When Crowley met slice-of-life author Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945), his classic An American Tragedy was still a decade off. In 1917 he nevertheless had a reputation with his books Sister Carrie (1900), The Financier (1912), and The Titan (1914). Viereck had offered to publish his newly completed The “Genius” in The International, but Dreiser, loyal American that he was, refused; shortly after publication this same novel would be banned by the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. For his part, Crowley sold Dreiser copies of The Works of Aleister Crowley and The World’s Tragedy and borrowed $15.
Dreiser, whom Crowley considered to be one of the few people in New York worth speaking to, reluctantly attended one of AC’s Anhalonium parties at the insistence of their mutual friend, Louis Wilkinson. When they arrived, Crowley sized up the author and declared, “It will take treble the usual dose to move Dreiser.” He disliked Crowley’s antics and resented the dare implicit in the statement. When Crowley presented him with a hallucinogenic drink, Dreiser snatched it from his hand and boldly knocked it back.
Unfamiliar with the drug, however, Dreiser soon questioned the wisdom of his action. What if the drug made him sick? What if he had a bad reaction? What if it was poisonous? “Uh, Crowley,” he approached his host sheepishly, “is there a good doctor in the neighborhood … in case anything goes wrong?”
Crowley responded reassuringly, “I don’t know about a doctor … but there’s a first-class undertaker on the corner of 33rd and Sixth Avenue.”
Dreiser sat in stunned silence. After a time, he finally said, “I don’t like that kind of joke, Crowley.” However, after the colorful visions began, he described in detail his hallucinations while a small English actor lay beside him, moaning and vomiting into the bedside basin. It was a toss-up which was worse, Dreiser’s narration or the actor’s retching.
On May 4, 1917, Crowley—oblivious to the trouble that was about to explode at Regent Street—dreamed that his mother had died. The quality of this dream differed markedly from his usual dreams, causing him to ponder its significance. The answer arrived two days later: he learned that Emily Crowley was indeed dead at age seventy.193 Ironically, Crowley was on the wrong side of the Atlantic to collect his £3,000 inheritance (equivalent to roughly $125,000 today).
By the end the month, Crowley’s health returned. He sought out a prostitute to perform his first act of sex magick in a month—only his fifth this year—with the goal of completely restoring his health. He proceeded with operations to energize his will and spread the Law of Thelema. It signaled the end of Crowley’s dry spell and the beginning of renewed prosperity.
At its new location at 93 Regent Street, MMM thrived under the direction of medium Mary Davies, V°. Mary Davies (née Brick) was born in 1867 on Portsea Island, Hampshire, to Elizabeth and Edward Brick, the latter a Civil Guard sergeant at the Portsea Convict Prison.194 She was the oldest of five children.195 According to Davies,
My name, Mary, was given to me in Baptism in the hope that I should be blessed by the Virgin Mother, so I was brought up and confirmed in the Faith soon after the age of seven, made my first Confession and Communion, and was enrolled in the order of the Scapular of our “Lady of Mount Carmel” at the age of twelve.196
While a girl of seven, she awoke to a spiritual visitation from her patron, Saint Theresa. From that point, her childhood was filled with clairvoyant and other psychic experiences; this gradually led to her leaving Catholicism and devoting herself to study, public speaking, and holding classes. In February 1886 she married William Robert Davies, a friend of the family and a petty officer in the Royal Navy.197 She had two children, William Clemance (b. 1888), who died in 1893 from a childhood illness, and Theophilus Stewart (b. 1892).198 Relocating to London,199 the Davieses encountered a Spiritualists’ Society, of which Mary would become president; they also formed a circle of fourteen to sixteen people, holding meetings at their home twice a week and launching her career as a medium; her career up to 1912 is detailed in her memoir, My Psychic Recollections (1912). Although reviewed in The Theosophist and Atheneaum, it is Crowley’s 1912 review in The Equinox that is of most interest:
Mrs. Davies is a “professional medium”; of such I have said things which only my incapacity for invective prevented from being severe. But though (no doubt) the phenomena recorded in this book are ‘non-evidential,’ I do feel the sincerity of the writer. I am confident of her good faith.200
Indeed, Davies had been aware of Crowley and his circle as early as 1910, when she met George Raffalovich at one of the rites (whether one of the lesser rituals like the Rite of the Phoenix or the grand Rites of Eleusis is unclear). Both Crowley and Cowie privately disparaged her interests in clairvoyance and spiritualism but quietly tolerated them in light of her other strengths. By the summer of 1913, she took her III° initiation, and by 1916 the Lodge, with her help, moved into its space on Regent Street.
