the story about going up the Hudson in a canoe loaded with red paint. It was loaded with camping apparatus and supplies, of course. What else would an explorer do? The paint (I think about four pots of it) was bought at a local shop after I had been living on the island for a month.43
Crowley arrived at the island, pitching his tent and sitting in his asana. Realizing that since coming to America his emphasis on sex magick was a detriment to his other disciplines, he took this opportunity to refine his skills in meditation and concentration. He often sat for hours before realizing someone had left food for him. The milk, eggs, and sweet corn came not from ravens but local farmers who, though uncertain whether Crowley was a sage or a psycho, decided he needed to eat.
Combining yoga and drugs produced an intense series of trances that he believed recalled his past lives. Working back from his last incarnation as French occultist Éliphas Lévi (1810–1875), who died six months before Crowley’s birth, he relived memories as Count Cagliostro, Edward Kelly, and Pope Alexander VI. Among his less illustrious incarnations were a suicide, a Polish scholar, and the monk Father Ivan. In one dismal life he was a deformed hermaphrodite who, conquering tuberculosis and scoliosis, died from syphilis after a German knight raped him. In Mohammedean times, he served on a council of Secret Chiefs who, despite the skepticism of older masters, revealed the Mysteries to mankind through Mohammed, Luther, Adam Weishaupt, Christian Rosenkreuz, and similar teachers. In a much earlier incarnation, he was Ko Hsuen, a disciple of Lao Tzu, author of the King Khang King. While basking in the illumination of these memories, Crowley prepared “translations” of the Chinese classics Tao Teh King and King Khang King—actually enlightened paraphrases of James Legge.
Subjected to empirical rigors, these memories are unconvincing. In the case of well-known figures, his “recollections” contain obscure or unverifiable details; sometimes they even conflict with known facts. For example, Crowley recalled Cagliostro being born not in Palermo but in a Tunisian brothel, and dying not as a prisoner of the Inquisition at San Leo but in a mountain forest with a gaily dressed youth. Despite their empirical failings, Crowley attached great significance to these memories and claimed to benefit from them.
Even greater illumination came on September 5 when, at 5 p.m., he recorded in his diary,
The meditation of this afternoon resulted in an initiation so stupendous that I dare not hint at its Word. It is the supreme secret of a Magus, and it is so awful that I tremble even now—two hours later and more … as I write concerning it. In a single instant I had the Key to the whole of the Chinese wisdom. In the light—momentary glimpse as it was—of this truth, all systems of religion and philosophy became absolutely puerile. Even the Law [of Thelema] appears no more than a curious incident. I remain absolutely bewildered, blinded, knowing what blasting image lies in this shrine.44
Following this vision, he used the rope he had brought to make rigging by which to dangle from the cliffs facing the Hudson. Upon these cliffs, plainly visible to passing steamers, Crowley painted in large red letters:
DO WHAT THOU WILT SHALL BE THE WHOLE OF THE LAW EVERY MAN AND EVERY WOMAN IS A STAR
By the time he left Esopus Island, Crowley realized that the magical current that had fueled his American period had depleted itself. The time had come to wrap up business and move on.
Tan and trim, Crowley returned to New York early that September and took a one-room studio at 1 University Place on the corner of Washington Square, hiding his bed behind a triptych screen whose panels he painted as sun, moon, and fire. Boasting to Seabrook of his newfound magical skills, he encountered only skepticism and so arranged a demonstration: walking down 5th Avenue, he assumed the slouched posture of a well-to-do gentleman and fell into step behind him. As an example of sympathetic magic, AC adapted the man’s mannerisms so strongly that when Crowley dropped briefly to a squat, the gentleman in front of him fell to the ground. Seabrook and Crowley helped the puzzled fellow to his feet as he searched vainly for a banana peel or something slick on the soles of his shoes.
Also at this time, Crowley made the stunning announcement that he was now a painter. “My familiar spirit visited me in the night and commanded me to paint,” he told Willie. “I have been under the misapprehension that I was a great poet. I was clearly mistaken. Paint is my real medium, and I am destined to become one of the outstanding artists of my age.”45 Alas, his skill remained poor despite diligent work. He eventually confided in Seabrook, “I am certain Aiwass has something important to express through paint, but he doesn’t know a thing about technique!” So Willie took him to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where Crowley spent the day studying Rembrandt’s “Old Woman.” Then he understood painting.
