Unimpressed, Crowley closed the temple on the fourth working.
At about this time, Wally and Jane appeared with the remedy to Crowley’s cold: an opium pipe. While the drug would prove harmfully habit-forming for his friends, Crowley recognized opium as sacred to Jupiter, the deity he was trying to contact. Taking this as a sign, he partook. Afterward, he took a nap.
Upon awakening, not only had his cold cleared up, but he was also inspired to write a story. Crowley’s “Kubla Kahn,” “The Stratagem,” came to him in full form as a “subtle exposure of English stupidity.”98 The English Review would accept it straight off, and Joseph Conrad would reputedly consider it the best short story he had read in ten years.
From January 6 through 11, four more workings occurred, the first three of Jupiter and the fourth of Hermes. Then Neuburg took a week off to go to the forest and recuperate from an illness. The Paris Working resumed on January 19. Six more workings occurred up to the 27th, all invoking Jupiter. In these rites, they recalled past lives, including one as a priestess named Asteria or Astarte, recalling the great sacrifice of spring, wherein a bull was cut open and a virgin, laid inside the hot carcass, was violated by the High Priest as she choked on blood in orgasm.
Crowley and Neuburg shared an incarnation, they learned: as Mardocles, an aspirant for initiation, Neuburg’s ordeal was to watch the temple dancer Aia (Crowley) without becoming aroused; if he did, he was to rape her or face castration. Mardocles, aroused by the dance, was moved by tenderness not to violate her. Favoring the candidate, the high priest spared him castration but expelled both he and Aia from the temple. The saga of Crowley and Neuburg as lovers in a past life unfolds from there. Taken as a spate of fantasy or wish-fulfillment, it illustrates their love for each other; accepted as truth, it explains why they were drawn together in this life with such compatible sexual styles.
When the temple opened at 10:20 on January 29 for the sixteenth working, Jupiter demanded blood. Crowley compliantly cut a four (the number of Jupiter) on Neuburg’s breast. Afterward, AC sat in the yogic posture Shivasana while Victor danced. Crowley experienced a most complete possession of his person by the god, wrapping his consciousness into the godhead so intensely that the only appropriate expression he could arrive at was “Sanguis and Semen”: Jupiter’s energy flowed through the staple fluids of life, “blood and semen.” Further workings followed on February 2, 4, 5, 9, 10, 11, and 12.
After twenty-four operations, the Paris Working finished with Neuburg’s bibliomancy, “I am Thou, and the Pillar is established in the Void.” Hermes had promised money: long-overdue checks arrived in the mail, and a Brother donated £500 of his recent inheritance to the order. Hermes promised to help with books: and Crowley’s newest, Chicago May, was back from the printers; while in Tunisia on May 14, he would be inspired to write “The Soul of the Desert.”99 Jupiter promised health and hospitality: Crowley found his bronchitis cured, and friends offering him opium, the drug sacred to Jupiter, while Neuburg found himself flooded with dinner guests and hosts. Crowley and Neuburg considered the rituals an unqualified success.100
Another important result of these workings was their effect on Crowley’s conceptualization of the OTO mysteries. While the VIII° dealt with masturbatory magick and IX° with vaginal intercourse, he saw no room for homosexual workings. Crowley found that his “researches into the mysteries of the IX° have compelled me to add an XI°.”101 Although it remains an obscure part of Crowley’s system, the XI° represented a symbolic reversal of IX°: Just as the digits were reversed, so were the energies inverted.
Duranty, meanwhile, remained close with the opium-wracked Chéron, taking her as his wife for many years. However, after Crowley and Neuburg returned to Paris, he found he no longer believed in anything. On Crowley, he commented, “I don’t believe in magic, but I’m not sure that I disbelieve it. But wouldn’t it be funny if all the magicians went to heaven?”102
Finding his finances more and more overextended, Crowley protected himself from creditors by selling Boleskine and its thirty-four-acre parcel to the trustees of MMM (namely, himself, Leila, and Cowie). On May 5, the MMM paid £500 to Crowley and assumed £900 in debts and bills on the property. In order to protect his intellectual property, Crowley transferred the copyrights of all his works to OTO as well. In theory (but not, as it turns out, in practice), all of Crowley’s possessions and works were now owned by OTO, and hence inaccessible to creditors.103
The English Review’s August publication of Crowley’s “Chants Before Battle” was particularly well-timed, coinciding with the start of World War I. The piece, leading off the issue, integrates into classic selections of poetry the gist of the lines
We don’t want to fight, but, by Jingo, if we do,
We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, we’ve got the money, too.