MMM members were unanimous in her praise. Organist William Steff Langston described her as “one of the most lovable of her charming sex, she has sweetness, tact, power and ability in profusion … she is just the one to attract the people we need.”201 Cowie concurred. “She’s a good soul and a good sort altogether, and her gift, which appears to amount to ability to knock about on the plane next to material, is quite genuine.”202 That April, Davies reported, “we had 3 Initiations and an affiliation of a Master from Rugby—we now have only 2 First Degree all the others are raised, as a L[odge] we number 21 (9 M[inerval] & 11 F[irst]) with 3 waiting Initiation.”203 As G. M. Cowie recounted: “We owe much to Mary Davies. Practically every new member has been brought in by her. Besides, the membership is steadily growing.”204
Alas, during this fecund period MMM came under police scrutiny. Cowie was shadowed by an investigator, his reputation the subject of official inquiry. Late in the winter of 1917 he was finally questioned about what MMM was, and the nature of his involvement. It soon became clear that this inquiry was connected to AC’s political writings. As Cowie wrote to Crowley:
I learn that it is only my known probity of character, which unknown to me, has been closely inquired into, that has satisfied the authorities that the Lodge is exactly what is set forth in the Manifesto and that we have no political motive.… The authorities say that so long as I am in control in England and so long as we are not helping you, they are satisfied and we may continue. Otherwise, I have no doubt we should have been closed down … I must make it clear that everyone who has joined us did so in complete ignorance of your ‘views’—and is guiltless of any political motive.205
The authorities’ assurances, however, proved fleeting.
A couple of months later—on Monday, May 14, 1917—Detective-Inspector John Curry of New Scotland Yard went with another officer to 93 Regent Street. The glass panel of the door bore the letters “MMM,” which he knew stood for Mysteria Mystica Maxima. Inside, they found additional signage that read MARY DAVIES, SITTINGS 11 TO 5 and CLAIRVOYANCE. Entering a front room on the third floor, they found five men and five women dressed in Master Masons’ uniforms, and Davies herself dressed as a Worshipful Master, or head of the Lodge. The police presented a warrant for Davies’s arrest. Protesting that she had done nothing wrong, she was told, “I understand you call this the ‘Order of the Temple of the Orient,’ and your founder is Aleister Crowley, a man of evil reputation and a traitor to this country.” The arrest warrant, however, simply charged her under the Vagrancy Act for telling fortunes. She was taken into custody, and the police seized furniture, regalia, books, and papers for examination (never to return them). The arrest garnered headlines, like the Times’s “ ‘M.M.M.’ Mysteries: Order of the Temple of the Orient Raided.”206
Witnesses for the prosecution recounted visits to her under false pretenses. Bertha Brondle consulted Davies about a fictitious sick child and received instructions on how to affect a spiritual cure. Similarly, Blanche Daisley consulted her about a similarly fictitious brother in the Flying Corps, to be told that he had d
ied but that he was now being guarded by two spirits. For this advice, the women paid 10 shillings 6 pence. Davies protested that she did not profess to tell fortunes; she described herself as an author and preacher. Nevertheless, she was found guilty and fined £40, plus 10 guineas costs.207
Crowley initially believed the raid was arranged by Feilding as a publicity stunt to maintain his cover, but soon realized it was an official response to his wartime activities. This hampered fund-raising efforts to pay his passage back to England. As Cowie informed Crowley, “We could not even think of raising funds to bring you back, desirable as it is, when we are told you will certainly be arrested if you return.”208 As a solution, AC resigned as head of MMM and appointed Frater Achad as nominal Grand Master. In subsequent letters, Cowie wrote to Crowley, “It’s just ‘care frater’ [dear brother] now, as in happier days of old”209 and “As you are no longer G[rand] M[aster] but my guru as of old.”210 Nevertheless, efforts to continue operating were difficult. Other than membership dues, MMM’s only revenue came from sales of Crowley’s books … and even this had to be discontinued. “I’ve not been able to supply one of the rare orders for books lately,” Cowie explained to Crowley at the end of 1917. “The real and vital reason however, and here you force my hand, is that the police were trying to trace your property in this country.”211
In response to the bad publicity resulting from both her arrest and her connection to the “evil” and “traitorous” Crowley, Davies ran the following letter in The Occult Review:
