Martha Küntzel had been overjoyed when Adolf Hitler became Führer on August 19, 1933. She had considered Hitler her Magical Son, and intended to convert him to Thelema because The Book of the Law claimed that the first nation to accept it would rule the world. Although she attempted to get a copy of The Book of the Law to Hitler in the 1920s—and Crowley heavily annotated a copy of Hitler Speaks,6 claiming references to Thelema were interspersed throughout its pages—this was certainly not the case. Hitler’s ideology was formed long before Küntzel entered the picture. The Nazis began gunning for magicians in 1933, first banning fortune-telling, next confiscating occult books and outlawing secret societies, and finally imprisoning high-ranking occultists, including those from Freemasonry to the Fraternitas Saturni. Eventually, Küntzel’s own papers—including the stock of Crowley paintings stored with her after the Berlin exhibit—were seized and destroyed. Although AC initially supported the idea of converting a political leader to Thelema, his support of Hitler quickly dissipated when the chancellor showed his true colors.
When the British Home Office refused to extend Karl Germer’s temporary visa, it forced him to return to Germany on February 2, 1935. He was arrested at a relative’s house in Leipzig on February 13, charged with having illegal Masonic connections. He was taken first to Berlin, then to Esterwegen, a camp on the Dutch frontier.
Cora sought help from the American consul, but when she sent him a telegram from the States, the Nazis intercepted it and placed Karl in solitary confinement. He maintained his sanity by reciting the Thelemic Holy Books from memory and aspiring to his holy guardian angel. Cora’s constant inquiries to the American consul finally resulted in Germer’s release on August 1. That he was a German and had served as a major during the Great War helped.
A condition of his release forbade Germer to leave Germany and required him to report his residence and movements regularly. Thus Karl took an apartment near Belgium and reported it as per his parole, but also took another residence under an assumed name. One October night, he sneaked across the border to Belgium. Although he returned to England on a Belgian refugee passport, Germer was ultimately forced back to Belgium, where he stored his belongings and worked for an exporter of farm machinery in Brussels.
On April 14, 1934—the day after Crowley lost his court case against Constable and Company—W. T. Smith incorporated the Church of Thelema. This act was a bone of contention because Crowley wanted his American students to incorporate OTO, while Smith and Jacobi both argued that a church would net them tax-exempt status.
In June 1935, Smith wrote to Crowley about an influx of students to their group. C. F. Russell had set up his own OTO spin-off groups, “The Choronzon Club” and “GBG,” which advertised a shortcut to initiation. “It appears that, in a few short weeks, one may become 7°=4° or more,” Smith wrote.7 It had started five years previously—in spring 1930—when Russell wrote a series of articles for Chicago’s The Occult Digest.8 Coinciding with his first article, “Viens,” in May 1930, he began running a banner ad that read:
SPECIAL NOTICE TO ADVANCED STUDENTS
We will disclose a short cut to INITIATION to ALL those who are willing to perform THE GREAT WORK! Here is the TEST. Can you do exactly as you are told, just one simple easy thing and KEEP SILENT FOREVER about your success? Then send your name and address with one dollar to C. F. Russell, Secretary.
CHORONZON CLUB, P. O. Box 181, Chicago
MAKE SURE YOU KNOW YOUR OWN MIND BEFORE YOU ANSWER!
This ad ran for twenty-six months, from May 1930 to June 1932. The following month he switched to a new banner ad which ran until February 1933:
THERE IS A SHORTCUT TO INITIATION
The ANCIENT WAY to the Adeptship and beyond the ULTIMATE ATTAINMENT is now opened to Members of the CHORONZON CLUB by a scientific technic based on the Supreme Secret of all PRACTICAL MAGICK. The enrollment fee is one dollar. The final fee is six dollars. There are absolutely no further fees, dues or alms of any kind. Our business is to Initiate, not to make money. If you are willing to do exactly as you are told and can keep silence, apply today to any Member in your own town or send your application with the enrollment fee directly to:
MR. C. F. RUSSELL, Secretary, P. O. Box 181, Chicago.
After that, he ran a series of shorter classified ads that ran until December 1933.
