Perdurabo

by Richard Kaczynski

  This will inroduce to you Aleister Crowley, poet, sage, mountain climber and general lunatic. I am sure you will have much in common.106

  They indeed had much in common: both Feilding and Carrington had tested Italian spiritualist medium Eusapia Palladino, and Crowley—based on Feilding’s report—had had a sitting with her when he and Mary Desti were in Naples. Crowley was furthermore interested in Carrington’s scientific approach to psychic science, noting he “boasts that he has explained every single ‘sealed letter reading’ that has come under his notice.”107 Through Carrington, Crowley lectured under the auspices of “a particularly transparent charlatan named [Christian P.] Christensen, who worked the sealed letter swindle with a crudity that paid a very poor compliment to his audience”;108 significantly, this was the lecture at which he met Leah Hirsig’s sister. Finally, Carrington saw Crowley to the port when he left America:

  I saw Crowley off on the boat when he sailed. He had not been a “success” in this country, as he had in Europe, and, while expressing my regret at this, I also reminded him that this was largely his own fault. His parting words—his last shot as he went down the gang-plank—were “Well, what can you expect of a country which accepts Ella Wheeler Wilcox as its greatest poet!”109

  Around this time, Jones met with Lodge at the house of Dr. Frank E. Bowman (1873–1947), another of the prospective Detroit Thelemic circle who had taken his Craft degrees a dozen years earlier at Oriental Lodge No. 240.110 A Canadian-born naturalized citizen, he was a physician and surgeon with offices on Kenilworth in Detroit.111 Of him, Crowley wrote:

  The best of the crowd was a young doctor who had sufficient sense to see how stupid the rest were, to disdain the bluff of the advertising adepts, and to realize that genuine magicians were necessarily gentlemen and scholars. He felt himself utterly lost in the darkness of Detroit, but despaired of mending the matter by setting forth to seek the Graal without guidance.… Pluck would have pulled him through in the long run; as Blake said, “if the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.”112

  Anxious to proceed with establishing a Supreme Grand Council for the Lake Section of the United States, as well as the Great Lakes Council VII° of OTO, Lodge and Bowman paid Crowley’s $100 fare to Detroit. To prepare, Crowley sent revised initiation rituals to Jones, who in turn instructed Lodge that “a Meeting of the Grand Council be called at an early date to discuss the details of the establishment of an Oasis in this City of Detroit and arrange for the production of this Degree as soon as possible.” 113

  After Crowley’s arrival, according to Ryerson, “a Supreme Grand Council got together at the D[etroit] A[thletic] C[lub], and I think then it was formed, tentatively, if the ritual be re-written and if drafted and accepted.” This meeting took place on April 13, 1919. Of these negotiations, Crowley later reflected, “Even their compact group was torn by bitter jealousies.”114 Neither Ryerson nor Hill were invited, causing considerable rancor. As Ryerson noted,

  This is what started the rupture between Dr. Hill and Mr. Crowley.… Because of the book store’s officers [not] being a part of it, Dr. Hill took great exception and thought that inasmuch as we were going to market the literature of the Order, someone of us ought to be represented, and he made some very terse comments about it and Crowley in the store here. And the result of it all was that Dr. Hill said, “Well, we won’t handle your books” and he then tried to cancel the order, and made a mess of it generally, and that started the fuss between them.115

  Hill would ultimately resign in January 1920 as president of Universal Book Stores and burn his copy of The Equinox.116

  During this visit, Crowley also affiliated eight Detroit Masons to OTO. “Affiliation” indicated that no initiation was performed, but the members were formally accorded a rank in OTO commensurate with their degree in Freemasonry. In addition to Lodge, Ryerson, and Bowman, the other men signing on at this time included Dr. C. P. Sibley, C. Y. Smith, W. H. Bogrand, George Jarvis, and Albert A. Stibbard.117 U.S. District Attorney Frank Murphy would later comment, “They are big men. The mention of their names would immediately bring on a scandal.”118

  Dr. Cedric Putnam Sibley (b. 1886)119 was the second of five children born in Bennington, Vermont, to Edward L. Sibley and Delia A. Putnam. A surgeon in Cleveland, Ohio, who moved to a private practice in Detroit’s Kresge Building until he left for Vienna in June 1914—the same month that Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination triggered the start of the Great War—on a mission to help Austria’s wounded.120 He currently worked for Parke-Davis Pharmaceuticals, whose facility on the Detroit River Crowley had visited:

  Parke Davis were charming and showed me over their wonderful chemical works. They had installed countless and ingenious devices for conduction the processes involved in manufacture by machinery. Many of these produced effects of exquisite beauty of a land till then dreamed of in my philosophy. A great mass of pills in a highly polished and rapidly revolving receiver was infinitely fascinating to watch. The spheres tumbled over each other with a rhythmical rise and fall in a rhythm which sang to the soul.