While this tale of Crowley’s artistic awakening is courtesy of Seabrook, Crowley himself gives an explanation that sheds more light on the origins of this interest:
I probably would never have taken up painting if it hadn’t been for the International, of which I became editor. I couldn’t find artists who would draw the covers I wanted, so, finally I became disgusted about fifteen months ago and decided to draw my own covers. I had never studied art and had never drawn or painted a picture in my life. When I tried to draw those covers I became so interested in the work that I gave up the editorship of the magazine and went in for art.46
None of Crowley’s concepts, however, ever covered the magazine.
To locate models for his unusual and often grotesque pictures, Crowley ran the following ad in the newspaper:
WANTED
DWARFS, HUNCHBACKS, Tattooed Women, Harrison Fisher Girls, Freaks of All Sorts, Coloured Women only if exceptionally ugly or deformed, to pose for artist. Apply by letter with photograph.
He drew preliminary sketches of his subjects, mixed pigments, and “began to paint the amazing pictures that have come to be the despair of art critics here and abroad.”47 Though an unskilled draughtsman, the haunting quality of his pictures nevertheless attracted acclaim from New York’s ultramodernists.
While S. L. Mathers died that November in the worldwide Spanish flu epidemic, Crowley nurtured two ambitions, as described in a letter to author James Branch Cabell (1879–1962):
I am just off to Detroit to give three lectures—Labour, Religion, and Death—and thence by the Beard of the Prophet to a Free Country. I am trying to find an Abbey of Thelema for free men.48
The latter ambition involved starting a utopian society based upon Thelemic principles, inspired by Rabelais’s Abbey of Thélème for his own law of “Do what thou wilt.” Its first tentative steps, however, remained more than a year away. More pressing was Crowley’s visit to Detroit, which would figure prominently in his plans during 1918–1919, both for publication and establishment of OTO’s U.S. headquarters.
His link to Detroit was Albert Winslow Ryerson (1872–1931), general manager of Universal Book Stores Inc. Born in Hollis, New Hampshire, to John and Evelyn Ryerson, who traced their family back to the Mayflower, Ryerson was raised in Concord, where he drove a dog cart for his neighbor, transcendentalist philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882). From Emerson and his distinguished visitors,49 he acquired a keen interest in philosophy and the ancients’ worship of sex. As he explained obliquely:
Why it was my father who took the wild grape and the Isabella together, the male and the female and they formed the present Concord grape. Father introduced them there was no engagement, they were married, he married them, and I assume the Concord grape must have been a love grape. This school of philosophy is the same that Thoreau and all those people believed in where they delved into the finest things of nature. It was in that atmosphere that I was reared and that atmosphere surrounded me and which in a measure determined or directed my life. And many of these fine people, because of the libelous press, have to go into hiding to think and talk about these finer things, which give great truths to the world. Of course in such an atmosphere there were so-called “love cults,” but in this school there were p
eople of high ideals.50
He later moved to Boston, where in 1893 he married Vida E. F. Marsh, with whom he had three children: Martin Albert, Grace Louise, and Winslow George. In 1896 he moved to Detroit and introduced there the ninety-nine-year lease. He worked as a representative for an eastern rubber company; while traveling for work, he spent years building up an inventory of unusual books in order to start a bookstore.
