Perdurabo

by Richard Kaczynski

  54 Testimony of A. W. Ryerson, 23 Dec 1921, 4–5.

  55 1920 U.S. Census, Detroit Ward 6, Wayne, MI, enumeration district 200, 10A.

  56 Testimony of A. W. Ryerson, 23 Nov 1921, 12.

  57 Testimony of W. A. Gibson, 30 Dec 1921, 5–7.

  58 Testimony of A. W. Ryerson, 9 Jan 1922, 13.

  59 Testimony of A. W. Ryerson, 9 Jan 1922, 1–2.

  60 Testimony of W. A. Gibson, 30 Dec 1921, 17. Testimony of A. W. Ryerson, 9 Jan 1922, 1–2.

  61 Passenger list, SS Orduña, 22 Aug 1917.

  62 Spence, Secret Agent 666, 146.

  63 Confessions, 754. Note that the lacuna given in the published version gives the name as H..d; however, the original manuscript has H..l.

  64 PH:LF Crowley, Humanities Research Center. With thanks to William Breeze. However, another possibility is suggested by Crowley’s marginalia to Diary of a Drug Fiend, where he identifies the “tall bronzed Englishman” (p. 128) as modeled “Mostly from Smart, English Vice-Consul in New York during the war.”

  65 AC to Arnold Krumm-Heller, 22 Jun 1930, Yorke Collection.

  66 Confessions, 842.

  67 AC to Krumm-Heller, op. cit.

  68 “ ‘Do Anything You Want to Do’—Their Religion,” New York American, date unknown.

  69 1920 U.S. Census, Detroit Ward 14, Wayne, MI, enumeration district 411, 3A.

  70 Testimony of W. A. Gibson, 30 Dec 1921, 26–7.

  71 Testimony of A. W. Ryerson, 9 Jan 1922, 3–4.

  72 Frank T. Lodge, Why Weepest Thou? Book to Offer Comfort to the Sorrowing, the author, a Physician and Attorney in Detroit, Was Inspired to Write (Detroit: Frank T. Lodge, 1913).

  73 Confessions, 842.

  74 General examination of A.W. Ryerson, 8 Dec 1921, 10–1. General examination of A.W. Ryerson, 23 Dec 1921, 1, 8. Testimony of A.W. Ryerson, 9 Jan 1922, 9–10.

  75 AC to Krumm-Heller, op. cit.

  76 Quoted in Martin P. Starr, The Unknown God: W. T. Smith and the Thelemites (Chicago: Teitan Press, 2003), 92.

  77 AC to C. S. Jones, 19 Feb 1919. CSJ Papers.

  78 Quoted in Detroit Times, 10 Jan 1922.

  79 AC to A. W. Ryerson, 6 Mar 1919, quoted in Detroit Times, 10 Jan 1922.

  80 Aleister Crowley, Olla: An Anthology of Sixty Years of Song (London: OTO, 1946), 69.

  81 Diary, 31 May and 2 Jun 1920.

  82 Although it has been almost universally reported that “Marion (sic) Dockerill” is a pseudonym for Leah’s sister Alma Hirsig Bliss, this is untrue: Anna Maria (Marian) Dockerill née Hirsig is a completely different person, vide infra.

  83 Confessions, 791.

  84 Leah Hirsig’s siblings were Martha (1869–1950), Margaritha Rosa (1870–1961), Johannes (1872–1965), Friedrich (1873–1905), Gottlieb (1873–1922), Fanny Christina (b. 1874), Magdalena Alma (b. 1875), Andreas (1877–1877), and Anna Maria (or Marian) (b. 1878). [Familienregister der Gemeinde Amsoldingen, Zivilstandsamt Kreis Thun, Zivilstands- und Bürgerrechtsdienst des Kantons Bern, Amt für Migration und Personenstand. With thanks to Michela Megna.]

  85 Passenger list, St. Laurent, Apr 1885. U.S. 1910 Census, Manhattan Ward 12, New York, New York, enumeration district 399, 1A. “Promotion Licenses Granted to Teachers in the Elementary Schools,” New York Times, 12 May 1915, 19. U.S. Passport Application, 14 Oct 1919, National Archives, College Park, MD.

