Perdurabo

by Richard Kaczynski

  In January 1928 Yorke took the name Volo Intellegere (I will to understand) upon joining the AA, and he devoted his spare time to managing Crowley’s finances. He sold his Chinese paintings and ivories to raise money and, that spring, put £400 into a publication account to rehabilitate Crowley’s name and publish his works. From this fund, Yorke paid Crowley a weekly allowance of £10. He also wrote the eight remaining AA members—including Jacobi, Wolfe, Olsen, and Smith—to regularize their membership subscriptions and permit Crowley to continue writing without monetary concerns; of these, only Jacobi regularly contributed $20 a month to the cause, forcing Crowley to rely on the Germers for much of his support. Nevertheless, this permitted Crowley a furnished flat at 55 Avenue de Suffren in Paris.

  Yorke also paid a typist to copy Crowley’s manuscripts for publication. One of these new projects was AC’s magnum opus, part three of Book Four, Magick in Theory and Practice. Of this manuscript, Crowley wrote to Yorke:

  Montague Summers appears to know what he is talking about. People generally do want a book on Magick. There never has been an attempt at one, anyhow since the Middle Ages, except Lévi’s.25

  Alphonsus Joseph-Mary Augustus Montague Summers (1880–1948), occult scholar, offered a curious contrast to AC. Whereas the latter identified with the infernal trappings of the Great Beast while explicating the holy quest for one’s divine nature, the former was an ordained deacon of the Church of England who specialized in demonology and black magic. Nevertheless the two men shared a mutual respect. Éliphas Lévi, also cited in the above quote, Crowley claimed as his previous incarnation, and a translation of his book, The Key of the Mysteries, appeared as a supplement to The Equinox I(10). Crowley correctly states the literary primacy of his book: whereas Montague Summers, A. E. Waite, and even Francis Barrett (The Magus, 1801) were primarily purveyors of medieval traditions, Magick in Theory and Practice was the first modern textbook on the subject in English. How big a market existed for such a book was another matter entirely.

  Alas, managing Crowley’s old stock of books was more complicated than Yorke had imagined. While he hoped to inventory these books, Yorke found them scattered around the world: in Chicago with Achad and Olsen, in Naples with Aguel (presumably), in Leipzig with Küntzel, and in London with Pickford’s storage. The latter stock (early works of poetry), he discovered, had been damaged when Pickford’s storage facilities flooded; although Crowley valued these books at thousands of pounds, professional booksellers hired by Yorke estimated that even a good salesperson would be lucky to realize £200 on them. Yorke settled with Pickford’s for the balance of past charges and £40 damages. He then paid the American Express Company to ship Crowley’s remaining works from Naples to Crowley’s Paris address.

  Finally, Yorke kept AC’s pipe dreams in perspective: one such scheme involved Metro-Goldwyn’s film adaptation of Maugham’s The Magician, which was opening on the Grand Boulevard March 23. Since Crowley received no compensation as the model of Oliver Haddo, he filed an injunction against showing the film. However, when representatives from the film company offered to pay Crowley, he refused. “The lawsuit is a pretext for a business deal,” he explained to Yorke. “I’m holding out for publicity and power.”26 Crowley wanted a contract to produce a series of educational films on magick. Yorke was pessimistic about the scheme.

  I cannot say that I think you will get any damages from Metro-Goldwyn over The Magician film. Your reputation is too bad to be damaged by that. Nor do I think there is any hope for rehabilitation of character. To my mind, part of your “mission,” if I may use a word I mistrust, is to show that the code of morals of what a Thelemite calls the Old Aeon has been superseded, and that now any act is right provided it is done in the right way, as in interpretation of True Will. It must have been your Will to be the Beast, and a whitewashed Beast is an useless commercial article.27

  He was right: when Crowley could have taken a quick financial settlement, he pushed too hard and got nothing at all from the film company.

