P. R. Stephensen, who would later become Crowley’s friend and publisher, called the stories that filled newspapers for the next two months a campaign of vilification unparalleled in the history of journalism. It began in the February 25, 1923, Sunday Express with a headline splashed across the front page:
New Sinister Revelations of Aleister Crowley.
Varsity Lad’s Death.
Enticed to “Abbey”
Deradful Ordeal of a Young Wife.
Crowley’s Plans.
The article described Raoul, without naming him, as “a boy of twenty-two.” His wife—the thrice married, cocaine-addicted pub singer whose bandit friends named her the “Tiger Woman”—became a naive and defenseless maiden whose idyllic marriage was destroyed by the manipulations of the depraved Aleister Crowley at his Abbey of iniquity. The abominations published in the Sunday Express, she said, only hinted at the real horrors that occurred at the Abbey. Betty’s warning that Crowley planned to sue the Sunday Express for £5,000 over the libels printed in their attack on The Diary of a Drug Fiend—met with cocksureness:
The “Sunday Express” promises Crowley that it intends to pursue its investigations with the utmost ruthlessness, and that next Sunday it will endeavour to supply him with considerable further material on which to base any action which he may care to bring.
An artist’s conception of Betty May’s account of a cat being sacrificed at the Abbey. (photo credit 15.5)
While the Sunday Express followed the article with an interview with Betty May on March 4, John Bull commandeered the bandwagon. In the following weeks, its lurid stories featured headlines that would be at home on any tabloid:
A Wizard of Wickedness (March 17).
The Wickedest Man in the World (March 24).
King of Depravity Arrives (April 11).
A Man We’d Like to Hang (May 19).
The paper claimed Crowley was actually in London and called for his arrest. It reported that as a mountaineer, Crowley had at one time run low on provisions and chopped up two of his coolies for food. It called him “one of the most shameless degenerates who ever boasted of his British birth.”42 These attacks generated so much interest that even American newspapers picked up the story of Raoul’s death.
When the onslaught began, Crowley was still too sick to care. Jane, however, arrived in London on February 28. Seeking legal counsel to sue the Sunday Express, she learned that she could not sue for defamation because the article did not mention her name. Before long, an undercover reporter from John Bull tracked down this “unscrupulous harpy” and interviewed “the elusive and dangerous Jane Wolfe.” The result was “We Trap the Temptress,”43 an article disclosing how Jane was seeking new students for the Abbey, along with other equally horrible truths.
Among those shocked by the news of Raoul’s death was dramatist and producer Lance Sieveking (1896–1972). He had just written his novel The Psychology of Flying and was in his second year at Cambridge. Like other students, he and his friends absorbed themselves in the newspaper accounts, trying to name Crowley’s “nameless rites” and imagine his “unimaginable horrors.” Ultimately, all they managed was to revolt each other with images far more twisted than any Crowley or the press could suggest. Then, around Easter, students and perfect strangers began asking him, “I say, do tell me about Aleister Crowley. Is he really as bad as they say?” Sieveking denied knowing Crowley, to the disbelief of his interrogators. This mystified him until he discovered The Diary of a Drug Fiend contained the line, “I suppose every one has read The Psychology of Flying by L. de Giberne Sieveking” on page 24. Although the passage explained the connection, he found the remaining text incomprehensible. It would be years before he thought of Crowley again.
Raoul’s death robbed Crowley of a friend, student, magical son, and secretary. While there was no replacing him, he still needed a secretary. Thus he summoned Norman Mudd, one of his most devoted and stalwart students.
