2 “Aleister Crowley Sent for Trial: Mystery of Woman’s Letters: Model in the Box,” News Chronicle, 29 Jun 1934. “Aleister Crowley on His Trial: Counsel Questions ‘Betty May’: Book Issued As Her Story,” Morning Post, 29 Jun 1934. “Mr. E. A. Crowley in Court on Charge of Receiving Letters,” Daily Mail, 29 Jun 1934). “Charge of Receiving Letters: Mr. Aleister Crowley on Trial,” Times (London), 25 Jul 1934). “Charge of Receiving Letters: Mr. Aleister Crowley Bound Over,” Times (London), 26 Jul 1934.
3 “Law Report, Nov. 8, Court Of Appeals: Mr. E. A. Crowley’s Appeal Fails: Crowley v. Constable and Co Limited, and Others before Lord Justice Greer, Lord Justice Slesser, and Lord Justice Roche,” Times (London), 9 Nov 1934.
4 “An Author’s Affairs,” Times (London), 9 Feb 1935. See also the following unidentified press clippings from the Yorke Collection: “Aleister Crowley and ‘Boycott of His Works’: Complains that Public Cannot Get His Books” and “Puts £2,000 Value on His Life-Story.” See also the 1935 correspondence of Charles J. S. Harper and Otto Kyllmann, Nina Hamnett Papers, especially Harper’s notes on the bankruptcy hearing, included in C. J. S. Harper to O. Kyllmann, 1 May 1935.
5 This article is reprinted in Stephensen and King, Legend of Aleister Crowley, 3rd ed.
6 Hermann Rauschning, Hitler Speaks: A Series of Political Conversations with Adolf Hitler on His Real Aims (London : T. Butterworth, 1939).
7 W. T. Smith to AC, 3 Jun 1935, New 15, Yorke Collection, Warburg.
8 Russell’s articles for The Occult Digest are: “Viens” (May 1930); “Mikrokosmogonia” (Jul 1930); “Black and White” (Jul 1930); “The Black Raven” (Aug 1930); “Cosmic Dawn” (Oct 1930); “The First Matter” (Oct 1930); “The Chymical Marriage” (Nov 1930); “The Mead of Odhraerir” (Dec 1930); “Silence: The Lightning Path” (May 1931); “The Universe Depends on You” (Nov 1931); “The Ritual of the Flaming Star …” (Nov 1932); “The Oracle of the Sun” (Sep 1933).
9 AC to W. T. Smith, 15 Aug 1935, New 15, Yorke Collection.
10 Paschal Beverly Randolph, Eulis! The History of Love (Toledo, OH: Randolph Publishing Co., 1874).
11 Reuben Swinburne Clymer, The Rosicrucian Fraternity in America: Authentic and Spurious Organizations as Considered and Dealt with in Treatises Originally Published and Issued in Monograph Form (Quakertown, PA: The Rosicrucian Foundation, 1935).
12 Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crucis, White Book “D”: Audi Alteram Partem (Hear the Other Side) (San Jose, CA: Rosicrucian Press, 1935).
13 AC to F. M. Spann, 13 Jan 1936, Evans Papers.
14 AC to Arnold Krumm-Heller, 28 Dec 1936, New 117, Yorke Collection.
15 AC to Montgomery Evans II, 28 Jan 1936, Evans Papers. This text also appears in AC to Louis Wilkinson, 8 Aug 1939, Wilkinson Collection; and in AC to W. T. Smith, 28 Jan 1936, New 15, Yorke Collection.
16 AC to W. T. Smith, 23 Jan 1936, New 15, Yorke Collection.
17 She would later marry intelligence agent Captain James MacAlpine, who, alas, died during a mission in the Balkans (see Spence, Secret Agent 666, 232–3). Thus, she is often referred to in Thelemic circles by her married name, MacAlpine. She later married again, becoming Deirdre MacLellan.
18 Louis Marlow [Louis Wilkonson], Forth, Beast! (London: Faber and Faber, 1946), 190–1. Bax, Some I Knew Well, 54.
19 Adapted from Charles Richard Cammell, Aleister Crowley: The Man, the Mage, the Poet (London: Richards Press, 1951), 175–7.