  Promotional leaflet for Metro-Goldwyn Pictures’ adaptation of The Magician. (photo credit 17.1)

  Kasimira Bass returned to Crowley that spring. While they didn’t run off and marry, they did find bliss together. “She is the one possible magical partner for me, and she is perfect,” Crowley enthused. “Already, despite the greatest difficulties, we have succeeded beyond all my hopes in awakening a current of creative energy of enormously high potential.”28 Although she began signing her letters to W. T. Smith as 156,29 she complained that her standard of living fell below the expectations Crowley had given her. While he was used to living hand to mouth with faith that the gods would provide for his needs, Kasimira had no such conviction. “This is her first experience of living under magical laws,” he commented on their finances, “so that the funny little ways of the Gods rather get on her nerves.”30 They soon began quarreling over money and other petty matters. By June 6, Crowley’s glowing praise of her magical talent declined to “Kasimira is that same cauliflower Ego which destroyed Achad.”31

  During the summer of 1928, Ninette’s daughter Mimi was in the hospital for twenty-four days with a fever, measles. and bronchitis. Public assistance was in sorry shape there, and, penniless, Ninette could obtain no better care for her child. She wrote desperately to Crowley and Kasimira, begging for help, but to Crowley’s frustration forgot to include her address. He had no way to respond. That season, Crowley met Lance Sieveking, whose book he cited in The Diary of a Drug Fiend. The young author was in St. Tropez recovering from his wife’s leaving him for another man. Crowley walked the beach with Sieveking, consoling and conversing; he later did Sieveking’s horoscope and put him in touch with Yorke to work on Magick. Both Yorke and Sieveking agreed that no English publisher would touch the manuscript; and even if one did, they believed Scotland Yard and the Home Office would object and the Beaverbrook press would suppress it. Although Yorke could have printed it privately, he feared the consequences and encouraged Crowley to seek a U.S. printer.

  With £190 left in the publication fund, Yorke was now pulling out—from his trusteeship and from his editorship. His change of heart stemmed from personal difficulties with The Book of the Law:

  The crux of the matter is a) I have tried to accept the Law of Thelema and the New Aeon with you as [Savior of the Universe], Liber Legis [The Book of the Law] as the book, and Thelema as the logos. I cannot accept it. Liber Legis and its claims have bothered me throughout, as it bothered you until it beat you, and I suspect still does.… I cannot therefore support a movement whose sole aim is to spread the teaching contained in Liber Legis and the commentaries thereon.… Owing to my convictions, therefore, I cannot honestly assist in the practical handling of a publication fund or the raising of money for that purpose.32

  So Crowley hired Carl de Vidal Hunt (b. 1869) to prepare the public for his book. After becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1895, Hunt settled in Los Angeles,33 where he became part of the nascent motion picture industry, appearing in such early films as Roaring Camp (1916), The Marriage of Arthur (1916), and Jeremias (1922).34 While in his mid-fifties, he became a journalist, writing racy human interest stories that were syndicated across America.35 In Crowley’s employ, he published a story about Hollywood “film mother” Jane Wolfe’s stay at Cefalù as a resident of the “mystery house” run by “Sir Aleister Crowley, high priest of Thelema (oriental philosophy)”:

  Sir Aleister, known among his disciples as the “Beast,” is a Britisher, who spent his patrimony in search of the stoic philosophies of the East. He had lived with the Yogis in the silent wastes of India and had published books on the subject. Now he is a wanderer, barred even from his own country—but his friends declare him a genius.36

  When publishers Turnbull became interested in taking Magick, Crowley gave them a £200 deposit; however, they returned his deposit at the end of October after he refused to let them edit problematic passages.

  About this time, Kasimira announced sh
e was getting £3,000 for Beast’s publication fund. Yorke loaned her £200 against a promissory note, but it soon became clear that Kasimira was skimming money off the publication account. Yorke suggested Crowley dump her. AC concurred, writing in his diary,

  K. has been acting outrageously for some days. She is stupidly jealous of my talking to Yorke. She sulks and rages without sense. She complains of everything in the most idiotic way. She interferes with every act one does. It is intolerable, save for the Magical Necessity.

