Crowley had a temple in Cefalù in Sicily. He was supposed to practise Black Magic there, and one day a baby was said to have disappeared mysteriously. There was also a goat there. This all pointed to Black Magic, so people said, and the inhabitants of the village were frightened of him.69
“Abominable libels,” he wrote in his diary,70 and took the book to his solicitor. He demanded an injunction and planned to sue. While he was at it, he also sued Ribbons and Yorke for good measure.
On September 7, Crowley filed for £40,000 in damages against Yorke, the sum he would have made if Yorke hadn’t mismanaged his finances. Stunned, Yorke figured this could only be a ploy to keep him from leaving for Shanghai. It clarified to Yorke that Crowley would stop at nothing to extract contributions from his students. Thus Yorke resigned from the AA. He gave Kerman the diaries of two probationers he had been supervising—Mrs. French (Soror Maximus) and Mr. Vilette (Volo Vincere)—along with the remaining stock of Crowley’s books. He provided his own solicitors with a written account of his dealings with Crowley, then left for China in the middle of September. The case never came to court.
Despite the harsh words between them, Yorke and Crowley corresponded and visited after his return from Shanghai. Because Yorke was no longer a student, Crowley made no further financial demands of him. Because he was free to support Crowley when and how he saw fit, Yorke continued to help both morally and financially. He saw something remarkably brilliant in Crowley and, despite their differing ideologies, vowed to preserve Crowley’s legacy. Nevertheless, their past was an invisible wall between them. It would be eleven years before they made peace. On June 6, 1944, Crowley would write to Yorke:
1. It is dangerous to judge a man unless you have been able to put yourself in his place. I want you to understand me first of all; to look through my eyes at what happened between us.
2. I have always taken myself and my mission with absolute seriousness. I believed in the chiefs and in my authority; also that those who opposed me were asking for trouble. I was, if you like, 80% crazy in the same sense that Mohammed was, and I have often regretted that my common sense and my sense of humour prevented me from going over the line. But I was never 1/10th of 1% dishonest. Use your imagination. Suppose I had been a Spencer Lewis. What a garden path I could have led you down, and nothing would ever have persuaded you that it wasn’t the path of the wise.
3. When we first met, I was having my Indian Summer. No. 1 with Kasimira and Hanni.… Plus I interpreted your motto as ‘I will to become a Master of the Temple’ in just that sense of the words that was true to me. I see now that you had not really bound yourself by this oath, but I thought you had done so. The crux of this initiation, as you know, is to surrender—or, rather, to annihilate—“all that I have and all that I am.” When, therefore, it seemed to me that you were not taking your fences cleanly, I concluded that you were becoming divided against yourself—whence, of course, Black Brothers and all the rest of it—and jumped. What you read as abuse I had written as the Archbishop’s most fatherly of rebukes.…
4. About money … Do please try once more to put it on my boots. Remember that I had spent over £100,000 of my own money, directly or indirectly, on the Great Work. This purchase of the egg without haggling was completely in my blood, so that I simply could not understand how any serious aspirant could even think of doing otherwise … I am still utterly sure that this is a condition Number 1 of full attainment, but I realize that there are people who don’t see, and can’t be made to see, the necessity.71
On August 17, 1932, in the midst of frustrations and litigations, AC met with London’s largest and most famous bookseller, William Alfred Foyle (1885–1963), and his daughter, Christina (1911–1999). Crowley’s was a familiar face to the Foyles, and they arranged to buy half the four hundred remaining copies of Magick in Theory and Practice that Hanchant had remaindered, trimmed in size, and bound in a red hardcover sans the color plate. Foyle paid five shillings apiece for the books, and scheduled AC to speak at its September 15 literary luncheon.
Miss Foyle began organizing her literary luncheons in 1930 when she was just nineteen. She hosted not only prominent writers like Shaw and Wells but also painters, actors, prime ministers, and other celebrities. They proved wildly successful, not only providing great publicity but also keeping the business afloat during the lean 1930s.72 Although people told her that she should be ashamed of herself for hosting a man of Crowley’s reputation, she knew him as a frequent patron of her father’s bookstore. Having spent many enjoyable hours visiting him in his Earls Court flat, she knew him to be harmless. Her attitude was more in line with Rose Macaulay, who said of the luncheon, “I don’t mind what he does, as long as he doesn’t turn himself into a goat.”
