Aleister Crowley

by Colin Wilson

  The German OTO was by no means unanimous in accepting Crowley as its new head. In fact, it finally split into three groups. One, led by Tränker, totally rejected Crowley. Another, led by a man named Eugen Grosche, accepted Crowley as an important teacher, but declined to regard him as a Secret Chief. The third, whose most important member was Karl Germer, swallowed Crowleyanity lock, stock and barrel. And for the next ten years or so, Germer continued to be Crowley's main financial support. As usual, the Beast had fallen on his feet.

  Norman Mudd and Leah Hirsig now vanish from the story. When writing The Great Beast in 1949, John Symonds took the trouble to find out what had happened to them. Leah, he learned, had tried to live up to the doctrines of The Book of the Law—which she regarded as more important than Crowley—but was finally disowned by Crowley, who informed other members of the OTO to refuse all contact with her. She returned to America—whence her son had already been taken by sister Alma—and became a school teacher again. For this reason, Symonds disguised her identity under the name Leah Faesi in The Great Beast. She died in 1951. Norman Mudd also turned against Crowley, whom he believed to have betrayed the Secret Masters, and at one stage announced himself to be the new World Teacher. Symonds’ enquiries elicited the fact that he had committed suicide on the channel island of Guernsey in June 1934, walking into the sea with bicycle clips on the bottoms of his trousers and the legs and pockets filled with stones.

  Now once again solvent—thanks to Germer—Crowley installed himself once more in Paris. Symonds confesses with a sigh: ‘A list of Crowley's mistresses at this time will get us nowhere.’ But he quotes a letter from Karl Germer's wife to Crowley in which she complains: ‘The $15,000 I have given you were spent not in real constructive work but in expensive cigars, cognac, cocktails, taxi's, dinners, wives and sweethearts, or anything you desired at the moment…God Almighty himself would not be as arrogant as you have been, and that is one of the causes of all your troubles.’ It was a perceptive comment.

  Like Norman Mudd, Crowley's ‘magical son’ Jones (Frater Achad) also began to suffer from delusions. He returned to England and became a Catholic convert—not because he had abandoned the doctrines of Aiwas, but because he hoped to convert the Catholic Church to the Book of the Law. Failing in this endeavour, he returned to Vancouver and was arrested for flinging off a raincoat and revealing himself naked underneath. Crowley expelled him from the Order.

  In 1926, Crowley began to store up more trouble for himself by entering into correspondence with a young man from Philadelphia, Francis Israel Regardie, who had read Crowley's classic on yoga Book Four. Crowley advised Regardie to contact Karl Germer, who was now living in New York, and Germer sold Regardie a set of the Equinox. In October 1928, Regardie sailed for France to become Crowley's secretary. But his sister had meanwhile looked into the Equinox, been horrified by its attitude to sex, and begged the French consul to deny her brother a visa. This was impossible—it had already been granted—but the consul referred the matter to Paris for investigation. Meanwhile, Regardie arrived in Paris and was met by Crowley; he moved into a flat at 55 Avenue de Suffren with Crowley and his latest Scarlet Woman, a flamboyant Nicaraguan lady named Maria de Miramar. Crowley had also acquired another well-off disciple, Gerald Yorke; Regardie confesses that both he and Yorke were nervous in case Crowley tried ‘some homosexual monkey tricks’, but apparently neither had any reason for alarm. The French police, alerted by the New York consul, proceeded to investigate Crowley, and learned of his expulsion from Cefalu and of his drug-taking; in March 1929, Crowley, Regardie and Maria de Miramar were ordered to leave France forthwith. Crowley managed to delay his expulsion by pleading illness, but Regardie and the Scarlet Woman had to leave. They were not allowed to land in England—although Regardie had been born there—but had to await Crowley in Brussels. Crowley himself left France in a blaze of publicity in the following month; since his expulsion from Sicily, he had been a subject of intense interest to the world's press. He managed to secure a British passport for Maria by the simple expedient of marrying her. Then he and Regardie were able to resume their work, this time at Knockholt, in Kent. Regardie records that when Gerald Yorke came to visit, Crowley would play them both simultaneouly at blindfold chess, sitting with his back to them in an armchair, and calling out the moves; he would always beat them both. The story reveals how much skill in ‘visualization’ Crowley had achieved through his studies of magic.