  I definitely appeal to the Gods to let this Cup pass from me.37

  Young Philadelphian art student Francis Israel Regardie (1907–1985) was born Israel Regudy in London on November 17, 1907, to a pair of poor Orthodox Jewish immigrants from Russia: cigarette maker Barnet Regudy and his wife, Phoebe Perry. The family name, Regudy, was mistakenly recorded as “Regardie” when Israel’s older brother joined the army, and the family adopted this spelling when it emigrated to Washington, D.C., in August 1921, where young Regardie studied art. At age fifteen he also began studying H. P. Blavatsky, Eastern scriptures, and yoga. When, at age eighteen, a lawyer friend read him Crowley’s writings on yoga from Book Four, their simplicity and clarity stunned him. As a result, his yoga interests quickly extended to magick. He read every Crowley title he could find, and he contacted the author in 1926. Crowley put him in touch with Germer, whom he met in New York and thereby acquired a set of The Equinox. Around this same time, he also received special dispensation as a minor to join the Washington College of the Societas Rosicruciana in America, taking his 0=0 degree in March 1926 and his Zelator initiation in June 1927.38

  When Crowley sought a new secretary during the summer of 1928, he wrote Regardie and offered him the job. He dearly wanted it but, as a minor, needed parental permission to obtain a passport. Knowing his parents would never let him study mysticism in France with Aleister Crowley, he told his father he had been invited to study with an artist in England.

  He sailed from New York, arriving at the noisy Gare St. Lazare station on the morning of October 12. Through the backdrop of French conversation he heard a distinctly British voice say, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.” Regardie turned to face Crowley, tall and pudgy, dressed in blue-gray plus fours. They shook hands—firm, Regardie noticed—then gathered his luggage. They took a taxi to Crowley’s flat, where AC made them coffee in a glass apparatus heated by an alcohol lamp. Thus Regardie, henceforth known as Frater NChSh (Serpent) or Frater Scorpio, became Crowley’s new secretary. He was not yet twenty-one.

  In person, Crowley proved to be venerable. He played chess frequently because his phlebitis often kept him homebound. On weekends when Yorke visited, he would set each of them up at a chessboard; then, seated in his favorite chair, smoking a pipe of perique tobacco and warming a snifter of brandy, he would sit with his back to them and call out his moves, playing them both simultaneously. Most amazing was that he usually won.

  Crowley spent much of his energy teasing timid Regardie, trying to persuade him to be a bit more outgoing. At one point he suggested Regardie forget about magick altogether and first hit the streets of Paris in order to become acquainted with every human vice. One evening he and Kasimira went out to see the sights of Paris and watch a movie. There, away from Beast’s watchful eye, she confided in him: she was leaving Crowley and wanted Regardie to deliver the message.

  Hearing the news, Crowley shrugged and calmly responded, “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.” On November 3 he recorded in his diary simply, “Kasimira bolted.” In a candid note to Yorke, he wrote:

  Relieved from the strain of Kasimira, I have been able to start serious magick with ritual precautions. The Climax of the first ceremony was marked, as it should be, by the sudden arising of a violent wind; and subsequent ceremonies have been equally notable.39

  Shortly thereafter, the mage was furious to learn that his ex-fiancée had previously been the lover of W. T. Smith, to whom he wrote:

  You send me a letter in which you tell me as plainly as anything can possibly do that she has been your mistress. She presents me this letter and imagines that I will not understand anything by it and dismiss the whole thing for weeks and months until, in a burst of confidence, the cat comes out of the bag. I am now looking like Diogenes with a lantern of much greater power to find somebody whose mistress she has not been.40

  A year later, Kasimira Bass would be safe and happy, conducting business in South America, eventually finding her way back to the United States.

  Crowley was now paying Hunt £20 a month for his services. Besides preparing the British public for the appearance of Magick in Theory and Practice and editing his Confessions, Hunt was responsible for arranging Crowley’s marriage to a wealthy woman who would support his work. One potential wife, Cora Eaton, did not work out but, on January 15, 1929, she married Karl Germer in Jersey City. Since Germer was supporting Crowley, the result was almost as if Crowley had married her himself. Cora, however, was not as willing as Germer to hand over her money to the Master.

  By November 8, 1928, Crowley found a new mistress in Nicaraguan-born Maria Teresa Ferrari de Miramar. A dark, short divorcée, she was charmingly convivial despite her poor grasp of English. Crowley called her “marvellous beyond words,”41 and she certainly made an impression: Jack Lindsay described her as “a fairly well-blown woman, oozing a helpless sexuality from every seam of her smartly cut suit, with shapely legs crossed and uncrossed.”42 Regardie’s first dinner with the new Scarlet Woman was likewise memorable: while he was busy pondering which utensil was proper to use for which portion of the meal, Crowley fell upon Marie and began humping her right on the floor.

