Finally, the April issue of the Occult Review carried Crowley’s essay, “The Camel: A Discussion of the Value of ‘Interior Certainty.’ ”73
On April 26, 1911, Jones v. The Looking Glass Publishing Company Ltd. et al.74 appeared before Lord Justice Scrutton of the King’s Bench Division and a common jury. The suit sought damages for an alleged libel in the November 26, 1910, issue of the Looking Glass. Harold Simmons, instructed by Bullock and Co., represented Jones. For the defense, Mr. Schiller represented the publisher while West de Wend Fenton (the editor) represented himself, and Mr. Rowlands appeared for the printer.
Crowley sat in the courtroom, amused that neither side planned to call for his testimony. Fenton, he knew, was afraid of being exposed. Jones, meanwhile, he believed, feared what the notorious AC might say on the stand. To Fuller, however, Jones explained, “If, as my friend, he hasn’t the decency to come forward willingly, it would be an insult to myself had I compelled him to do so.”75
The case opened with Simmons, for Jones, summarizing the charges, stating that the Looking Glass printed so serious a libel about Jones “that if a tithe of it were true, my client was unfit to associate with human beings.” Because of his friendship with AC, he was linked to Crowley’s rumored immoralities. As a professional with a family to support, such statements were very damaging.
The proceedings were indeed unusual: although Jones and his past were briefly discussed—including his membership in the GD and his trusteeship on behalf of AC and Lola Zaza—the case quickly became a trial of Crowley’s morality. While AC’s failure to file suit with the Looking Glass was considered telling, the most damning evidence came from Crowley’s own published works. Presented as evidence was “Ambrosii Magi Hortus Rosarum” from the collected Works. Schiller had marked several of the Latin marginal notes: “Quid Umbratur In Mari.” “Adest Rosa Secreta Eros.” “Terrae Ultor Anima Terrae.” “Femina Rapta Inspirat Gaudium.” “Puella Urget Sophiam Sodalibus.” “Culpa Urbium Nota Terrae.” “Pater Iubet Scientiam Scribe.” The words formed by their initials—quim, arse, tuat (twat), and so on—were Crowleyan mischief that none of his associates had discovered up to that point.
Despite objections from Jones’s counsel that Crowley’s writings were irrelevant to the question of Jones’s character, the defense revolved around a simple premise: the Looking Glass did nothing more than say Jones was an associate of Crowley. Any libelous meaning coming from such a statement was due to Crowley’s notoriously evil character and not anything written by the paper.
Next was the subject of Allan Bennett recently being attacked in the paper Truth, and his failure—like Crowley—to file suit. The fact that Bennett, as a monk, had no possessions and was living five thousand miles away didn’t seem to matter. Nor did Bennett’s medicinal use of drugs help matters. In the end, the legal inaction of Crowley and Bennett was seen as admission of guilt.
Finally, Schiller introduced surprise witnesses for the defense: Mathers, the wizened patriarch of the GD, was introduced to the court as Mr. Samuel Sidney Liddell MacGregor, ready to return the favor to Crowley for his defeat in court. The other was Mathers loyalist Dr. Berridge. Mathers fielded questions about the secret Rosicrucian Order, Crowley’s expulsion from the GD, previous incarnations and various pseudonyms attributed to either him or Crowley, and other mystical traditions. At one point, Justice Scrutton interjected, “This trial is getting very much like the trial in Alice in Wonderland.” Berridge, meanwhile, recounted the rumors of “unnatural vice” that had circulated about Crowley during his GD years.
Fuller was the only witness called in Jones’s defense and could do little to undo the damage done by the previous testimony. The court transcript—while an interesting read—is too extensive to reproduce here.76 Schiller’s closing comments to the jury, however, captures its gist:
You have heard from Dr. Berridge the type of man Aleister Crowley is. Confessedly Crowley stands as a man about whom no words of condemnation can be strong enough. That is the man of whose friendship Captain Fuller is proud; that is the man whose associate Mr. Jones is. I submit I have proved to you up to the hilt both by his writing and his own confessions that Crowley is a man of notoriously evil character. If that be so, gentlemen, I have discharged the chief burden on my shoulders, and it only remains for you to say whether I have gone beyond the bounds of fair comment.