  Crowley had now completed what many regard as his major work, Magick in Theory and Practice, basically a sequel to the earlier Book Four. Gerald Yorke and Karl Germer paid for its publication in Paris—no English publisher would touch it, perhaps because Crowley recommended sacrificing a male child to achieve the best magical results, and added a footnote to the effect that he himself had done so about a hundred and fifty times a year between 1912 and 1928. And even in this, his major work, Crowley was unable to resist the temptation to indulge in sadistic practical joking; a practising magician explained to the present writer that the book was ‘booby trapped’—that is, that certain ‘deliberate mistakes’ have been included in its magic rituals. To the non-occultist this may sound harmless enough. But it is a basic part of the magical tradition that demonic entities are sticklers for precision and accuracy, and that the smallest slip can bring disaster. Crowley obviously liked the idea of some neophyte magician pronouncing magic spells in a graveyard by moonlight, and being possessed by some sinister entity from ‘beyond the threshold’.

  It is a measure of Crowley's total lack of realism that he believed that Magick would finally establish his reputation with the general public (he explains that he has written it ‘to help the banker, the pugilist…the grocer, the factory girl…’ etc.). In fact, it was not even noticed by reviewers.

  Things looked slightly more promising for the ‘auto-hagiography.’ He discovered a small press in Museum Street, Mandrake Press, run by Edward Goldston. Collins had, of course, lost interest in the book after the Sunday Express attacks; in June 1929, Crowley signed a contract with Mandrake Press, with an advance of £50. Goldston's partner, an Australian named P. R. Stephenson, was a great admirer of Crowley, and was engaged in writing a defense of the much-maligned magician—although this was not so much a labour of love as a business precaution, designed to break down sales resistance to Crowley's Confessions and to his witchcraft novel Moonchild (written in New Orleans in 1917). Regrettably, Crowley's reputation was so unsavoury that none of these books made any impact. Moonchild appeared later in 1929, accompanied by a note that begins:

  This entrancing story, by one of the most mysterious and brilliant of living writers, describes the magickal operation by which a spirit of the moon was invoked into the being of an expectant mother despite the machinations of the Black Lodge of rival magicians…[And it ends, significantly]: Aleister Crowley's first novel, The Diary of a Drug Fiend, was withdrawn from circulation after an attack in the sensational press.

  It is utterly typical of Crowley that when, in 1933, he saw a copy of Moonchild in a bookshop in Praed Street, with a card that stated: ‘Aleister Crowley's first novel The Diary of a Drug Fiend was withdrawn from circulation after an attack in the sensational press’, he instantly sued the bookshop for libel, pointing out that the book had simply gone out of print, and won £50 damages with costs. It seems a pity that the bookshop owner (a Mr Gray) did not have the presence of mind to point out to the judge that he was quoting Crowley's own words from the blurb of Moonchild.

  When the first two volumes of the Confessions appeared in 1930 (it was designed to be published in six) the Mandrake salesman tried in vain to persuade bookshops to offer it for sale. The man who had committed ‘unutterable obscenities’ at his abbey in Sicily was too hot to handle. As far as the British public was concerned, he should have been in prison, not openly trying to peddle his disgusting life story. The cover design, with its ‘idealized self-portrait’ and signature whose initial letter was obviously an erect penis, must have
put off anyone who thought that ‘confessions’ implied some kind of repentance.

  With regard to the Confessions and Moonchild, it must be admitted that, for once, Crowley's attitude of injured innocence was justified. The Confessions may not be comparable to Cellini, as Cammell suggests, but it is a fascinating book, and not even remotely obscene. Moonchild is a highly readable novel; two or three decades later, it might have achieved a success like that of The Exorcist or Rosemary's Baby. The other small book published by Mandrake—The Stratagem and Other Stories—reads at times like a mixture of Borges and Lovecraft, and confirms that Crowley was a born writer. These books were ignored simply because Crowley was Crowley—the ‘wickedest man in the world.’ And while his reputation was certainly his own fault, it seems a pity that their very real merits were ignored. In any case, Crowley soon quarrelled with Gerald Yorke and Karl Germer—though in neither case was the break a permanent one—and Mandrake Press ceased to exist.