Some of the authors subjected to this clever and humorous mutation are Geoffrey Chaucer, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, Percy Bysshe Shelly, Francis Thompson, and D. G. Rosetti. It remains one of Crowley’s greatest bits of literary parody.
Also contributing to Crowley’s high public profile at this time was his introduction, through Frank Harris, to the “tramp poet” Harry Kemp (1883–1960). Attending one of Crowley’s performances of the Mass of the Phoenix (or “séances” as they were popularly dubbed), Kemp wrote an article—which Crowley considered rubbish and Kemp himself called “a turgid bit of sensational journalism”104—for the New York World’s Sunday magazine of August 2, 1914. The title said it all: “Weird Rites of Devil Worshippers Revealed by an Eye Witness.” Despite whatever virtues the piece may have lacked, it did stir up interest in the United States. As Crowley noted, “we have had a lot of letters from America on account of a lunatic’s article in the New York World.”
“Tramp Poet” Harry Kemp (1883–1960), who helped introduce Crowley to America. (photo credit 11.4)
Early in September, Crowley renewed his experiments in the IX° with Leila. Although he penned official OTO instructions on sex magick—“De Arte Magica,” “De Nuptiis Secretis Deorum Cum Hominibus,” and “De Homunculo Epistola”—they were obsolete even as they appeared. As Crowley wrote at this time, “My knowledge of the technique has largely increased since I wrote my Commentary on the IX°.”105
While Crowley busied himself with writings and “séances,” Neuburg began to maintain his distance. Although business kept them apart, Neuburg also tired of the fits of anger to which he, as AC’s lover, had become subject. After a violent row between Crowley and Hayter Preston that past May, Neuburg took Preston’s advice and went away for the summer to a cottage in Branscombe, South Devon. There, his close friends were Crowley’s former students Olivia Haddon and Vittoria Cremers; to them, Crowley was an impostor and charlatan, and they made Victor see him in a new light. Unfortunately, they also led Neuburg to the far-fetched belief that Crowley had jealously caused Jeanne Heyse’s suicide. A passage he would read years later in Magick in Theory and Practice would only confirm Victor’s suspicions:
An adept known to The Master Therion once found it necessary to slay a Circe who was bewitching brethren. He merely walked to the door of her room, and drew an Astral T (“traditore,” and the symbol of Saturn) with an astral dagger. Within 48 hours she shot herself.106
This passage was likely a case of Crowley, having heard the allegations against him, recounting the story in a way that bolstered his magical image.
When Neuburg faced Crowley that fall, tendering his resignation and renouncing all his oaths, the master ritually cursed him on the spot. Neuburg was too stunned to do anything but stand there. Three years previously, almost prophetically, Neuburg had written to Crowley in The Triumph of Pan:
Because the fulfilment of dreams is itself but a dream,
There is no end save the song, and song is the end;
And here with a sheaf of songs barehanded I stand,
And the light is fled from mine eyes, and the sword from my hand
Is vanished from life, and the swift years sear me and rend.107
Neuburg would never again write poetry as moving as that he wrote under Crowley’s influence, although he would go on to run the Vine Press and edit “The Poet’s Corner” for the Sunday Referee. Through this column, which awarded weekly prizes to promising new talents, Neuburg would discover Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (1914–1953).108 Up until his death from tuberculosis in 1940, Neuburg would recall his days with Crowley with a combination of tenderness and pain. It was the end of an era for both of them.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Chokmah Days
Crowley’s life began to progress in episodic cycles lasting seventy-three days. These he dubbed Chokmah days, after the Tree of Life’s second sphere, numerically valued seventy-three and representing the grade of Magus to which he aspired.
Day one.