Five hundred guests, including London’s social and literary elite, attended Foyle’s Twenty-third Literary Luncheon at Grosvenor House. Crowley’s talk on “The Philosophy of Magick” was one of his most lucid.
I am sorry if I am not as frivolous as might be required by the exigencies of the occasion, but Magick is a very serious subject, and I have a very serious message to bring to you. It is very little understood what Magick is. It is connected in the minds of some people with conjuring. In the minds of others it is connected with charlatanism. I want to tell you that Magick has been since the very earliest ages of humanity the tradition of the wise men. I want to tell you what the essential doctrine of the magician is with regard to man’s place in the universe and that it is given in The Book of the Law that “every man and every woman is a star.” What is a star? Philosophers have always agreed about one thing—that is that the Universe to be intelligible at all must be considered as one and homogeneous. Therefore you can understand the position of the mystic who says that each of us is a member of the body of God. You can understand what is written in the Bible, “Your bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost.” It is upon these postulates that the general theory of Magick is founded.73
After the luncheon, women with autograph books lined up for an introduction to the Wickedest Man in the World. He was elated with the outcome, writing in his diary, “Made a good speech!!!!!!”74 With the book released to the public, rather than subscribers, for the first time, the Occult Review finally reviewed it. Neuburg also gave it a positive treatment in The Referee; in fact, he was so impressed that he briefly contacted Crowley again.
After he became the Referee’s poetry editor in April 1933 Neuburg discovered Dylan Thomas and eventually passed on his tales of AC. Shortly thereafter, Thomas formed a second connection to Crowley when he took Betty May as a lover; her involvement in AC’s lawsuit against Nina Hamnett would soon follow. Unsurprisingly, several apocryphal tales have circulated wherein Dylan Thomas meets the Beast. As one legendary account goes, some time later, in 1941 or 1942, Thomas would find himself in pubs, retelling the stories he had heard from Neuburg, such as the time Crowley turned him into a camel in the Sahara Desert. One evening, Thomas and his companion, Theodora, were waiting to meet someone when the patrons began discussing ghosts. “Dullan,” one finally called out, “tell us: have ye ever seen a ghost?”
Thomas, who was normally very uneasy about paranormal events, replied jovially, “No, but Aleister Crowley appeared in my bathwater once.”
The room fell silent. Only then did he realize that the Wickedest Man in the World himself was sitting at the end of the bar. Thomas dropped his head and absorbed himself in doodling, as he often did when moody or uncomfortable. Eventually, Crowley walked up and presented Thomas with a scrap of paper. Upon it was a duplicate of his doodle. In response, Dylan grabbed Theodora’s hand and, even though they hadn’t met their friend, whisked her out of the pub. Certainly more fiction than fact, it remains a popular “Crowley story.”
On September 20, 1932, Isidore Kerman served a writ on Hamnett’s publisher, Constable and Co., to immediately cease production of Laughing Torso until the courts heard Crowley’s libel complaint. Two days later in Vacation Court, Cha
ncery, AC argued that Hamnett’s collection of anecdotes about him were indecent, vulgar, and ignorant. They were entirely untrue, and he couldn’t understand how the book came to be written. Justice Lawrence ruled that the injunction against Constable and Co. should stand until the October 5 hearing.
Crowley claimed he, Kerman, Hamnett, and her publisher met thereafter and agreed to an out-of-court settlement of £1,000 and a published apology, but that “Nina got a crook lawyer to start a fuss.”75 Lawyer Martin O’Connor convinced Nina to defend herself. On October 5, the injunction Crowley v. Constable and Co., Limited and Others came to court. After four hours’ testimony and fifteen minutes’ consideration, the injunction was defeated pending the outcome of the libel suit. “Considering that he had by law to decide against us,” Crowley commented, “he made it damned hot for O’Connor.”76 Even though the injunction was settled, the libel case itself had only begun.
