40 AC to W. T. Smith, 16 Dec 1928, New 15, Yorke Collection.
41 Diary, 19 Nov 1928.
42 Lindsay, Jack. 1982. Life Rarely Tells: An Autobiography in Three Volumes. New York: Penguin Books, 672.
43 Diary, 14 Nov 1928.
44 Diary, 23 Nov 1928.
45 AC to Gerald Yorke, 28 Nov 1928, Yorke Collection.
46 C. de Vidal Hunt to Gerald Yorke, 26 Nov 1928, Yorke Collection.
47 AC to Gerald Yorke, 5 Nov 1928, New 115, Yorke Collection.
48 AC to Henri Birven, 8 Oct 1929, New 24, Warburg. This is confirmed in Marlow, Seven Friends, 48–9.
49 AC to Gerald Yorke, 21 or 22 Nov 1928, New 115, Yorke Collection.
50 Yorke’s annotation on AC to Gerald Yorke, 20 Dec 1928, Yorke Collection.
51 AC to Gerald Yorke, 13 Jan 1929, New 115, Yorke Collection.
52 Gerald Yorke to AC, n.d., New 116, Yorke Collection.
53 Lola Zaza Crowley to Gerald Yorke, Yorke Collection.
54 Marriage record, 9 Jun 1934, GRO, Paddington, Middlesex. Death record, 9 Mar 1990, GRO, Reading, Berkshire.
55 AC to Gerald Yorke, 5 Feb 1929, New 115, Yorke Collection.
56 AC to Gerald Yorke, 13 Jan 1929, New 115, Yorke Collection.
57 AC to Gerald Yorke, 19 Jan 1929, Yorke Collection.
58 AC to Karl Germer, 9 Jan 1930, Old D8, Yorke Collection.
59 See AC to Gerald Yorke, 18 Jan 1929, New 115, Yorke Collection.
60 The registry index of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office summarizes the British Embassy’s response to Crowley’s request: “[T]he Embassy are unable to intervene with the French authorities on his behalf. Has ascertained that Mr. Crowley has been asked to leave French territory exclusively on moral grounds. Proposes therefore to take no action on his behalf.” Quoted in Spence, Secret Agent 666, 198.
61 Diary, 16 Mar 1929.
62 Diary, 18 Apr 1929.
63 Reynolds Illustrated Newspaper, 21 Apr 1929.
64 John Bull, 27 Apr 1929.
65 AC to Gerald Yorke, 1 Jun 1929, New 115, Yorke Collection.
66 “Lieut-Col. J. F. C. Carter,” Times (London), 17 Jul 1944, 49910: 6. Death record, GRO, Tavistock, Devonshire, 5b: 349.
67 Daily Express, 9 Jul 1929.
68 Diary, 10 and 12 Oct 1929.
69 AC to Karl Germer, 7 Nov 1929, Old D8, Yorke Collection.
70 Aberdeen Press, 28 Oct 1929.
71 New Statesman, 4 Nov 1929.
72 New Age, 7 Nov 1929.
Chapter Eighteen • Beast Bites Back
1 Knox was raised an Anglican and attended Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, on a classics scholarship. He became a fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, in 1910, and was ordained in 1912, taking the post of Trinity’s chaplain. In 1917, he left the college when he converted to Roman Catholicism, being ordained into that church in 1918. He wrote several books about the issues that led to this spiritual journey, e.g., Some Loose Stones (1913), Reunion All Round (1914), Apologia (1917), A Spiritual Aeneid (1918), and The Belief of Catholics (1927). He was Roman Catholic chaplain at the University of Oxford from 1926 to 1939. He also wrote detective stories, compiling the rules for the genre in 1929 into a decalogue of ten commandments.
2 Hugh Speaight was the brother of actor and writer Robert Speaight (1904–1976), and puppeteer and theatre historian George Victor Speaight (1914–2005). For Hugh Speaight, see A. J. Ayer, Part of My Life (London: Collins, 1977), 95.
3 Hugh Speaight to AC, 30 Jan 1930, Box Y2143, Stephensen Papers.
4 Hugh Speaight, Period: Being Seven Studies Followed by an Open Letter to the Author of “Bees from an Undergraduate Bonnet” (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1929). Quoted in “Books of the Day,” Manchester Guardian, 23 Dec 1929, 5.