C. F. Russell’s later advertisements in The Occult Digest for the Choronzon Club (clockwise from upper left: June, September, October, and November/December, 1933). (photo credit 22.1)
From what Smith had gathered, the system provided financial incentives for people to initiate more members and set up more lodges: while membership cost $1, the Lodgemasters split the $6 Neophyte initiation fee with Russell in Chicago. The group boasted five hundred members in Denver alone. However, Russell announced the beginning of the order’s five years of silence that summer: no more initiations would take place, and all typescript instructions were to be returned or destroyed. In response, members flocked to Crowley’s group.
Appalled by the details of Russell’s activities, Crowley asked Jane Wolfe to talk sense into him. When Russell refused to cooperate, Crowley expelled him from OTO and circulated the following encyclical:
To those whom it may concern,
The Master Therion warns all aspirants to the Sacred Wisdom and the Magick of Light that initiation cannot be bought or even conferred. It must be won by personal endeavour. Members of the true Order of the AA are pledged to zeal and service to those whom they supervise, and to accept no reward of any kind for such service. Nor does the Order receive any fees whatsoever when degrees of initiation are conferred by its authority.
He especially warns all persons against C.F. Russell of Chicago, Illinois, and his agents. He is a thief, swindler, and blackmailer. He has stolen the property of the Order, and used it to enable him to pose as its representative and so to carry on his swindles upon would-be initiates. Russell is a man of no education; he cannot even spell correctly. Steps have already been taken to prosecute him for his frauds.
Therion.
Aleister Crowley.9
That fall, far from the depredations of the German war machine, OTO took its first steps in California. On September 21 at 7 p.m., Jane Wolfe escorted seven aspirants into the desert. Here, Smith, Schneider, Jacobi, and Kahl conducted the 0° initiation, admitting the seven seekers into the OTO grade of Minerval. Afterwards, Smith announced the name of their lodge: Agape. It was the Greek word for “love,” and, like thelema, added to 93.
At this time, a war that had nothing to do with Hitler or Europe raged. The battlefield was the United States, but the combatants never faced each other, and no casualties resulted. Sounding like the 1910 Mathers v. Crowley case, both sides of the skirmish—the Fraternitas Rosae Crucis (FRC) and the Ancient and Mystical Order Rosæ Crucis (AMORC)—deemed themselves the “true” Rosicrucian Order and their opponents “Black Magicians.”
The Pennsylvania-based FRC was descended from Paschal Beverly Randolph (1825–1875), whose psychosexual doctrines in Eulis!10 and other books influenced OTO system of sex magic. Randolph had received a charter from the Societas Rosicruciana, and over the years the mantle of leadership passed to Freeman B. Dowd then to R. Swinburne Clymer (1878–1966). Now Clymer was slugging it out with a Mr. Lewis.
Before H. Spencer Lewis (1883–1939) founded AMORC in 1915, he was simply Harvey Lewis, illustrator for a New York mystery magazine. He was initiated into a French Rosicrucian tradition in 1909, then founded his own branch in the United States. As mentioned previously, he met Crowley in New York in 1918, shortly before moving the AMORC headquarters to California, where it has flourished ever since. Crowley had recognized Lewis as an honorary VII° and in 1921 Theodor Reuss issued a “Gauge of Amity” stating that OTO and AMORC worked along cooperative lines. Since his degree was honorary, Lewis took no initiation or instruction; it was simply Crowley’s (and, later, Reuss’s) recognition of Lewis’s other accomplishments to which
the VII° corresponded. Lewis admittedly drew on Crowley, Eckartshausen and Franz Hartmann as sources of information, and even borrowed the GD’s Rosy Cross and the Thelemic motto “Love is the law, love under will.” In his Militia (1933), Lewis claimed his authority derived from OTO.
Clymer, having read and thoroughly misunderstood Crowley, accused Lewis of following the tenets of a black sex magician. Ironically, Clymer’s organization, descended from Randolph—who was, in turn, one source of OTO’s sex magical teachings—denied and shunned Randolph’s doctrines and branded them evil. To discredit Lewis as head of a competing Rosicrucian organization, Clymer issued a two-volume diatribe titled The Rosicrucian Fraternity in America.11 Its sole purpose was to expose Lewis and the people connected to him. Lewis responded to these attacks by publishing Audi Alteram Partem—also known as White Book “D”—sending copies to various libraries and adding another stack of paper to the fire.12 Next, Crowley added gasoline.
