Hebrew Publications Gnostic Mass Glossary Useful Links Contact Me Images Downloads |
|
|
|
|
|
|||
|
 |
|
|||||||||||||||||
 |
Aleister Crowley (12 October 1875 – 1 December 1947) 
A man totally misunderstood and even feared by many of his contemporaries during his lifetime, Aleister Crowley channelled his genius and numerous talents into magick, in the belief that he was the reincarnation of one of the world's greatest magicians,
Eliphas Lévi
(1810 - 1875), who died in the same year in which he was born. He also remembered past incarnations as
Count Alessandro di Cagliostro
(1743 - 1795) and
Pope Alexander VI (1431 - 1503) amongst others.
The spelling of magick in this manner, now in common practice, had been used centuries before Crowley came into being in his latest existence, but had gone out of fashion. It was revived by him to distinguish the true science of the Magi from its 'counterfeits', such as stage magic, legerdemain and illusion. It could 'possibly' be coincidence, but 'k' also has an esoteric meaning in that kteis in Greek means vagina.
| ||||||||||||||||||
|
|||
|
And now - a Biography of The Beast 666
Although he was an only child, his parents did conceive and bear another, Grace Mary Elizabeth, on 29 February 1880, who lived for just five hours. As a young boy, the only book he was allowed to read was the Bible, but it seems he had no interest in the narrative with the exception of that in Revelation. He was attracted to the opponents of heaven such as the Dragon, the False Prophet, the Scarlet Woman, and in particular, the Beast 'whose number is the number of a man, six hundred and three score six', with whom he could identify. His attitude towards his parents is probably one of the stranger facets of his early life, eventually leading to his contempt for Christianity. His father was undoubtedly his hero and friend, a natural 'born leader' of men, who influenced thousands through his expressiveness, but he tells us he despised his mother and treated her like one would a servant, although he always appeared to have a 'soft spot' for her when we actually read between the lines. He maintained frequent contact throughout her life and often stayed with her when he needed to convalesce - or annoy her possibly.
He obviously did recover, and once again his parents reverted to his being taught privately. During these schooldays he quickly learnt the subtleties of the game of chess, even devising his own strategies, and very soon became a true expert at the game. He also learnt how to play golf (very well) and the art of rock climbing. An event which changed his life completely during these formative years was the death of his father on 5 March 1887, following which he started to rebel against authority and began to question the concept of Christianity. His father had been ill for a while with tongue cancer, and the family had moved to Glenburnie in Southampton to be close to the doctor treating him. His first experience of true mountaineering was in the Alps in 1894, where he became very proficient at the sport, even managing to rankle the members of The Alpine Club. with his achievements. A year later he sat the entrance examination for Trinity College, Cambridge where he lived in the manner of the privileged aristocracy, and reputedly had a great deal of sex with both men and women. During his three years at Cambridge his literary faculties developed tremendously, reading the whole of the works of such writers as Carlyle, Swift, Coleridge, Fielding, Gibbon, and others, as well as a great deal of French literature along with the best books by Greek and Latin authors. It was during his final year that he published his first poem of any note, Aceldama, a Place to Bury Strangers in. For many years he had loathed being called Alick, partly because of the unpleasant sight and sound of the word, but mainly because it was the name by which his mother called him. Edward certainly did not appeal to him and the diminutives Ted or Ned were even less appealing. He had read somewhere that the most favourable name for becoming famous was one consisting of a dactyl (a metrical foot of three syllables, one long, or stressed, followed by two short, or unstressed, as in happily) followed by a spondee (a metrical foot of two syllables, both of which are long, or stressed) such as Jeremy Taylor. Aleister Crowley fulfilled these conditions, and since Aleister also happened to be a Gaelic form of Alexander he opted for that. He also concluded that he would have become famous whatever name he had. It was around this time that an interest in the occult began to occupy his mind. In my own humble opinion it possibly started subconsciously as a result of a near fatal accident at a railway station during his childhood when a porter dropped a large trunk which was inches away from crushing him. Had it landed on him it would doubtless have killed him. He heard his father remark, “His guardian angel was watching over him.” This interest was rekindled at about midnight on 31 December 1896 during a vacation in Stockholm, having been woken in the night with a conviction that he had magical powers. He now wanted to know more. He discovered and read A. E. Waite’s The Book of Black Magic and of Pacts (since renamed and republished as The Book of Ceremonial Magic) and wrote to him enquiring as to how he could find the ‘Secret Sanctuary of the Saints.’ Waite told him to read more and suggested Councillor von Eckhartshausen’s The Cloud upon the Sanctuary as translated by Isabelle De Steiger, which he did along with The Kabbalah Unveiled (a translation of Knorr von Rosenroth's Kabbalah Denudata by S.L. Mathers) admitting to not understanding a word of it at the time. He later calculated that to maintain equilibrium the forces of good and evil must be equal in power, and further decided that true spiritual freedom must lie with Satan because the forces of good had tried to crush him all his life. He was now approaching the age where a choice of career had to be considered. Entering the Foreign Office crossed his mind and met with his mother's approval, so during the summer vacation of 1897 he travelled to St. Petersburg with the intention of learning Russian. However, it transpired that he lacked the inclination and he decided he had no real interest in the language anyway. Consequently, he rejected the idea. What he really wanted, even at this stage of his life, was to be someone whose name would be remembered for so long as life existed on earth. Clearly he was smart enough to realise he was unlikely to achieve this by devotion to duty in the Diplomatic Service. Although heterosexual (so he assured us, but bi-sexual might be a better description), Crowley had been having an affair with Herbert Charles Pollitt (1871 – 1942), better known as Jerome, a dancer and female impersonator, and a close friend of Aubrey Beardsley (1872 – 1898) the English illustrator and author. This liaison with Pollitt, who was ten years his senior, had been going on for several years. In January 1898 Crowley took rooms at 14 Trinity Street, Cambridge, where they spent a lot of time together despite the fact that Pollitt disapproved of the ‘magical’ decor.
Having come into a vast inheritance in his third year at Cambridge, and thus a private income, Crowley no longer considered employment to be essential – in fact, to be honest, he never even considered employment!. His inheritance (£40,000 has been suggested by some, although Susan Roberts, in The Magician of the Golden Dawn, tells us this sum was £50,000) would have been sufficient to provide a very good standard of living for any normal person for the rest of his or her life had it been invested wisely. But Aleister, as we shall see, was far from being a normal person, and set out on his mountaineering and magical quests with zeal and extremely expensive tastes. Within a few weeks of leaving university he began training on the Schönbühl glacier in the Swiss Alps with Oscar Eckenstein for a possible assault on K2, the second highest peak in the Karakoram Range in the Himalayas. Bad weather caused them to remain on the glacier for longer than they intended, during which time The Kabbalah Unveiled became Crowley's constant companion, and he resolved to find the elusive 'Secret Sanctuary of the Saints.' He became ill during this training period and had to go back down the mountain to Zermatt. One evening he gave an ad-hoc talk on alchemy (knowing comparatively little about the subject at the time) in one of the beer-halls and seemed to impress the mainly English-speaking captive audience, one member of which was Julian L. Baker (1848 – 1925), an analytical chemist and minor magician who claimed to have fixed mercury. Either being dumbfounded by his sheer bravado or not wishing to embarrass him, Baker never commented on his speech on the walk back to their hotel. Crowley realised Baker could possibly help him in his quest, so the next day he determined to speak to him again. Baker left the hotel that morning, but Crowley eventually tracked him down and found him some distance from Zermatt. He convinced Baker of his need to find this Secret Sanctuary, after which Baker intimated that he might know a link to an organisation that could hold a key. They arranged to meet again later that year in London. In October he met Julian Baker as arranged. Baker introduced Crowley to George Cecil Jones (circa 1870 - 1953), a Welsh industrial chemist and member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (G.D.). He more or less moved in with Jones, who was living in Basingstoke in Hampshire, and convinced him of his potential to become a great magician; his name was put forward for membership of the Order. Strangely, despite his being a member of the G.D. and his long association with Crowley, very little is known about Jones.