On May 15 last, the Press generally stated in connexion with the prosecution against me, Mary Davies, of 93 Regent Street, that I was the protégée of a man of evil reputation and a traitor to this country. I desire emphatically to disavow any such association. I have no knowledge whatsoever, nor ever had, of the views and actions—political, social or private—of the person referred to. The only link I had with this person was on Masonic grounds, in the mysteries which no one could be more profound. It is scarcely necessary to stress my own patriotism, as my public know since the beginning of the war my Intercessory Services at Kensington have been solely such as to encourage and to fortify every patriotic effort, and I deliberately repudiate the stigma implied by the quotation given above.212
Davies appealed the ruling but, on October 26, 1917, the decision was upheld.213 The legal bill for her defense topped £250, and Cowie—indignant that this sweet and sincere fifty-year-old woman had suffered publicly and financially because of Crowley’s politics—adopted an increasingly bitter tone in his correspondence: “In one way and another, the Lodge has cost me more than the total contributions of the members; and all lost uselessly thanks to your politics.”214 Bitterness quickly became resentment:
I told you long ago that the continental origin of the O.T.O. would make it impossible to work it in England and that is now evident. It now will not be allowed.…
A little tact on your part and the assumption of the vice of sympathy even if you have it not would have helped things along better.
I hope M.O.H. [Mother of Heaven, Crowley’s nickname for Leila Waddell] is flourishing, and yourself better in health. It beats me to explain to people why the Sole Proprietor and Patentee of the Universal Medicine should be always fatally, even seriously, sick.215
And finally, “Come on! be a sporting Beast, not the kind of animal who gets out of pits by inviting some confiding creature to come in & taste the waters of Liberty—how good they are!—and climbs out over his shoulders.”216 By the end of the year, the stress fractures became fissures and Cowie closed the Lodge. On April 30, 1918, a classified ad ran in the Times reading “Regenta Tea Rooms, 93 Regent-street, newly decorated. Apartments furnished; also one floor as office; part attendance. Can be viewed 11–5.”217
Davies, with the help of another member, Mrs. Scott, ultimately sold Boleskine for £2,500 to Dorothy C. Brook on July 12, 1918. This final act was a relief to Cowie, who sank much of his own money, including his retirement fund, into keeping the mortgage afloat.218 Cowie’s last tie to Crowley had been cut.
On August 6, Crowley opened an account in the name Ordo Templi Orientis with the Title Guarantee and Trust Company, wherein the proceeds from the sale were deposited from England through the law firm of Lord, Day and Lord. Although this was technically OTO’s money, Crowley felt entitled to it “inasmuch as he was personally responsible for having supplied about nine tenths of the total amount of money on deposit.”219 It allowed him to support himself through the remainder of his time in America.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Amalantrah
Although Chokmah days ticked by, Crowley, enjoying one boon after another through the summer of 1917, knew the worst of his trials had passed. Editors Daniel Howard Sinclair Nicholson (1883–1923) and Reverend Arthur Hugh Evelyn Lee (1875–1941)1 included his poems “The Quest,” “The Neophyte,” and “The Rose and the Cross” in The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse.2 Louis Wilkinson offered his comments on the newly completed Butterfly Net manuscript. And Viereck appointed Crowley editor of The International with a $20-per-week salary. He first appeared on the masthead as “contributing editor” with the August issue. In the tradition of The Equinox, Crowley wrote most of the magazine’s contents under various pseudonyms, publishing his Simon Iff and Golden Twigs stories along with practical articles on magick, such as “The Revival of Magick,” “Cocaine,” “The Ouija Board,” “The Message of the Master Therion,” “Geomancy,” and “Ecclesiae Gnosticae Catholicae Canon Missae” (the Gnostic Mass).3
For a short time, Crowley lived with a Pennsylvania Dutch woman named Anna Catherine Miller. He met her at a Singalese restaurant on 8th Avenue and likened her to the Egyptian god Anubis, the dog-headed underworld guide. He and the Dog, as AC dubbed her, took a furnished Central Park West apartment near 110th Street. Miller was “the only member of her family not actually insane,”4 but she drank heavily, and when she proved unable to quit, Crowley left her. The last thing he wanted was another Rose Kelly or Mary Desti.
