Perdurabo

by Richard Kaczynski

  “You said he is a writer,” Salvesen posited. “Does he make anything by it?”

  Gerald snorted. “Certainly not.”

  Salvesen considered the case, granted Rose her divorce, and awarded her custody of Lola Zaza, with £1 a week as alimony. Since Crowley had spent his fortune on publishing and mountaineering adventures, he had no money to offer as a settlement, but with the help of Dennes & Co., he set up a trust fund into which would be deposited the £4,000 he would receive when his mother died; these funds would be divided between Crowley and Lola at the discretion of the trustees, Jones and Eckenstein.

  Looking at Crowley’s photograph, the judge sat back and mused. “He looks as if he belonged to the stage.”

  Jameson said, “He is a literary character, sir. He rather affects the artistic.”7

  The Crowley family—Rose, Lola Zaza, and Aleister—taken shortly after the divorce. (photo credit 9.1)

  In retrospect, their marriage was flawed even before alcohol became an issue. Admittedly, Rose’s love inspired passionate songs from the poet, just as Lilith’s death devastated him and the collapse of their marriage depressed him. And although comparatively uneducated and undisciplined, she was a valuable magical partner, leading AC to The Book of the Law, participating in his rituals, and scrying for his friends. Nevertheless, AC placed her third in his life, after books and magic. They shared little in common: he was a writer, she uninterested in literature. Moreover, they spent little time together: shortly after their marriage, he went on his expedition to Kangchenjunga; left her again in China to travel to America; went on a cruise with Tankerville; and maintained separate residences in London and Paris. In the end, theirs appears to have been a marriage held together by little more than the romance of their elopement.

  While the divorce unfolded, Crowley and Neuburg headed out of Aumale into the heart of Algeria. Crowley wore a robe and turban and read from the Qur’an as they marched across the desert. Neuburg’s head was shaved except for two tufts of hair that he twisted into horns. Thus Crowley led his familiar djinn about on a chain, to the amazement of the locals.

  That evening, they reached Sidi Aissa and, at 8 p.m., performed the 27th Call. From there, they proceeded to Bou Sâada, where they spent most of their trip. It was a quaint little town with houses gathered upon a hill in the middle of the desert. A stream ran through the land below, framed with palms, cacti, orchards, and gardens.

  As they regressed through the Thirty Aethyrs over the course of the next month, Crowley and Neuburg recorded the visions—apocalyptic, passionate, and inspired—which they experienced. AC encountered angels, streams of fire, dragons, ringing bells, and a landscape of knives. When they evoked the 21st Aethyr on November 29, Crowley faced an invisible entity that spoke by rapidly placing tastes into Crowley’s mouth: salt, honey, sugar, asafoetida, bitumen, honey. As they progressed, Crowley understood the images to unify every system of magical attainment.

  The Calls also initiated him into greater and greater mysteries. In the 15th Aethyr (December 3), a group of Adepts examined Frater Perdurabo at their Sabbath. The first one thrust a dagger into Crowley’s heart, tasted his blood, and spoke the Greek word katharos, thus deeming him at least an Adeptus Minor (5°=6°); indeed, he had received this initiation in 1900 from Mathers himself in Paris. The second, testing the muscles of his right shoulder and arm, pronounced the Latin word fortis, signifying he was an Adeptus Major (6°=5°). The third, examining his skin and tasting the sweat of his left arm, uttered the Enochian word TAN, declaring him Adeptus Exemptus (7°=4°), an exempt adept at the top of the Second Order’s hierarchy. The fourth, examining his neck, said nothing, then opened the right half of his brain and pronounced the Sanskrit samajh. He had crossed the abyss and was a Magister Templi (8°=3°).

  A fifth Adept approached, examined the left half of Crowley’s brain, pondered his evidence, and stiffened. He raised his hand in protest and, in his language, declared Crowley was not yet a Magus, 9°=2°: “In the thick of darkness the seed awaiteth spring.” AC still belonged to the first of the three grades of the third and highest order, the Silver Star.