Crowley was initially disappointed with the membership of the G.D., having found very few members of any intellect or spiritual stature as he put it. In the meantime, Jones had already realised Crowley’s potential and passion for magick so had given him a copy of the recently translated Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin the Mage, with which he became fascinated, or possibly obsessed.
Bennett suffered from chronic asthma, and was taking a concoction of drugs to relieve it. Crowley, along with Jones, persuaded him to leave England's miserable climate for health reasons using £100 Crowley had been given (so he says) by Laura Horniblow, the wife of a colonel serving in India and with whom he was having an affair, to pay his fare. That £100 'gift' was to contribute towards much of the trouble Crowley had later in his life. Bennett had no qualms about going to the Far East as he believed his future lay in Buddhism. He moved to Ceylon (known as Sri Lanka since 1972) where he joined a Buddhist monastery, taking the name Bhikkhu Ananda Mettaya after qualifying. In 1902 he relocated to Burma where he had been offered employment and where he considered Buddhism had remained uncorrupted. Before leaving these shores, he gave Crowley most of his magical notebooks, one of which contained the start of a Kabbalistic dictionary which later became Liber 777.
The ensuing uproar caused several of those London members to resign. Mathers was eventually expelled from the original Order, mainly on the grounds that he had put its authority into jeopardy by revealing his suspicions that the founding documents linking them to an older occult order in Germany had been forged by another member (which they had). Crowley, with Soror Fidelis (Elaine Simpson) who had sided with Mathers, attempted to obtain possession of the Order's property on behalf of Mathers, and he too was expelled from the G.D. just two years after joining. This farce is well documented. Tired with the infighting, Aleister decided to broaden his knowledge and outlook on life by travelling the world. He set off for New York, arriving on 6 July, and stayed for just three days (New York was suffering from a heat wave at the time). From New York he went by train to Mexico. There are insinuations that he chose Mexico because the police wanted to question him over allegations by Laura Horniblow. She was annoyed with Crowley for being ‘dumped’ and had written to him asking for the £100 she had given him to be returned. Naturally, he ignored her request. She complained to the police and also told them she had been tortured and sodomised by Crowley, but did not press charges because she did not want her husband to discover her infidelity while he was away. Nevertheless, Crowley was now known to the police. A file was opened on him which already contained inaccurate information, and which was to grow over the years. In Mexico he continued his magical studies. He gained a new concept of the Kabbalah and began to perceive the real implications of what he was doing. For example, the word abracadabra is familiar to everyone, but he wondered why it possessed such a reputation. By means of the Kabbalah and his own analysis, he restored its ‘true spelling’ to abrahadabra (with its numerical value of 418), which he considered to be the essential formula of the Great Work, adopting the word as the proper way to conduct all major Magical Operations. Using the authority invested in him by Mathers, he formed an Order called The Lamp of the Invisible Light. The Order demanded a light burn continually in a temple containing talismans corresponding with the forces of Nature. He left Don Jesus Medina, supposedly one of the highest chiefs of Scottish Rite Freemasonry, to run the Order as its High Priest. Before he left Mexico, so he said, he was admitted to the thirty-third and final degree of Freemasonry by Don Jesus. He never mentioned The Lamp of the Invisible Light or Don Jesus again. Oscar Eckenstein joined him in Mexico. He told Crowley to put aside magick for the time being and to practice meditation and concentration. But the main reason Eckenstein had gone to Mexico was to climb, and to take Aleister higher than he had climbed before. They scaled many peaks, including Iztaccihuatl (16,000’) and Popocatepetl (16,500’), and planned the previously discussed expedition to K2, after which Crowley continued on his travels. His lasting legacy of Mexico was malaria, a disease from which he was to suffer recurring bouts for the rest of his life. He went to San Francisco before visiting Honolulu, Japan, China and Ceylon, where he renewed his friendship with Allan Bennett. He stayed with Bennett for several months, and during this period studied the Eastern religions as well as all forms of Yoga. Before he left Ceylon, Crowley was advised by Bennett not to trust Mathers, and to distance himself from him. He also learnt that Elaine Simpson was now living the life of a colonial lady in Hong Kong. She was married and had given up magical work, which disappointed him somewhat.