5 AC to PR Stephensen, 1 Feb 1930, Box Y2143, Stephensen Papers.
6 Birmingham Evening Dispatch 3 Feb 1930.
7 The New Statesman, 19 Jul 1952, 8(379): 80. Anne Jackson Fremantle, Three-Cornered Heart (New York: Viking Press, 1971), 280.
8 As soon as he could, Yorke paid Cora £25 a quarter until her death, when he and Germer settled the matter; they probably wrote the balance off.
9 Grace Winifred Pailthorpe, What We Put in Prison and in Preventive and Rescue Homes (London: Williams & Norgate, 1932). Although Pailthrope studied medicine and served as a surgeon during World War I, she became a psychoanalyst and opened a practice in 1922. After publication of her book, she would establish the world’s first institution for the treatment of delinquency, with vice presidents including luminaries like Freud, Jung, Adler. In 1935, she would also begin the study of automatic drawing and painting. See Penelope Rosemont, Surrealist Women: An International Anthology (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998), 105–12.
10 Crowley’s writings appeared in issues 2, 3, 4, 6 and 7 in 1930, and issues 1, 2, 5, 6 and 7 in 1931.
11 New York passenger lists from 1924–1931 show visits from Hanni Jaeger of Bernau, born c. 1910, coming into the United States as a student heading for Santa Barbara, CA. In 1924, she arrived with her mother Martha (age forty-one), and her sisters Kaethe (eighteen) and Else (fifteen). In 1928, she was a “returning resident alien,” age eighteen, traveling alone. She departed Hamburg for America yet again on November 22, 1931, age twenty-one. New York passenger lists. SS Deutschland, 4 Aug 1924; SS Cleveland, 4 Dec 1928; SS St. Louis, 3 Dec 1931. While the travel dates fit, this is not a positive identification.
12 Diary, 29 Apr 1930.
13 P. R. Stephensen to AC, 3 May 1930, Box Y2143, Stephensen Papers.
14 Diary, 13 Jun 1930.
15 From a TS in the Stephensen Papers.
16 Victor Neuburg, “The Legend of Aleister Crowley: A Fair Plea for Fair Play,” Freethinker, 24 Aug 1930.
17 Diary, 31 Jul 1930.
18 AC to Max Schneider, 15 Feb 1943, Yorke Collection.
19 AC to Israel Regardie, n.d., Yorke Collection.
20 Gerald Yorke to Montgomery Evans II, n.d., Kaplan Papers.
21 AC to Herbert Gorman, 30 Aug 1930, MS 9040, Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library.
22 Quoted on p. 380 of Edouard Roditi, “Fernando Pessoa: Outsider among English Poets,” Literary Review 1963, 6(3): 372–85.
23 French, “So much the worse.”
24 AC to Marie Crowley, 20 Sep 1930, New 117, Yorke Collection.
25 AC to Francis Israel Regardie, 17 Oct 1930, New 117, Yorke Collection.
26 Gerald Yorke to AC, 21 Sep 1930, New 116, Yorke Collection.
27 Gerald Yorke to AC, 26 Sep 1930, New 116, Yorke Collection.
28 Gerald Yorke, draft (never sent), 1930, Yorke Collection.
29 Regardie closed the account with a £3 payment to himself in August, 1931, but it is unknown how he used the money.
30 After Crowley died, Yorke bought all these things back from Kerman for £100. Kerman was born in 1905 to poor Jewish immigrants from Odessa. He attended Cheltenham College and, while still in his twenties, set up a one-man law firm named “Forsyte and Kerman”—an homage to Nobel literature laureate John Galsworthy’s “Forsyte Saga”—specializing in divorces. “Endowed with good looks and charm,” he is remembered for his willingness “to turn his hand to anything,” as attested to by his interests as a bridge player, horse racer, property speculator, and restaurant owner. Stephen Aris, “Obituary: Isidore Kerman,” The Independent, 21 Aug 1998.
