Obscure bits of Crowleyana trickled onto the market in this interim. The poem “Villon’s Apology” appeared in the Poetry Review at the end of 1912.54 The “Rosicrucian” Scandal, a hilarious parody of Mathers’s testimony in Jones v. The Looking Glass, appeared under the pseudonym of Leo Vincey. The “M.M.M. Manifesto” also appeared, adorned with photographs of Boleskine. Gwen Otter’s privately published The Writing on the Ground included Crowley’s essay on Lord Alfred Douglas and his poem “A Slim Gilt Soul” from The Winged Beetle. Finally, part two of Book Four appeared as a blue paperback, selling for four tanners, the equivalent of two shillings.
On the first day of spring 1913, issue nine of The Equinox appeared. Although the names of Mary d’Este Sturges and Victor Neuburg still appeared on the masthead, the only contributions not by Crowley were a couple of one-page poems, book reviews, and a sketch cowritten with Mary Desti. At 313 pages, the issue contained no supplement and bore little magical matter: “The Temple of Solomon the King” was brief, and the evocation of Bartzabel mostly of didactic and historical value. The issue’s only important magical essay was “Energized Enthusiasm.”
Crowley dedicated plenty of space to attacking his enemies: he gleefully noted that Looking Glass publisher de Wend Fenton was fined over £91 on six charges of sending obscene matter through the mail; Mathers, he said, was “reduced to beggary, his only remaining capital, his brain, in a state of hopeless decay”; and he warned students to accept no instructions from Fuller, who never advanced beyond the grade of Probationer55 and had no authority to represent the AA. This last warning was prompted by Crowley’s discovery that Fuller, two years after their split, was still instructing Canadian disciple C. S. Jones. Meanwhile Raffalovich, who requested a printed statement that he was no longer associated with Crowley, received this mention:
Mr. George Raffalovich is in no way connected with The Equinox.
Mr. George Raffalovich has never been connected with The Equinox in any way but as an occasional contributor.
It cannot be too clearly understood that The Equinox has no connection with Mr. George Raffalovich.
We have much pleasure in stating that Mr. George Raffalovich is in no way connected with The Equinox.
We have no reason to anticipate that The Equinox will in any way be connected with Mr. George Raffalovich.
We trust that Mr. George Raffalovich will be satisfied with these statements of fact, to which we are prepared to testify on oath.
The poem “Athanasius Contra Decanum” attacked Reverend R. St. John Parry, who had banned Crowley from Trinity’s campus, showing “that a Dean may be damned without being a liar and slanderer.” The paper “How I Became a Famous Mountaineer” was a swipe at the Alpine Club, and “A Quack Painter” berated his former brother-in-law Gerald Kelly.
He also took pleasure in publishing pieces rejected by the English Review, including “Lines to a Young Lady Violinist,” an amorous poem for Leila; the humorous book review “A Literatooralooral Treasure-Trove”; the poems “At Sea” and “Dumb!”; his novella “Ercildoune”; and the short story “The Testament of Magdalen Blair.”
Music dominated the first months of 1913. Following her superb playing in 1910’s Rites of Eleusis, Leila appeared, as noted previously, in the Ladies’ Orchestra for A Waltz Dream. Next, she left from Liverpool on the Mauretania, arriving in New York on March 30, 1912,56 for a stint of several weeks with the musical comedy Two Little Brides. The New York Times panned the show, saying that it “entirely lacks distinction” and that “faith and the best intentions in the world cannot help very much.”57 Nevertheless, it had sixty-three performances at the Casino Theater and Lyric Theater between April 23 and June 15, 1912. However, women rarely played in orchestras in 1913, and Leila, despite her skills, had trouble finding work. Crowley—no doubt inspired by his recent friendship with music impresario Theodor Reuss—responded by assembling a troupe of seven fiddlers (three dipsomaniacs and four nymphomaniacs, by his reckoning) and dubbing them the Ragged Ragtime Girls. Leila, the only one of the group with her head on straight, was first violinist. Contrary to their name, the musicians were lithe, dressing in diaphonous gowns and playing ethereal music while dancing. Crowley described them as
seven beautiful and graceful maidens who dance and play the violins simultaneously. The strange, exotic beauty of the leader, Miss Leila Bathurst, as she weaves her dances in the labyrinthe of her attendant nymphs, thrills every heart with the sense alike of the rococo and the bizarre.… The weirdly fascinating appearance of the leader, Miss Leila Bathurst, first stupefied the house and then roused it to a frenzy. As exotic and bizarre as her beauty is, it is yet of that royal kind which goes straight to every heart. Her paces suggest the tiger and the snake, and her violin contains in itself all the music alike of nature and of art. The house could not wait for the fall of the curtain to rise to its feet in surging enthusiasm, and the last bars were drowned in the roars of applause that greeted the march past through the stalls. Women shrieked, and strange men wept. Babes at the press fainted with emotion, the very unborn emulated the execution of John the Baptist recorded in the first chapter of the Gospel according to St. Mark.58