Mudd had changed a great deal since Crowley last saw him on Trinity’s campus in 1910. After finishing his master’s degree, Mudd received two job offers, one at the National Physical Laboratory and another as a professor at Grey University College in Bloemfontein, South Africa. He chose the latter, hoping to leave the country, forget his college dealings with Crowley, and make a fresh start. He ran the Department of Applied Mathematics from 1911 to 1912, all the while experiencing fits of depression. In 1915 he lost an eye due to a gonorrheal infection. From 1916 to 1917 he ran the Department of Pure Mathematics and wrote a criticism of Einstein’s theory of relativity. He nevertheless remained unhappy. In 1920, a decade after he last saw AC, Mudd went on sabbatical to seek the only man who’d ever made him feel he had a purpose in life: Aleister Crowley. Sailing from South Africa, he arrived in Southampton on December 13, 1920,44 and began his quest. Finding the blue Equinox, he traveled to America, arriving aboard the Imperator on January 18, 1921.45 On reaching Detroit, he learned from the Thelemites there that, to his disappointment, AC had already returned to England, where Mudd thus returned on February 7, 1921.46 A letter to his colleague, Leo Marquard, reveals Mudd’s state of mind at this time. Beginning and ending his letter with the standard Thelemic salutations, Mudd wrote about the path of initiation:
The taking up of this Path is what is referred to variously as the Second Birth, or being Born of the Water of the Spirit, or (by Dante) the Vita Nuova, or (by the Egyptians) the Entrance on Light, or (by the Buddhists) The Noble Aryan Path, or (by the Alchemists) the Great Work, and so on. Also each of these groups possesses and communicates to aspirants a body of wisdom and a set of disciplines which guide and protect the beginner and prevent his task from being harder and more dangerous than is, in the nature of the case, unavoidable. Also, it is possible to investigate this Path in a purely scientific manner and to pursue the Work without committing oneself to any definite creed or philosophy.47
When he finally got hold of Crowley, he received an invitation to Cefalù. This coincided with an invitation to organize the school of astronomy for the University of South Africa. He turned down the job to visit the Abbey.48
Mudd would become Crowley’s biggest challenge: as an academician, he was accustomed to the logical rigors and proofs of mathematics, and refused to engage in any activity or initiation that compromised his objectivity. Nevertheless, he was Christian-reared and caught up in the passion of Crowley’s convictions, eager to understand and spread the Word of Thelema. He longed to dissect The Book of the Law and argue its philosophical and historical elements with AC. All Crowley wanted was a secretary.
Frater Omnia Pro Veritate (All for Truth), as Mudd was known in the AA, arrived the third week of April 1923. At the same time, two of Raoul’s friends, John Pigney and Claud Bosanquet, also came to the Abbey to determine for themselves the circumstances of their classmate’s death. The pair only stayed long enough to discover the facts and return home satisfied, if not disappointed, with the truth.
Raymond Greene (1901–1982) also came to Cefalù at this time. An acquaintance of Raoul’s, Greene and two of his schoolmates had devised a plan for Greene to go to Cefalù, assassinate Crowley, and flee to the south coast, where his friends would pick him up in a sailboat and take him to Morocco; from there, he would return home via Spain. Greene, however, doubted the stories about Crowley, and refused to participate in such a plan. What finally convinced him was a letter that he received from Crowley just before Easter:
Dear Sir,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Forgive me if I suggest, from the little experience that I have in such matters, that when one is establishing a spy system it is rather important to prevent one’s principal plan coming directly into the hands of the person whom you want watched.
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours truly,
Aleister Crowley
Knight Guardian of the Sangraal49
Greene visited Italy that Easter, where Crowley met hi
m in Naples to discuss drugs, sex, and libel. “Did Shelley bring libel actions?” AC asked. Before Greene could respond, he continued. “No. He came to Italy. Did Byron bring libel actions? No. He came to Italy. Did I bring libel actions?” By this time, Greene was able to follow the answer in his mind. Crowley received Greene warmly, and a visit to Cefalù left him reporting to Raoul’s mother that Crowley was well-liked in the community, the children seemed clean and healthy, and that he saw nothing suspicious about Raoul’s death.