31 AC to Gerald Yorke, 3 Dec 1930, New 115, Yorke Collection.
32 Diary, 2 Nov 1930.
33 Diary, 26 Dec 1930.
34 Symonds, Shadow Realm, 505.
35 See note 11 above.
36 Gerald Yorke to AC, n.d., New 117, Yorke Collection.
37 Francis Israel Regardie to AC, n.d., New 117, Yorke Collection.
38 Marie Crowley to Gerald Yorke, 28 Feb 1931, New 117, Yorke Collection.
39 Colonel Carter to Gerald Yorke, 31 Mar 1931, New 117, Yorke Collection.
40 Col
Carter to AC, 21 Oct 1930, Old EE2, Yorke Collection.
41 Originally a banker, Nierendorf started in the art trade in Cologne in 1920 and later promoted the German Expressionists in Berlin. In 1936 he moved to America and opened another modern art gallery in New York, from which several pieces were acquired by the new Guggenheim Foundation. After World War II he returned to Germany to help the American military return works of art to their rightful owners. After his death, the Guggenheim Museum purchased his estate, acquiring not only his gallery’s inventory but also his personal collection.
42 AC to Louis Wilkinson, 7 Feb 1931, Wilkincon Collection, Humanities Research Center.
43 Diary, 12 Jun 1931.
44 Diary, 12 Aug 1931.
45 Diary, 29 Aug 1931.
46 Karl Nierendorf, “Aleister Crowley: The Ultimate Outsider” in Hymenaeus Beta, Martin P. Starr and Karl Nierendrof, An Old Master: The Art of Aleister Crowley (London: October Gallery, Apr 7–18, 1998), 29–31.
47 However, the “Aleister Crowley Timeline” at LAShTAL.com asserts “He even sells one painting!” http://www.lashtal.com/wiki/Aleister_Crowley_Timeline (accessed Aug 24 2009).
48 Diary, 21 Oct 1931.
49 AC to Gerald Yorke, 24 Dec 1931, New 115, Yorke Collection.
50 Diary, 26 Oct 1931. See also AC to Gerald Yorke, 17 Nov 1931, New 115, Yorke Collection, wherein Crowley confirms she had a miscarriage.
51 Diary, 6 Dec 1931.
52 AC to Gerald Yorke, 24 Dec 1931, New 115, Yorke Collection. See also the letters of 12 Dec and n.d. for more.
53 Diary, 7 Dec 1931.
54 This comes from a popular bit of German erotic verse:
Nach dem Essen sollst Du rauchen,
Oder eine Frau gebrauchen.
Hast Du beides nicht zur Hand,
Bohr ein Loch und fick die Wand!
(“After the meal, you should smoke
Or use a woman.
If you don’t have both handy,
Bore a hole and fuck the wall!”)
A variant of the two lines Billie quotes replaces “eine Frau gebrauchen” (use a woman) with “eine Frau missbrauchen” (abuse a woman). Billie’s version changes “eine Frau” (“a woman”) to “deine Frau” (“your woman” or “your wife”).
55 Diary, 31 Dec 1931.
56 AC to Gerald Yorke, 26 Jan 1932, Yorke Collection.
57 Roger Deacon, A History of the British Secret Service. (London: Frederick Muller, 1969). Also see AC to Gerald Yorke, 26 Jan 1932, New 115, Yorke Collection. Yorke’s handwritten note identifies Colonel Carter as Crowley’s employer, and states that the £50 Yorke asked Hamilton to give to Crowley that January was a loan—not payment from Colonel Carter, as Hamilton himself later came to believe. See Gerald Hamilton, The Way It Was with Me (London: Leslie Frewin, 1969), 56–7.
58 Diary, 27 Feb 1932.
59 AC to Gerald Yorke, 24 Aug 1931, Yorke Collection. Yorke’s hand-written annotation to the same, Yorke Collection.
60 AC to Gerald Yorke, n.d., New 115, Yorke Collection.
61 Italian immigrants Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were arrested in 1920 and charged with a payroll robbery and murder. A controversial political trial ensued, where the men were convicted on circumstantial evidence and executed on August 23, 1927.
