Perdurabo
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No sooner did Crowley agree to a meeting than Bennet entered from the next room. Taking Crowley aside, the Earl spoke to him like a lifelong friend, disclosing intimate details and discussing family secrets with embarrassing frankness. But most remarkable was his claim that his mother and her friend were trying to kill him with magic. He wanted Crowley to protect him. AC viewed him as suffering from “persecution mania.” His predilections for “his old habit of brandy tippling and his newly acquired one of sniffing a solution of cocaine” not only accentuated his concerns—leading Crowley to nickname him the “Earl of Coke and Crankum”29—but also explained his presence at Whineray’s shop.
AC saw him as a religious man with a mystical bent, and although he doubted the accuracy of his story, he knew Bennet himself believed it. Therefore, Crowley suggested they take a retirement that spring so the master could teach him magical self defense. The Earl of Tankerville delightedly agreed, and Crowley gained a new student.
George Montagu Bennet (1852–1931), 7th Earl of Tankerville. (photo credit 7.2)
The magicians were coming out of the woodwork: Jones and Fuller, now the Earl of Tankerville. Crowley pondered what could possibly happen next. Then he met Victor Neuburg.
Victor Benjamin Neuburg (1883–1940) was a Jewish poet and native Londoner, born in Islington to Bohemian merchant Carl Neuburg and his wife Jeannette (née Jacobs).30 Carl left the country shortly after Victor was born, so Jeanette moved in with her mother, Rebecca, where the Jacobs family helped raise Victor.31 His first published poem, “Vale Jehovah!,” appeared in the October 25, 1903, issue of the Freethinker, which encouraged him to continue publishing regularly, including in The Agnostic Journal.32 He was a young mystic who believed in reincarnation, vegetarianism, and the existence of a greater reality. Thinking Judeo-Christian religions a sham and finding spiritualism unsatisfying, he was searching for a genuine master.
When he met J. F. C. Fuller in 1906, Neuburg explained that he was studying medieval and modern languages at Trinity College. Fuller remarked on two coincidences: first, he too was a regular contributor to the Agnostic Journal and had admired Neuburg’s writing. Second, his friend—poet and mystic Aleister Crowley—had also attended Trinity. Neuburg was very interested in meeting this friend, and Fuller happily supplied Crowley’s address. Thus he wrote and arranged a meeting.
Crowley stepped into Neuburg’s room and introduced himself. Neuburg was a small man, with a head much too large for his slight body. His lips, Crowley thought, were three times too thick for his face, and he later characterized Neuburg as a “sausage-lipped songster of Steyning.”33 Despite this, his brown hair and distinguished features made him handsome. Crowley explained that he had read Neuburg’s poetry and was very interested in it because it showed evidence of astral projection. No reply was necessary: Crowley could tell just by looking at him that Neuburg had a terrific capacity for magic. Neuburg confirmed this by stating he had practiced spiritualism and clairvoyance. As the two got to know each other that weekend, they became entranced with each other: Crowley with the apprentice poet and magician, and Neuburg with the older master.
Victor Benjamin Neuburg (1883–1940). (photo credit 7.3)
Despite the dons’ objections, Neuburg invited Crowley to speak at Cambridge on Thursday, February 28, 1907. This “First Missionary Mission,” as AC dubbed it, was one of many visits he would make to Neuburg’s poetry club, the Pan Society, to read poetry, discuss magic, and recruit students into his fold. Neuburg in turn devoted himself to the study of magic.
A formative episode in Crowley’s work occurred when he wrote to Jones on March 7, asking permission to take a vow of silence. Jones discouraged Crowley from using this fourth power of the Sphinx, and suggested an alternative: Crowley ought to vow to answer no questions for a week, punishing each violation of this oath with a razor-cut on the forearm. Crowley picked up the gauntlet. On the first day of his oath, he slipped twenty-four times, but with an equal number of gashes on his arm, he quickly learned. The next day, he slipped only twelve times, the total dwindling down to around seven for the following days. In all, he slipped seventy-two times in a week. The exercise taught Crowley an important lesson in vigilance: not only did it make him carefully measure his words and responses, but it raised his consciousness of the world around him. He was so impressed that he incorporated the lesson into his cannon of magical instructions as “Liber Jugorum.”