  They were kind enough to interest themselves in my researches in Anhalonium Lewinii and made me some special preparations on the lines indicated by my experience which proved greatly superior to previous preparations.121

  If Sibley prepared the peyote, Crowley did not recall him kindly:

  Their second string was a doctor, who spent sleepless nights sweating with shame and sentimentality in an agony of anxiety as to whether it was his duty to get divorced in order to marry a white-haired spinster, half-crazy with the pain of cancer, with whom he had no sexual relation at all, but an overwhelming obsession that she was his sister-soul, his mystic mate, his psychic partner and his Ouija Wife.122

  Insurance salesman Charles Yale Smith was born in Algonac, Michigan, in 1862 to Thomas and Rowena Smith. His mother was descended from Yale University founder Elihu Yale, whence Smith’s middle name. Schooled in Alpena, Michigan, he married Eugenia Wilson of Detroit in 1901 and settled on a career in insurance, in whose circles he became well known. He was also a prominent Mason, with memberships in Damascus Commandery of the Knights Templar (York Rite), the Michigan Sovereign Consistory (Scottish Rite), and the Moslem Temple of the Mystic Shrine.123

  William Henry Bogrand (1873–1949) was born in Munsing, Michigan, to Elias Bogrand and Harriet Harris. At age nineteen, he married Angeline Frost in neighboring Windsor, Ontario; the marriage did not last, as the 1900 census shows him married to a woman six years his senior named Hattie. He worked as a house painter, and as an electrician’s helper with the Electrical Construction Co. on Grand River Avenue. He took his Masonic initiations at Friendship-Lincoln Lodge No. 417 in September and October 1903.124

  Albert Alexander Stibbard was born in York, Ontario, to farmer John Sheldrake Stibbard and Mary Collings in 1875, making him Crowley’s age. He was a builder with the Reliable Construction Co., applied for U.S. citizenship in 1918, and his wife’s name was Elisabeth.125

  Finally, George Jarvis was born in Ovid, Michigan, on July 15, 1873, taking his three Masonic Craft initiations at Ovid Lodge No. 127 in April, May, and October 1909.126

  As Crowley’s relationship with Leah entered rough waters that May, he cultivated other paramours. He wrote to Helen Westley, the Snake, proposing marriage; she had scarcely received the letter when she declined and Crowley reconsidered. He grew more interested in American actress Sarah Jane Wolfe (1875–1958), a St. Petersburg, Pennsylvania, native who, after ten years as a college-trained stenographer, changed careers after an attack of neuritis in her right arm. She moved to Hollywood in 1910 and became an actress, playing supporting roles—mostly mothers—in more than forty early silent movies, primarily with the Pioneer Picture Company, including some with Mary Pickford.127 Coincidentally, Wolfe played in the 1917 version of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, while Westley would go on to appear in the 1938 remake.

  Wolfe became interested in the occult in 1913 when
she received a copy of Franz Hartmann’s Magic, White and Black (1889). In 1917, she turned from her Ouija board to The Equinox and Book Four on the advice of Sheridan Bickers, an early AA student who had relocated to California and become Crowley’s West Coast representative. Achieving success in pranayama and astral visions—which included one of the Master himself—she contacted Crowley through The International. He responded by putting her back in touch with Bickers; but she wrote again and began corresponding directly with AC about her visions.128

  In June, Leah learned she was pregnant with Crowley’s child. This was happy news to AC, as the Secret Chiefs had taken his first child and Rose his second, and neither Jeanne Foster nor Ratan Devi bore him an heir. They reconciled promptly.

  When Crowley interrupted a Magical Retirement on Montauk Point at the eastern extremity of Long Island and returned to New York to prepare the second new issue of The Equinox, a manuscript by Frater Achad was awaiting him. Liber 31 stunned him with its revelation of a major key to The Book of the Law that Jones had discovered in the winter of 1917. His exegesis, briefly, was this: the Hebrew word for God, El, numbered thrity-one, and a trinity of thirty-ones, referring to the supernal triad of the kabbalistic Tree of Life, totaled ninety-three, the value of Thelema. The Book of the Law itself implied this triad with references to “the threefold book of Law” and “Three Grades.” Even the numbers of the tarot cards attributed to these three grades—IX (The Hermit), VI (The Lovers), and XVI (The Tower)—added to thirty-one.

