The demon resumed the form of Lamb and again tempted Neuburg to no avail. Then he complained he was cold and asked permission to leave the triangle in order to find something to cover his nakedness. Neuburg refused, and again threatened Choronzon with retribution if he did not proceed.
So he did. “I am commanded, why I know not, by him that speaketh. Were it thou, thou little fool, I would tear thee limb from limb. I would bite off thine ears and nose before I began with thee. I would take thy guts for fiddle-strings at the Black Sabbath.” Then, taunting, “Thou didst make a great fight there in the circle; thou art a goodly warrior!”
“You cannot harm one hair of my head,” Victor stood firm.
He roared, “I will pull out every hair of thy head! Every hair of thy body, every hair of thy soul, one by one.”
“You have no power.”
“Yea, verily, I have power over thee, for thou hast taken the Oath, and art bound unto the White Brothers, and therefore have I the power to torture thee so long as thou shalt be.”
“You lie.”
“Ask of thy brother Perdurabo, and he shall tell thee if I lie!”
“No. It is no concern of yours.”
At that, Choronzon taunted Neuburg, trying to convince him that magic was all gibberish, that the names of power were, in fact, powerless. Realizing that all would be lost if he doubted for even an instant, Neuburg kept the demon at bay.
Choronzon continued, “In this Aethyr is neither beginning nor end, for it is all hotch-potch, because it is of the wicked on earth, and the damned in hell. And so long as it be hotch-potch, it mattereth little what may be written by the sea-green incorruptible Scribe. The horror of it will be given in another place and time, and through another Seer, and that Seer shall be slain as a result of his revealing.”13
With that prophecy, the demon disappeared. Crowley knew he was gone. He removed his magical ring and, with it, wrote the name BABALON in the sand. Two hours after beginning, the vision was over. Together, Crowley and Neuburg destroyed the circle and triangle, scattering the rocks about. They lit a bonfire to purify the valley of the unholy power they had called to earth, and counted themselves lucky to be alive.
The next day, the Ninth Aethyr described Crowley’s ascent from the Abyss and his arrival in the City of the Pyramids as a Magister Templi. Per its instructions, Crowley prostrated himself on the sand 1,001 times during the day’s march, reciting from the Qur’an:, Qul: Huwa Allâhu ahad; Allâhu alssamad; Lam yalid walam yûlad; Walam yakul lahu kufuwan ahad.14
On December 8 they continued south, out of Bou-Sâada and toward the winter resort town of Biskra, over one hundred miles away. When one of Victor’s relatives arrived, worried for his safety, Crowley determined to let nothing interfere with their plans. “Where’s Victor?” Crowley was asked.
“There,” he replied, gesturing toward a dromedary. “I’ve turned him into a camel.” At that, he dismissed the chaperone and returned to his business.
Crowley and Neuburg followed the southbound road out of Bou-Sâada only to find it ran out after only a few miles. The rest of the day they walked through the Sahara, and that evening proceeded with the Eighth Aethyr.
The visions proceeded regularly throughout their march, describing the grade of Magus (9°=2°)—ninth in the hierarchy of ten grades and second from last—and Crowley’s final ascent as a Magister Templi into the Great White Brotherhood.
On December 16 they finally reached Biskra, a resort town full of palm trees and camels. They checked into the Royal Hotel, and Crowley dictated a thirteen-page letter to Fuller. In it, he dealt with Equinox business and complained incidentally about his difficulty in keeping Victor away from the bottoms of Arabic boys. While much has been made of this latter comment, it stands simply to reason that Crowley was dictating to none other than Neuburg, and that the comment was a joke; possibly one between Crowley and Neuburg, alluding to their own physical involvement. The poem “At Bordj-an-Nus,” which Crowley wrote at this time, sheds some light on this matter. When Crowley published it in The Equinox, he signed it as “Hilda Norfolk” to disguise its homosexual undertones:
The moon is down; we are alone;
May not our mouths meet, madden, mix, melt in the
starlight of a kiss?
El Arabi!