20 Short for era vulgari or vulgar year, Crowley’s designation for the “common era” or years counting from the birth of Christ.
21 Diary, 14 Jun 1936.
22 C. R. Cammell’s recollections of Crowley, New 18, Yorke Collection. See also AC to Gerald Yorke, 3 Sep 1936, New 115, Yorke Collection.
23 Oddly enough, Smith—who also worked for the California Gas Company, and was master of this “immoral” order—received no such threat.
24 W. T. Smith to AC, 21 Aug 1936, New 15, Yorke Collection.
25 AC to W. T. Smith, 16 Sep 1936, New 15, Yorke Collection.
26 W. T. Smith to AC, 4 Oct 1936, New 15, Yorke Collection.
27 Regardie, Eye in the Triangle, 8.
28 Regardie, Eye in the Triangle, 8–10.
29 AC to Edward Noel Fitzgerald 20 Oct 1942, New 117, Yorke Collection.
30 Over the years, he would go by Aleister Macalpine, Aleister Ataturk Crowley, Randall Gair Doherty, and Charles Edward d’Arquires. He died on November 20, 2002, at Chalfont St. Peter, Bucks. Death record, Nov 2002, GRO, Chiltern, Buckinghamshire, register L8D, district 3271D. See also http://www.lashtal.com/nuke/PNphpBB2-viewtopic-t-959.phtml (accessed Dec 18 2009).
31 She provided watercolor illustrations for Songs and Poems of John Dryden. London: Golden Cockerel Press, 1957.
32 She and Bax compiled the anthology of women’s poetry, The Distaff Muse. London: Hollis & Carter, 1949.
33 Frieda Harris, Winchelsea, a Legend (London: Selwyn & Blount, 1926). J. Johnson and A. Greutzner, The Dictionary of British Artists 1880–1940 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Antique Collectors’ Club, 1976), 107.
34 For a detailed biography of Frieda Harris, see Richard Kaczynski, “The Crowley-Harris Thoth Tarot: Collaboration and Innovation” in Emily A. Auger (ed.), Tarot in Culture: An Anthology (under review); Hymenaeus Beta, “Editor’s Foreword” in Aleister Crowley and Frieda Harris, The Thoth Tarot: A Descriptive Essay (Neuhausen, Switzerland: AGMüller, 2007, German edition; English edition forthcoming).
35 Edward Bainbridge Copnall, Cycles: The Life and Work of a Sculptor. Box 6, Edward Bainbridge Copnall Papers, 2003.2, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds. With thanks to Claire Sawyer.
36 Diary, 10 Aug 1937.
Chapter Twenty-One • The Book of Thoth
1 AC to anonymous, GARL.
2 After Crowley died, Karl Germer was sent a large number of unbound sheets of the second standard printing and a small number of sheets—estimated at ten to twenty sets—of the subscriber’s edition. He passed about five hundred sets of the standard issue to New York publishers Samuel Weiser, who cropped the margins and reissued the book in maroon cloth around 1956. The sheets from the subscriber’s edition passed to Helen Parsons Smith, who bound them in a facsimile of the standard issue’s white buckram boards and sold them through Thelema Publications in the 1980s.
3 Cammell, Aleister Crowley, 108–10.
4 Madame V. K. Wellington Koo to AC, 20 Nov1945, Old E21, Yorke Collection.
5 Diary, 18 Feb 1938.
6 As mentioned earlier, “affiliation” indicates administrative conferral of a degree, with no additional ceremonies, in recognition of an equivalent degree in another Masonic tradition. Harris held the VII° in OTO, which was equivalent to the highest degree, 33° or Sovereing Grand Inspector General, in the Scottish Rite. See http://weiserantiquarian.com/catalogfiftyseven/ (accessed May 12 2009) for Harris’s holograph copy of the VII° instructional paper, “De Natura Deorum.”
7 Roberts, Magician of the Golden Dawn, 308–10.
8 See Kaczynski, “The Crowley-Harris Thoth Tarot” and Hymenaeus Beta, “Editors’ Foreword” for a detailed account of this project’s execution.