AC moved into 20 Leicester Square on September 26 and began preparing a talk on psychic rejuvenation. Harry Price (1881–1948) of the National Laboratory of Psychical Research for the Scientific Investigation of Alleged Abnormal Phenomena had invited Crowley to give the lecture before the Society for Psychical Research on October 5. Admission was ten guineas a head, and the lecture, titled “Amrita,” was Crowley’s ploy to advertise OTO’s secret “tonic of rejuvenation.” The basis of his claims rested in the youthful bursts of energy Crowley experienced during his retirement at Lake Pasquaney in 1916, when he was experimenting heavily with sex magick. While sworn not to reveal the sexual components of this elixir, he accepted a few “patients” to receive the miracle drug at the rate of twenty-five guineas weekly.
As Frau Busch increasingly frequented London’s pubs—including one named Cheerio, where a drugged prostitute reputedly bit her—her relationship with Crowley became less intimate. She faded from the picture at this time. Shortly after New Year’s Day 1933, she entered Grosvenor Hospital for Women; shortly thereafter, Crowley noted in his diary that he was “Arranging Bill’s marriage.”77 She finally ran off with a former middle-weight boxing champion, who supposedly beat her and forced her to walk the streets; because “it does not improve a woman’s allure … if her face is a purplish pulp,”78 she fared poorly, for which her husband would beat her and send her back out again. These claims about fallen friends were typical of Crowley, going back to the first time he claimed an impecunious Mathers was pimping his wife.
On Saturday, January 7, 1933—after seeing Billie off to Brighton—Crowley walked the Paddington streets. Passing the Modern Book Co. at 23 Praed Street, he spied a copy of Moonchild in the window, along with a card reading “Aleister Crowley’s first novel, The Diary of a Drug Fiend, was withdrawn from circulation after an attack in the sensational press.” He was furious at the implication that his first novel had been suppressed. Despite his efforts with the “Open Letter to Lord Beaverbrook” and The Legend of Aleister Crowley, the public still considered him a degenerate. “Libel!” he muttered to himself.
That Tuesday, Crowley visited his solicitor and began a suit charging the bookseller, Mr. Gray, with libel. The case came to court on May 10, when Justice Bennett ruled in favor of Crowley, who received £50 and costs:
There was not the smallest ground for suggesting that any book Mr. Crowley had written was indecent or improper. Mr. Gray wanted the public to believe that the book to which the label was attached was an indecent book.79
In order to produce documentation for his elixir of rejuvenation, Crowley began recording his physical state when taking this elixir. On January 23, 1933, he began the experiment, noting the condition of his asthma, weight, stricture, sex drive, and other matters. After the first week, Crowley noted marginal improvement in his asthma and his stricture “quite miraculously less,” although he still suffered from broken sleep and a distended abdomen. On February 8, he had sex for the first time in months, noting “These were difficult to perform and quite unsatisfactory in result.”80
When he completed the experiment after five weeks, he decided that his active sex life and absence of stricture indicated success. “Thoughts all robust & juvenile e.g. I think naturally of ski if it snows; I want to walk rather than ride etc., etc. Irritated (7 a.m.) because I can’t go & take exercise!”81 Although Crowley judged his experiment a success, his diaries suggest otherwise: he was still unable to sleep, his asthma constantly left him coughing badly, and he spent February 19 sick in bed all day.
Another scheme at this time was to market Crowley’s distinctive sex attraction ointment. Called “IT,” the perfume gave AC an unusual—but not unpleasant—scent. As with Amrita, the active ingredient of IT was Crowley’s sexual fluids. On June 9, Crowley recorded in his diary, “IT worked wonders—all women after me!” Like the previous scheme, IT never took off.