Gentlemen, was not the paper justified in showing up this amazing sect of Crowley’s and were not they right in saying and fully justified in the comment they made about Mr. Jones’s association with Aleister Crowley? Though he knew these rumours were flying about, rumours which Crowley did not dare to deny, he still associated with Crowley and would have you believe that he is a man of perfectly unblemished character, a man whom he would not hesitate to introduce to his own wife. If a man values his own reputation so cheaply that he does not mind associating with that kind of creature, he must not complain if comment is made about it and he must not come to you and ask you to give him exemplary damages. When he can associate with a creature of Aleister Crowley’s description and can come here and be proud of it, and to corroborate him, call a friend who is proud of the friendship of a man who writes the kind of stuff you have seen, a man who does not hesitate to advertise his pernicious literature of a gross type by appealing to the worst instincts of degenerates amongst mankind, by appealing to their sense of the morbid, a man who himself publishes the criticisms of his books in order to attract purchasers for his wretched books, books that have been criticized in a well-known publication of one of the two leading universities as dealing with a revolting subject revoltingly handled, and who advertises the whole thing under the hypocritical guise of a society for the propagation of religious truth—what are you to say of a man who boasts of his associations with such a creature?
I ask you to say as twelve healthy-minded men that there is no comment strong enough which a paper is not entitled to make in criticizing the conduct of a man like the plaintiff in this case. It serves him right if he meets with strong criticism under such circumstances. Were we not justified in saying that you must judge this man’s character by his association with this creature? Gentlemen, I ask you to say, and I ask you with confidence to say, that I have not and that I was amply justified in making the comment I did make, that it was a fair and proper comment to make under the circumstances, and I ask you therefore to give a verdict for my clients.
Scrutton posed four questions to the jury: 1. Were the words complained of defamatory of the plaintiff? 2. If so, were the defamatory statements of fact substantially true? 3. Were the defamatory statements so far as they consisted of opinion fair comment on facts? 4. What damage has the publication caused the plaintiff? After thirty-two minutes of deliberation, the jury returned its verdict. They answered the first three questions “Yes,” and the last “None.” In essence, the statements and their unsavory implications were accurate and fair comment on a friend of Crowley’s, and Jones thereby suffered no damages. They entered judgment for the defendants. The Looking Glass had won.
Jones’s defeat unleashed a new wave of gossip about the notoriously evil Aleister Crowley. When American art patron and book collector John Quinn (1870–1924) visited publisher Elkin Matthews at this time, the subject of Crowley inevitably came up. Matthews had published Ambergris, and told Quinn, “We had a very ’ard time getting him to cut things out of it. Right now, Crowley’s out of England because of something he’s done.” “What was the trouble?” Quinn asked.
“We don’t know, sir, only he has got himself dreadfully talked about.”77
The worst ramifications, however, were personal. Because Crowley offered no assistance, Jones ended their friendship. Although he would continue to oversee Lola Zaza’s trust for decades, he maintained distance from Crowley. He would retire in 1939 because of wartime restrictions on trade; his planning would prove insightful, as an air raid would destroy his lab in 1941.
Fuller, whom Crowley considered his
best friend, sent his last letter ever to Crowley on May 2. He thought Crowley a coward for not defending himself and broke with him on the same grounds as Jones. Fuller would go on to attain the rank of major-general and invent the blitzkrieg, which England would disregard and Germany would adopt. He would be the only Englishman invited to Hitler’s birthday party in 1939. Throughout the years, however, his interest in magic would never fade: he would write books like Yoga (1925) and Secret Wisdom of the Qabalah (1937), and contribute articles to journals like Form and the Occult Review.78 Even in his last days, Fuller maintained that Crowley was one of England’s greatest lyric poets.79
At this time, Ward also became disillusioned with the AA. He not only doubted Crowley’s honesty and character but also grew weary and critical of magic. Feeling a need to break away, he welcomed the opportunity to become professor of mathematics and physics at Rangoon College, where he would study Buddhism. His thoughts on the subject remained remarkably close to Crowley’s: “Properly speaking, the ‘theory’ is philosophy, the ‘practice’ is science; and both together are religion,” he would say. In the end, he would become a Christian Scientist.