Crowley acted as impresario. “It was a sickening business,” he recalled.59
As early as February 1913, Crowley wrote to George M. Cowie that Leila “is going wildly with the girls into Abyssinia, and intends to abide and rejoice.”60 The Ragged Ragtime Girls played that March as part of the Easter program at the Old Tivoli, with nightly performances and Saturday matinees.61 The New York Times noted the program “is practically American,”62 specifically mentioning the Ragged Ragtime Girls even though they were American-sounding in name only. George M. Cowie attended a show in Edinburgh later that year, noting,
I went with a friend to see [Leila’s] performance on Friday and was greatly delighted with it—the only artistic thing in (to me) rather a dismal programme. It struck me what a very effective thing she and these girls might make out of a Witches Sabbath dance and an Act that would probably fetch her at least double the money.63
In April 1913, Crowley distributed photographs and press cuttings to announce that the Ragged Ragtime Girls were available for banquets, private engagements, and society functions. They knew immediate success, playing the London Opera House that month. In May, Crowley consulted Russian guidebooks and wrote to Moscow hotels for accommodations. Before long, he booked them for a summer theater engagement in Moscow.64
Before departing for Russia, AC took a break from the Ragged Ragtime Girls and OTO to relax at Eastbourne and Fontainebleau. When he returned to London, he found everything in turmoil: John Yarker had died. This was important because Yarker was the leading light of the Ancient and Primitive Rite of Memphis and Mizraim. It was he who had authorized Reuss to operate a lodge in Germany and who gave Crowley the 33° in his rite. Yarker’s rise to power among the various flavors of Masonry is an interesting tale best left in Crowley’s own words:
Yarker was always bothering over these questions of jurisdiction. Wishing to contract an alliance with the Scottish Rite of France, he found that they quite naturally objected to him having degrees beyond their own 33rd. He, therefore, agreed to reduce the Memphis Rite to 33 degrees. It was, however, rather sharp practice on his part, because in the course of reduction the Scottish 33rd was made equal to the 20th of the reduced Rite. The alliance was concluded, and Yarker conferred the 33° on about 100 British Masons. He obtained toleration from the Grand Lodge of England; toleration, not recognition, by agreeing not to admit to the Rite any man who was not a Master Mason in good standing under the Grand Lodge of England or some body in alliance with it.
You will understand from the above that the effect of Yarker’s action was to put an end, once and for all, to the Rites of Memphis and Mizraim in their original form, though whether it had been worked any time within historical periods I cannot say. I strongly doubt it.65
At the June 28 meeting to elect Yarker’s succes
sor, Crowley objected to the presence of James Ingall Wedgwood, Supreme Secretary to Annie Besant’s Co-Masonic Order. Although Yarker had made him an honorary Master Mason, Crowley—who opposed Besant’s TS and its “world teacher,” Krishnamurti—feared Wedgwood was there to co-opt the rite for the TS and its Co-Masonic Order. Crowley’s opposition to Co-Masonry was so great that when the French Grand Lodge he had joined recognized Co-Masonry, AC resigned. Thus Crowley, the sole person in Ireland authorized to teach the rites of Memphis and Mizraim,66 appeared and argued that the meeting was illegal.
Two days later, another meeting of members of the Sovereign Sanctuary—namely Crowley, Reuss, Kennedy, and other Masons—elected Henry Meyer, Yarker’s own nominee, as Grand Master General. Over the next decade, a number of people would succeed him. As Crowley recorded, Meyer,
whom nobody had heard of for years, appeared in the Sovereign Sanctuary to get elected, and has never been heard of. He did not answer any subsequent summons, and his death was presumed, whereupon we elected Papus, and on the death of Papus, the Grand Master of Spain whose name I have forgotten, and after him, Reuss, who died in ’22 and I succeeded him.67
Although lineage and jurisdiction were serious matters to British Masonry, Crowley regarded such matters with disdain. “It’s all what Roosevelt would have described as blah, baloney, bullshit and bunk.”68 Noncoincidentally, newly elected Grand Hierophant Meyer named Crowley’s address at 33 Avenue Studios, 76 Fulham Road in South Kensington, as headquarters of the Rite.