Rose, seeing her husband’s forearms covered with scabs and slices, hated the exercise. This friction further eroded their conjugal life and made him fear that she was interfering with the Great Work. With precious little in common, and Rose’s drinking poisoning even that, Crowley moved into rooms on the fourth floor of 60 Jermyn Street, London, on the weekend of March 23–24.
Relieved to be alone, he worked to a peak at the end of May, when he took the oath of a Magister Templi (8°=3°) in the presence of “Tankerville.” In so doing, Crowley vowed to emerge from the Ordeal of the Abyss and stand in the entrance hall to the Third Order as a purely magical entity, selfless and unattached. His task as a Master of the Temple was twofold: First, he had to found a temple (which was just the work he and Jones were doing). In addition, he vowed to interpret every event in his life as a particular dealing of God with his soul. While any person could theoretically take this oath to find the significance behind everything, the consequences for one unprepared for the grade of Magister Templi were terrible indeed; at the very least, it swept an inexperienced soul inexorably toward the Abyss.
The next day, Crowley and Tankerville arranged to take the magical retirement they’d planned since their first meeting. It was the perfect opportunity for both to study and learn. They planned to sail to Marseilles, Morocco, Mongolia, Gibraltar, and Spain, and began the voyage that June. Although Crowley attributed Montagu’s claims of magical attack to paranoia, he taught him a protection technique to alleviate his worries. As Crowley wrote:
Whenever he noticed his mother flying past the moon on her broomstick, he would perform a banishing ritual, and sail out in his astral body onto the word and chop the broomstick like Sigfried with the lance of Wotan, and down she would fall into the Straits of Gibraltar, plop, plop.34
As they journeyed, Crowley also wrote many of the pieces that would appear in Konx Om Pax: “The Mask of Gilt” (July 12), “There is No Other God than He” (July 13), “Return of Messalina” (July 22), and the piece considered by many to be his best poem, “La Gitana” (July 21). The last is about a Spanish gypsy who made Crowley forget his domestic troubles:
Your hair was full of roses in the dewfall as we danced,
The sorceress enchanting and the paladin entranced,
In the starlight as we wove us in a web of silk and steel
Immemorial as the marble in the halls of Boabdil,
In the pleasaunce of the roses with the fountains and the yews
Where the snowy Sierra soothed us with the breezes and the dews!
Crowley agreed with the critics, noting, “The Morocco poems seem to me about the best I have ever done.”35
Before long, however, both men got on each other’s nerves. Crowley tired of the Earl’s incessant delusions, writing sarcastically in his journal for July 11, “I don’t know about the Power of Samadhi; but I can tolerate Tankerville, and I want a new grade specially for that.” He summed up his feelings about Bennet in “The Suspicious Earl”:
There was a poor bedevilled Earl
Who saw a Witch in every girl,
A Wehr-Wolf every time one smiled,
A budding Vampire in a child,
A Sorcerer in every man,
A deep-laid Necromantic plan
In every casual word; withal
Cloaked in its black horrific pall
A Vehmgericht obscenely grim,
And all designed—to ruin him!36
Meanwhile, the earl tired of the master’s constant lessons, telling Crowley, “I’m sick of your teaching, teaching, teaching
as if you were God Almighty and I were a poor bloody shit in the street!” Shortly after they returned to Gibraltar on July 20, they had a row and parted. On July 25, they arrived in Southampton aboard the Scharnhorst. 37
Throughout these adventures, Crowley continued to produce poetry. He had already completed in February the poems that made up Clouds without Water. Additional 1907 releases from SPRT included Rosa Coeli, Rosa Inferni, and Rodin in Rime, all of which featured color lithographs of Rodin’s watercolors. The last book was a bold gesture on Crowley’s part because it was fashionable to criticize Rodin at this time; but Crowley chose to defend and praise him instead. SPRT also reissued Tannhäuser and The Mother’s Tragedy.