  86 Although Leah Hirsig reportedly married Edward Jack Hammond in 1917, I have been unable to trace a record of this union. Indeed, Leah did not take his surname, her 1919 passport application lists her marital status as “single,” and on that application she claims Hansi was her “nephew.” Hans Hammond would go on to have four years of college, work as an actor, and enlist in the army during World War II. [U.S. World War II Army Enlistment Records 1938–1946, National Archives, College Park, MD. Social Security Death Index, 114-24-4532, New York.]

  87 In Equinox of the Gods, Crowley refers to “Hans ‘Carter’ (or Hirsig)” (p. 127), and in his marginalia to Diary of a Drug Fiend notes that the “even smaller boy” on page 309 is based on “Hansi, natural son of Leah Hirsig and Edward Carter.”

  88 Samuel S. Carter married Fanny Cristina Hirsig in Pinellas, Florida, on 18 Mar 1918, four months after Hans was born.

  89 “Poet-painter Who Studied Magic Visits Atlanta,” unidentified newspaper clipping, Yorke Collection.

  90 Marian Dockerill gives a different account of Leah’s first meting with Crowley. One of Dockerill’s former lovers wrote to her that she should not miss seeing Crowley, and arranged an invitation to one of Crowley’s events. At this party, Leah and AC stared at each other for a while until Crowley came over and offered them wine. Dockerill, feeling unnerved, tried persuading her sister to leave; Hirsig, however, insisted on remaining, telling her sister to go home and that she would see her later. Although Dockerill left, Hirsig wound up staying the night along with several of Crowley’s other lady friends. When Dockerill came the next morning to fetch her sister, Hirsig—knowing full well that Dockerill herself had engaged in quite a wild sex life—replied “Oh, don’t protest, Marian! Have you thought your life a secret from me?” This and other details of Dockerill’s account of their first meeting matches what Crowley described as their second meeting. See Marian Dockerill, My Life in a Love Cult: A Warning to All Young Girls (Dunellen, NJ: Better Publishing, 1928).

  91 Robert Winthrop Chanler (1872–1930) was a New York painter, designer and muralist; Crowley’s Temperance: A Tract for the Times (1939) contains the poem “Bob Chanler.” For more, see “Bob Chanler,” Biographical Notes, Confessions (unexpurgated edition), vol. 7.

  92 French actress Madame Yorska was cofounder of the Theatre Français in New York; she appeared in America on Broadway (All Star Gambol, 1913, and The Greatest Nation, 1916) and in film (Our Mutual Girl, 1914, and It Happened in Paris, 1919). See “Who Is Madame Yorska?” New York Tribune, 3 Jun 1917, C3.

  93 In hand-written notes on his artwork, Crowley wrote, “Was This the Face That Launched a Thousand Ships? No, but it kept me busy in Atlantic City and annoyed Helen Westley.”

  94 “Artist Paints Dead Souls but Refuses to be Classed with Futurists’ School: Englishman Portrays Weird Spirits at His Studio in Greenwich Village,” Syracuse Herald, 9 Mar 1910, 10. “You Agree with Artist, His Pictures Look Best with Your Eyes Closed: Aleister Crowley Paints Dead Souls as His Brush Wanders Undirected over Canvas,” Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, 10 Mar 1919, 5 and Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, 17 Mar 1919.

  95 Seabrook, op. cit.

  96 Jones’s class flier and the Equinox prospectus are reproduced in Richard Kaczynski, Panic in Detroit, Blue Equinox Journal 2 (Troy, MI: Blue Equinox Oasis, 2006).

  97 Charles S. Jones, “A Master of the Temple.” The Equinox III(2). Forthcoming.

  98 Testimony of Homer W. Adair, 20 Jan 1922, 3–4.

  99 Confessions, 841.

  100 AC to RC Newman, 24 Sep 1944, New 24, Yorke Collection.

  101 AC to Mr. Ackland of EP Dutton & Co, n.d., New 4, Yorke Collection.

  102 New York Times Book Review, 23 Nov 1919, 681–2. This portrait currently hangs in England’s National Portrait Gallery.