To cut a very long story short, the wanderer returned home calling at Egypt, via Aden, somewhere he describes as a perfectly ghastly place to live in (the author can personally vouch for this having spent nearly 10 months there as a soldier between 6 September 1966 and 30 June 1967). He stopped off in Paris where he stayed with Gerald Kelly in his new studio in Rue Campagne-Première (off Boulevard du Montparnasse), Despite Bennett’s warning, he visited Mathers to demonstrate his recently acquired skills in Yoga. Mathers was unimpressed and had no desire to listen, let alone consider treating him as an equal, which Crowley now considered himself to be. Soon after visiting Mathers he was attacked by a 'vampire' (a middle aged woman referred to as Mrs M) supposedly sent by Mathers to kill him. He resisted her subtle approach, her increasing youthfulness and beauty, her gentle caress and her attempt to kiss him. He defeated her by turning her into an old hag who hobbled out of the room - see Confessions Chapter 42 for a more complete description of this occurrence. His relationship with Mathers ceased after he and Jones broke into Mathers’ flat to recover some of his belongings.
“We went, accordingly, after dinner, with candles. More from habit than anything else, as I imagine, I had with me a small notebook of Japanese vellum in which were written my principal invocations, etc. Among these was a copy of the 'Preliminary Invocation' of The Goetia.
However, back to the facts. The King's Chamber was aglow as if with the brightest tropical moonlight. The pitiful dirty yellow flame of the candle was like a blasphemy, and I put it out. The astral light remained during the whole of the invocation and for some time afterwards, though it lessened in intensity as we composed ourselves to sleep. For the rest, the floor of the King's Chamber is particularly uncompromising. In sleeping out on rocks, one can always accommodate oneself more or less to the local irregularities, but the King's Chamber reminded me of Brand; and I must confess to having passed a very uncomfortable night. I fear my dalliance had corrupted my Roman virtue. In the morning the astral light had completely disappeared and the only sound was the flitting of the bats.”
From Cairo, Aleister and Rose travelled to Ceylon where Rose announced that she was pregnant shortly after their arrival. As a result Crowley abandoned his plans to see Allan Bennett in Burma before going on to China, and after enjoying a big-game hunting expedition in Ceylon decided to return to the west where they could be sure of better medical care and attention for Rose and their unborn child. They arrived back in Cairo on 9 February 1904, and toured Egypt before returning to Cairo on 16 March, shortly after which Crowley underwent (for him) a life-changing
experience. He had been trying for several years to contact his Holy Guardian Angel using the methods described in The Sacred Magick of Abramelin the Mage, but without success. It was here in Cairo where he finally encountered an entity known as Aiwass, whom he believed was this long sought after Holy Guardian Angel. Crowley later discovered through Gematria that the spelling of this name should be AIWAZ.
On arrival at Boleskine, they began to carry out some of the instructions given by Aiwass by proceeding to prepare the perfume and the cakes according to the prescription given in Chapter 3,
verses 23 - 29 of the Book of the Law.
Before the birth, however, he had been forced to resume magical work of sorts on realising that Mathers was attacking him and Rose magically. Crowley kept a pack of bloodhounds for hunting
purposes at Boleskine, but Mathers had managed to kill the majority of them, and the servants became ill in various ways.