Finally, the winning essay on the works of Aleister Crowley appeared: The Star in the West, by J. F. C. Fuller, appeared as a prodigious, 328-page volume with white buckram covers gilt-stamped with Crowley’s Magister Templi (8°=3°) emblem, or lamen. A vesica enclosed the lamen, which consisted of a crown with a sword’s blade extending through and far above it, balancing on its tip a scale whose pans held the Greek letters alpha and omega; it also sported five V’s, which represented Crowley’s Magister Templi motto, Vi Veri Vniversum Vivus Vici (“By the power of truth, I have conquered the universe”). Although Crowley and Fuller released only one hundred copies of this signed and numbered edition,38 it was significant in marking the appearance of Frater V.V.V.V.V., the Magister Templi.
Although Crowley professed not to accept this grade until 1909, he clearly claimed it much sooner: on May 30, 1907, five months after Jones declared him 8°=3°, he took his 8°=3° oath with Montagu as a witness; he published The Star in the West with his Magister Templi lamen on the cover; and his diary from this period contains many references to the attainment, such as “I think this stamps me clearly as an 8°=3° elect.”39 After returning to London from his trip with Montagu, Crowley mailed out cards which bore the lamen of V.V.V.V.V.; this mailing puzzled at least one recipient, who wrote to the Daily Mirror:
Contemporary cartoon about Crowley’s Magister Templi lamen. (photo credit 7.4)
Two days ago I received the enclosed card anonymously, and just glancing at it briefly, thinking it an advertisement of some sort, I placed it on the mantlepiece.
Within a few minutes, disasters of a minor kind began to happen in my little home.
First, one of my most valuable vases fell to the ground and was smashed to pieces. My little clock stopped—the clock was near the card—and then I discovered to my amazement that my dear little canary lay dead at the bottom of its cage!40
Although the letter is unsigned, Crowley is likely the author.
Alas, The Star in the West turned out to be the name of a children’s book published in London the previous year.41 This mix-up caused a chagrined Fuller to publish an apologia that summer in the Athenaeum:
I exceedingly regret that through an unfortunate coincidence my recently published volume The Star in the West, a critical essay upon the writings of Aleister Crowley, bears the same title as a Welsh story for children by Miss Mary Debenham, already published by the National Society. But for the fact that my work was already printed and bound before my attention was drawn to this point, I would willingly have changed the title. However, with the courteous consent of both publishers, the title is retained; and I trust this letter will save booksellers any inconvenience that might have arisen from this similarity of the titles.42
Unlike Crowley’s postcard, no mishaps were reported with Fuller’s book.
By this time, Crowley was living in London at Coram Street, and new works continued to flow from his busy pen: he followed his poetic adaptation of Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” and hymns to the Virgin Mary with “The Hermit,” and “Empty-headed Athenians.” Next, he worked on Konx Om Pax, writing its prologue and dedication and designing its cover. That fall, Crowley wrote the novella “Ercildoune” and the short story “The Wizard Way.”43
Volume three of his collected Works was also in press at the time. Although The Book of the Law had been typeset and slated to appear as an appendix with a brief commentary,44 Crowley scrapped the plan. Instead, the appendix became a bibliography of Crowley’s published works up through 1906, compiled by Duncombe-Jewell. Despite intentional omissions—notably, White Stains and Snowdrops from a Curate’s Garden—the bibliography was excellent and progressive;45 information on print runs, paper type, and binding clarified to all how fine and collectible Crowley’s first editions were.
Familial tension finally erupted at the end of October, when Crowley received a grocer’s bill for the 120 bottles of liquor that Rose had purchased over the past five months. Pondering where the devil Rose could have stashed a bottle of liquor a day, Crowley searched the house but found no trace of alcohol anywhere. He had to assume she drank it all. Armed with the evidence he needed, Crowley confronted his wife with the facts. She admitted to drinking heavily, and Crowley sent her to Leicester to dry out for two months.