Albert Winslow Ryerson (1872–1931), proprietor of the Universal Book Stores. (photo credit 13.6)
He was an active Mason, claiming membership at Detroit’s Free and Accepted Masonic Lodge No. 2. He was also a knight of the Detroit Commandery No. 1 and held the 32° with the Michigan Sovereign Consistory of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.51 Through his Masonic Lodge, Ryerson met two men who were interested in partnering in his bookstore: Gordon Hill and Hugh Jack. Gordon W. Hill (1883–1971) was a dental surgery student from Windsor, Ontario, who took his Craft degrees at Detroit’s Lotus Lodge No. 549 in 1909 and shared Ryerson’s esoteric interests.52 Reverend Hugh Jack (1864–1949) took his Craft degrees at Dearborn Lodge No. 172 in May 1906; he was the Irish-born pastor of Central Presbyterian Church, and would receive an honorary doctor of laws degree from Dubuque College in June 1918.53 As Ryerson recalled his December 1917 purchase of Homer W. Adair’s bookstore at 131 Grand River Avenue:
The Universal Book Store was formed for the purpose of handling all kinds of religious literature, all over the country, or the world, with everything that was odd or out of the way. We did not specialize in any one thing, to make it sacred, but bought anything that had to it any great amount of religion, consequently the stores became phenomenally successful.54
Hill was president, Jack vice president, and Ryerson general manager.
Before long they opened two other branches in the city and a third in Toledo, Ohio. In July 1918, Maryland native William A. Gibson (born c. 1874), an educator with the auto industry,55 came onboard as their treasurer. The following month, Ryerson took Gibson on a book-buying trip through New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore to stock up their new store and show him the ropes. It was on this trip that they met Crowley.56
Ryerson was already familiar with Crowley’s works and quite eager to meet him when their travels brought them to New York in early October 1918. Arranging a meeting, however, proved challenging. They arrived at what they thought was Crowley’s address only to discover that he had moved; although the staff knew his new whereabouts, they were unwilling to say. Ultimately the janitor directed them to Crowley’s regular lunch spot at the Brevoort Hotel on 5th Avenue. There they left a note and, a couple of days later, received an invitation to meet with Crowley’s intermediary, Jones, who would determine if they could talk to Crowley. After meeting Jones, he took them downtown to see Crowley face-to-face. These cloak-and-dagger activities, coupled with Jones’s attitude, convinced Gibson that Crowley “was under police surveillance; he could not go out in the open because of the police.”57 Ryerson, however, understood things differently:
Mr. Crowley was the accredited agent of the British Government in the employ of their Secret Service Department. That was one of the reasons why it was always so difficult to get in touch with him. German spies were continually after him, and he would never allow anyone to see him, unless he first knew who they were.58
In addition to Crowley, Jones, Ryerson, and Gibson, two women also attended the meeting. One was “some sort of lecturer in connection with some Russian movement or propaganda,”59 i.e. Marie Roehling. The other was English, the wife of a British vice consul.60 Although unidentified, she would appear to be Helen Hall, wife of Frederick Hall: both arrived in New York on September 1, 1917.61 According to Spence, Mr. Hall was posing as a journalist as a cover for his intelligence work out of Guy Gaunt’s offices at 44 Whitehall.62 As Crowley reported with respect to his own intelligence work, “There was a Temporary Gentleman named H … l in the British Military Mission with whom I had such dealings as is possible with the half-witted.”63 Completing the puzzle is a note attached to Crowley’s painting from this period, La Femme de Chez Moi: “This cannot be described for fear of a consular scandal. For particulars, apply to Mr. Hall of the British Mission.”64
Crowley’s recollections indicate that more than bookselling was on the agenda; his OTO work had generated interest amongst Detroit Freemasons:
The accounts of the new Rite made a great impression; and in particular, attracted the attention of the Supreme Grand Council, Sovereign Grand Inspectors General of the 33rd and Last Degree of the Scottish Rite in the Valley of Detroit, Mich. This Council deputed two Princes of the Royal Secret from the Consistory dependent from their jurisdiction to interview me in New York.65
Crowley “offered to reorganize freemasonry, to replace the pomposities and banalities of their ragbag of rituals by a simple, lucid and coherent system,”66 and Ryerson believed his fellow Masons back in Detroit would be equally excited. Crowley, however, was uninterested in discussing the particulars of OTO with anyone but the highest-ranking Freemasons of his coterie, remarking, “It was of course impossible for me to deal with subordinates, and I refused to discuss the matter except with Sovereign Grand Inspectors General [33°].”67
In all, Ryerson had three meetings with Crowley early that October. The result was an agreement to market the next volume of The Equinox, an informal agreement to accept on consignment the Crowley rariora that John Quinn hadn’t purchased, and an invitation for Crowley to come to Detroit. Ryerson embraced Thelema … evidently to the detriment of his marriage, as his wife, Vida, filed for divorce shortly thereafter, writing in her complaint:
The defendant by his acts and declarations appears to be possessed of a religious conviction that he is not bound longer to recognize any of the conventions or formalities of society, but insists that he is free to conduct himself according to the dictates of his own conscience.68
Ryerson soon found a lover in Bertha Almira Bruce, a feisty and independent woman who shared his perspective on sexual freedom. Born in Kansas around 1889, she was proprietor of a rooming house on 381 West Grand Boulevard.69 She was also the “financial angel” of the publishing venture, loaning money to both him and the Universal Book Stores to help with their projects.