Crowley promptly took up with Miller’s friend Roddie Minor (1884–1979). Standing five-foot-eight with gray eyes and brown hair, she was “physically a magnificent animal”5 with broad muscular shoulders and masculine features. She was born in Lawrenceville, Georgia, on April 9, 1884, the third of four daughters to farmer William Jackson Minor and Lide Hawthorne Minor.6 While a student at Columbia University, she became active in winter 1908 in New York’s suffrage movement, where she was described as a lieutenant to radical feminist activist Bettina Borrman Wells. When police refused to grant a parade permit for a Sunday demonstration, Minor told reporters, “If necessary to avoid the molestation of the police, we shall get a corpse and a coffin, or one of us will pretend she is dead, so that the procession will be a funeral march.”7 To avoid arrest, she was one of eight who held a “silent march” up Broadway from Union Square to the Manhattan Trade School, their numbers swelling to two thousand along the way. Encountering a crowd surrounding a Salvation Army band, Minor complained “Fine justice this. Here are persons in uniform, carrying banners and with a brass band. If they can parade, why can’t we?”8 The march resulted in Minor’s photograph appearing in the papers under the headline “She Wants to Vote,” and when Borrman Wells and several of her people left New York to spread their message elsewhere, Minor was placed in charge of the Progressive Woman Suffrage Union headquarters.9
Roddie Minor, the Camel (1884–1979). (photo credit 13.1)
She graduated in 1911 from Columbia University’s New York College of Pharmacy with a Doctor of Pharmacy degree.10 The following year, she began working as a chemist for druggists and importers W. H. Schieffelin & Co., joined the American Pharmaceutical Association as a corresponding member, and helped found the American Women’s Pharmaceutical Association, serving as its vice president.11 She would soon leave her medical pathology laboratory job to become managing chemist for a large perfume manufacturer.
Because Crowley saw her carrying him out of
a dry and desiccated period of his life and into a comfortable phase, he dubbed her the Camel, although she went by the nickname Eve. By early October, he was living with her in a West 9th Street studio. In these new surroundings, Crowley returned to the work of promulgating the Law of Thelema. Thus, 1918 began on a productive note: Crowley wrote “De Lege Libellum” (“The Law of Liberty”), revised his “Message of the Master Therion,” and quickly published both tracts.
It looked like it would be a typical Saturday night. It was past midnight—technically now Sunday, January 14. Eve lay on a mattress on the floor, smoking opium and muttering about this thing and that. Crowley, meanwhile, blocked out the distraction of her babbling as he worked at his desk writing Liber Aleph. Alternately known as The Book of Wisdom or Folly, Liber Aleph was a series of epistles of a magician (the Magus To Mega Therion) to his magical son (the Magister Templi OIVVIO) covering a broad array of spiritual and magical topics. Its style was that of prose poetry. Each one-page epistle bore a Latin title, with every noun in the book capitalized. Beginning as a challenge to Freud, it became one of his most elevated and sublime works.12
He set down his pen when the Camel muttered that she saw herself as a candlestick with thirteen candles. Crowley expounded on the number ninety-three (the value of the words thelema, will, and agape, love, among others), explaining how adepts had sent messages for him through his Scarlet Women and how he tested these adepts and their messages. Then he returned to work.
Eve interrupted again to explain that she was now thirteen naked women being caressed simultaneously. The image did nothing to distract him, nor did the recurrence of the number thirteen interest him. As he scribbled away, Crowley offhandedly suggested she try to obtain a message.
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