  103 Testimony of A. W. Ryerson, 9 Jan 1922, 15.

  104 Kaczynski, Panic in Detroit, 12.

  105 Hereward Carrington, “What Is the Best ‘Psychical’ Literature?” Bookman: A Review of Books and Life, Aug 1919, 49(6): 689. “Books Received,” Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, Jul 1919, 13(7): 384. Although Crowley and Carrington knew each other, the ASPR’s journals and files contain no other references to Crowley (thanks to Jeff Twine, ASPR librarian, for checking). Since attendance at meetings was not logged, it is unknown what other association, if any, Crowley may have had with the ASPR.

  106 Hereward Carrington, “Men of Mystery: Aleister Crowley,” Fate, Sep 1949, 2(3): 66–72.

  107 Confessions, 683–4.

  108 Confessions, 791. In the Confessions, Crowley mis-spells the name “Christia
nsen.”

  109 Carrington, “Men of Mystery,” 72. Wilcox died on October 30, 1919, shortly before Crowley sailed for London.

  110 Membership record, Grand Lodge of Michigan.

  111 World War I draft registration card, National Archives, Washington, DC. 1910 and 1920 U.S. Census, Detroit Ward 1, Wayne, MI.

  112 Confessions, 842–3.

  113 C. S. Jones to F. T. Lodge, Apr 22, 1919, CSJ Papers.

  114 Confessions, 842.

  115 Testimony of A. W. Ryerson, 9 Jan 1922, 10.

  116 Detroit Free Press, 21 Jan 1922.

  117 Starr, Unknown God, 99.

  118 Detroit Free Press, 14 Jan 1922.

  119 His siblings were Tarrant (b. 1884), Edmond L. Jr. (b. 1891), Eleanor (b. 1893) and Edith (b. 1899). James Scarborough Sibley, The Sibley Family in America 1629–1972. (Midlothian, TX: privately printed, 1982). 1900 and 1910 U.S. Census, Bennington, VT. 1920 and 1930 US Census, Detroit, MI. Passport application, 20 May 1914, National Archives, College Park, MD. World War I draft registration card, Wayne County, MI, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

  120 “Emperor Thanks American Surgeons,” New York Times, 4 Oct 1914, 84.

  121 Confessions, 768.

  122 Confessions, 842–4.

  123 Burton, City of Detroit, 4: 216–7.

  124 World War I Draft Registration Card, National Archives, Washington, DC. Marriage record, Division Registrar Vital Statistics Records, Toronto, Canada. 1900, 1910, and 1920 U.S. Census, Detroit Ward 4, Wayne, MI. Membership record, Grand Lodge of Michigan.

  125 Birth record, 5 Aug 1875, York, Ontario, Archives of Ontario, Toronto. 1910 and 1920 US Census, Detroit, Wayne, MI. World War I draft registration card, National Archives, Washington, D.C. U.S. Naturalization Indexes, 1794–1995.

  126 Membership record, Grand Lodge of Michigan.

  127 Pictures featuring Jane Wolfe (sometimes credited as Jane Wolf or Jane Wolff): A Lad from Old Ireland (1910); The Stolen Invention (1912); Shannon of the Sixth (1914); The Invisible Power (1914); The Boer War (1914); The Majesty of the Law (1915); The Case of Becky (1915); Blackbirds (1915); The Immigrant (1915); Pudd’nhead Wilson (1916); The Blacklist (1916); The Thousand-Dollar Husband (1916); The Selfish Woman (1916); Each Pearl a Tear (1916); The Lash (1916); Unprotected (1916); The Plow Girl (1916); Castles for Two (1917); Unconquered (1917); The Crystal Gazer (1917); On the Level (1917); Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917); The Call of the East (1917); The Fair Barbarian (1917); A Petticoat Pilot (1918); Mile-a-Minute Kendall (1918); The Bravest Way (1918); The Firefly of France (1918); Less Than Kin (1918); The Cruise of the Make-Believes (1918); The Girl Who Came Back (1918); Under the Top (1919); The Poor Boob (1919); The Woman Next Door (1919); An Innocent Adventuress (1919); Men, Women, and Money (1919); A Very Good Young Man (1919); The Grim Game (1919); The Thirteenth Commandment (1920); The Six Best Cellars (1920); Why Change Your Wife? (1920); Thou Art the Man (1920); The Round-Up (1920); Behold My Wife (1920); and Under Strange Flags (1937). See http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0938059.