News of the Great War arrived while Crowley was climbing in Switzerland to prepare for a £40,000 rematch with Kangchenjunga. As he wrote:
I came down from a mountain to find the Swiss had mobilized and all the railways held up, but on the first day possible I went to Berne, where the British minister informed me it was impossible to get back, that the line had been torn up for 13 miles beyond the frontier, and that he could not get his own men through. Reduced to desperation, I consequently took the train and came home without any difficulty.1
The world had never seen fighting on so a large scale. While Neuburg—prior to his parting with Crowley—suggested it was a sign of the Reign of Horus, Crowley was “hoping it will be over in two or three months.”2 Nevertheless he dutifully offered to help with the war effort; but his assistance was unwanted. Whether due to age (thirty-nine), health, or notoriety, Crowley does not say.
However, we do know that a severe attack of phlebitis in his left leg incapacitated Crowley from September to mid-October. As he recuperated, he visited Boleskine one last time. His spent fortune required him to liquidate even this: since going over to MMM, Boleskine was mortgaged to raise funds for the Great Work and rented to Dr. Murray Leslie for £250 a year in order to pay the bank. In his final visit to his former home, Crowley worried about the war. He confided in C. S. Jones that, if the end of civilization was coming, he should share the secret of the IX° with several persons to ensure its survival. In a separate letter to MMM’s treasurer, he wrote, “Unfortunately this Secret is in possession of very few, and it is quite conceivable that all the holders might perish within the next year or two. A part of the instruction of the IX° is in these words: “Trust not a stranger; fail not an heir.’ ”3 The task of finding competent and capable people to carry on the mysteries would worry and motivate Crowley even in his last days.
Everywhere he looked, it seemed the propaganda of Lord Northcliffe (Alfred Harmsworth, 1865–1922) presented itself. A newspaper magnate and politician, Northcliffe is remembered as England’s William Randolph Hearst. For years he had been publishing articles in his newspapers such as the Daily Mail, warning about the threats to Britain’s sovereignty posed by the airplane and by Germany’s politics. When the war finally broke out, the Star wrote, “Next to the Kaiser, Lord Northcliffe has done more than any living man to bring about the war.”4 Northcliffe’s propaganda disgusted Crowley. To smash Wagner records and ban Father Christmas because of their German roots simply made England look ridiculous. Seeing England’s own efforts reflect poorly on itself, it occurred to him that an unprincipled or clever man could easily use a nation’s propaganda as a weapon against itself. The idea fascinated him.
This jumble of ideas played in Crowley’s mind: finances; preservation of the IX° secret; rejection by a homeland that was embarrassing itself with its awkward propaganda. In the midst of the crisis, everything pointed to America.
Kemp’s article in the New York World magazine helped pave the way, followed by the republication of “Appeal to the American Republic” in the October English Review as “To America.” New York lawyer and patron of the arts John Quinn (1870–1924) had collected most of Crowley’s books (but read none of them). He knew “some of them seemed to be the limit, both erotic and blasphemous. I can forgive the blasphemy.”5 He wished to buy Crowley’s rare editions, and the desperate author shipped two trunks of rariora—special bindings, manuscripts, and the like—to the States. Valued at $20,000, Crowley hoped to sell at least $5,000.
In addition, C. S. Jones had collected signatures in Vancouver that October to found an OTO lodge. Reuss granted him a charter, and Crowley took him under his wing. Thus another pupil and friend stepped into the space vacated by Neuburg, Fuller, the other Jones, and Eckenstein.
On October 24 Crowley sailed for America on the Lusitania, six months before German U-boats would sink it and 1,198 passengers, drawing the United States into the war.
For the third time in fourteen years, Crowley set foot on American soil. He arrived in New York on November 1 with $200 in his pocket and his wax-paper charter as Honorary Magus of the Societas Rosicruciana. On his fingers were various magical rings, and in his vest hung a pocket watch bearing the emblem of a 33° Freemason. Henry Hall, a reporter from the New York World Sunday magazine, met him at the dock, following up the account of London “devil-worshippers” with a description of Aleister Crowley’s arrival (it appeared in the December 13 issue, and was syndicated nationally):
Aleister Crowley, who recently arrived in New York, is the strangest man I ever met. He is a man about whom men quarrel. Intensely magnetic, he attracts people or repels them with equal violence. His personality seems to breed rumors. Everywhere they follow him.