Thus, in very short order, Crowley lost two of his oldest friends and, with Ward and Raffalovich, two of his best students. Two-thirds of the founding triad of the AA had seceded, leaving him, like Mathers, sole authority of his occult organization, and bad press caused AA enrollment to dwindle to only three applicants for the year 1911.
The Secret Chiefs were testing him, he decided, and help would soon be on its way.
The evening was dark, and seven poplars near the Vanne Rouge Inn looked the like vigilant spirits of God. Standing at the weir, Crowley felt an emptiness as if the dark current of the Loing had swept away his life’s work. Not even his nostalgia for weirs staved off the pain he felt from having friends and students leave him, of having his work attacked, of having the order suffer. When he needed her most, Leila was off playing in the English Ladies’ Orchestra in A Waltz Dream.
A lone star shone overhead, the moon set behind a tower, and he thought, I am alone in the Abyss. It felt as if he were again experiencing that soul-crushing ordeal. Crowley returned to his room and wrote “The Sevenfold Sacrament,”80 a pendant to “Aha!” describing that evening’s Abyss reprise.
Adversity, however, always inspired Crowley; this time, he entered an annum mirabilis. With Fuller gone, Crowley prepared to fill The Equinox with his own works, writing feverishly throughout his stay in Paris and Montigny-sur-Loing. The English Review’s June publication of “On the Edge of the Desert” served as the starting gun for his marathon.
On August 10, spending Leila’s birthday separated from his love, Crowley dwelt all night on their year together. “A Birthday” resulted, recalling their meeting, her last birthday, the Rites of Eleusis, a tentative parting and reunion, their arrival in Paris. On their present separation, he wrote:
Do not then dream this night has been a loss!
All night I have hung, a god, upon the cross;
All night I have offered incense at the shrine;
All night you have been unutterably mine …
Crowley wrote many other pieces at this time, including two short stories: “The Woodcutter,” about a man with a one-track mind, and “His Secret Sin,” about sexual hypocrisy. Mortadello,81 his five-act play of Venice, also came out of this period. Rhythm gave it a decidedly mixed review, calling it
a dull, stupid, dreary affair. The stale situations, the childish “comedy,” and the peurile grossness, are incredibly school-boyish; though the verse in which the play is written is damnably accomplished. Mr. Crowley manipulates his medium with a deadly dexterity. He works the Alexandrine for all it is worth; and gets unexpected amusement out of it by the skillful surprise of unexpected internal rhymes. He is a master of metrical artifice.82
Nevertheless, Mortadello would remain one of his favorite pieces, which he would try throughout his life to produce on the stage.
He got the idea for his play “Adonis” next, and stopped at the Café Dôme in Montparnasse for a citron pressé before commencing. New inspiration struck unexpectedly when, to his bemusement, he saw Nina Olivier with her latest attachment, Scottish pianist and raconteur James Hener Skene (born c. 1878).83 Accompanying them was Fenella Lovell, a consumptive-looking Parisian model of 203 Boulevard Raspail. Of Romany descent, she wrote Gypsy songs in English and Romany, and was involved in the Gypsy Lore Society.84 In the summer of 1908 she gave Romany language lessons to British poet Arthur Symons (1865–1945), who offered her hospitality and found her to be an accomplished teacher.85 She also modeled for many, including aspiring Welsh painter Gwen John (1876–1939), whose younger brother Augustus John (1878–1961) would become better known. Of Lovell, Gwen John wrote, “no one will want to buy her portrait do you think so? … it is a great strain doing Fenella. It is a pretty little face but she is dreadful.”86 Her beauty and dress struck Crowley, who mentally cast her as the heroine of some yet-unwritten play. Eyeing her, he wrote in his head:
By the window stands Fenella, fantastically dressed in red, yellow, and blue, her black hair wreathed with flowers. She is slight, thin, with very short skirts, her spider legs encased in pale blue stockings. Her golden shoes with their exaggerated heels have paste puckles. In her pale face her round black eyes blaze. She is rouged and powdered; her thin lips are painted heavily. Her shoulder-bones stare from her low-necked dress, and a diamond dog-collar clasps her shining throat. She is about seventeen years old.87
Yes, he mused, and left minutes later. Returning to his room at 50 rue Vavin, he wrote “The Ghouls,” then proceeded immediately on to “Adonis.” He completed both in a single forty-three-hour sitting.