  128 Jane Wolfe’s life is serialized in In the Continuum, a periodical published by the College of Thelema. The biography was collected and published as volumes 10 and 11 of the journal Red Flame in 2003.

  129 AL ii.19.

  130 A. W. Ryerson to AC, 5 Jul 1919, quoted in Detroit Free Press, 21 Jan 1922.

  131 In AC to Frank Bennett, 18 Dec 1920 (New 92, Yorke Collection), Crowley refers to Libri XII and DCCCLXXX. Neither of these correspond to known writings. DCCCLXXX is almost certainly DCCCLXXXVIII, The Gospel According to St. Bernard Shaw, for, in AC to Ben Stubbins, 13 Oct 1942 (Yorke Collection), Crowley writes “It is the bound set of proofs of Equinox Vol III No 2 which has a big supplement ‘Jesus,’ which has vanished.”

  132 The issue was actually printed by W. J. Hanson in New York, but the balance was never paid. Around 1928, the unbound sheets were finally destroyed. See Kaczynski, Panic in Detroit, 16.

  133 William Seabrook, Witchcraft: Its Power in the World Today (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1940), 195–6.

  134 AC to Roy Leffingwell, 23 Oct 1942, New 14, Yorke Collection.

  135 New York American, 8 Jan 1923.

  136 Detroit Free Press, 10 Jan 1922.

  137 Confessions, 598.

  138 Starr, Unknown God, 103.

  139 Starr, Unknown God, 107.

  140 Detroit Free Press, 10 Jan 1922.

  141 Bankruptcy notice, Detroit Legal News, 26 Oct 1921.

  142 Detroit Free Press, 13 Jan 1922.

  143 Ibid.

  144 “Do Anything You Want to Do” op cit.

  145 Detroit Free Press, 14 Jan 1922.

  146 Detroit News, 16 Jan 1922.

  147 Detroit News, 13 Jan 1922.

  148 “Cult Men Facing Arrest,” Detroit Times, date unknown.

  149 Confessions, 888.

  150 New York American, 8 Jan 1923.

  151 1930 U.S. Census, Militia District 1199, Brooks, GA, enumeration district 7: 17B. Death record, Orange, FL, Florida Department of Health Office of Vital Records. For additional details about Ryerson and the Universal Book Stores, see Kaczynski, Panic in Detroit.

  152 James Branch Cabell, Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice (New York: R. M. McBride & Co, 1919), 154–6.

  153 AC to James Cabell, undated telegram, item #7779–b, James Branch Cabell Papers, Collection M 214, James Branch Cabell Library, Virginia Commonwealth University. The second quote is from Crowley’s review of Jurgen for The Equinox 1920, 3(3). Although this issue never appeared, the typescript survives as item #7779–b, Cabell Papers.

  Crowley had high hopes for Cabell, hoping to make a convert out of a great author. Crowley wrote to Cabell about the philosophy of Thelema and praised him in print, but, in the end, Cabell maintained his distance. Their extant correspondence includes: AC to Cabell, undated telegram, op. cit. AC to Cabell, 24 Oct 1919, Cabell Papers. Cabell to AC, 10 Nov 1919, Evans Papers. AC to Cabell, 17 Nov 1919, HRHRC. Cabell to AC, 26 Nov 1919, Evans Papers. AC to Cabell, 17 Sep 1922, HRHRC. “Memorandum re CCXX”, ca 1923, HRHRC. AC to Cabell, 24 May 1942, HRHRC. Crowley’s article in praise of Cabell, “Another note on Cabell” appeared in the Reviewer 1923, 3(11–12): 907–14. The relationship of these men is discussed in Roger Staples, “The Lance and the Veil,” Kalki 1969, 4(1): 3–8.