Then, just as Crowley prepared to get back to business, the Office of the Commisario summoned him. Accompanied by Mudd and Leah, Crowley learned that he had one week to settle his affairs and leave the country.50
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Eccentrics in Exile
Poor and downtrodden, accused of murdering his best friend and favorite pupil, Crowley faced expulsion from his Abbey of Thelema at the Villa Santa Barbara. A petition signed by local villagers sorry to see Crowley go did nothing to undo the expulsion order. He wrote his will on April 30, leaving his possessions to Mudd, then pondered what to do tomorrow, when his deadline came to leave the country. Unsure where to go or what to do, he knew only that the Great Work had to continue. So, on May 1, he consulted the I Ching. It advised that he go to Tunis.
Leah, convinced that a detective was following them, accompanied Crowley while Norman, Ninette, and the children stayed behind, maintaining the Abbey until matters were rectified. They reached Tunis on May 2, and shortly thereafter ended up twenty-five miles northeast in Au Souffle du Zéphyr, the cheapest hotel in La Marsa. Crowley’s journal at this time records:
Another bad night: this time because a mouse ran across Leah’s face at 1:15 a.m. She started screaming and became violently hysterical. I copied her as faithfully as I could.1
The image of Crowley shrieking hysterically with Leah is both funny and sad. They soon found themselves under a doctor’s care as their health suffered from stress. Meanwhile, the Sunday Express triumphantly proclaimed:
The Beast Told Go:
Move by Fascisti against Crowley:
Week’s Notice.2
Back at the Abbey, the remaining Thelemites fared their best. On May 19, at 7:26 a.m., Ninette gave birth to la Calce’s daughter; the father contributed nothing to the child’s support and complained when Ninette was unable to pay the rent. “Carlo is a piece of shit,” Leah wrote Ninette in a supportive note. “I wish O.P.V. [Mudd] would tell him so.” Crowley, however, gladly took on the paternal role. He named the child Isabella Isis Selene Hecate Artemis Diana Hera Jane, although Ninette would come to call her simply Mimi after her twin sister. Casting the child’s horoscope, he observed:
Mars, rising above Luna, is rather threatening, but there are no close bad aspects either to the Sun or Moon, so probably there is not much to worry about. There is no big complex to make the child distinguished. She is likely to develop into a fairly ordinary little whore.3
To the Thelemite who venerated the whore Babalon, this last sentence was not intended as derogatory. As Crowley stressed in closing the letter: “Ever yours with lots of love, Beast.” Elsewhere, he asked Mudd to “Tell Ninette that I love her very dearly and enjoyed her letter immensely.”4
In another letter, Leah tried to keep morale up and family ties tight by adding, “Please tell Miss Lulette that Big Lion and Lala talk about her more than about anyone else.” Ninette similarly did her best to keep “Mama Lala” abreast of developments at the Abbey: Hansi had stripped someone’s tree of green apricots; Isabella had bedbugs in her crib; Lulette asked Beast to bring her back some chocolates; and Howard’s sagacity grew by leaps and bounds. In matters of the Great Work, she took on Salvatore, their drug connection, as a Probationer. Regarding her own practice of pranayama, Ninette wrote, “I was doing it the other day outdoors whence Hansi came up. Lulette called to him, ‘shh, Hansi! Shummy’s doing polyoner.’ I had to stop and have a beneficial laugh.”5
Crowley spent the spring writing. After a series of drug experiments in May, he dictated the essay “Ethyl Oxide” to Leah. He also worked on his life story, which he cynically dubbed the Hag, or ‘autohagiography,’ i.e., the autobiography of a saint. Even at this early stage, Crowley’s vision—projected at 600,000 words long—was quite ambitious:
The MS though lively is censor proof. It can be represented artfully in prosepctuses as the Confessions of A.C. A great fuss can be made about mailing copies to subscribers in a plain wrapper and otherwise ensuring their delivery.… There should be no difficulty in selling outright 2000 at $10 a copy. Surplus subscriptions can be absorbed in a second Edition which can be in some way different from the first—either abridged or edited or in some way sufficiently altered. During the issuing of the prospectuses the Author will undertake some feat which will bring him great extra publicity.6
Work also progressed at this time on a commentary to The Book of the Law. Regarding this comment, Crowley wrote in 1946:
Remember always that Commentary was written 25 years ago, and in a peculiarly exalted state of mind which I can never regain; which is why I never dared touch it. Afraid even to read it!7
On June 17 he began his commentary on “Liber LXV, or the Book of the Heart Girt with the Serpent.” Also at this time, he wrote “Eruption of Aetna”:
Have not I spoken, even I, Benito,
The big, the brave, the mighty Mussolini,
The ultra-modern Cæsar, with my ‘Veni
Vidi, Vici’?—let all the world agree, too!