This address was also headquarters of MMM. It foreshadowed Crowley’s plans for OTO: having approved the MMM constitution (which he wrote) on February 15, he added to the order’s Golden Book a note:
In all lodges of O.T.O. and M.M.M. in Great Britain and Ireland the Volume of the Sacred Law shall be the book of Thelema, or a facsimile copy of Liber Legis (CCXX), and no initiations upon any other document will be recognised by the Grand Lodge.69
Liber Legis was the Latin title of The Book of the Law, and CCXX its corresponding number. Crowley was preparing to make his philosophy of Thelema or True Will the official doctrine of OTO.
On July 7, after paying for one thousand Ragged Ragtime Girls postcards and sending the tenth Equinox proofs to Richard Clay for printing, Crowley and the Ragtime Girls caught the 2:20 for Russia. The train ride seemed interminable, proceeding day after day through endless dull pines, dun earth, and remorseless rain. The sky was “leaden, flat, featureless,” made worse by the surrounding land’s “monotony of grievous green and grey.” Nobody on the train spoke English, French, or even German.
Then, one morning, he awoke as the train entered Moscow. The colors of this wonderful city sparked him to life, and he smiled to himself. “Our hashish dream come true.”70
Minor complications ensued: they could locate nobody to help them find their hotel, and they eventually managed alone. Then, late that night, Crowley and Leila received a frantic call from the other musicians: he had neglected to warn them that in Russia, the bedbug “is as inseparable from the bed as the snail is from his shell.”71 After a day or two of such minor problems, the country finally enchanted them.
Standing in the capital recalled for Crowley the passion he felt for Russia over a decade earlier: back when he wanted to be an ambassador, back when he took the name Count Vladimir Svareff. As he eagerly walked the streets, he met a prostitute whom he dubbed “Olya of the broken nose.” In a café he also met a Hungarian girl named Anny Ringler,
tall, tense, lean as a starving leopardess, with wild, insatiable eyes and a long straight thin mouth, a scarlet scar which seemed to ache with the anguish of hunger for some satisfaction beyond earth’s power to supply.72
She spoke only broken German and he faltering Russian. Despite the language barrier, they became passionate lovers, meeting daily. He assuaged her masochistic tendencies, and she inspired him to write about Russia’s tortured world.
It was typical of Crowley that he should travel to Russia on so mundane a premise as being impresario to a musical troupe, yet achieve profound inspiration and enlightenment. “During my six weeks in Moscow in 1913, I had what I can only call almost continuous illumination and wrote quite a number of my very best poems and essays there.”73 New works flowed effortlessly from his pen as he relaxed in the Aquarium Hotel or the nearby Hermitage: “The City of God,”74 a poem describing his train ride to Moscow; “The Heart of Holy Russia,”75 a prose description of Russia; “The Fun of the Fair”76 (which he dedicated to Anny Ringler and Olya), a description of the famous fair at Nizhni Novgorod; “Morphia,” a poem about drug addiction that features a description of Olya;77 “The Lost Continent,” a humorous story/essay on Atlantis;78 “To Laylah—Eight-and-Twenty,” a poem for the August 10 birthday of the Mother of Heaven;79 and “The Ship,” a poetic adaptation of the mysteries of Masonry. This last piece was one of Crowley’s favorites, containing what he called the “Quia Patris,” a sublime poem to the Higher Self beginning with the words, “Thou who art I …”80 He also wrote “Hymn to Pan,” his most potent invocation:
Thrill with lissome lust of the light,
O man! My man!
Come careering out of the night
Of Pan! Io Pan!
Io Pan! Io Pan! Come over the sea
From Sicily and from Arcady!