One man to whom I spoke of him lauded Crowley as a poet of rare delicacy, the author of “Hail Mary,” a garland of verses in honor of the Mother of God. Another alluded to him as an unsparing critic of American literature. Another knew him as the holder of some world records for mountain-climbing. Still another warned me against him as a thoroughly bad man, a Satanist or devil-worshiper steeped in black magic, the high priest of Beelzebub. An actor knew of him only as a theatrical producer and as the designer of extraordinary stage costumes. A publisher told me that Crowley was an essayist and philosopher whose books, nearly all privately issued, were masterpieces of modern printing.… By others he was variously pictured to me as a big game hunter, as a gambler, as an editor, as an explorer. Some said that he was a man of real attainments, others that he was a faker. All agreed that he was extraordinary.6
The account was far more accurate than Kemp’s sensationalism.
Seizing on the publicity, Crowley issued a pamphlet announcing “The Master will remain in New York until the end of January.” During his stay, he was offering a series of classes on world religions, divination, and magic. The latter curriculum is most interesting: although he hadn’t yet adopted his idiosyncratic spelling of magick, the outline is virtually identical with the table of contents to Magick in Theory and Practice (1929), which at this point only existed as the first draft of Book Four, Part Three. This shows how little the structure of the book changed between its original draft, completed with Leila Waddell in Fontainebleau in 1912; its revision with Mary Butts in Cefalù in 1921–1922; and its final revision and publication with Gerald Yorke in 1929.
The class series was at one stage connected to George Winslow Plummer (1876–1944), Supreme Magus of the Societas Rosicruciana in America.7 Plummer was born in Boston but moved to New York City to work as an artist; there, his encounter with Freemasonry prompted him, together with Sylvester C. Gould (1840–1909), to form the Societas Rosicruciana in America, which would be open to Masons and non-Masons alike. Gould’s death in 1909 left Plummer the sole executive of the order while it was still in its formative stages. As early as 1912, Plummer had been in touch with Crowley’s circle through The Equinox. By early 1913, both men had reciprocated recognition of each other, Crowley inscribing Plummer’s name in MMM’s Golden Book as a 32° Scottish Rite Mason, and Plummer for
warding Crowley an SRIA IX° diploma in Honoris Causa. On arriving in New York on November 1, one of the first things Crowley did was to write Plummer in order to meet and personally present him with a certificate recognizing him as an honorary Prince of the Royal Secret in OTO. The SRIA minute book for November 13, 1914, records that Plummer had a “satisfactory interview” with Crowley.8 A four-page card produced at this time, advertising a series of talks very similar in structure to the one described above, listed a New York City address for G. W. Plummer. The level of Plummer’s involvement, however, is unclear; he may simply have been providing a mailing address or a classroom.
AC found America unrecognizable, with its skyscrapers, capitalists, and bustle more distasteful than ever. Although he found accommodations at the Hotel Wolcott on 4 West 31st Street (today known as one of New York’s great bargain hotels), he wound up at 40 West 36th Street. From there, he looked up friends and acquaintances: Frank Harris recalled how Crowley arrived at his St. Regis Hotel room looking “more like an Egyptian than ever”9 and still suffering from phlebitis. Harris had worked with Crowley in the past, through both Vanity Fair and The Equinox; he was now editor for Pearson’s magazine. Angered that the world treated poets like stray dogs, Harris treated Crowley kindly and provided him with introductions to many New Yorkers, including journalist William Buehler Seabrook (1886–1945)10 and the man who would become Crowley’s lifelong friend, writer and biographer Louis Umfreville Wilkinson (1881–1966), better known by his pen name Louis Marlow.
When Crowley called, John Quinn invited him to dinner. Crowley asked permission to reproduce the Augustus John pencil sketch of him that Quinn owned; since John himself had asked Quinn for copies, he agreed to have prints made for both John and Crowley. AC also helped Quinn select Crowleyana to purchase for his library. These included one of ten Japanese vellum copies of Jezebel and Other Tragic Poems, fine bindings of The Sword of Song and Konx Om Pax in blue crushed levant morocco by the master bookbinder Zaehnsdorf,11 and the original manuscripts of The Soul of Osiris, The Mother’s Tragedy, and Alice: An Adultery, all bound by Zaehnsdorf. The latter book contained a verse in “White Poppy” that the published edition omitted. In the end—on November 14—Crowley, hoping to exchange his cache of books for cash in hand, was sadly disappointed. Quinn bought only $700 worth of books. It hardly justified the transatlantic journey.
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