There by the palms, the desert’s edge, I drew thee to my
heart and held
Thy shy slim beauty for a splendid second; and fell
moaning back,
Smitten by Love’s forked flashing rod—as if the
uprooted mandrake yelled!
…
Great is the love of God and man
While I am trembling in thine arms, wild wanderer of wilderness!
El Arabi!15
They called the Fourth Aethyr that evening at nine, learning more details about the Grade of Magus. The third, second, and first Aethyrs followed in rapid succession, wrapping up on December 19 at 3:30 in the afternoon.
With the conclusion of these visions, Crowley came to an understanding of the Great White Brotherhood and its three highest grades. He fathomed the sacrifices of the Abyss; understood how, as a Master of the Temple living in the City of the Pyramids under the Dark Night of Pan, he must interpret every event as a particular dealing of God with his soul; knew that as a Magus, he would become the Logos, the embodiment of the Word of the Aeon (Thelema), but be cursed to have his speech interpreted as a lie; and learned about Babalon, who as a guardian of the Abyss gathered into her chalice the life blood of the Exempt Adept before he crossed the Abyss and, as the priestess or sacred prostitute of the Thelemic system, was the epitome of love under will. Reliving his ordeal of the Abyss and initiation into the Third Order, Crowley completely accepted The Book of the Law and felt genuinely secure in his chosen role as its prophet. Even though he had claimed the grade previously, he now fully understood the tasks of a Magister Templi and knew like never before that he had reached that grade.
Returning to Southampton in January 1910, Crowley kicked into high gear. Although he published various booklets for members of the AA—including Thelema (the Holy Books in three volumes), “Liber Causae” (an account of the collapse of the GD and the AA’s emergence therefrom, included in Thelema), and Liber Collegii Sancti (a booklet in which to record the progress of students)—his most personal production was Rosa Decidua, the fallen rose, the last in his series of poems about his ex-wife. The piece is a mournful dirge, a romantic lament over lost love:
This is no tragedy of little tears.
My brain is hard and cold; there is no beat
Of its blood; there is no heat
Of sacred fire upon my lips to sing.
…
I have no memory of the rose-red hours.
No fragrance of those days amid the flowers
Lingers; all’s drowned in the accursèd stench
Of this damned present …
See! I reel back beneath the blow of her breath
As she comes smiling to me: that disgust
Changes her drunken lust
Into a shriek of hate—half conscious still
(Beneath the obsession of the will)
Of all she was—before her death, her death!
…
Who asks me for my tears?
She flings the body of our sweet dead child
Into my face with hell’s own epitaph
…
And all my being is one throb
Of anguish, and one inarticulate sob
Catches my throat. All these vain voices die,
And all these thunders venomously hurled
Stop. My head strikes the floor; one cry, the old cry,
Strikes at the sky its exquisite agony:
Rose! Rose o’ th’ World.
Crowley printed only twenty copies of the eleven-page poem to commemorate the divorce. It sported a green cover, with a friendly photograph of the poet with his wife and daughter, taken shortly before the court da
te, tipped in. Crowley dedicated the piece to Lord Salvesen, who presided over the trial. With Rosa Decidua, Crowley closed the door on a tragic phase of his life and bid farewell to his Rose of the World and her brother, Gerald of the Festuses.
Business at the Equinox offices proceeded as usual toward publication of the next issue, set to contain a wide assortment of contributions: a description of the tasks for students in the AA; Crowley’s “Aha!”; “The Shadowy Dill-Waters,” a spoof on Yeats; Baudelaire’s “The Poem of Hashish,” translated by Crowley; poems by Neuburg and Arthur F. Grimble; a story by Raffalovich; and two installments by Fuller—“The Treasure-House of Images” and the contentious “Temple of Solomon the King.”