9 Roberts, Magician of the Golden Dawn, 308–10.
10 Ibid., 313.
11 Death record, 554–12–1613, California, Social Security Administration.
12 Starr, Unknown God, 247. “Plays: New Productions,” Los Angeles Times, 4 Jun 1939, C4.
13 Starr, Unknown God, 247. “Plays: New Productions.”
14 Death record, 572–12–4456, California, Social Security Administration. Starr, Unknown God, 274.
15 See http://grunddal_sjallung.totallyexplained.com/ (accessed Dec 19 2009). Starr, Unknown God, 375. Sjallung’s works include Amélie André Gedalge, Mary Haller, and Grunddal Sjallung, Haandbog i Frimureriets Symbolik (København: Co-F. M. Forlag, 1926). Grunddal Sjallung, Litteratur for Frimurere (Kbh, 1934). Grunddal Sjallung, De œldste Afsløringer af Frimurernes Hemmeligheder (Kbh, 1941).
16
See J. B. Jameson to AC, 11 May 1938, Old E21, Yorke Collection, as well as the correspondence related to Jameson in the New 117, Yorke Collection.
17 Khaled Khan, “Das Herz des Meisters,” Pansophia 1925, 1(7): 93–124. It was also issued as a separate offprint in wraps.
18 Diary, 7 Oct 1938.
19 AC to unknown, 11 Nov 1944, tipped into Crowley’s The Book of Thoth, T198.b.1.15, Cambridge University.
20 Volume 3, number 1 was the so-called “blue” Equinox. Number 2 was printed but never bound, and ultimately destroyed by the printer for non-payment. Number 3 became The Equinox of the Gods.
21 For but a few examples, see the following Los Angeles Times program listings: “Notables will Talk on Radio,” 19 Sep 1931, 14; “Football Goes on Radio Today,” 26 Sep 1931, 16; “Much Music on Air Today,” 29 Sep 1931, 20; “Jujitsu Menu for Breakfast,” 21 Oct 1931, A15; “Moslem Voice to Span Seas,” 22 Oct 1931, 12; “Melody, Bridge and Golf on Air,” 9 Jan 1932, 12; “International Broadcast Set,” 11 Jan 1932, 14; “Radio Brings Grand Opera,” 16 Jan 1932, A5.
22 Leffingwell was the middle child of Wendel (b. 1849) and Mary (b. 1855) Leffingwell. He had an older sister Mabel (b. 1882) and a younger sister Mildred (b. 1896). See 1930 U.S. Census, Pasadena, Los Angeles, California, district 1120, 16A. World War I draft registration card, roll # 1411593, Cleveland, Cuyahoga, OH; National Archives, Washington, DC. 1900 US Census, Chicago Ward 19, Cook, Illinois, district 591. Los Angeles, California, voter’s registration logs for 1924, 1928, 1930, 1936, 1940.
23 Starr, Unknown God, 251, 366.
24 W. T. Smith to AC, 1 Sep 1939, New 15, Yorke Collection.
25 Roy Leffingwell to AC, n.d., New 14, Yorke Collection.
26 Roberts, Magician of the Golden Dawn, 305
27 AC to Gerald Yorke, 27 Mar 1946, Yorke Collection.
28 AC to NID, 6 Sep 1939, New 117, Yorke Collection.
29 See Spence, Secret Agent 666, 248–9, which reports that Crowley was interviewed by Admiral Godfrey of the Naval Intelligence Division.
30 A biography of Wheatley was recently published as Phil Baker, The Devil is a Gentleman: The Life and Times of Dennis Wheatley (Sawtry, Cambs: Dedalus, 2009). See also Phil Barker, “Dennis and All His Works,” Fortean Times, Jan 2010, 256: 38–43.
31 “Viscount Tredegar: A Modern Dilettante,” Times (London), 28 Apr 1949, 51367: 7.
32 Spence, Secret Agent 666, 225.
33 P. R. Stephensen to J. K. Moir, 6 Jun 1952, Box Y2116, Stephensen Papers.
34 The Asthmosana was a German-made glass asthma inhaler, consisting of a hollow flat oval with three openings, used for filling the inhaler and atomizing its contents.