Roaming as Bacchus, with fauns and pards
And nymphs and satyrs for thy guards,
On a milk-white ass, come over the sea
To me, to me …81
Moved by the liturgy of St. Basil, Crowley also wrote his Gnostic Catholic Mass.82 That Crowley should write such a ritual is not as unusual as it may sound, as one branch of Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica, or the Gnostic Catholic Church, was connected to OTO. Gerard Encausse, as one of the church’s bishops, was the link between the EGC and OTO; according to one theory, Crowley was consecrated a bishop by Reuss, who was consecrated by Encausse. It is an important ritual because Crowley, busy writing OTO instructions, incorporated its Great Secret openly into the Gnostic Mass, much to the ire of his fellow OTO members. He wrote, “my idea was to write a Mass which would, in once sense, carry on the old tradition yet not come into conflict with science. The whole thing, as is almost invariably the case with my work, was written straight off in white heat and never underwent revision.”83
Although it more closely resembled the Tridentine rather than the Russian Orthodox mass, Crowley adapted the basic structure to the trappings of Thelema; hence the altar bears The Book of the Law. Its officers are the priest, priestess, deacon, and two “children.” The main focus of the rite involves reanimation of the symbolically dead priest by the priestess, his invocation upon the priestess, and their symbolic sexual union: the priest, with his lance, advances and approaches the priestess, who is seated behind a veil; after much ceremony, the lance parts the veil, and they celebrate the mystic marriage by depressing the lance into the grail. The deacon begins the Mass by proclaiming the Law of Thelema, and at other points during the ceremony recites a Thelemic profession of faith and a list of Thelemic saints, including Roger Bacon, Sir Edward Kelly, Éliphas Lévi, Goethe, Wagner, Nietzsche, Carl Kellner, Sir Richard Burton, Theodor Reuss and, of course, Crowley. Despite its pretensions, the ceremony itself is beautiful and moving.
By the time he left Russia, AC had written about 150,000 words.
Crowley returned to London early in September, a fortnight later than he had planned. The six hundred pages of Equinox 10 snowed him under; Leila and the troupe had just gone to Glasgow for a two-month stint at the Theater Royale, and Spare declined to provide an illustration for the last issue. Facing these complications, he invited Neuburg to help pull it together.
Meanwhile, organizational upheaval rocked the MMM. Its financial records were in chaos, with several members behind in their dues. He accused the treasurer, Cremers, of misappropriating funds by using the signed checks he had left in her care. That October, Crowley demoted her to VI° and canceled her posts as Grand Se
cretary General and Trustee of MMM property. Furthermore, he called her to account for her actions. When Cremers refused to answer the charges, a Grand Tribunal met in Paris and expelled her. At this same hearing, they charged Nina Hamnett with being seriously behind in her dues, R. L. Felkin for absenteeism,84 and W. C. Minchin for attempting to seduce the wife of a brother. Another member was expelled for swindling. Leila succeeded Cremers as Grand Secretary General, and George Cowie became Grand Treasurer General; both became cotrustees, along with Crowley, of MMM.
On the positive side, Crowley had encouraging news about his South African student, James Thomas Windram. Although his clairvoyance was so poor as to prevent his advancement to the grade of Zelator, he nevertheless excelled in other areas. When Crowley instructed him to use the Enochian system to evoke the fiery power of air, which was plentiful in his part of the world, he conjured up a storm that tore the roof from his home and struck his temple with lightning. Duly impressed, Crowley appointed him OTO’s representative for South Africa.
In between crises, AC was as charming as ever, telling riveting stories of his travels to Russia. When someone asked him how one could sleep in Russia without being bothered by bedbugs, Crowley wryly replied, “Shift the frontier.” And he sent his mother a spoon with “Christ is Risen” on it to help remind her guests to say grace. He also resumed his Sunday performances of the Mass of the Phoenix, a ritual from The Book of Lies that culminated in the Adept cutting his chest and blotting the blood with bread; socialites thought of these performances as nothing more than séances.85
The tenth and final issue of The Equinox, volume one, appeared that fall. If the previous issues had been slim, this one more than compensated, featuring 223 pages of material in the main body and an additional 244 in the supplement. It contained “In Memoriam: John Yarker,” which Crowley had previously printed and distributed separately. It also featured the first typeset edition of The Book of the Law, a syllabus of official AA instructions, “The Ship,” and a biting obituary of the still-living occult scholar A. E. Waite. The supplement—AC’s translation of Éliphas Lévi’s The Key of the Mysteries—was supposedly superior to Waite’s translations of other works by Lévi. Having spent his inheritance on publishing, Crowley announced that volume two of The Equinox would represent five years of silence to balance the five years of speech that the first volume consumed. Publications would commence with the third volume, due in 1919. In closing, he humorously added,
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