That June, Crowley sold a series of articles to the Sunday Dispatch for £40. In them, he defended himself against accusations made about him in the press, and sought to educate readers on matters of the occult:
I have been accused of being a ‘black magician.’ No more foolish statement was ever made about me. I despise the thing to such an extent that I can hardly believe in the existence of people so debased and idiotic as to practice it.…
The “Black Mass” is a totally different matter. I could not celebrate it if I wanted to, for I am not a consecrated priest of the Christian Church.82
These articles were evidently ghost-written by Dispatch feature writer Ian Coster (b. 1903), who translated AC’s florid words into journalistic prose. Hoping to attract readers with a series of articles “by” the wickedest man in the world, Coster was disappointed to find Crowley less wicked than expected, complaining, “He makes black magic as tame as a kids’ party” and “The only black things I discovered about him were his pipe and tobacco.”83
The Sunday Dispatch pieces were among several articles that ran in London papers in 1933, including the Referee and Empire News, to rehabilitate his reputation.84 Although Crowley could not undo the damage done by the Sunday Express and John Bull, he hoped to regain some credibility.
Crowley around the time of his 1933 lawsuit with Ethel Mannin. (photo credit 18.2)
At this time, Crowley read novelist and travel writer Ethel Mannin’s (1900–1984) memoirs, Confessions and Impressions (1930), where she described Crowley as “that high priest of black magic who likes nothing better than to be regarded as His Satanic Majesty the Prince of Darkness, and who would take it as a compliment to be called an arch-devil.”85 This and similar passages sent Crowley into Kerman’s office, filing an injunction against the publisher and printer. When the case appeared before Justice Farwell on July 25, 1933, Mannin’s solicitor, John W. Morris, argued that the book came out in 1930, and Crowley had voiced no objection to its contents. Constantine Gallop argued on Crowley’s behalf that he knew nothing at all about the book when it appeared, and that the passages about him were entirely untrue. Alas, Justice Farwell declined to grant the injunction.
Meanwhile, AC’s students thrived in the United States. As early as May 1929, Jane Wolfe had begun preparing for an OTO lodge in Hollywood. Her circle included her voice teacher Regina Kahl, Max and Leota Schneider, and Wilfred Talbot Smith (1885–1957), with whom Wolfe had had a brief affair. Smith was a pale and short man who had signed Jones’s 1914 petition for a Vancouver OTO charter from Reuss. In 1921 Crowley appointed him Grand Treasurer General of British Columbia, honorary VII°, and Sovereign Grand Inspector General. When in 1932 Crowley appointed Smith as his successor, he and Kahl (now his lover) took a large house at 1746 Winona Boulevard in Los Angeles as their headquarters. Loving simple things in life—nature, literature, conversation, and handiwork—Smith eagerly converted the attic into a temple.86
Crowley encouraged their public performances of the Gnostic Mass every Sunday, with the ambitious hope that the California group could find a priestess with lots of sex appeal and film the mass with Crowley as priest. The masses in Smith’s attic temple attr
acted a dozen or so observers, largely from a curious group of science fiction writers. When the group began to recycle its profits into improving the temple, the perpetually penniless Crowley objected to having his contributions cut. Smith, meanwhile, insisted they needed a properly equipped temple to attract people and money with a spectacular Gnostic Mass. Ultimately, their correspondence became petty, Crowley ridiculing Smith’s grammar and accusing him of mismanaging the Great Work. Smith, who worked for a pittance as a bookkeeper for the California Gas Company since 1922, objected to the accusations:
Christ, you are like a child.… Listen, I may write rotten letters as far as spelling and literary style, but I don’t misrepresent or exaggerate. I never said or intimated that 80 or 100 people attended the Mass. I merely said we had two social affairs which that number attended.
My attic temple is 36 by 16 feet, and at the most, if the floor would stand it, could not contain more than 30 people. I don’t sit on my arse all day, but leave the house at 8 in the morning and return at 5:30 pm if I don’t stay at the office until 10:00 pm as I did twice last week. In my spare time, when not too worn out, I endeavor to make social contacts in the hope that they may be of use to Us.…
Three times I have built a temple on this continent. There is nothing to it, I know, for any dumb carpenter could have done the same if we had had the money to pay him. The point is we did not have it.…
You have not made much money out of your talent with a pen and paper. I have not made money out of my talent with a hammer and nails. Perhaps together we may yet become bloated capitalists for the world’s good.87
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