Soon after these unfortunate incidents, he noticed a beetle in the bathroom, which, despite his worldly experiences, was like no other he had come across before. It was about an inch and a half long with a single horn, nearly as long as itself, which ended in a small sphere similar to an eye. From then on, for probably a fortnight or so, a plague of these beetles descended upon Boleskine, not simply in the house, but on the nearby rocks, in the gardens, and by
what was known as the sacred spring - they were everywhere! He even sent a specimen to London to be examined by ‘experts’ at the Natural History Museum who were unable to identify the
species. Crowley saw this as a tangible piece of magick; the Book of the Law Chapter 3, verse 25 reads as follows: ..... make cakes & eat unto me. This hath also another use; let it
be laid before me, and kept thick with perfumes of your orison: it shall become full of beetles as it were and creeping things sacred unto me. This should have convinced him that the Book of
the Law meant business, but he tells us, “It left me absolutely cold.”
After having taken the necessary steps to ensure that Rose was protected against the 'murderous attack' by Mathers, he decided to retaliate by evoking Beelzebub along with his forty-nine servitors. In addition to the aforementioned attacks, one of the
workmen had suddenly become insane, attacking Rose while she was inspecting the offices. He was thrown into the coal cellar to await the arrival of the police. However, as soon as
Beelzebub 'got on the job', as Crowley put it, the magical assaults ceased, and his interest in all things magical waned again. The Book of the Law was put to one side.
They spent the summer at Boleskine relaxing and entertaining, one of the visitors being Guillarmod of the failed Chogo Ri expedition, with whom he planned an assault on Kanchenjunga (K3), the third
highest mountain in the Himalayas. A famous tale from this summer concerned the successful hunting and killing of a haggis by Guillarmod (a haggis being described by Crowley as a rogue ram to his
gullible guest). At the end of that summer, because winters could be very cold and miserable in Scotland, the Crowleys spent that season in St. Moritz, returning to Boleskine in the spring
of 1905.
He went via Darjeeling to Calcutta, to await the arrival of Rose and Lilith, which is where he received an invitation from the Maharajah of Moharbhanj to go hunting in his kingdom of Orissa (on the east coast
of India, on the edge of the Ganges flood plain, by the Bay of Bengal,), an offer he willingly accepted. While in Calcutta he made astral contact with Elaine Simpson in Hong Kong. During one
of these meetings he saw a Secret Chief in the form of a hawk in her company, and realised the Secret Chiefs still wanted him to work for them. He had more or less forgotten about the Book
of the Law and its implications at the time, and wondered where he had put it.
There were hardly any decent roads; in fact there were hardly any roads to begin with. Crowley was on horseback for a major part of the journey, while Rose and Lilith travelled in a sedan chair. China was where he discovered the 'correct' art of smoking opium, which certainly must have contributed to his ongoing drug addiction, and was also where he began his
Augoeides invocations, which lasted for several months. He was astounded by his wife’s durability in the time spent trekking through that vast country in extreme changes of climate and terrain. She not only looked after their child admirably, but 'flourished' in what were truly arduous conditions. They eventually arrived in Haiphong from where they took a boat to Hong Kong, considered to be a haven after the rigours they had endured in a country he surmised had not changed in a thousand years. It was here they decided that Rose should return to England with Lilith via the Western route, calling at Calcutta to collect the belongings they hadn't taken on the trip, while he went to New York to try to raise money to finance another assault on K3.
As Rose departed for Calcutta, Crowley set sail for Shanghai to where Elaine Simpson had moved. He brought her up to date on everything that had happened and naturally told her about Aiwass
and the Book of the Law. They talked and worked magick together for nearly two weeks during which time the Secret Chiefs advised him to disassociate himself from Fidelis. He left
for Vancouver from where he journeyed to New York. He spent about ten days there, but did very little to raise funds for a new K3 expedition, before crossing the Atlantic to Liverpool. On his return to England he was shocked to learn of the death of his daughter (she died in Rangoon of typhoid), and that his wife was an hereditary dipsomaniac. Rose was already pregnant on her return to England and gave birth to their second daughter, Lola Zaza, in the winter of 1906. She was a very sick child, and because of his wife’s problems, Lola was brought up by her parents.