  Chapter Fourteen • The Abbey of Thelema

  1 Quoted in Booth, A Magick Life, 355.

  2 “Obituary: H. Batty Shaw, M.D., F.R.C.P., Consulting Physician, University College Hospital and the Brompton Hospital,” British Medical Journal, 23 May 1936, 1(3933): 1081. “Royal College of Physicians,” British Medical Journal, 7 May 1898, 1(1949): 1226. Bruce C. Berndt and Robert A. Rankin, Ramanujan: Letters and Commentary (Boston: American Mathematical Society, 1995), 154. R. A. Rankin, “Ramanujan as a Patient,” Proceedings of the Indian Academy of Science and Mathematical Sciences 1984, 93(2–3): 79–100.

  3 See, e.g., Robert H. Babcock, Diseases of the Lungs; Designed to Be a Practical Presentation of the Subject for the Use of Students and Practitioners of Medicine (London: D. Appleton and Co., 1907). “Heroin in Asthma,” Clinical Excerpts, Mar 1905, 11(3): 93. Journal of the American Medical Association, 15 Nov 1902.

  4 John Shorter, “Humphrey Owen Jones, F.R.S. (1878–1912), Chemist and Mountaineer,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 1979, 33(2): 261–77. Oscar Eckenstein, “Claws and Ice-Craft,” Climbers’ Club Journal 1912, 32–48. Oscar Eckenstein, “The Tricouni Nail,” Climbers’ Club Journal 1914, 76–80. Geoffrey Winthrop Young (ed.), Mountain Craft (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1920).

  5 John Bull, 10 Jan 1920.

  6 Passport application, 28 Feb 1919, National Archives, College Park, MD.

  7 Confessions, 857.

  8 AC to Jane Wolfe, 8 Jan 1920. Quoted in “Letters from Aleister Crowley to Jane Wolfe.” In the Continuum 1981, 2(8): 28.

  9 For a modern-day account of the villa with photos, see Richard T. Cole, Thelema Revisited: In Search of Aleist
er Crowley (n.p.: Orange Box Books, 2007).

  10 Diary, 2 Apr 1920.

  11 Quoted in many of the 11 Apr 1934 press reports of the so-called Black Magic Libel Case, such as the Daily Telegraph and Yorkshire Post. In 1921, Crowley’s diary entry for this canonization reads:

  Gauguin literally torments me; I feel as if by my own choice of exile rather than toleration of the bourgeois, I am invoking him, and this painting of my house seems a sort of religious-magical rite, like the Egyptian embalmers’, but of necromancy. I would he might come forth “his pleasure on the earth to do among the living.”

  I gladly offer my body to his Manes, if he need a vehicle of flesh for new expression. I could never have done quite that for any other spirit—I have been faithful to my own Genius.

  It is maddening to think that I might have known him in the flesh; he died in 1903, May 8, eleven months before the First day of the Writing of the book of the Law. Just six months after I had met Rodin.

  I feel very specially that I should consecrate my house to him, not to Beardsley, a quite inferior type deriving from pifflers like Burne-Jones, and the over-elaborate school of Japanese, while he snivelled and recanted disgustingly when his health gave way.

  So, by the Power and Authority invested in Me, I Baphomet 729 ordain the insertion of the name of PAUL GAUGUIN among the More Memorable Saints in the Gnostic Mass.

  12 W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence (New York: Vintage International, 2000 [1919]), 185.

  13 Confessions, 113.

  14 Maugham, Moon and Sixpence, 267–8.

  15 Diary, 20 Apr 1920.

  16 Diary, 21 Apr 1920.

  17 Diary, 18 Jun 1920.

  18 Diary, 24 Jun 1920.

  19 Aleister Crowley, Leah Sublime. (Montreal: 93 Publishing, 1976).

  20 Diary, 22 Jun 1920.

  21 Fuller, Magical Dilemma, 244.

  22 For an examination of this approach of Crowley’s to spirituality, see Richard Kaczynski, “Taboo and Transformation in the Works of Aleister Crowley” in Christopher Hyatt (ed.), Rebels and Devils: The Psychology of Liberation (Tempe, AZ: New Falcon, 1996).