  This vision occurred between 9:15 and 11:10 in the morning. Later that afternoon, the magicians climbed the mountain Dáleh Addin in the desert and, at 2:50, attempted to obtain a vision of the 14th Aethyr, named UTI in Enochian. As he proceeded, Crowley encountered thick veils of darkness. Tearing his way through the veils, trying to penetrate their mystery, the darkness was endless. Finally, a voice instructed him, “Depart! For thou must invoke me only in the darkness. Therein will I appear, and reveal unto thee the Mystery of UTI. For the Mystery thereof is great and terrible. And it shall not be spoken in sight of the sun.”

  At 3:15, Crowley abandoned the vision.

  Descending the mountain, inspiration seized Crowley. He suggested they gather rocks and build a stone circle around a rough stone altar dedicated to Pan. This they did, and wrote magical words of power in the sand. With the temple established, they now needed to worship the deity. A sacrifice was customary, but Crowley had no animal with him. He knew, however, that sacrifices often symbolized the sex act, the spilling of the seed of life. So upon the makeshift altar, beneath the desert sun, Victor assumed the active role in an act of anal sex with his master.

  Crowley staggered back to Bou Sâada in a drunken state of spiritual ecstasy and collapsed on his bed, feeling insights he had never known before. In his own words, the ritual “produced a great wonder,” for he realized for the first time what power could be wielded by using sex in ritual. He also accepted the homosexual component of his sexuality; this stood in sharp contrast to his college relationship with Pollitt, which ended with bitterness and recriminations. The indulgence and transcendence of the last taboo that Victorian-Christian mores had programmed into him completely obliterated “Aleister Crowley” and erased his ego. As he wrote:

  It was a repetition of my experience of 1905, but far more actual. I did not merely admit that I did not exist, and that all my ideas were illusions, inane and insane. I felt these facts as facts. It was the difference between book knowledge and experience.… All things were alike as shadows sweeping across the still surface of a lake—their images had no meaning for the water, no power to stir its silence.8

  Through the Enochian Calls, Crowley was reliving all the initiations he had experienced: up to this point, he had had sporadic enlightenments that gave him claim to the exalted grades of the AA, but now he was systematically and formally going through his initiations.

  For Victor, that day marked the consummation of a love that had grown steadily within him, and which would never in his life find equal.

  At 9:50 that evening, they again tried the Call of the 14th Aethyr. This time the consciousness that had been Crowley penetrated the veil, encountered the angel, and by 11:15 was confirmed as one of the masters.

  The remaining visions instructed him in what lay ahead. The 13th Aethyr described the work undertaken by a Master of the Temple (8°=3°). The 12th described the City of the Pyramids, the allegorical name for the third sephira, Binah, on the Tree of Life, which represents the 8°=3° grade. Having been fully instructed on the Grade of the Magister Templi and having had his lease in the City of Pyramids approved, he could now move in. All he had to do was ritually recross the Abyss. Staring into the dark wind-swept void, Crowley beseeched his holy guardian angel, “Is there not one appointed as a warden?”

  Aiwass replied with the torment-spawned last words of Jesus, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani.”9

  Returning from the 11th Aethyr, Crowley knew he was alone. Just as he had trodden upon mountains where no one had previously set foot, there was no other person living in the areas he now ventured.

  “Accursed” was John Dee’s word for the 10th Aethyr. Its path crossed the Abyss, but Choronzon, the demon of dispersion, guarded the higher grades from those unprepared. Edward Kelly called him “that mighty devil,” the first and deadliest of all evil powers. Crowley and Ne
uburg knew they needed to be prepared to encounter this infernal entity.