Crowley now resolved to concentrate on the performance of the Operation of the Sacred Magick of Abramelin the Mage. The operation requires six months of preparation, the object being to
obtain the Knowledge and Conversation of one's Holy Guardian Angel. Once the Angel appears it is then necessary to call forth the Four Great Princes of the Evil of the World followed by their
eight sub-princes, and finally their 316 servitors. It is vital for the success of the operation that the magician prepares and charges talismans with the power of these spirits. Anything is then possible! Crowley finally completed the operation on 27 September 1906.
Fuller happened to be on sick leave in Britain in the summer of 1906 and met Crowley in one of Crowley's favourite haunts in London, the Hotel Cecil in The Strand. They took an instant liking to each
other, both being interested in the occult and sharing many other common interests such as anti-Christianity. Fuller quickly finalised his essay and sent it to Boleskine. Needless to say, he
won the prize with his book The Star in the West which praised Crowley greatly, although it is widely accepted that he did not pocket the prize money for his efforts. It would also seem that
Fuller’s effort was the only entry. The Star in the West was published in 1907.
George Cecil Jones was the man who had been responsible for introducing Aleister Crowley to the G.D. in 1898. Now, with Jones' assistance (with whom he was staying at the time because
of illness), and as a consequence of his own travels, experiences and the vast amount of occult knowledge he had acquired, plus the matter of the fragmentation of the G.D. along with the souring of
relations between him and Mathers, Crowley decided to form his own replacement Order with the intention that it would supersede the G.D. They wrote Liber LXI vel Causae, and in 1907 founded the
Astrum Argentum A
In February 1907, through a mutual acquaintance, a pharmacist by the name of Whineray, he met George Montagu Bennett (1852 - 1931), the 7th Earl of Tankerville. The Earl, a paranoid cocaine
addict, was firmly convinced that his mother, the eldest daughter of the 6th Duke of Manchester, was using magick to try to kill him. He asked Crowley to help, which he agreed to do, particularly as
the Earl was to pay him not only a handsome retainer, but was also prepared to meet any expenses he incurred. The Earl was blissfully unaware of how quickly Aleister could spend money - especially
someone else's!
Crowley told Tankerville he needed to develop his own magical powers to counteract those ‘being used by his mother’, so over the next few weeks he sent him several books to study. To ensure
they would not be disturbed during his training, Aleister suggested they hire a yacht which they moored upstream from Buckler’s Hard, a maritime village on the western bank of the River Beaulieu in
Hampshire. For about a week Crowley tried to teach the Earl how to establish his astral body, but it was proving to be a difficult task. As a consequence, he considered a magical retirement
to Morocco might rid the Earl of his paranoia and cocaine dependency (and more of his money).
Arriving in Tangiers, they found the country to be in turmoil. Although they were not allowed to leave the city, Crowley found plenty to do, but he was finding it more and more difficult to have a sensible
conversation with the Earl of Coke and Crankum, as he referred to Tankerville in his biography. Before long, however, the sultan was overthrown and the country returned to normal.
Aleister enjoyed his wanderings, particularly as it wasn't costing him a penny, but Tankerville was rapidly losing interest in his surroundings and instruction. Crowley had been
expecting it, and knew his financier for this excursion to North Africa was pulling the plug out when he flipped and accused Crowley of being in cahoots with his mother. After the Earl’s outburst of, “I’m sick of your teaching, teaching, teaching, as if you were God Almighty .... ,“ they returned home.
Following this episode, and because what remained of his inheritance was dwindling away, Crowley began taking in pupils, the proceeds from his instruction providing a ‘steady income’ and a route back into society. He spent a good deal of time between 1907 and 1909 writing, turning out reams of poetry and criticising other poets and writers of the day. Louis Unfraville Wilkinson (1881 - 1946), a friend and very talented writer, tried to get him out of the habit, but to no avail. It seems it was part of Crowley’s nature to criticise others. Wilkinson was later to say about Crowley, “His vanity was his handicap. He was too sure of his genius to criticise or revise his own work ......”