When he first read Sri Brahma Dhàra (“Shower from the Highest”) by yogi Mahatma Sri Agamya Guru Paramahamsa (born c. 1841),46 Crowley had heard that the fierce author was nicknamed the Tiger Mahatma and that he referred to seekers who were too meek for his tastes as “sheep.” A retired judge, he devoted himself to religion and was described by German philologist and orientalist Max Müller (1823–1900) as the only Indian saint he had ever known. His temper was both fierce and legendary, which seemed to attract—and ultimately repel—his followers.47 Back on November 13, when the guru was on his second trip to London, Crowley had sent him a cryptic letter. “If you are the one I seek,” the note read, “this will suffice.” He had enclosed his name and address and awaited a reply. A response had come the next day, and several days later Crowley had begun meeting the guru for instructions on yoga.
The “Tiger Mahatma,” Sri Agamya Guru Paramahamsa. (photo credit 7.5)
That was last fall. Now that Agamya had returned to London, Crowley rejoined him and his “tiger cubs” at 60 South Audley. Before long, however, Crowley and Agamya had “a devil of a row”48 at a meeting of students. In response, AC asked Fuller—who, he knew, was well versed in both yoga and Agamya’s writings (of which he thought little)—to attend a meeting the following Sunday. Fuller went, and his disdain for the proceedings was evident. After ninety minutes’ talk, the yogi grew upset with Fuller, crying out, “You pig-faced man! You dirty fellow, you come here to take away my disciples … Crowley send this pig-one, eh?” At that, Fuller politely took his hat and cane and walked to the door. Before closing it behind himself, Fuller poked his head back in and, in Hindi, replied, “Shut up, you son of a sow!”49 Fuller could hear the yogi’s characteristic fit of anger as he closed the door and walked away.
Agamya’s concerns may have been well-founded. Crowley, trying to found an order with Jones, sought students, and the same purposefulness that caused Tankerville to exclaim “I’m sick of your teaching, teaching, teaching” may have made Agamya uneasy: the Tiger Mahatma’s claim that AC took away his students may reflect either a concern or the truth.
Crowley’s results with magic began to resemble those he obtained in Cairo in 1904. Crossing the Abyss required that he release everything dear to him: his wife, daughter, and that one item for which he had fought so hard—his holy guardian angel. The lesson, he learned, was not to lose these things but to be able to release them and act without attachment; for, that fall, Crowley realized his holy guardian angel was still with him. “I can, I know, get into touch with Adonai at will,” he recorded in his diary.50 Adonai was the Hebrew word for “lord,” and was used as a title of the holy guardian angel.
On October 30, Crowley got it in writing. That evening, the automatic writing “Liber VII” was penned, the first of a series of “Holy Books” that Crowley claimed were dictated by his holy guardian angel, Aiwass. In one sitting of two and a half hours, Crowley took down its seven chapters, one for each of the traditional astrological planets; although longer than The Book of
the Law, it took thirty fewer minutes to write. “Liber VII,” Crowley explained, was an account of “the voluntary emancipation of a certain Exempt Adept from his Adeptship. These are the birth-words of a Master of the Temple.”51
Immediately after finishing VII, he began another. Throughout this writing, Crowley basked in the trance of samadhi, his own identity dissolved into the cosmic dance, recording passively the dictation of his inner voice.52 These writings continued intermittently until November 3, when he finished “Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente,” or “The Book of the Heart Girt about by the Serpent,” the longest of the Thelemic Holy Books. Each of its five chapters (one for each element) contains sixty-five verses describing the relationship of an Adeptus Minor (5°=6°) with his holy guardian angel.
Ever since Kangchenjunga, Crowley and Jones met regularly to discuss, compare and practice magic. They knew they held the key to a newer and more potent formula of initiation than that of old, and this led Crowley to write:
O restless rats that gnaw the bones
Of Aristophanes and Paul!
Come up to me and Mr. Jones
And see the rapture of it all!53
For the past year, however, their lack of a third member to form a governing triad had stalled their formation of a magical order.
On November 15, Crowley visited Jones with a solution: his bright friend, Frater Per Ardua ad Astra (“To the stars through great effort”), also known as Frater Non Sine Fulmine (“Not without thunder”), known among mundane men as Captain J. F. C. Fuller, would be the third. Jones considered the proposition and consented to forming the triad.