  On December 6, the magicians wandered until they found a suitable spot in a desert valley filled with white sand. Sparing no precaution, they gathered stones and arranged them in a huge circle. Around it they traced the protective kabbalistic names of God in the sand: Yahweh, Shaddai El Chai, and ARARITA. Due east of the circle, they inscribed a triangle which enclosed the name Choronzon. To fortify it, they wrote on each of its sides a sacred name as advised in the Goetia: ANAPHAXETON, ANAPHANETON, and PRIMEUMATON. At its vertices they put a pair of letters from the name of MI-CA-EL, the archangel bearing the fiery sword. Into this space they would summon the demon. And in this same space Crowley, robed in black, would scry. Neuburg sat in the fortified circle; his duties were to use his consecrated dagger to command and contain Choronzon in the Triangle of the Art, and to record the content of the vision in his notebook. So grave and serious was this responsibility that he swore an oath:

  I, Omnia Vincam, a Probationer of AA, hereby solemnly promise upon my magical honour, and swear by Adonai the angel that guardeth me, that I will defend this magic circle of Art with thoughts and words and deeds. I promise to threaten with the Dagger to command back into the triangle the spirit incontinent, if he should strive to escape from it; and to strike with a Dagger at anything that may seek to enter this Circle, were it in appearance the body of the Seer himself. And I will be exceeding wary, armed against force and cunning; and I will preserve with my life the inviolability of this circle, Amen. And I summon mine Holy Guardian Angel to witness this mine oath, the which if I break, may I perish, forsaken of Him. Amen and Amen.10

  Crowley performed banishing rituals of both the pentagram and hexagram, purging their workplace of both elemental and planetary forces. Then, calling on the sacred names of God, he recited the exorcism of Honorius:

  O Lord, deliver me from hell’s great fear and gloom!

  Loose thou my spirit from the larvae of the tomb!

  I seek them in their dread abodes without affright:

  On them will I impose my will, the law of light.…

  Their faces and their shapes are terrible and strange.

  These devils by my might to angels I will change.

  These nameless horrors I address without affright:

  On them will I impose my will, the law of light.

  These are the phantoms pale of mine astonished view,

  Yet none but I their blasted beauty can renew:

  For to the abyss of hell I plunge without affright:

  On them will I impose my will, the law of light.11

  Traditionally, blood sacrifices helped provide the life essence a spirit needed to materialize. In order to assure a clear encounter with the guardian of the Abyss, he slit the throat of a pigeon at each vertex of the triangle and allowed its blood to drain out, all the while being careful that every drop stayed within the triangle lest its barriers be breached. Sacrifice was a practice as old as the Hindu, Jewish, and Greek religions, and this one represented one of the few he would make in his lifetime.12 Once the blood soaked completely into the sand, Crowley squatted in the thunderbolt asana and recited the Call of the 10th Aethyr, called ZAX.

  The vision began with a deep, chilling voice crying aloud, “Zazas, Zazas, Nasatanada Zazas.” According to tradition, Adam once opened the gates of hell with these words. This time, Choronzon entered their midst.

  “I am the Master of Form,” the demon declared, “and from me all forms proceed. I am I. I have shut myself up from the spendthrifts, my gold is safe in my treasure-chamber, and I have made every living thing my concubine, and none shall touch them, save only I. From me come leprosy and pox and plague and cancer and cholera and the falling sickness. Ah! I will reach up to the knees of the Most High, and tear his phallus with my teeth, and I will bray his testicles in a mortar, and make poison thereof, to slay the sons of men.”

  Next, Neuburg heard Crowley say, “I don’t think I can get any more; I think that’s all there is.” He was not fooled. Choronzon was mimicking his master’s voice.

  Suddenly, Euphemia Lamb appeared before him, tempting and inviting him to make love to her. Neuburg shook his head, attempting to dispel the hallucination. This was another of Choronzon’s tricks, an attempt to lure him out of the protective circle. Neuburg refused to comply. In the face of hideous, loud laughter that echoed wildly about the valley, Neuburg commanded him to proceed with the vision.

  “They have called me the God of laughter, and I laugh when I will slay. And they have thought that I could not smile, but I smile upon whom I would seduce, O inviolable one, that canst not be tempted.” With that, Choronzon slipped in an appeal to Neuburg’s pride and vanity: “I bow myself humbly before the great and terrible names whereby thou hast conjured and constrained me. Let me come and put my head beneath thy feet, that I may serve thee. For if thou commandest me to obedience in the Holy names, I cannot swerve therefrom. Bid me therefore come unto thee upon my hands and knees that I may adore thee, and partake of thy forgiveness.”

  “Back, demon!” Neuburg commanded. “And continue with the vision!”

