(3) That I will keep secret all things connected with this Order; that I will maintain the Veil of strict secrecy between the First and Second Order.
(4) That I will uphold to the utmost the authority of the Chiefs of the Order.
(5) Furthermore that I will perform all practical work connected with this Order, in a place concealed; that I will keep secret this inner Rosicrucian Knowledge; that I will only perform any practical magic before the uninitiated which is of a simple and already well-known nature, and that I will show them no secret mode of working whatsoever.
(6) I further solemnly promise and swear that, with the Divine permission, I will from this day forward apply myself unto the Great Work, which is so to purify and exalt my spiritual Nature that with the Divine Aid I may at length attain to be more than human, and thus gradually raise and unite myself to my higher and divine Genius, and that in this event I will not abuse the Great Power entrusted unto me.
(7) I furthermore solemnly pledge myself never to work at any important Symbol or Talisman without first invocating the Highest Divine Names connected therewith; and especially not to debase my knowledge of Practical magic to purposes of Evil.
(8) I further promise always to display brotherly love and forbearance towards the members of the whole Order.
(9) I also undertake to work unassisted at the subjects prescribed for study in the various practical grades.
(10) Finally, if in my travels I should meet a stranger who professes to be a member of the Rosicrucian Order, I will examine him with care, before acknowledging him to be so.55
The Robe of Mourning and Chain of Suffering were removed from the candidate, who next learned the history of the Rosicrucian Order: it began with Christian Rosenkreuz, a mythical German noble who was initiated into the Mysteries in Arabia in 1393. He traveled and studied the teachings of world religions until 1410, when he and four Masons whom he had initiated founded a temple of the Rosy Cross. After Rosenkreuz died he was buried in a vault within the temple undisturbed until, over a century later, a brother who had been repairing the temple discovered a secret door inscribed with the words POST CXX ANNOS PATEBO (I will be found after 120 years). The rediscovery of the vault occurred precisely 120 years after Rosenkreuz’s death.
The name Crowley chose as an Adeptus Minor was one he guarded closely all his life. He recorded this motto in only one notebook as Christeos Luciftias. In the Enochian angelic language, it means “let there be light.” Allan Bennett’s motto meant the same thing in Hebrew; the reference to his friend and mentor is clear. Crowley’s motto is also interesting as its surface resemblance to Western Christian terms contrasts and unites the names of Christ and Lucifer.56 Its only appearance in print is as the “translator” of “Ambrosii Magi Hortus Rosarum,” a satirical Rosicrucian essay included in his Works.
The initiation marked a milestone for Crowley. Dissatisfied with the instructions of the First Order, he had followed advice to wait until he reached the Second Order before judging the system. The First Order, he had learned, served only to prepare the student; the Second Order taught the application of magic. Now he was ready for the real secrets. The initiation was also a victory for Mathers. While the order in London had refused to advance Crowley, Mathers overruled Farr’s decision. The war had begun.
While in Paris, Crowley asked Mathers for advice on the legal trouble brewing in London. Mathers examined Crowley’s astrological chart and, based on the date of the letters of warning, concluded there was real danger. However, his Saturn on the cusp of Capricorn mitigated things. “You are strong and the end of the matter is good,” Mathers counseled. “By all means, avoid London.”57
Using the lunar pantacle from the Key of Solomon in order to avoid trouble, Crowley took his chances and briefly returned to London to check in with his associates. While Bennett, Jones, and Eckenstein believed his concerns were unfounded, GD member W. E. H. Humphrys warned Crowley that he was indeed wanted, and that the danger was greatest just before Easter.
Crowley left London and reached Boleskine safely on February 7. In his absence, Horniblow had left without warning or explanation. The reason lies in one of Yeats’s letters about the GD’s activities at this time:
We found out that his [Mathers’s] unspeakable mad person [Crowley] had a victim, a lady who was his mistress and from whom he extorted large sums of money. Two or three of our thaumaturgists … called her up astrally, and told her to leave him. Two days ago (and about two days after the evocation) she came to one of our members (she did not know he was a member) and told a tale of perfectly medieval iniquity—of positive torture, and agreed to go to Scotland Yard and there have her evidence taken down. Our thaumaturgist had never seen her, nor had she any link with us of any kind.58
Nothing would ever come of this, although the gossip would haunt Crowley years later in the yellow press.