On March 11, solicitor George Rose Cran16 appeared and served Crowley with a writ: Mathers was seeking an injunction to keep The Equinox from publishing the remaining GD ritual, its 5°=6° R.R. et A.C.17 Or, in legalese, he was
restraining the defendant, his servants, and agents from publishing, or causing to be printed or published in the third number of the book or magazine known as The Equinox or otherwise disclosing any matter relating to the secrets, forms, rituals, or transactions of a certain order known as the Rosicrucian Order, of which the plaintiff was the Chief or Head.18
“Balls,” Crowley cursed. The books were already printed and ready to be released in ten days. “Prophetically,” they offered a £10 reward for the source of a fictitious clipping sent to him:
Cox, Box, Equinox,
McGregors are coming to Town;
Some in rag, and some on jags,
And the Swami upside down.
Cran, Cran, MacGregor’s man
Served a writ, and away he ran.19
This suggests he knew the writ was coming.
On March 14, Mathers applied for an ex parte interim injunction, which Justice Bucknill granted on March 18. One day after the spring equinox, March 21, Crowley’s appeal came before the court. Hearing the case were appeals judges Vaughan Williams, Fletcher Moulton, and Farwell.20 The plaintiff, the Comte Liddell MacGregor, appeared with long white hair brushed straight back to reveal the withered features of his aging face. He was represented by Frederick Low and P. Rose-Innes. It was an impressive team: Sir Frederick Low (1856–1917) was admitted to the Middle Temple in 1890, invested as king’s counsel in 1902, and knighted in 1906; he would later serve as a member of Parliament for Norwich from 1910 to 1915, and as high court judge of the King’s Bench in 1915.21 Sir Patrick Rose-Innes (1853–1924) was called to the bar in 1878, established a reputation as a Unionist lawyer and tariff reformer, and in 1905 was appointed recorder of Sandwich and Ramsgate; he would go on to be knighted in 1918. While this might seem an odd fit for the case, the hook may have originated with Rose-Innes’s role as provincial Masonic Grand Master for Aberdeenshire, which he would hold from 1905 to 1920: He may have been helping a fellow brother Mason, especially against someone breaking their oath of secrecy.22
Crowley’s men were W. Whately and A. Neilson for the firm of Messrs. Steadman, Van Praagh, and Gaylor. William Whately (1858–1937) was a London-born Barrister-at-Law of the Inner Temple who would go on to be a Master of the Supreme Court.23 Alexander Neilson (1868–1929) was educated at Fettes College and received his MA from Edinburgh University, passing his exam for the Middle Temple in 1891 and being called to the Bar in 1893; with a general practice in the Midland Circuit, “his kindly nature and pleasant manner made him many attached friends.”24
The courtroom was packed. The last trial with this much interest occurred in 1905, when Mrs. Eliza Dinah Sheffield brought a breach of promise case against the Marquis Townshend; she claimed to be High Priestess of the Rosicrucian Order, but as of late she was known only as a West End hostess. The present trial promised to be just as colorful.
It began with Crowley’s man, Whately, reading Mathers’s affidavit:
I am the chief of the Rosicrucian Order. It is an order instituted in its modern form in 1888 for the study of mystical philosophy and the mysteries of antiquity. The order is upon the lines of the well-known institutions of Freemasonry.
The exclusive copyright of the rituals, ceremonies, and manuscripts of the order is vested in me, I being founder and compiler of them, and I claim such an interest in the same as will entitle me to restrain any infringement of my rights therein.
On November 18, 1898, Aleister Crowley, having duly qualified himself, signed the preliminary pledge form, to which it is requisite intending candidates for membership should subscribe their signatures. After compliance with the necessary formalities he became a member, and thereupon ratified the obligation of his signed pledge form by a solemn obligation in open Temple of the Order.
Throughout the reading, the justices smirked and sneered at the sworn testimony. Their response visibly displeased Mathers.
Whately handed a copy of the pledge form up to the bench, and continued to summarize the complaint. “The plaintiff claims the grossest possible breach of the defendant’s obligations and a serious infringement of the plaintiff’s right by publishing the order’s secrets in the second Equinox under the title ‘The Temple of Solomon the King.’ The article in question referred to the meetings of the Rosicrucian Order, and gave notice to the effect that the publication would continue in the March number.”