  He did. “Choronzon hath no form, because he is the maker of all form; and so rapidly he changeth from one to the other as he may best think fit to seduce those whom he hateth, the servants of the Most High. Thus taketh he the form of a beautiful woman.” And so he did. “Or of a wise and holy man.” He did so again. “Or of a serpent that writheth upon the earth ready to sting.” And again. Then, shifting gears, Choronzon interrupted his dialogue with a request: “The sun burns him as he writhes naked upon the sands of hell so that he is sore athirst. Give unto me, I pray thee, one drop of water from the pure springs of Paradise, that I may quench my thirst.”

  Neuburg held his post and offered no water. “Continue with the vision!”

  Next, Crowley’s voice came from the triangle. “Sprinkle water on my head. I can hardly go on!”

  Again calling upon the names of god, Neuburg commanded the uncooperative spirit to continue. He hedged, and Victor cursed him with the names and the pentagram. Undaunted, Choronzon simply roared back at the Neophyte. “I feed upon the names of the Most High. I churn them in my jaws, and I void them from my fundament. I fear not the power of the Pentagram, for I am the Master of the Triangle. Be vigilant, therefore, for I warn thee that I am about to deceive thee. I shall say words that thou wilt take to be the cry of the Aethyr, and thou wilt write them down, thinking them to be great secrets of Magick power, and they will be only my jesting with thee.”

  His was an unsettling declaration, as one of the basic assumptions of magic was that the true names of God compelled all spirits. But this chaotic entity that they had called forth openly defied these laws. Shaken, Victor commanded, “In the name of Aiwass, continue!”

  The demon quickly shot back, “I know the name of the Angel of thee and thy brother Perdurabo. All thy dealings with him are but a cloak for thy filthy sorceries.”

  Neuburg replied indignantly to that remark, “I know more than you, foul demon, and I do not fear you. I command you to proceed.”

  “Thou canst tell me naught that I know not, for in me is all Knowledge: Knowledge is my name.”

  “I tell you, proceed!”

  “Know thou that there is no Cry in the tenth Aethyr like unto the other Cries, for Choronzon is Dispersion, and cannot fix his mind upon any one thing for any length of time. Thou canst master him in argument, O talkative one; thou wast commanded, wast thou, not to talk to Choronzon? He sought not to enter the circle, or to leave the triangle, yet thou didst prate of all these things. Woe, woe, woe, threefold to him that is led away by talk, O talkative One.”

  “I warn you, you anger me. Unless you wish to feel the pain of hell, continue.”

  Again Choronzon retorted, “Thinkest thou, O fool, that there is any anger and any pain that I am not, or any hell but this my spirit?” Next, he sprang into a dialogue about Crowley’s stupidity. “O thou tha
t hast written two-and-thirty books of Wisdom, and art more stupid than an owl, by thine own talk is thy vigilance wearied, and by my talk art thou befooled and tricked, O thou that sayest that thou shalt endure. Knowest thou how nigh thou art to destruction? I heard it said that Perdurabo could both will and know, and might learn at length to dare, but that to keep silence he should never learn.”

  His words came quicker and quicker. Neuburg, concentrating on his note book, scribbled frantically to keep up. With the magician suitably distracted, Choronzon tossed sand on the circle, trying to fill it in as he rambled. Then, running out of things to say, the demon began reciting “Tom o’ Bedlam.”

  Neuburg may have realized in that moment that Choronzon was up to no good, but it was far too late. The demon sprang over the hole in the circle and threw Neuburg hard to the ground. They struggled and rolled in the sand. Choronzon, in the form of a naked savage, tried to tear out Neuburg’s throat and bite through the bones of his neck with his frothing fangs. Neuburg, meanwhile, reached desperately for his dagger. Fingers closing around the hilt of the magical weapon, Neuburg struck with the blade and called on the holy four-lettered name of God, commanding Choronzon back to the triangle.

  And he obeyed.

  Neuburg repaired the breech in the circle, and the demon continued, “All is dispersion. These are the qualities of things. The tenth Aethyr is the world of adjectives, and there is no substance therein.”