  The important twist came from noting that El, spelled backward, meant “not.” This notion of reversibility was paramount in religious and magical practice. When Hadit asked, “Is God to live in a dog?”129 he alluded to the principle; so too did Achad when altering his motto from V.I.O. to O.I.V.V.I.O. As synchronicity would have it, Achad, the Hebrew word for “one,” had a numerical value of thirteen, which was the reverse of thirty-one. Crowley had also applied this idea to derive the XI° by a “reversal” of OTO’s IX° formula of sex magick, and Austin Spare used it in his practice of “atavistic resurgence.” Even the god name Allah, or AL-LA, incorporated it.

  In Crowley’s mind, Achad’s thesis was further proof that The Book of the Law originated from an intelligence possessing knowledge greater than the instrument of its writing. Both Samuel Jacobs and Frater Achad found important keys and solutions that Crowley failed to see. In response to Achad’s paper, Crowley changed the official name of The Book of the Law from Liber L vel Legis to Liber AL vel Legis.

  Frater Achad, Charles Stansfeld Jones (1886–1950). (photo credit 13.9)

  The Equinox proved to be a white elephant. It did not, as claimed, find a ready market. When a distributor in Louisville, Kentucky, reconsidered carrying it, Ryerson complained that “Norwood appears to have become concerned in the evil reports, apparently circulated by our enemies.”130 This was Joseph Norwood of the International Magian Society, who at this time also reported Crowley to the Bureau of Investigation as a possible spy. Things worsened when Crowley threatened to sue Universal Book Stores for payment on the rariora he had on consignment with them. On June 16, 1919, Ryerson pleaded with Crowley, stating that publication of The Equinox had alienated his family, friends, and business associates, and that a lawsuit would bankrupt his company. They reached an understanding, and work proceeded on the second issue, which would contain the continuation of “A Master of the Temple,” a reprint of the Holy Book “Liber Liberi vel Lapidis Lazuli,” “Liber XXI,” and, as a special supplement, The Gospel According to St. Bernard Shaw.131 Alas, this volume would never get beyond page proofs.132

  When September 23 came and went without a new issue, Crowley resigned himself to a delay in the next Equinox. Despite this setback, the Great Work proceeded. Thus that same day, Crowley—together with Leah and Roddie Minor, the new and old Scarlet Women—received a Double Word: Ahitha-Alostrael, the combination of both women’s magical names. For Leah, this established a succession between Crowley’s magical and sexual partners. Thereafter the priest and whore, Beast and Babalon, swore to promulgate the Law of Thelema and establish somewhere an Abbey of Thelema.

  Both prepared to pull up stakes. On October 2, Leah resigned from New York’s public schools; a month later, she went to stay with her ailing sister in Switzerland. Meanwhile, that October Crowley traveled to Decatur, Georgia, to bid farewell to the Seabrooks. One evening, as he stayed on their farm, AC decided with Willie to try a variation on the Trappist monk vow of silence. For a week they agreed to confine their speech to a single nonsense syllable: wow. Although visitors thought them mad and Shep, the servant, was bewildered, they soon learned the importance of intonation, speaking several rudimentary things in “wow.” The experiment culminated when Shep produced a gallon of moonshine; becoming very drunk, they conducted a sublime philosophical conversation in “wow,” interrupted only when Kate, who had tolerated their eccentricity, insisted in the early morning hours that they go to bed. Although Seabrook thought the experience sublime, she believed they simply got drunk and barked at each other all night.133

  During this time, Crowley wrote increasingly passionate letters to Jane Wolfe, addressing her as “Best beloved,” “My darling child,” and “Janet o’ mine.” He begged her to meet him in England before he joined Leah in Switzerland, but the best she could do was promise to visit him in June.