At that, Justice Williams chimed in, “Is it a romance?”
“I do not know, my lord. I cannot describe it.” After the laughter in the courtroom died down, Whately continued with his summary. “The plaintiff charges the matter to be printed in numbers three and four would continue the infringement.” Crowley, however, argued that Mathers was certainly not the head of the Rosicrucians, did not write the rituals, had not established any rights with respect to the material being published, and was not entitled to an injunction. “If there is any obligation to anybody it is to the society, and that cannot be a legal obligation, because they are a voluntary association and are not the plaintiffs.”
Williams asked Mathers’s counsel pointedly, “May I take it there is such a society as the Rosicrucians?”
“Yes,” Low replied, “there is.”
“And does the society have rules?”
“No, there are no rules of the society in fact, but there is a pledge of secrecy, which the defendant signed.” He indicated the copy of the pledge form which had been submitted to the bench.
“I see the plaintiff says he is ‘the earthly chief’ of the order, and subject to the guidance of the ‘spiritual’ order.”
Justice Farwell interrupted the questioning to ask, “What is the ‘spiritual order’?” The courtroom giggled in response.
“I cannot go into it, my lord,” Low apologized, “but it is clear the spiritual head would not be answerable for costs.” Laughter erupted from the observers.
Justice Moulton asked to see a copy of the second Equinox, and the thick tome was handed up to him. Low also asked the judges to read “The Pillar of Cloud,” a Rosicrucian piece by Mathers. As he read, Moulton’s lips curled into a delighted smile. The other judges similarly enjoyed Mathers’s article.
“The article is simply material which Comte Macgregor obtained from old books,” Whately complained for Crowley. “He can have no copyright in such material. Moreover, if publication of the next number of The Equinox is stopped, the publication will practically be stopped altogether, because the subscribers will be scattered. Although the plaintiff knew all about the subject matter of his complaint since November 11, he did not issue his writ until March 11, after the magazine had already been printed.”
“That is a question of pounds, shillings, and pence,” Justice Williams stressed, trying to return to the legal question of infringement.
“It is a very serious matter to my client.”
Low interrupted, “The plaintiff waited until the eve of publication because he was unable to locate Mr. Crowley’s address before then. Our complaint is that wherever our ritual was got from, it was a gross breach of faith for the defe
ndant, after being admitted and allowed to attend the meetings—and then being expelled from the order—to start publishing this matter.”
“He has as much right to publish what is in the old books about the Rosicrucians as anybody else,” Justice Moulton argued.
“But he is not entitled to publish a ritual ceremony which he had pledged himself to secrecy about, even if it was got from the Bible.”
“Anybody who knows anything about these societies knows that the rituals of most of them have been published.”
“Your lordship must not ask me to admit that.”
Justice Williams, trying a different approach, interceded. “I have not observed any indication that you are, either of you, Masons.” The courtroom broke into laughter.
“I don’t propose to give your lordship any, either,” Low replied, generating even more laughter. “This society is in no way a Masonic society.”
Farwell selected several “strange and unpronounceable” words from the second Equinox and with a smile asked Mathers what they meant. Arouerist, Onnophris, Jokam. He could not—or would not—answer. Farwell shook his head in response. “I can understand the publication of a trade secret doing a person irreparable injury, but I cannot see how any damage, irreparable or otherwise, could be done by the publication in question.”
“If the initiation ritual is published in the March number, as Mr. Crowley proposes, the damage will be irreparable,” Low argued. “The cat would be out of the bag.”
Justice Williams replied, “But so much of the cat came out of the bag in September.”
Farwell added, “And I think it is a dead cat.” By this time, the courtroom roiled with laughter.
“Perhaps there is a second cat in the bag, my lord,” Low feebly tried to continue his argument. “If they have let out one, they may let out another. If you cannot stop this sort of thing by an injunction, there is practically no remedy at all. The defendant has been turned out of the order, and is publishing the article as an act of revenge for having been expelled.”
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