62 AC to Gerald Yorke, 20 May 1932, New 115, Yorke Collection.
63 Yorke’s handwritten note to Crowley’s diary, 27 May 1932.
64 Gerald Yorke to AC, n.d.. New 116, Yorke Collection.
65 Gerald Yorke to AC, 16 Jun 1932, New 116, Yorke Collection.
66 Richard Lane, “Portrait of a Yorkshire Yogi,” The Bedside Lilliput (London: Hulton Press, 1950), 414–9.
67 Cannon’s works include: The Pathology of Beriberi (London: Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, 1929); Hypnotism (London: Heinemann, 1932); (and Edmund Duncan Tranchell Hayes), The Principles and Practice of Psychiatry (London: W. Heinemann, 1932); Hypnotism, Suggestion and Faith-Healing (London: W. Heinemann, 1932); The Invisible Influence; A Story of the Mystic Orient with Great Truths Which Can Never Die (London: Rider & Co, 1934); Powers that Be (London: Mott, 1934); (and Edmund Duncan Tranchell Hayes and G. H. Monrad-Krohn), The Principles and Practice of Neurology (London: Heinemann, 1934); Sleeping through Space, Revealing the Amazing Secrets of How to Get What You Want and Keep Well (Woodthorpe: Nottingham, Walcot, 1938); and The Shadow of Destiny (London: Rider, 1947).
68 Diary, 5 Jul 1932.
69 Hamnett, Laughing Torso, 173–4.
70 Diary, 7 Sep 1932.
71 AC to Gerald Yorke, 6 Jun 1944, New 115, Yorke Collection.
72 At the time of her death, she had hosted over six hundred luncheons and attended most of them. “Obituary: Christina Foyle,” The Independent, 11 Jun 1999.
73 “The Philosophy of Magick,” Foyle’s Archives.
74 Diary, 15 Sep 1932.
75 Diary, 22 Sep 1932.
76 Diary, 5 Oct 1932.
77 Diary, 24 Mar 1933.
78 AC to Gerald Yorke, 17 Jun 1935, New 115, Yorke Collection.
79 Law Report. Daily Telegraph, 11 May 1933.
80 These experiments are recounted in Aleister Crowley, Amrita: Essays in Magical Rejuvenation, ed. Martin P. Starr (King’s Beach, CA: Thelema Publications, 1990). The quote is from Crowley’s diary, 8 Feb 1933.
81 Diary, 27 Feb 1933.
82 Quoted in Grant, Magical Revival, 5. Similar entries also appear in Crowley’s diary, on 4, 5, and 9 Jun 1933.
83 Quoted in Clive Harper, “ ‘He Makes Black Magic as Tame as a Kids’ Party’: An Afterword to the Sunday Dispatch Articles.” Behutet, spring 2009, 41: 4–5. Ian Coster was born in New Zealand and worked as a reporter for the Auckalnd Sun; after the paper went under he moved to England in April 1929. He was hired as a writer for Nash’s Magazine, and would later marry its proprietor, Martha Harris. He evidently had an interest in the occult, having asked psychic researcher Harry Price to arrange a séance to contact the spirit of Arthur Conan Doyle and also having written for Nash’s an article on “Black Magic as Practised in London at the Present Day.” After two years with Nash’s, he moved onto London’s Sunday Dispatch, where he claims to have written his articles on Crowley’s behalf. In later years, he would become a columnist for the Daily Mail and Evening Standard and author of the memoir Friends in Aspic (1939). See also UK Incoming Passenger List, 24 Apr 1929; New Zealand Railways Magazine, May 1933, 8(1): 19 (http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-Gov08_01Rail-t1-body-d19-d1.html, accessed Apr 20 2010); Margaret MacPherson, “New Zealanders in Fleet Street: Maoriland’s Distinguished Sons and Daughters,” New Zealand Railways Magazine, Apr 1935, 10(1): 27 (http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-Gov10_01Rail-t1-body-d7.html, accessed Apr 20 2010); “Nicolas Coster Soaps It Up,” Rome News-Tribune, 7 Sep 1984, 28; “ ‘Modern Prodigal Sun’ Flying Home,” Sydney Morning Herald, 18 Aug 1947, 5; John Miles, “Feast of Friendship,” Sydney Morning Herald, 3 Feb 1940, 12.