In Crowley’s opinion, Lewis’s sole authority stemmed from OTO. Reuss had given Lewis a diploma and, now that Crowley was OHO, Lewis was acting “entirely without my knowledge and approval, in complete disregard of, and in opposition to, my principles.”13 The solution was simple: Since Lewis owed everything he had to OTO, Crowley proposed that he give it all back to OTO. The entirety of AMORC and its property was valued at £150,000 (about $7 million by contemporary standards). Crowley thereby hoped to run AMORC honestly and to dispense authentic teachings. To get his way, he was prepared to go to the Federal Trade Commission and if necessary to go to California himself.
Correspondence proved fruitless. Lewis argued that even if Crowley did control OTO and the Rites of Memphis and Mizraim, AMORC was Rosicrucian, not Masonic. Furthermore, American Masons recognized neither OTO nor Memphis-Mizraim. In the end, Lewis saw Crowley making claims without documentation of his authority, running a spurious British order—and he claimed to have correspondence with Reuss and Krumm-Heller to prove it. Crowley, however, was also in contact with Krumm-Heller, writing:
Spencer Louis [sic] was never a disciple, either of Reuss or myself in any sense of the term. He had been knocking about for years trying to run a fake Rosicrucian Order. He cast about everywhere for authority and when I first met him in New York in 1918 E.V., he was showing a charter supposed to be from the French Rosicrucians in Toulouse. He devoted so much time to the conquest of the innermost secrets of nature that he had not been able to spend any to learn French. Now even in New York there are a few people who know French and this ridiculous forgery made him a general laughing stock so that he withdrew it.
Now in the last 2 or 3 years of his life Peregrinus Reuss was sick, impoverished and desperate. He was anxious at any cost to find people to carry on his work. He, accordingly, handed out honorary diplomas up to the 95th degree and sometimes very foolishly the 96th. That is how people like Spencer Lewis and Tränker get their standing.…
It is amusing to notice that my own personal seal is on the documents quoted by Lewis as his authority and the words ‘Ordo Templi Orientis’ are sprawled all over the document … Either he had no authority at all or he had mine. If he had none he can be prosecuted, if he had mine he must account for the 900,000 dollars odd which he had amassed in the last few years.14
To get the wheels moving, Crowley circulated this document:
MEMORANDUM
Aleister Crowley is the head of the O.T.O. (Ordo Templi Orientis).
His authority is sole and supreme, and the property of the Order is vested in himself and his Grand Officers, who are his nominees.
The Order is international in scope.
A Mr. H. Lewis Spencer has been in control of an Order with headquarters in California under the title of AMORC. His authority is, however, derived from the O.T.O.
The property of the AMORC is, therefore, by the Constitution of the Order, legally the property of Mr. Aleister Crowley.
The real and personal property of the AMORC is estimated at $900,000 by his ex-Grand Treasurer, and its annual income is said to amount to about $350,000.
Mr. Crowley proposes to go to California and claim the property.…
There should be no difficulty in getting lawyers in San Francisco or Los Angeles to undertake the prosecution of the claim on a contingent basis.…
[Mr. Crowley’s] ultimate aim is to establish the Order on a large scale in the U.S.A. and elsewhere, on a basis of the most scrupulous honesty.
We require $5,000 to finance Mr. Crowley’s journey.
The details of this proposition, with documentary corroboration, will be shown to interested parties on application, and if a satisfactory basis of action can be agreed, the terms of the loan will be discussed by us on his behalf.15
When Lewis suffered a stroke around this time, Crowley wrote to Smith, “This is where you jump in and file a claim on my behalf to the whole property of the AMORC.”16 Alas, like so many of AC’s schemes, this never transpired.
Over the past two years, Crowley and Pearl tried desperately to conceive a child together. Yet AC’s diary notes with disappointment the start of her every period. Then, on January 14, 1936, Pearl went into the hospital. The following day, doctors removed her uterus and fallopians. While Crowley loved her and stood by her, he realized she could never be the mother of his child.