  Her magical talents were also remarkable. She claimed to have conjured the devil on four occasions while dancing around bonfires in Nicaragua, and Crowley attested to her abilities shortly after their meeting, “She has absolutely the right ideas of Magick and knows some Voudou.… We did proper ritual consecrations, and arranged for the next Work.”43 Soon thereafter, AC noted in his diary the consequences of their magical workings:

  The Magical Phenomena in this apartment are now acute. Lights and shadows, dancing sparks, noises as of people walking about, a large dark ghost in the bedroom lobby, short attacks of rheumatism (to 3 of us) and a Nameless Fear which seized Regardie.44

  The following day, he also wrote about these manifestations to Yorke:

  The phenomena that have taken place in this apartment since the High Priestess of Voodoo [Marie de Miramar] displaced the woman from Samaria [Kasimira Bass] would be quite interesting to the Psychical Research Society, if any of them are not in a coma.45

  Visiting Paris in December 1928, Yorke recounts in his diary an impromptu magical working with Crowley, de Miramar, and Regardie. While Crowley banished and recited the Bornless One invocation, Marie saw visions and did a dance to evoke a fire spirit.

  Maria Theresa Ferrari de Mirimar and Aleister Crowley. (photo credit 17.2)

  By this point, relations between Hunt and Crowley deteriorated. Hunt, realizing he had his work cut out for him, complained to Yorke of Crowley’s “dormant, inarticulate, wheezy way of speaking what little he has to say.”46 Crowley, meanwhile, opined

  Hunt’s limitation is that he sees everything in terms of journalism. He is apparently unaware of the existence of the serious occult public. The trouble with him is that he is a cynic. If he could only believe in people and look for noble motives instead of base ones.47

  In Crowley’s mind, Hunt, with his irons in too many fires, was unable to devote enough time to any.

  Their business dealings came to a head when Hunt asked Crowley to “fix” the horoscopes of a couple to show them as perfectly compatible. “Hunt was bribed by the Infanta Eulalia, the mother of Don Louis, to arrange a marriage by which her son should get about £24,000 a year settled on him for life,” Crowley recorded;48 to Hunt’s displeasure, he refused to sell the Great Work. Before long, Crowley stopped paying him altogether.
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br />   Hunt promised dire consequences if AC did not pay his salary. “It is a type of blackmail well known in France,” Crowley scoffed,49 and his friend Gérard Aumont concurred. Yorke also noted, “Hunt had written me what AC interpreted as a blackmail letter. It probably was the first step towards blackmail.”50 Nevertheless, Hunt took a stack of Crowley’s news cuttings and the manuscript of Mortadello to the Prefecture. He also told the official that Crowley had been questioned regarding rumors that he had strangled three women in Sicily, and asked the authorities to look into the matter.

  In response, Crowley alleged that Hunt had stolen his employer’s personal property, i.e. the manuscripts. Furthermore, AC argued, Hunt showed bad faith by going to the police with papers entrusted to him as Crowley’s agent. “His first capital was the pennies he stole off his dead mother’s eyes,” Crowley said.51 As with his Metro-Goldwyn stunt, Crowley wasn’t out to ruin Hunt as much as he hoped to drum up publicity for Magick.

  Learning of this conflict, Yorke was furious. He had planned to sink a fortune into printing Magick, and now AC threatened to ruin it with a spate of bad publicity. He fired off a virulent criticism:

  you are a bloody, not a divine, fool in attacking Hunt. To start with, he was not in our employ when he sent those papers to the Prefecture. He told me at the time, and wrote to me afterwards, that he honestly thought it was impossible to help you, as you would not play up to the necessary parlour tricks, and that your past reputation was too much of a good thing. He could not, therefore, continue to take your money. He introduced you to good people, and can make a good showing that he worked for you. It was my honest opinion at the time that he was doing his best, and I wrote and told him so at the time.52