  Early in 1930, Crowley was asked to lecture at the Poetry Society at Oxford, and proposed to talk about Gilles de Rais, the fifteenth century child murderer, whom Crowley rightly described as a practitioner of black magic; the authorities banned the lecture, and Crowley countered by having it printed as a pamphlet. When he tried to arrange an exhibition of his paintings, London art galleries declined the honour; when he proposed to show them at another address, where he was negotiating for the lease of a flat, the agent cancelled the lease. Soon after this, he abandoned his wife Maria, went off to Berlin, and found himself a nineteen year old mistress named Hanni Jaegar, whom he called the Monster. Later that year he went off to Spain with Hanni, and performed some spectacular operations of sexual magic with her; but she grew sick of magic, and after a violent quarrel, they were ordered to leave their hotel. After this, Hanni left him and fled back to Germany. Crowley decided to ‘annoy’ her by pretending to commit suicide; so at a steep cliff called Hell's Mouth, near Cintra, he left a suicide note under his cigarette case. Then he hastened off in pursuit of Hanni. Impressed by his devotion, she again gave herself to him in Berlin. While the world press speculated about his suicide, Crowley persuaded her to lodge a formal complaint—implying sexual harassment—against an American consul who had befriended her in Lisbon and advised her to go home. He was (as Regardie had observed) a man who could nurse a grudge for a long time. The speculation about him ceased when he appeared at the opening of an exhibition of his paintings in Berlin. But this piece of pointless exhibitionism only deepened the general impression that he was a man who would do anything for self-advertisement.

  In England, his wife Maria had become an alcoholic, then went insane and had to be committed to Colney Hatch asylum. Crowley's plans to divorce her and marry Hanni Jaegar were shelved when he met another Scarlet Woman named Billy Busch; Symonds’ account makes it clear that his relationship with her was as tempestuous as the one with Leah had been. Gerald Hamilton—Christopher Isherwood's ‘Mr Norris’—came back to the flat he was sharing with them one day to find her drugged and tied up with ropes, while a note from Crowley ordered him not to release her on any account.

  It was in May, 1933, that Crowley—as already mentioned—had sued a Praed Street bookseller for advertising Moonchild with a note stating that Crowley's previous novel had been withdrawn from circulation. When the judge awarded Crowley £50, his taste for litigation was whetted. Earlier in life he had wisely steered clear of lawyers; now in perpetual need of money, he bitterly regretted not suing Beaverbrook for the Sunday Express ‘libels.’ So when he came upon a passage in the autobiography of his old Soho friend Nina Hamnett, mentioning that he was accused of practising black magic, Crowley saw another opportunity to raise the wind. He approached her and explained that they could both benefit financially if he won a case against her publisher, Constable and Co (of whom Bernard Shaw was a main shareholder). How far she agreed to participate in this unpleasant charade is not clear. At all events, Crowley began to look around for friends to support him in court. J. W. N. Sullivan declined; so did Captain [now Major General] Fuller; so did the novelist J. D. Beresford, who had recommended Drug Fiend for publication.

  Memories of the law case of 1910 should have warned Crowley that he was tempting the fates. Even without the reputation of the wickedest man in the world, he could not have expected heavy damages for the statement that ‘he was supposed to have practised Black Magic’ in Cefalu. As it was, his decision to sue Nina Hamnett was as rash as Wilde's decision to sue the Marquis of Queensberry for implying he was a homosexual.

  When the trial opened, on 10 April 1934, Crowley soon made a bad impression with his flippancy. Asked whether ‘Master Therion’—‘the Great Wild Beast’—was a fair expression of his outlook on life, Crowley replied that it meant sunlight, and that they could call him Little Sunshine. He denied that he had been defying all moral conventions since his youth—a statement that may have been expedient but was certainly a lie, and a denial of all his basic principles. Readings from Crowley's erotic poetry shocked the court just as much as the prosecuting counsel knew they would, and even Crowley's comment: ‘As you read it, it is magnificent’ failed to lighten the atmosphere. When Betty May gave evidence about the death of her husband, Crowley's last hope of winning the case evaporated. (He had taken the precaution of having some of her letters stolen from her, but they did him no good in court.) Finally, the judge could contain himself no longer; he interupted to say that in forty years in the legal profession, he thought he had seen every form of wickedness, but now realized he could always learn something new. ‘I have never heard such dreadful, horrible, blasphemous and abominable stuff as that which has been produced by the man who describes himself to you as the greatest living poet.’ When he asked the jury if they wanted the case to go on, they lost no time in returning a verdict against Crowley.