Fenella Lovell. (photo credit 10.4)
While most of these stories appeared in the next two issues of The Equinox,88 the bulk of his work that summer involved the magical papers of the AA, which he wrote in abundance. These documents he divided into four classes: Class A documents were Holy Books, “inspired” or “channeled” works not to be altered in any way; Class B documents were scholarship; Class C were inspirational or suggestive; and Class D were practical instructions.
While most of the Thelemic Holy Books were channeled at the end of 1907, the remaining ones came to Crowley this summer. These Class A documents included: “Liber B vel Magi” (The Book of the Magus), which describes the grade of Magus 9°=2°; “Liber Tzaddi vel Hamus Hermeticus” (The Book of the Hermetic Fish Hook), which calls mankind to initiation; “Liber Cheth vel Vallum Abiegni” (The Book of the Wall of Abiegnus, the great Rosicrucian mountain), which describes crossing the Abyss; and “Liber A’ash vel Capricorni Pneumatici” (The Book of Creation, or the Goat of the Spirit), an instruction in sexual magic in veiled language.89
Class B documents written at this time include “Liber Israfel,” an invocation of the Egyptian god Thoth written by Allan Bennett and revised by Crowley; “Liber Viarum Viae” (The Way of Ways) on the tarot; “Liber Viae Memoriae vel ThIShARB” (The Way of Memory), a method for thinking backwards to understand the causes acting in one’s life; and a tentative work on the Greek kabbalah.90
Class C, or suggestive, works include “Across the Gulf,” an allegorical account of a past life in Egypt; and “Liber Os Abysmi vel Daath” (The Book of the Mouth of the Abyss), which describes a method of entering the Abyss based upon logical skepticism. “Adonis” he also classed in this category.
The Class D, or official instructions, included the following: “Liber NV” and “Liber HAD” describe, based on the Book of the Law, how to attain the states of consciousness associated with these Egyptian deities. Practical instructions in yoga were summed up in books on meditation (“Liber Turris vel Domus Dei”), devotion (“Liber Astarte vel Liber Berylli”), and pranayama (“Liber RV vel Spiritus”). “Liber IOD” (The Book of Vesta) contains instructions on thought reduction, while “Liber Resh vel Helios” (The Book of the Sun) contains adorations of the sun for dawn, noo
n, sunset and midnight.91 This last exercise Crowley considered most important for reminding students of the Great Work, and Crowley practiced it regularly throughout his life.
On the autumnal equinox, the sixth issue of The Equinox appeared. Owing to difficulties with Fuller and Raffalovich, it was the slimmest volume to date, and notably missing was the next installment of “The Temple of Solomon the King.” To compensate, Crowley printed “The Rites of Eleusis” as a supplement for the public to judge its contents. Besides several AA libri, this issue also featured contributions from Archer and Neuburg as well as book reviews courtesy of two of his friends, chemist Edward Whineray and Freemason John Yarker. Yarker was a new acquaintance who would go on to influence Crowley’s magick heavily. Yarker had previously awarded Crowley with various Masonic and pseudo-Masonic distinctions after his victory in court against Mathers over the GD rituals reproduced in The Equinox. AC had since reviewed Yarker’s The Arcane Schools in the fourth Equinox, writing “The reader of this treatise is at first overwhelmed by the immensity of Brother Yarker’s erudition” to which the author replied with a letter of thanks for “your kindly review.”92
Sweet classical melodies issued from the piano; facile fingers deftly executed the performance; and silence greeted its conclusion. Hener Skene turned from the piano to face the man who had requested a lesson in music appreciation. “That was Chopin.”
“I don’t know,” Crowley remarked, desperately hiding a smile. “I think it a trifle boring.”
“Oh?” Skene lifted an eyebrow. “Then how about this?” He returned to the piano and played another piece. It was a selection from Cavalleria Rusticana (1890), the one-act opera by Pietro Mascagni (1863–1945) about a love triangle ending in bloodshed. Skene considered it a clearly inferior work.
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