While Ryerson returned to Detroit, Crowley made arrangements to print The Equinox. In November 1918 he received a quote from New York’s DeVinne Press to typeset, print, and bind the volume for $4,050 with a promised delivery date of March 21, 1919: the vernal equinox, perfectly concluding the publication’s “five years of silence.” Crowley gave the printer the contents to set, and he had a cover design in mind. By January he was working out details of the inserts, which included color plates, black and white photographs, and line drawings. Since he was so busy with the printers, Crowley sent his Deputy Grand Master General (Jones) to Detroit to generate interest in The Equinox and prepare to establish OTO in Detroit.
The timing couldn’t have been better. In early November, Gibson resigned as treasurer-accountant for the bookstore. Although he later pointed to his disapproval of Crowley and the way Ryerson “toadied” up to him,70 the real reason, according to Ryerson, was that his demand for a half interest in the bookstore was denied. In response, Gibson emptied their bank accounts, took some of the merchandise, and started his own mail-order business.71 Fortunately, Jones had just arrived in Detroit, representing the public accounting firm of A. E. Duncan. Ryerson hired him as their new accountant.
Jones wasted no time in getting to work. Arriving early on Sunday morning, February 16, 1919, he just made a 10:30 a.m. meeting with Ryerson at the store. Later that day, he took a furnished apartment at 108-75 Sibley Street. He began work the next morning, and after work met at the law offices of Frank T. Lodge (1859–1930). Born in Indiana, Lodge relocated to Michigan, where he became Past Grand Master of Michigan’s Grand Lodge of Freemasonry, a Sovereign Grand Inspector General (33°) in the Scottish Rite, and was now the presumptive leader of the embryo
nic OTO group in Michigan. He was the author of Why Weepest Thou?,72 which he wrote and published in 1913 in his grief over the loss of his wife, Gemma, twenty-seven years his junior. In terms reserved for those who angered or disappointed him, Crowley wrote, “Their leader, for all his fine talk, had only one real desire—to communicate with his dead wife, a silly smirking society waxwork, a pink-tea princess!”73 Whatever Lodge’s motives, Jones emerged from the office with a signed contract from the Universal Book Stores for two thousand copies of latest Equinox.
Ryerson initially planned to order five hundred copies of The Equinox. When Jones produced two hundred orders from OTO members as far away as Europe, Canada, and Mexico, this convinced Ryerson that they could sell more. Plus, the larger order would mean a bigger wholesale discount. He later scaled his offer to take the entire two-thousand-copy print down to a more reasonable one thousand copies. In exchange, the book would show “Universal Publishing Company” on the title page. The name was merely a pseudonym for the Universal Book Stores to facilitate mail-order sales.74
Jones’s meeting with Lodge also concerned the establishment of a Supreme Grand Council of OTO. Discussions of this undertaking had begun with Crowley as early as November 1918. Because OTO had its origins in high degree Freemasonry, however, the similarity of its rituals made the Detroit Masons uncomfortable. As Crowley recounted,
However, when it came to the considerations of the practical details of the rituals to be worked, the general Council of the Scottish Rite could not see its way to tolerate them, on the ground that the symbolism in some places touched too nearly that of the orthodox Masonry of the Lodges.… In order to meet these views, it was suggested that I should re-write the rituals in an entirely new symbolism, which would in no way be considered as in competition with the accepted ritual of the Craft.75
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