  From Georgia, Crowley took a side trip to the Mammoth Caves of Kentucky, then returned to business. “I once went from Louisville to Detroit,” he recalled, “I think, on a train called the Big Four, car number four, berth number four. It started at 4:44 p.m. from platform number four, and my ticket was numbered 44444. Meant nothing. Why should it be otherwise?”134

  In November 1919, Crowley had another meeting with several Detroit-area Masons. Things did not go smoothly. It included only four of the original charter members, and “a certain prominent attorney was elected its head.”135 This was undoubtedly Frank T. Lodge. In response to this tentative organization of OTO, Crowley and Jones sponsored Ryerson’s application for initiation (rather than mere affiliation) into OTO’s preliminary degree on November 24, 1919. The Detroiters rehearsed “the ritual” of OTO one night in November, but it is unclear which ritual was rehearsed. In one place it was described as involving kneeling before a priestess,136 suggesting the Gnostic Mass.

  Regardless, trouble brewed. According to Ryerson, there was an argument about who should be the “Supreme Grand Cheese,” with the result that OTO was never organized, no one was initiated, and no dues were paid. Nevertheless, Crowley entrusted The Equinox with “the bug house” in Detroit, who promised to bring out the next issue once funds became available; Achad became his business manager in absentia. Thus, in mid-December, Crowley left the United States, his book business in the hands of Achad and Ryerson, to chase even bigger dreams back to England. As he recalled, “When I returned to England at Christmas 1919, all my plans had gone to pieces owing to the dishonesty and treachery of a gang which was bullying into insanity my publisher in Detroit.”137 Unknown to Crowley, he had left a scandal brewing behind him.

  The summer, fall, and winter months of 1920–1921 saw a great deal of shuffling amongst the Detroit Thelemites. On April 13, 1920, W. T. Smith was fired from his job, so he left Vancouver and joined Jones in Detroit to help with the Great Work. He soon found a job at the Detroit City Gas Company,138 and remained there with Jones until they both moved to Chicago the following June. Russell, who had been in Detroit since May 1919, left that fall to join Crowley at the Abbey of Thelema in Sicily, arriving on November 21, 1920. Shortly after Russell left town, another Thelemite arrived in the person of Norman Mudd. He had taken a sabbatical from his professorial position in South Africa’s Grey University College to seek out Crowley, whom he hadn’t seen since his undergraduate days at Cambridge. Having purchased the latest Equinox, he went to Detroit but found only Jones and Smith. They treated their visiting Brother well, and Jones admitted him as a Neophyte into the AA139 before h
e continued on to Cefalù finally to reunite with Crowley.

  When, in September 1920, six tons of books arrived unexpectedly from Crowley, Jones was dumbstruck. He had to beg and borrow money to pay the substantial duty on these books, which he then placed in storage with Detroit’s Leonard Warehouse. He sold them on the side through Universal Book Stores in an effort to recoup his money. When he moved to Chicago, he somehow lost track of these crates—this would become an irreconcilable bone of contention between him and Crowley—and they remained forgotten in Detroit until rediscovered in 1958. The bulk of this collection wound up in the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center in Austin, Texas.

  Jones and Smith left Detroit on March 26, 1921, for Chicago. There, on April 2, Jones opened a post office box under the name Collegium ad Spiritum Sanctum to sell Crowley’s books and for putting out his own writing. Their decision to leave Detroit was well timed. Poor sales of The Equinox and the postponed (and ultimately abandoned) second issue prompted Ryerson to write to Crowley in January 1921 offering to exchange some unsold blue Equinoxes for older issues. In May 1921 the beleaguered Universal Book Stores were in bankruptcy court. Their creditors and trustees alleged that Ryerson single-handedly ruined the business by misappropriating as much as $35,000 for the publication of Crowley’s book (a falsehood, as the actual printing costs were far less). As Grover L. Morden, counsel for the creditors and trustees, put it, “A business man should have known that the frontispiece of The Equinox, representing the hanging of Christianity on a gibbet, alone would have resulted in the failure of the publishing house.”140 Although Universal Book Stores was adjudicated bankrupt on September 6, 1921,141 a series of hearings followed concerning these allegations.

  These bankruptcy proceedings drew the attention of the press, and soon the tale of Ryerson, Crowley and OTO filled the front pages of the January and February 1922 newspapers in a series of exposés that Ryerson called “the mess in the press.” The first of these articles exposed the existence of Detroit’s “love cult,” as the papers dubbed OTO. The Equinox’s naked priestess and Christianity hanged on a gibbet shocked casual readers. Dr. James W. Inches, Detroit police commissioner, remarked, “The sort of conduct described in The Equinox is common in Europe, but it will not do for Detroit.”142 Federal prosecutor Paul W. Voorheis was even more vocal: