Two days later, he met Bertha Busch.
Crowley went walking on Monday, August 3. He saw Adlon and Bristol that morning and, at half-past noon, paused at the window of a travel agency on Unter den Linden. The woman who’d been watching him seized the opportunity to step forward and speak. “Where are you going for your next trip?” He turned and faced the beautiful thirty-six-year-old redhead who was trying to pick him up. Although her name was Bertha Busch, she preferred “Billie.” And although Crowley was twenty years older, age did not dissuade her.
Within three days, Crowley performed his first sex magical ritual with her. “I love Billie passionately & truly—& I must avoid her,” he soon wrote in his diary. “She might return my love.”44 His words were prophetic, for he was soon bedridden with bronchial asthma; Billie came to his side, dubbed him her “Darling Boy,” and nursed him to health. On August 29, Crowley introduced Billie to the Germers over dinner. Karl, who had been growing more eccentric with each passing month, explained “everything about Danish Butter to the amazed admiration of all parties.”45 Although they passed a pleasant time, Germer disliked Billie: he found her coarse and unworthy of the Beast. Despite this friction, Germer grudgingly agreed to pay the rent on their flat. They moved in September 15 and, at the end of the month, conducted a sex magick ritual to consecrate Billie as Crowley’s new Scarlet Woman.
That October—despite Germany’s economic catastrophe and Germer’s own financial distress—the art exhibit was on the verge of opening. Tension was high as Germer paid for framing seventy-three paintings and drawings (ultimately fifty-one were shown) and Crowley brought his copies of The Equinox, Konx Om Pax, The Legend of Aleister Crowley, Moonchild, The Diary of a Drug Fiend, and other books to display. The exhibit opened at the Gallery Neumann-Nierendorf on October 11 with many newspapers, the New York Times included, photographing and interviewing Crowley about the show. In the exhibition’s catalog, Nierendorf—comparing him to Dix, Nolde, Beckmann, Mueller, Schmidt-Rottluff, and Scholz—praised Crowley’s works:
there can be no doubt that the arranged exhibition is stimulating and more impressive than a lot of the English artwork we might otherwise have shown. The paintings are by the intensity of their desire and the primitiveness of their execution more closely related to German artists than to the rehash of customary French recipes commonly knocked together on the other side of the Channel today.46
Crowley’s diary for the day notes “Show about normal.” Despite the warm response, whether anything sold is unknown.47 In the end, Crowley packed his paintings and stored them with Martha Küntzel.
One good thing resulted from the show, however. On its first day, Crowley received a phone call from Gerald Hamilton (c. 1888–1970), who identified himself as Berlin correspondent for the London Times. He wanted to interview Crowley. Hamilton has been described as a strange wanderer: born in China, he was a world traveler and a connoisseur of fine food, and described Crowley as a “bon bourgeois” sharing his fondness for good talk and good food. They had so much in common that—despite Hamilton’s lack of interest in magick—they hit it off well. By the time Germer discovered Hamilton was not really a press correspondent, it no longer mattered: the two men were close friends. Compared to Germer’s antics, Hamilton was a godsend. Crowley filled his days “pentagramming off the Germers”48 until, that fall, “Karl … ditched Cora with his family and got a charming girl of thirty-one.”49
During the art exhibit, an associate of Martha Küntzel’s had a vision of the Scarlet Woman pregnant. When, on October 22, Billie suffered again from what Crowley dubbed the Nameless Fear—menstruation marked by heavy bleeding and painful cramps—the prophecy seemed wrong. AC was nevertheless nervous. When the pain became worse on October 26, he called a physician, who diagnosed her complaint as a miscarriage. “I was utterly crushed by sorrow and anxiety all day,” Crowley recorded.50
Billie recovered by the end of the month, and that November their sex lives assumed wildly orgiastic dimensions, driven by an intense, violent passion that brought out the beast in both of them. Crowley’s diary entries make this clear:
Monday, November 2. We went crazy. Instantly we got home I got down on S[carlet] W[oman]. She pissed gallons—we tore off our clothes & fucked & fucked & fucked. She tore my lips & my tongue—the blood streamed all over her face. We fucked. And suddenly she got a jealous fit about 3 cheap whores at Brunnigs & I strangled her—
Tuesday, November 3. Woke early & finished the fuck. Opus 59 very gently: both exhausted.
Tuesday November 10. S[carlet] W[oman] again rather upset at night—for no reason unless too much Korn & cunnilingus before dinner.
Wednesday November 11. A general orgie—including every possible device—from 3 to 6.30.
Thursday November 12. Recuperating—making vows of chastity—U.S.W. And while I was telephoning after lunch, she went into the study & waited for me with her bare bottom in the air … Opus 66.
On December 6, Billie got drunk again on corn alcohol, and she and Crowley began humping on the sofa. When their landlady walked in, Billie sheepishly hid in the kitchen while Crowley retreated to his study. Billie surprised AC when she walked into the study and drove a carving knife into him, just below the shoulder blade. “She then became violent,” he recalled.51 “I had to hold her down. So I bled till Marie [the landlady] got a doctor, about 2 hrs. later.” Most interesting about this incident is Crowley’s reaction. When Hamilton heard about the stabbing, he felt ill; and when Crowley wrote matter-of-factly that had the wound been a quarter inch lower it would have been fatal, Yorke was alarmed. Yet Crowley responded, “I wish you would read my letters carefully. The wound was not dangerous though I lost quarts of blood, but it just missed being fatal, which is different.”52 Rather than making it a bone of contention, he took it in stride as a facet of their relationship. The day after the stabbing, he noted with relief in his diary, “Bill started to menstruate, thus explaining everything neatly.”53
Crowley shared Christmas dinner of 1931 with Karl, his mistress Hedy, and Hamilton, along with novelist Christopher Isherwood (1904–1986) and poet Stephen Spender (1909–1995). Throughout the meal, Billie threatened Crowley with the silverware for misbehaving, and afterward slunk over and said,
Nach dem Essen sollst Du rauchen
oder deine Frau gebrauchen.54
(“After dinner you should smoke, or use your wife.”) Crowley laughed and asked her to fetch his pipe.
Hamilton and Isherwood were both homosexual and became close friends after Crowley introduced them. That evening they took AC to the Cosy Corner, a small blue-collar gay bar. Finding masculine and vain young men driven to prostitution by the economic collapse of the Weimar republic, Crowley giggled, “I haven’t done anything like this since I was in Port Said.” He bellied up to the bar and fixed his gaze on a bare-chested, sinewy man there. Beast, accustomed to Billie’s wild appetites, walked up and scratched him deeply on the chest. The man prepared to pulverize Crowley, and only a large gift of money saved Crowley from a pummeling. On the last day of 1931, AC again found himself in the company of his gay friends at a ball of homosexuals. Crowley called it “Frightfully dull, pretentious, & grotesque. Left at 11:30.”55
Crowley’s friendship with Hamilton intensified when, on January 22, 1932, the strange wanderer became a boarder in the spare room of Crowley’s flat. The arrangement also gave Crowley another opportunity to earn money: since Hamilton’s politics leaned leftward, and he had introduced Crowley to German communist leaders such as Ernst Thaelmann (1886–1944), Beast worked as a British agent, submitting regular reports on Hamilton to Colonel Carter in Scotland Yard. In a letter to Yorke, Crowley cautioned,
Hamilton leaves for London to-morrow night, and may probably call on you. If he should learn that I am as I was born, my usefulness would be over; and if he should even suspect that I have any relations with N[icholas Carter] beyond pulling his leg, there would be work for you within a week or two with that embalmer
. So please avoid discussing my politics, or, if forced to do so, say that you regard me as at least 80 per cent Bolshevik. Do please take this most seriously and be as cautious as you know how.56
Hamilton was good-humored about the arrangement; as Deacon suggests,57 he was probably spying on Crowley for the Germans.
Living with Crowley, Hamilton witnessed the constant and frequently violent relationship between Beast and Frau Busch. Early one afternoon, Hamilton came home to find Billie trussed up like a chicken, with a note beside her warning that under no circumstances should he untie her. On another occasion, Hamilton came home late one night to find broken crockery strewn all over and Billie sleeping, stark naked, in front of the long-extinguished hearth. Although the room was freezing in the dead of winter, Hamilton left her undisturbed. He went to Crowley’s room, where the master was sleeping fully clothed, shook him, and asked, “Is Billie sick?” Crowley sighed angrily. “Hasn’t that bitch gone to bed yet?” To Hamilton’s surprise, Crowley rolled out of bed, stomped into the living room, and gave Billie a stern kick. She leapt to her feet, and their obvious struggle began anew. Hamilton watched, dumbfounded, as Crowley tried to hold her down and reach for the rope simultaneously. “Don’t just stand there looking like a bloody gentleman,” Crowley cried. “Help me bind her!” Hamilton ignored both their pleas for assistance and left the flat, returning later with a doctor, who gave her morphine (the usual cure when she got this way). Crowley’s diary entry for this evening is indeed cryptic: “Bill—whew! the best show yet. Started to fuck—she got sadistic—then savage—poor Hamilton!—(I had got her quiet when he came in & woke her) doctor—morphia—hell till 6:30.”58
Finances picked up again that May 1, 1932, when Crowley heard the sad news that Rose had died in February; Lola Zaza was now receiving £232 annually from her mother’s estate, entitling Crowley to the full £165 annually from their joint trust fund. However, this only guaranteed £3 a week for himself and Bill, and Crowley insisted he needed at least fifty a month to carry on his business. Before long, Crowley would petition Yorke that
the trustees have it in their discretion to pay none, or any part, or the whole, of the income to any one of the beneficiaries. I made my application to you and Frater D.D.S. [George Cecil Jones] to let me have the whole amount while things remain in their exceedingly critical situation.… Lola is the only child of her mother who has quite an adequate income of at least £500 a year; and Gerald Kelly is making very large sums out of his outrages upon the art which he professes and prostitutes.
Yorke’s terse recollection of this matter: “We continued to pay Lola some or all or none in accordance with her needs.”59
At this time, Crowley’s literary career was looking up. A producer in Berlin named Ribbons wished to put on Mortadello if Crowley could get it translated into German; publisher Hans Weber hoped to issue translations of Crowley’s works; and a filmmaker named Offuls wanted to make occult films based on Crowley’s work. AC was notorious for misspelling names, and “Offuls” is almost certainly German—and later Hollywood—movie director Max Ophüls (1902–1957), who was just beginning to gain international acclaim with his Liebelei (“Love Affair,” 1932). To capitalize on these opportunities, AC planned a German publication syndicate with Yorke and other backers. He hoped to publish full and condensed versions of his Confessions, the plays Mortadello and Three Wishes, and several leftovers from the Mandrake plan, including a short story collection, Liber Aleph, and Little Essays Toward Truth. He wrote eagerly, “The plan is to put me over in Germany as they did for Bernard Shaw, Frank Harris and Oscar Wilde. Then and only then will the English follow.”60
Once again he counted on Yorke to produce the capital necessary to pull off the deal; but, stung by Mandrake’s collapse, Yorke was reluctant to place himself—or any of his acquaintances—at Crowley’s mercy. Although he contacted potential financiers, none wished to invest in the Great Beast. When a much-anticipated loan to Yorke fell through, Crowley was so disappointed and furious that he accused Yorke of sabotaging the deal. He fired off several acrid letters to Yorke, including the following:
Every word you write is in an attempt to avoid your own responsibility. The £30, not yet here, means a reprieve until the end of the month, no more, and does not in the least remove the feeling that we are standing on the drop. You are treating us as Boston treated Sacco & Vanzetti,61 and you apparently expect compliments and gratitude.
Now here is another ethical point, and one so deadly serious that I must copy your words and rub it in: “If we start talking of the cat, I would suggest you qualify for its reception by involving a sick woman in your affairs when you are not in a position to look after her properly.” You really wrote that base and vile sentence. It is before my eyes or I should find it hard to believe that any man, however low, could ever admit. But I’m afraid that’s you all over. “What? He’s sick? He’s poor? He’s likely to die? His work is in danger? Hurrah. That lets me out.”
Your one thought is to abandon the ship. “Alright, I’ll take the MSS and you can die in the gutter.” … Never mind. Go on with your little dinners and dances with people who don’t count and who are doomed anyway to perish in their own stupidity.”62
That was just the beginning. Although Frater Volo Intellegere passed from Probationer to Neophyte in November 1931, he failed, in AC’s estimation, to accept the work of the order. Crowley expected him to sacrifice everything—his family, fortune, and reputation—for the Great Work: namely helping the chosen Prophet of Thelema do his job. His reluctance to do so, in Crowley’s mind, was cowardly, the sort of materialistic clinging that doomed the Babe of the Abyss. In an effort to return Yorke to his senses, Crowley wrote a series of insulting letters questioning Yorke’s motives, loyalty, and manhood.