As fate would have it, Patricia Doherty reentered the picture. Her relationship with the much older Thynne ended with his death in 1935. She mournfully traveled abroad, returning to England in spring 1936. She looked up Crowley and resumed a platonic friendship with him … until that summer when out of the blue he asked her to bear his child. She agreed, and on May 2, 1937, Deirdre produced an heir.17
Crowley inaugurated 1936 with yet another pastime: cooking. Though he had been a bit of a chef in the past, this time he was serious. He planned to start “The Exotic Restaurant”—another pipe dream. Nevertheless, he delighted the palates of his many friends, with Louis Wilkinson ranking him among the best cooks in the world and Clifford Bax reporting AC’s to be “the most delicious curry which I have tasted.”18 This same curry was reputedly so spicy that decades ago it sent Eckenstein headlong into a snowbank in search of relief.
His first dinner for Charles Richard Cammell—remembered today as a poet of both children’s verse and of World War I—was a gastronomic spectacle. They’d met at a luncheon with their mutual friend Gwen Otter where Crowley impressed Cammell by correctly guessing his sun sign. “How did you guess?” the dumbfounded poet asked.
“I didn’t guess,” Crowley replied blankly. “I knew.”
Shortly thereafter, AC called him with a dinner invitation. Asked if he liked curry, the poet, a connoisseur of spicy food, taunted Crowley with the response, “Yes, but very mild please.” Crowley, of course, conjured his most infernal curry, which to his surprise Cammell devoured with impunity. Astonished that his liquid fire had failed to burn a hole in Cammell’s tender tongue, he finally asked, “Did you like it?”
“It was delicious,” Cammell remarked.
“Not too hot?”
“No, not at all. In fact, it was rather mild.”
Mild? “Would you like more?”
“Please, and make it plenty.”
This was all too much. “I suppose you’d like some vodka after your wine.”
“Yes,” he nodded, “I would.”19
With that, Cammell passed into the ranks of Crowley’s closest friends.
The Great Beast seemed to be vanishing into a purely mythical status. His last book had appeared in 1930 when Mandrake Press was still a going concern. Since then he had published almost nothing. Only the newspapers kept him in the public eye. Thus Crowley began working in the spring of 1936 on a republication of The Book of the Law that would do the book justice. He wanted to publish the text along with a complete account of its receipt and a thorough commentary on its contents—just as Aiwass had instructed him to do thirty-two years ago. A facsimile of the original pages, again according to Aiwass’s i
nstructions, would be included. However, such a tome was more than just The Book of the Law, and only one title fit this sweeping collection of papers. Crowley prepared to publish it as The Equinox, Volume III Number 3, otherwise known as The Equinox of the Gods.
This new Equinox was a different breed from its predecessor. It had no contributions from other authors; neither poetry, plays, nor short stories; no serialized features; no book reviews; and most significantly, no plan of regular publication. He had no idea how often he could bring issues out. Thus The Equinox became an irregular publication, each issue a self-contained book with its own title and format. Crowley designed a prospectus and subscription form for the book in June. On the 25th, after minor difficulties with his printer, the four-page flyer was completed.
On April 8, 9 and 10, 1904 e.v.20 this book was dictated to 666 (Aleister Crowley) by Aiwass, a Being whose nature he does not fully understand, but who described Himself as “the Minister of Hoor-Paar-Kraat” (the Lord of Silence)
The contents of the book prove to strict scientific demonstration that He possesses knowledge and power quite beyond anything that has been hitherto associated with human faculties.
The circumstances of the dictation are described in The Equinox, Vol I, No. vii: but a fuller account, with an outline of the proof of the character of the book, is now here to be issued.
The book announces a New Law for mankind.
It replaces the moral and religious sanctions of the past, which have everywhere broken down, by a principle valid for each man and woman in the world, and self-evidently indefeasible.
The spiritual Revolution announced by the book has already taken place: hardly a country where it is not openly manifest.
Ignorance of the true meaning of this new Law has led to gross anarchy. Its conscious adoption in its proper sense is the sole cure for the political, social and racial unrest which have brought about the World War, the catastrophe of Europe and America, and the threatening attitude of China, India and Islam.
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