Crowley waited langorously in his tranquil new neighborhood for things to quiet down in London. On Saturday, February 24, he began recording his preparations for the Abramelin working, starting with his Oath of the Beginning:
I, Perdurabo, Frater Ordinis Rosae Rubeae et Aureae Crucis, a Lord of the Paths in the Portal of the Vault of the Adepts, a 5°=6° of the Order of the Golden Dawn; and an humble servant of the Christ of God; do this day spiritually bind myself anew:
By the Sword of Vengeance:
By the Powers of the Elements:
By the Cross of Suffering:
That I will devote myself to the Great Work: the obtaining of Communion with my own Higher and Divine Genius (called the Guardian Angel) by means of the prescribed course; and that I will use my Power so obtained unto the Redemption of the Universe.
So help me the Lord of the Universe and mine own Higher Soul!59
With these words, he also took an Obligation of the Operation, which he adapted from his Adeptus Minor oath.
From the outset, circumstances seemed to oppose this working. Jones was the obvious choice for Crowley’s assistant, but he was unable to come to Boleskine. Therefore, Crowley summoned Bennett’s old roommate, Charles Rosher; he helped for a while but sneaked off early one morning and caught a steamer to Inverness, never to return. Rosher’s replacement was an old Cambridge friend, who also came and left suddenly. Finally, Boleskine’s teatotalling lodge-keeper went on a three-day drinking binge and tried to kill his wife and children. This and similar phenomenon convinced Crowley that the daily prayers and conjurations which constituted the Abramelin working were also attracting malevolent forces.60
Florence Farr, troubled by her schism with Mathers, resigned as both Praemonstrix of the Isis-Urania temple and as his London representative. Mathers feared her resignation indicated Westcott’s attempt at a coup: on February 16 he sent her a letter claiming that Westcott
has never been at any time either in personal or in written communication with the Secret Chiefs of the Order, he having either himself forged or procured to be forged the professed correspondence between him and them, and my tongue having been tied all these years by a previous Oath of Secrecy to him.61
The accusation was devastating. If Mathers was telling the truth, then she had been living a lie for years, initiating people under false pretenses.
To sort out her feelings, Farr returned to her childhood home of Bromley, where, after much contemplation and soul-searching, she decided to share the letter with six other members of the Second Order. On March 3, these seven formed an informal committee to quietly decide what they should do about Mathers’s accusations. The committee included Farr, Yeats, and Jones, as well as Mr. and Mrs. E. A. Hunter, M. W. Blackden, and P. W. Bullock.
On March 18, Bullock wrote Mathers on behalf of the committee, expressing shock over the letter’s implications and requesting proof of its accusations. Mathers shot an angry letter to Farr, refusing to recognize any committee formed “to consider my private letter to you … All these complications could have been avoided had you written me an open straightforward letter a
t the beginning of the year, saying you wished to retire from office.”62
Two days later, Yeats contacted Westcott. The Rosicrucian Supreme Magus’s response was noncommittal:
Speaking legally, I find I cannot prove the details of the origin of the knowledge and history of the G.D., so I should not be just nor wise to bias your opinion of them.
Mr. M. may insinuate and claim the authorship because I cannot disprove him. How can I say anything now, because if I accepted this new story, then Mrs. Woodman would rightly charge me with slandering her dead husband’s reputation, for he was answerable for the original history; and if I say M.’s new story is wrong I shall be open to violent attack by him and I shall have to suffer his persecution.
I must allow you to judge us both to the best of your judgement, and to decide on your responsibility.63
On March 23, Mathers sent poison pen letters to Farr and Bullock, again expressing umbrage at having his letter shown to others and refusing to recognize their committee. Calling on the vows of obedience to him which all members signed in 1896, he forbade the committee to meet and ordered them to abandon the inquiry. He also dismissed Farr as his representative.