Crowley had been given some advice by Bennett during their previous meeting in Burma about how to achieve his
Samadhi. Bennett suggested he develop a ‘magical memory’ (sammasati),
something he had been working on since then. Allan Bennett visited England for six months in 1908 to try to establish Buddhism. After returning to Burma he and Crowley began to drift
apart. Bennett was intent on spreading Buddhism while Crowley was totally obsessed with magick. Bennett had to return to England later in his life because of his poor health, which a smog-bound London did nothing to help. He died in 1923 in Lavender Hill, Clapham.
Crowley returned to Boleskine during the summer with Neuburg and Kenneth Ward, an undergraduate Crowley had met while climbing in Wastdale. Neuburg was sent on a magical retirement,
during which Crowley checked on his progress in between fell-walking, climbing and fishing with Ward. At the end of his 'sadistically cruel' retirement, Neuburg was initiated into the
A
In November of the same year Crowley divorced Rose on the grounds of her alcoholism. This enabled him to indulge his passions for magick, drugs and sex (not necessarily in that order), no longer prohibited by the constraints of married life. Despite the divorce, he and Rose continued to live together and he looked after her and cared for her until she was committed to an asylum in September 1911. Crowley’s relationship with Gerald Kelly ended soon after the divorce. At the time of the divorce, Crowley was in Algiers with Victor Neuburg, intent on discovering the secret of the
Enochian Keys and their thirty
Aethyrs. A magician has to work backwards through
them! In the eleventh Aethyr he saw the fortress on the frontier of the Abyss, with its warrior wardens. He considered he was doing well and believed the ordeal was over until he realised he actually had to cross the Abyss. Crowley’s own words describe what happened next, but see also Liber CDXVIII, The Vision and the Voice, which chronicles Crowley's astral explorations of the
thirty Aethyrs of Enochian Magick:
“We went far out from the city into a hollow among the dunes. There we made a circle to protect the scribe and a triangle wherein the Abyss might manifest sensibly. We killed three pigeons, one at each Angle, that their blood might be a basis whereon the forces of evil might build themselves bodies.
The name of the Dweller in the Abyss is Choronzon,
but he is not really an individual. The Abyss is empty of being; it is filled with all possible forms, each equally inane, each therefore evil in the only true sense of the word --- that is, meaningless but malignant, in so far as it craves to become real. These forms swirl senselessly into haphazard heaps like dust devils, and each such chance aggregation asserts itself to be an individual and shrieks, "I am I!" though aware all the time that its elements have no true bond; so that the slightest disturbance dissipates the delusion just as a horseman, meeting a dust devil, brings it in showers of sand to the earth.
Choronzon appeared in many physical forms to Omnia Vincam, while I abode apart in my magical robe with its hood drawn over my face. He took the form of myself, of a woman whom Neuburg loved, of a serpent with a human head, etc. He could not utter the word of the Abyss, because there is no word; its voice is the insane babble of a multitude of senseless ejaculations; yet each form spake and acted as if aping its model. His main object was to induce O.V. to leave the circle, or to break into it; so as to obsess him, to live in his life. O.V. had many narrow escapes, and once Choronzon made a long speech at a great pace to keep O.V. so busy writing it down that he would not notice that sand was being thrown from the Triangle so as to obliterate the Circle. The torrent of obscene blasphemy was beyond his power to keep up, concentration being impossible. It became an incoherent series of cries; then suddenly, perhaps catching the idea from O.V.'s mind, the demon began to recite Tom o'Bedlam.
There was now a gap in the circle; and Choronzon, in the form of a naked savage, dashed through and attacked O.V. He flung him to the earth and tried to tear out his throat with froth-covered fangs. O.V. invoked the names of God and struck at Choronzon with the Magical Dagger. The demon was cowed by this courageous conduct and writhed back into the Triangle. O.V. then repaired the Circle; Choronzon resumed his ravings, but could not continue. He changed once more into the form of the woman whom O.V. loved, and exercised every seduction. O.V. stuck to his guns and the dialogue took other forms. He tried to shake O.V.'s faith in himself, his respect for me, his belief in the reality of Magick, and so on. At last all the energy latent in the blood of the pigeons was exhausted by the successive phantoms, so that it was no longer able to give form to the forces evoked. The Triangle was empty.
