s appointment to the London and Brighton Railway and A. C. S. & H. Crowley’s “beware of imitators” ad in the Times.47 Writing about the British railway system, Henry O’Neil describes a placard with the slogan: “In the course of my excavations I have brought to light a board whereon is painted in large letters these words: ESTABLISHED TO SUPPLY THE PUBLIC WITH CROWLEY’S ALTON ALE.’ ”48 In 1846, Director Charles Sedgefield Crowley vocally supported the London and South West Railway’s proposed line between Farnham and Alton, which would connect Alton to London. He “spoke of the great want of a line to Alton” and “considered that the prosperity of Alton depended on the obtaining this line.”49 Four years later, the debate among the directors continued. For instance, Sergeant Gazelee
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