The next day, the committee met to decide on a plan of action, and Bullock wrote apologetically to Mathers, stating that his letter forbidding meetings reached him after the committee had already met. Mathers wrote back to Bullock on April 2 and threatened the committee. “And for the first time since I have been connected with the Order,” he wrote, “I shall formulate my request to Highest Chiefs for the Punitive Current to be prepared, to be directed against those who rebel.”64
The situation in London had continued for over a month when Crowley made his first contact with the lodge since his initiation by Mathers. From Boleskine, he wrote Maud Cracknell, assistant secretary of the Second Order, whom he bitterly called “an ancient Sapphic crack, unlikely to be filled.”65 As an Adeptus Minor in the GD, he requested the instructional papers to which he was entitled, but Cracknell told him he needed to deal directly with Mrs. Hunter, his superior in the order. Crowley’s letter to her couldn’t have been worse timed. Hunter was on the investigative committee and unkindly disposed to Mathers. On March 25, Mrs. Hunter sent Crowley a reply wherein she refused to recognize his initiation into the Second Order. “The Second Order is apparently mad,” he mused. In Crowley’s mind, Mathers was
unquestionably a Magician of extraordinary attainment. He was a scholar and a gentleman.… As far as I was concerned, Mathers was my only link with the Secret Chiefs to whom I was pledged. I wrote to him offering to place myself and my fortune unreservedly at his disposal; if that meant giving up the Abra-Melin Operation for the present, all right.66
A week later, Mathers accepted the offer. In his diary, Crowley noted,
D.D.C.F. accepts my services, therefore do I again postpone the Operation of Abramelin the Mage, having by God’s Grace formulated even in this a new link with the Higher, and gained a new weapon against the Great princes of the Evil of the World. Amen.67
On Tuesday, April 3, Crowley stopped in London to ask his oldest friends in the order their opinion of the rebellion. Baker told Crowley he was sick of all the politicking in the order, while Jones insisted that, without Mathers, there was no GD. Elaine Simpson also took Mathers’s side. Crowley also consulted Kelly and Humphrys, but their reactions are unrecorded.
That Saturday, Crowley appeared at the Second Order’s meeting room at 36 Blythe Road. His plan was to reconnoiter the order’s property for Mathers, but he found the vault locked and Miss Cracknell on duty. “I insist I be allowed inside,” he pressed her.
“The Vault is closed by order of the committee, and no one can go in without its consent,” she told the intruder coolly.
“Have you a key?”
“I’m a new member and don’t have a private key,” she lied.
“Can you go in yourself?”
“No,” she lied again. “Perhaps you’d better go to Mrs. Emery, or Mr. Hunter or Mr. Blackden.”
“On the contrary. It is they who should come to me.” At that, he dramatically stormed out of the room. Satisfied with his observation of the situation in London, he proceeded to France.
Crowley returned to 28 rue St. Vincent on Monday, April 9, and proposed a strategy to the Matherses: Crowley should return to London and summon the members of the Second Order individually to headquarters. There, they would encounter a masked man (Crowley) and his scribe. They would answer whether they believed in the truth of the teachings of the Second Order and were willing to stop the revolt; then they would sign a vow of obligation to the GD. Any refusal would mean expulsion.
Mathers accepted the plan. On April 11 he penned letters of authorization for Crowley. The next day, Crowley entered the following oath into his diary:
I, Perdurabo, as the Temporary Envoy Plenipotentiary of Deo Duce Comite Ferro & thus the Third from the Secret Chiefs of the Order of the Rose of Ruby and the Cross of Gold, do deliberately invoke all laws, all powers Divine, demanding that I, even I, be chosen to do such a work as he has done, at all costs to myself. And I record this holy aspiration in the Presence of the Divine Light, that it may stand as my witness.68
Crowley left Paris at 11:50 a.m. on April 13. For protection, Mathers gave him a Rose Cross, the Rosicrucian talisman. He warned Crowley to expect magical attack, and know that sure signs were mysterious fires or fires refusing to burn. It was the best he could do to prepare Crowley for the fight ahead.