  John Symonds makes the interesting observation that in spite of his defeat, Crowley felt elated. ‘The newspaper sellers had shouted out his name in the streets of London and elsewhere. The world had stopped and stared and wondered.’ Nothing could reveal more plainly that strange lack of realism that prevented Crowley from getting to grips with the world of actuality. The truth is that all Crowley's hopes, all his ambitions, had collapsed when Betty May and Mary Butts denounced him in the Sunday Express. He had always wanted to be recognized as a great poet, as a prophet, as a messiah; after the Sunday Express revelations, he had no more chance of achieving these ambitions than of becoming Archbishop of Canterbury. Yet his understanding of his own situation was so poor that he felt that being called horrible, blasphemous and abominable was a step in the direction of the recognition he craved. Perhaps it was just as well. Some men are improved by facing total failure and learning to draw on their inner resources; but Crowley had never been of this type. Self-discipline could only carry him so far; then he had to turn for support to drugs, women and disciples. An accurate assessment of his situation in 1934 would probably have destroyed him.

  As it was, the gods sent him immediate solace. As he left the court, a nineteen-year-old girl rushed up to him, and told him she thought the verdict was ‘the wickedest thing since the crucifixion.’ She went on to explain that she would like to become the mother of his child. This was just what Crowley needed. He rushed her off to his bed, and forgot the defeat in acts of sex magic. Yet his diary for that day reveals a total inability to grasp what had happened: he wrote ‘Case violated by Swift [the judge] and Nina. General joy—the consternation of Constable and Co.’—which seems to indicate a state of self-delusion not far from insanity.

  Later that year, he again appeared in court, this time to answer the charge of being in possession of Betty May's stolen letters. The man who was responsible for persuading Betty May to bring the case was a friend of Raoul Loveday's called Charles May who, according to Symonds, had also been responsible for having Crowley expelled from Cefalu. He told Symonds: ‘I am not at all ashamed of my share in this “Persecution.”’ Crowley was bound over and o
rdered to pay fifty guineas costs.

  Crowley was to live on for another thirteen years, and yet there is a sense in which the Nina Hamnett law case marked the end of his career as a magician. There are no more major events in Crowley's life to record, and no more major works to discuss—although many regard his work on the tarot—The Book of Thoth (1944)—as a classic in its field.

  Crowley was bankrupted by the Hamnett case (although this was less serious than it sounds, since he had no assets anyway). Friends like Germer continued to send him remittances, but certainly not enough to live in the style to which he was accustomed. The actor Oliver Wilkinson, son of Crowley's old friend Louis (Marlow) Wilkinson, mentions that there was a period in the 1930s when Crowley was forced to live in slum lodgings in Paddington Green, and that Louis Wilkinson asked his son not to give Crowley his address if he happened to run into him—when Crowley was broke, he was in the habit of sending frantic telegrams to his friends, some of whom ran themselves deeply into debt to respond to his appeals. But Oliver Wilkinson adds that Crowley soon had money to turn his back on Paddington and return to Piccadilly and Jermyn Street. This may have been due to the sale of Crowley's Elixir of Life pills, which cost twenty-five guineas for enough to last a week, and which were supposed to restore sexual potency and generally increase vitality; his satisfied customers were unaware that the chief ingredient in these pills was Crowley's own sperm. Or it may have been as a result of remittances from a new OTO Lodge in Pasadena, California, the Agape Lodge, which was part of the Church of Thelema. Founded by a Crowley disciple named Wilfred Smith, whom Crowley had met through his ‘magical son’ Jones in 1915, it was soon taken over by a rocket engineer called Jack Parsons, who later became closely associated with another aspiring young magician named L. Ron Hubbard, later the founder of Scientology, who soon stole Parson's wife. Hubbard was later to claim that he was actually trying to break up this ‘evil black magic group’, and that he actually succeeded; but the letters Parsons wrote to Crowley in the 1940s—which are quoted in The Great Beast—leave no doubt that Parsons regarded Hubbard as a genuine magical neophyte. Parsons later blew himself up in an experiment with rocket fuel. Oliver Wilkinson mentions that when he knew Crowley in the 1940s, Crowley's rent was paid by the Pasadena sect.