84 These are reprinted in P. R. Stephensen and Stephen J. King, The Legend of Aleister Crowley, 3rd. rev. and exp. ed. (Enmore, N.S.W.: Helios Books, 2007).
85 Ethel Mannin, Confessions and Impressions (London: Jarrolds, 1930), 203.
86 The story of W. T. Smith and the other California Thelemites is a story unto itself, and is recounted excellently in Starr, The Unknown God.
87 W. T. Smith to AC, 1933, New 15, Yorke Collection.
88 1930 U.S. Census, Los Angeles, CA, district 54, 29.0. Death record, 5 Jan 1945, State Vital Statistics Unit, Department of Heatlh, Harris County, TX. “Singer to Be Heard,” Los Angeles Times, 25 Jan 1931). “Historic Shawls Attract Clubwomen,” Los Angeles Times, 11 Feb 1935, A6. “Dancing ’neath Sycamores,” Los Angeles Times, 11 Sep 1937, A6. “Pen Women Will Hear Author Talk,” Los Angeles Times, 11 Oct 1940, A10. Katherine von Blon, “Little Theaters,” Los Angeles Times, 16 Apr 1939, C4. “ ‘Wuthering Heights’ Due on Warner Screens Today,” Los Angeles Times, 20 Apr 1939, A15.
89 Starr, Unknown God, 1
81; q.v. for more on Kahl’s life and untimely death.
90 Aimee Semple McPherson (1890–1944) was a well-known Los Angeles evangelist whose popular radio program pioneered faith healing over the airwaves.
91 Regina Kahl to AC, 13 Aug 1933, New 15, Yorke Collection.
92 AC to W. T. Smith, n.d., New 15, Yorke Collection.
93 Diary, 3 Oct 1933.
94 Symonds, Shadow Realm, 491.
Chapter Nineteen • The Black Magic Libel Case
1 This trial is exhaustively documented in Kaczynski, Perdurabo Outtakes, which reproduces a much longer version of this chapter, along with transcriptions of dozens of newspaper articles on the case. The trial has also been documented in the following sources: Joseph Dean, Hatred, Ridicule or Contempt: A Book of Libel Cases (London: Constable & Co., 1953), 190–201; Daily Herald, 14 Apr 1934; Daily Mail, 14 Apr 1934; Daily Mirror, 13–14 Apr 1934; Daily Telegraph, 11–14 Apr 1934; Evening News, 13 Apr 1934; Evening Standard, 13 Apr 1934; Evening Star, 11 Apr 1934; Times (London), 11–14 Apr 1934; Manchester Guardian, 12–14 Apr 1934; Sunday Express, 14 Apr 1934; Yorkshire Post, 11 Apr 1934; and Yorkshire Telegraph, 13 Apr 1934, plus numerous unidentified news clippings from the Yorke Collection.
2 John Percy Eddy, The Law of Distress: Being a Guide to the Law Relating to Distress for Rent, Distress for Rates, Distress for Tithe Rent Charge (London: Sweet & Maxwell, 1934). “Obituary: Mr. J. P. Eddy: A Life Committed to the Law,” Times (London), 15 Jul 1975, 59448: 16.
3 Crowley, Spirit of Solitude, 184–5.
4 Charles J. S. Harper to C. Somerford, 28 Sep 1932, Nina Hamnett Papers. Michael Sadleir to C. J. S. Harper, 3 Nov 1932, Nina Hamnett Papers.
5 C. J. S. Haper to Michael Sadleir, 1 Feb 1933, Nina Hamnett Papers.
6 Unidentified newsclipping, New 87, Yorke Collection.
7 Birth record, Q2 1915, GRO, Penzance, Cornwall, 5c: 365.
Chapter Twenty • The War of the Roses (and the Battle of the Book)
1 Gallop was born in Bermondsey around 1893, earned his LLB from London University, and was called to the bar at age twenty-one. He served in the Great War, after which he recevied his B.C.L. from Balliol, Oxford University. He died in his residential chambers in Essex Court at age seventy-four. W. L., “Mr. Constantine Gallop,” Times (London), 21 Apr 1967, 56921: 10. 1901 UK Census, Islington, Highbury, RG13, piece 203, 120: 26. Death record, 1967, GRO, London, 5d: 337.
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