Does a mere mountain think that it is free to
Stir up sedition? Shall such teeny-weeny
Volcanoes venture to display their spleeny
And socialist cant?—Subside, mosquito!8
It was the first in a series of anti-Mussolini poems Crowley wrote in response to his expulsion, published later that year as Songs for Italy.
Mudd had come to Tunis as early as June 20 to be closer to Crowley and help with the Great Work. Unable to afford separate lodgings, they shared a room, giving them ample time to talk. Mudd was so devoted a student and so dedicated an academician that he took reams of notes on everything they discussed. Among these were Crowley’s plans: he would summon Frank Bennett back to the Abbey, and he planned to contact Trotsky “to suggest that I be put in charge of a world-wide campaign to eradicate Christianity”;9 neither Bennett nor Trotsky would come through.
On July 22, Mudd’s mathematician friend joined them. Edmund Hugo Saayman (1897–1971) was born at Orange Free State in southern Africa, attending Boys High School in Riversdale and Grey University College in Bloemfontein, where he earned his BS degree.10 He arrived in the United Kingdom in October 192111 as a Rhodes Scholar attending New College, Oxford. Here, he was supervised by prominent English mathematician and number theorist G. H. Hardy (1877–1947).12 After his summer holiday with Mudd, he would return to Oxford to marry Janet Stokes in 1924, receive his BA with a third class in maths in 1925 and his MA in 1927.13 As a physics master at High Pavement School, Nottingham, and a part-time lecturer at Leicester University College, he would publish several influential papers in physics.14
A few days later, Crowley moved into the luxurious Tunisia Palace on a Lesser Magical Retirement.
In July, Crowley’s article on “The Genius of Mr. James Joyce” appeared in The New Pearson’s.15 Frater Achad, meanwhile, was publishing his own books in Chicago: the first, QBL: The Bride’s Reception (1923), was a boiled-down Thelemic version of Crowley’s own kabbalistic essays from The Equinox. Although this was acceptable, his next book, Crystal Vision through Crystal Gazing (1923) angered Crowley because of its unacknowledged extracts from The Vision and the Voice. On April 14, 1923, Jones completed the manuscript for his next book, The Egyptian Revival. In it, he claimed to restore the order of the paths on the Tree of Life by inverting their conventional arrangement. After finishing this book, he had a vision that inspired the pinnacle of his kabbalistic work, The Anatomy of the Body of God. On Achad’s output, Crowley wro
te:
The books—even apart from the absurd new attribution proposed for the Paths—are so hopelessly bad in almost every way—English, style, sense, point of view, oh everything!—yet they may do good to the people they are written for.16
August and September became a flurry of activity, Crowley finishing his comment on “Liber LXV”‘ proceeding with the Hag, fuming about Achad’s Egyptian Revival, and wooing Aimée Gouraud. On August 16 he wrote “Tyrol,” another anti-Mussolini poem. By August 25 he was planning a Golf Course Hotel that would never materialize. When he learned at the end of the month that his South African pupil Adam Gray Murray was in town, Crowley summoned him to his side in London. Like Bennett, Murray failed to show.
September began on a sour note for Crowley, who wrote in his diary for the 2nd:
This a.m. read of the Bombardment of Corfu, killing some dozen or more Armenian children—refugees—in revenge for the murder of some Wop fools by some persons unknown some 1,500 miles away! What utter fools—as well as blackguards—statesmen are!
Spent all day writing 6 sonnets (& some other verse) on the atrocity.
On September 17, Crowley updated the Hag to include a chapter covering the Abbey and his expulsion.
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