Back in London, Crowley’s first tactic was to contact GD members loyal to Mathers. He hired a cab to take him to two of these members, Mrs. Simpson and Dr. Berridge. During the ride, the paraffin lights on the carriage caught fire and the cab could go no further. Most mysterious, Crowley thought, in light of Mathers’s warning about fires. He hailed another cab, and as he rode along the horse bolted inexplicably.
When he finally arrived at Mrs. Simpson’s, Crowley noted the refusal of her hearth fire to remain lit, while his rubber raincoat, nowhere near the fire, spontaneously combusted. Mathers appeared to be correct about the fires: when they should have burned, they did not; when they were burning, they behaved mysteriously; when they should not be, they appeared. Crowley concluded he was under magical attack.
Taking out the Rose Cross, Crowley clenched the protective talisman given to him by Mathers and noticed something unusual about it. Its color was bleaching out, fading. In one day’s time, the talisman was nearly white.
During this time as Mathers’s plenipotentiary, Crowley also had his one and only contact with Supreme Magus William Wynn Westcott:
I only saw the old boy once in my life, and then merely on an errand from Mathers to tell him he had incurred a traitor’s doom. And I only wrote to him once, and that to demand that he should deposit the famous Cypher Manuscripts with the British Museum as their secrecy was being used for purposes of fraud.69
Westcott was less receptive to Crowley’s communications than he was to Yeats’s.
Thirty-six Blythe Road was the rebel base. As the Second Order’s London headquarters, it was the source of the insurrection’s power. Without it, they would be dead in the water.
On Monday, April 16, Crowley met C. E. Wilkinson, landlord of the room, and convinced him that he had authority to enter and occupy the premises. The next day, he returned with Elaine Simpson to wrest headquarters from the dissidents. They found Cracknell in the room, repeating her statement that the rooms had been closed by Farr’s order. As Mathers’s plenipotentiary, Crowley gleefully expelled the Sapphic Crack from the order. She rushed off and sent a telegram to E. A. Hunter: “Come at once to Blythe Road, something awful has happened.”
When Hunter arrived, he was shocked to encounter resistance in entering the room. Then he found Crowley in the supposedly locked premises, having apparently forced open the doors and changed the locks. Crowley proudly declared, “We have taken possession of headquarters by the authority of MacGregor Mathers.” He handed over
his letters of authority.
Hunter looked the papers over. “The authority of that gentleman has been suspended by a practically unanimous vote by the members of the society,” he replied dryly.
Undaunted, Crowley turned his attack to Cracknell, who had entered the room with Hunter. Jabbing a finger in her direction, he continued. “That woman must leave the room. She has been suspended from membership.”
Hunter shook his head. “I will not allow it. Not without her consent.”
Meanwhile, Farr appeared with a constable. Unfortunately, the authorities were powerless to help her. The landlord was not present to verify ownership of the premises, and Farr had not put into writing her orders for the rooms to be closed. Crowley was technically in possession of the rooms.
Victorious, AC proceeded according to plan. To cancel the proposed meeting of the renegade Second Order on April 21 and to summon all members for their test of allegiance, he sent the following telegram:
You are cited to appear at Headquarters at 11:45 am on the 20th inst.
Should you be unable to attend, an appointment at the earliest possible moment must be made by telegraphing to ‘MacGregor’ at Headquarters. There will be no meeting on the 21st inst.
By the order of Deo Duce Comite Ferro,
Chief of the SO70
Two days later, on April 19, Yeats and Hunter found Wilkinson, the landlord. Since members came and went regularly, he explained, he assumed Crowley was as welcome as any other. However, he agreed that Farr, who paid the bills, could do whatever she wanted with the rooms. They thereupon showed him a letter from Farr, authorizing them to change her locks.
At 11:30 that same morning, Crowley’s figure cut a spectacle through the shop below. He appeared in Highland dress with a plaid over his head and shoulders, a huge gold cross around his neck, and a dagger at his waist. According to plan, he wore a black mask over his face to conceal his identity.71 Crowley marched past the shop clerk, who notified Wilkinson. The landlord—having passed word along to Yeats, Hunter, and the constable—stopped Crowley in the back hall and forbade him from entering the premises. When the constable arrived, he advised Crowley to get a lawyer.
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