35 AC to Montgomery Evans II, 27 Jul 1940, Evans Papers.
36 AC to Montgomery Evans II, ibid.
37 Cammell, Aleister Crowley, 182–9.
38 Diary, 22 Sep 1940.
39 AC to Edward Noel Fitzgerald, 12 Dec 1940, New 117, Yorke Collection.
40 AC to Gerald Yorke, 28 May 1942, Yorke Collection.
41 In 1939, Sutherland and H. M. Lommer published 1234 Modern End-Game Studies: With Appendix Containing 24 Additional Studies (Philadelphia, David McKay).
42 Diary, 16 Dec 1940.
43 The speaker had confused William Joyce for novelist James Joyce.
44 Diary, 12 Feb 1941.
45 Diary, 14 Feb 1941.
46 AC to Montgomery Evans II, op. cit.
47 AC to Gerald Yorke, 13 Sep 1941, Yorke Collection.
48 AC to Louis Wilkinson, 14 May 1941, Wilkinson Collection; AC to Montgomery Evans II, op. cit.
49 Germer to Frater FT, 6 Jan 1954, OTO Archives.
50 AC to Louis Wilkinson, 16 Mar 1941, Wilkinson Collection.
51 Diary, 20 Apr 1941.
52 AC to Louis Wilkinson, 12 May 1941, Wilkinson Collection.
53 Some in the aerospace community reputedly joke that JPL stands for “Jack Parsons’ Laboratory.”
54 Helen Parsons Smith was born Mary Helen Cowley in Chicago, the oldest of three daughters to Thomas Philip Cowley and his wife Olga Helena (née Nelson). After Thomas died of pneumonia in 1920, Olga met Burton Ashley Northrup, whom she married in 1922. The family soon moved to southern California, where two more daughters were born. When Burton Northrup was imprisoned in 1928 for fraud, Helen was forced to drop out of high school and work to help support her family. She later worked for her stepfather at Northrup Business Adjustments and graduated from Pasadena Junior College. She met Jack Parsons at a church social and married him in 1935, making her home in Pasadena. In later years, she would be instrumental in maintaining OTO and Thelema in the decades after Crowley died, editing, publishing and selling his works. U.S. 1930 census, Pasadena, Los Angeles, CA, district 1212, 4A. Jean Kentle, “Pasadenan Married in Church Rite,” Los Angeles Times, 29 Apr 1935, A7. “Advancement in the Light [obituary],” Thelema Lodge Calendar, Oct 2003, http://www.billheidrick.com/tlc2003/tlc1003.htm (accessed 9 Jan 2010). Starr, Unknown God. George Pendle, Strange Angel: The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons (Orlando: Harcourt, 2005).
55 W. T. Smith to AC, Mar 1941, New 15, Yorke Collection. For Parsons’s biography, see Pendle, Strange Angel and John Carter, Sex and Rockets: The Occult World of Jack Parsons (Venice, CA: Feral House, 1999). For Parsons’s writings, see John Whiteside Parsons, Three Essays on Freedom, ed. Hymenaeus Beta (York Beach, ME: Teitan Press, 2008) and John Whiteside Parsons, Freedom is a Two-Edged Sword and Other Essays (The Oriflamme 1), ed. Cameron and Hymenaeus Beta (Las Vegas and New York: New Falcon Publications in association with OTO, 1989).
56 The society was established by Forrest J. Ackerman (1916–2008), who coined the term “sci-fi” and served as editor and principal writer for Famous Monsters of Filmland. They frequently met at Clifton’s Cafeteria in Los Angeles, and counted amongst its members aspiring young writer Ray Bradbury and stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen.
57 For a memoir of McMurtry, see J. Edward Cornelius, In the Name of the Beast: A Biography of Grady Louis McMurtry, a Disciple of Aleister Crowley (Red Flame #12 and 13 (Berkeley: Red Flame, 2005). For his poetry, see Grady Louis McMurtry, Poems: The Angel & the Abyss, Dark Space & Bright Stars (London and Bergen: OTO, 1986).