Yorke, however, was not about to throw away his life the way that Leah, Norman, Ninette, and others before him had. Perhaps he was materialistic, but he had a lot to lose; at this point he was contemplating marriage and an extended trip to Shanghai. While he admired Crowley as a great writer and teacher, Yorke had no intention of ruining himself to put over the Great Work.
Yorke recalled the episode ending unresolved when “I told him to come to London and raise the money himself.”63 On May 29, Crowley instead sent Billie to London to negotiate loans with Yorke. She arrived in old clothes and stayed in a cheap Fitzrovia hotel, with Yorke feeding and supporting her. “Without your presence, it is hopeless for her to raise money,” Yorke said, trying to convince him to come to London himself. “Do try and get it into your head that, however willing, I have not got the cash to support Bill.”64 Crowley maintained he could not make the trip without £200 to buy new clothes.
Frustrated by Crowley’s refusal to tend to his own business, Bill spent much of her time in suicidal tears. Yorke was aghast, thinking he was seeing Crowley destroy Bill the way he did Marie. To complicate things, Crowley had written a £10 check without funds to cover it: an offense punishable by imprisonment. “I cannot see how sitting tight will help you,” he wrote again. “You will merely mope, play chess, drink, and develop toothache, asthma and other nervous complaints.”65 However, Crowley soon found himself evicted from his flat on June 17 for nonpayment, and he set off five days later for London. It was the last time Crowley would reside outside England.
Crowley traveled north of London to the Colney Hatch asylum on July 5. Checking on Marie, he spoke with her doctor, Alexander Cannon (1896–1963), a figure as odd as Crowley.
Square and stout with a very large head, entirely bald except for patches of greying hair above the ears, he reminds you a little of an outsize Pickwick. His round clean-shaven face is pink but a trifle blotchy; his mouth pursed.… Black coat, striped trousers, spats, and the scarlet ribbon of one of the foreign orders of which his is a member—he prefers to be known as “His Excellency Doctor Sir Alexander Cannon”—complete one of the most striking ensembles in Medicine.66
He earned both an MD and PhD from his schoolin
g in Leeds, London, Vienna, and Hong Kong, and wrote several texts for his profession. He also traveled in the Orient, studying under yogis and learning secrets of mediumship, teleportation, and magic. His book The Invisible Influence (1933) would contain an account of him levitating himself, his porters, and his luggage across a chasm in Tibet.67 Crowley noted he had “rather a bug in his brain over hypnosis,” which he felt could be used to tap mankind’s hidden powers.
Cannon would go on to publish his eccentric theories in The Invisible Influence, with the result that, in December 1933, he would be asked to resign from Colney Hatch. Although he would find another post at Bexley Heath Mental Hospital, he would devote much energy to teatime lectures and demonstrations of magic at the Mayfair Hotel.
For now, he said Mrs. Crowley’s case was hopeless, and he requested AC “to leave Marie severely alone.”68 Despite differences of opinion between the man who claimed to have levitated himself across a fifty-foot river and the man who claimed to be the World Teacher as prophesied in the Book of Revelation, Crowley respected Cannon’s request to leave Marie alone. Colney Hatch was her home for the next twenty years, where she died during the 1950s.
A series of disappointments marked the second half of the summer of 1932. Yorke’s plans to travel to Shanghai left Crowley financially high and dry. When AC’s landlord evicted him, seizing his possessions in lieu of unpaid rent, Yorke paid £50 for the manuscripts and added them to his growing collection. Crowley’s plan to put on a performance of Mortadello fell through when his collaborator, Ribbons, backed out. The metaphorical backbreaker came on September 7 when Crowley read Nina Hamnett’s autobiography, Laughing Torso (1932). It had come out while he was in Berlin, and this was his first chance to peruse it. Nina mentioned AC throughout, painting him in a kind light, and imagined her former guru would be delighted. However, Crowley reacted with acrimony when he read the following passage:
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