58 Diary, 13 May 1941.
59 Frieda Harris to AC, 26 May 1941, GARL.
60 Diary, 30 Apr 1941.
61 AC to C. R. Cammell, 14 Jun 1941, Yorke Collection.
62 Harris to Alexander Watt, 3 Aug 1954, OTO Archives.
63 AC to Gerald Yorke, 20 Jun 1941, New 115, Yorke Collection.
64 Beverly Baxter to AC, 1 Jul 1941, Old E21, Yorke Collection.
65 AC to Roy Leffingwell, n.d., New 14, Yorke Collection.
66 AC to Gerald Yorke, 6 Sep 1941 and 13 Sep 1941, Yorke Collection, respectively. The people mentioned include rationalist philosopher and University of London lecturer Cyril Edwin Mitchinson Joad (1891–1953); writer John Cooper Powys (1872–1963); bookseller Harold Mortlake and literary critic, novelist and Dickens biographer Ralph Straus (1882–1950).
67 After the war, Joyce was hanged for treason on January 3, 1946.
68 AC to E. N. Fitzgerald, 11 Aug 1941, New 117, Yorke Collection.
69 Diary, 20 Aug 1941.
70 Diary, 21 Aug 1941.
71 AC to Gerald Yorke, 30 Aug 1941, New 115, Yorke Collection.
72 AC to Gerald Yorke, n.d., New 115, Yorke Collection.
73 Diary, 6 Sep 1941.
74 AC to Louis Wilkinson, 8 Jan 1942, Wilkinson Collection.
75 Diary, 25 Feb 1942.
76 Diary, 12 Jan 1942.
77 AC to Ethel Archer, 26 Mar 1927, New 4, Yorke Collection.
78 AC to Louis Wilkinson, 30 Mar 1942, Wilkinson Collection. Crowley is referring to Catullus’ epigram 94, addressed to Julius Caesar’s lieutenant Mamurra:
Mentula moechatur. Moechatur mentula? Certe.
Hoc est quod dicunt. Ipsa olera olla legit.
(“Mr. Prick is screwing around. Is Mr. Prick scre
wing around? Certainly.
This is the proverb: The pot gathers its own herbs.”)
The proverb may be taken as “the pot makes sure it gets what it needs.”
79 Diary, 5 Apr 1942.
80 This incident appears in Hamilton, The Way It Was with Me; and in John Symonds, Conversations with Gerald (London: Duckworth, 1974).
81 AC to Roy Leffingwell, n.d., New 14, Yorke Collection.
82 FBI report on Karl Germer, 16 Apr 1942, FOIA file #100–18329.
83 AC to Roy Leffingwell, 12 Sep 1942, New 14, Yorke Collection. See also the letters dated 11 Jul 1942, and 8 Dec 1942.
84 AC to Karl Germer, 7 Aug 1946, OTO Archives.
85 Diary, 25 Jul 1942.
86 AC to Roy Leffingwell, 15 Sep 1944, New 14, Yorke Collection.
87 Diary, 8 Jul 1942.
88 Diary, 1 Aug 1942.
Chapter Twenty-Two • The Great Turkey Tragedy:
Or Heirs Apparent
1 Diary, 19 Jan 1943. The American Book of the Law was issued in 1942.
2 Diary, 27 Jan 1943.
3 AC to Frater Viator, 15 Feb 1943, New 14, Yorke Collection. See also the letter of 3 Mar 1943.
4 Jane Wolfe to W. T. Smith, 13 Jan 1943, New 15, Yorke Collection.
5 W. T. Smith to AC, 3 Feb 1943, New 15, Yorke Collection.
6 AC to W. T. Smith, 1 Apr 1943, New 15, Yorke Collection.
7 AC to Viator, 15 Feb 1943, New 14, Yorke Collection.
8 FBI report on John Whiteside Parsons, 2 Nov 1950, p. 10, FOIA file # 65–59589.
9 Diary, 18 Feb 1943.
10 Diary, 15 Apr 1943.
11 AC to Max Schneider, 17 Aug 1943, New 14, Yorke Collection. A similar statement appears in AC to Roy Leffingwell, 10 Aug 1943, Yorke Collection.
12 For a detailed treatment of Smith’s life and ordeals, see Starr, Unknown God.
13 AC to Grady McMurtry, 9 Dec 1943 and 15 Dec 1943, OTO Archives, respectively.
14 Death record, GRO, Bracknell, Berkshire, 19: 52. Marriage record, GRO, St. George Hanover Square, Middlesex, 1a: 1077.
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