During all this time I had astrally identified myself with Choronzon, so that I experienced each anguish, each rage, each despair, each insane outburst. My ordeal ended as the last form faded; so,
knowing that all was over, I wrote the holy name of Babalon in the sand with my magical ring and arose from my trance. We lit a great fire to purify the place and destroyed the Circle and
Triangle. The work had lasted over two hours and we were both utterly exhausted, physically and in every other way.”
Of the entire system of the O.T.O., Crowley wrote, "It offers a rational basis for universal brotherhood and for universal religion. It puts forward a scientific statement which is a summary of all that is at present known about the universe by means of a simple, yet sublime symbolism, artistically arranged. It also enables each man to discover for himself his personal destiny, indicates the
moral and intellectual qualities which he requires in order to fulfil it freely, and finally puts in his hands an unimaginably powerful weapon which he may use to develop in himself every faculty which he may need in his work."
Crowley claimed that the rites were designed to inspire the audience with religious ecstasy, and that simply reading them would help people to cultivate their highest faculties. Not surprisingly, the popular press of the day thought otherwise. Horatio Bottomley of John Bull magazine, with De Wend Fenton of The Looking Glass following Bottomley’s lead, considered them to be an immoral display riddled with blasphemy and erotic suggestion. De Wend Fenton’s ‘Puritan attitude’ towards and ‘virtuous indignation’ shown for The Rites of Eleusis seem completely inexplicable when we consider an article printed in 1913 by the Daily Mail which showed him in his true light:
‘Mr. De Wend Fenton, Editor of the Sporting Times, was fined £10 and £5.5s costs at Mansion House by Alderman Sir John Knill on each of six summonses - £91.10s in all – for sending through the post indecent articles contained in the paper.’
The Rites of Eleusis included:
The years leading up to World War I were described as eventful. In 1911, Horatio Bottomley of John Bull magazine and De Wend Fenton of The Looking Glass magazine
began digging fervently into Crowley’s past after reviewing The Rites of Eleusis. The Looking Glass in particular started to print more and more outrageous reports about Crowley’s recent divorce, his adultery, the £100 gift from Laura Horniblow (which eventually became £200 he had stolen from her), and more importantly, about his friends and allies such as Allan Bennett of whom it was said conducted unmentionable immoralities with Crowley. Crowley was advised to sue by Fuller but chose not to as he considered the magazine to be on the verge of bankruptcy and
therefore unimportant. Finally, Jones sued the magazine because, although not mentioned specifically, he felt he had been implicated through his association with Crowley. Crowley sat in the
gallery throughout the trial, which Jones lost, refusing to testify. Fuller ended his friendship with Crowley on the grounds that he had let Jones down badly. He went on to become a Major
General and brilliant military strategist, writing several books on military history. The departure of this close friend and associate due to Crowley's arrogance or egotism was to set a pattern for
almost all of his relationships.
Following the trial, membership of the A
In October 1911 Crowley met Mary d'Este Sturges (a friend and companion of the dancer Isadora Duncan) celebrating her birthday at the Savoy in London. He travelled to Paris at the end of
October to visit her in her apartment. After ‘sweeping her off her feet’ he took her to Zurich where he initiated her into the
A
During this period leading up to the war he tried to get recognition for Leila Waddell. He formed a female dancing troupe which Leila headed, the Ragged Ragtime Girls, and launched them
in London at the Old Tivoli in March 1913. He hired six young female violinists to accompany Leila and dressed them all in coloured rags. Despite the fact they were dreadful they were well received, so in his new role as an impresario Aleister Crowley took the show to Paris and Moscow, with reasonable success.
After publication of the tenth and final issue of Volume 1 of the Equinox in September 1913, Crowley decided to pay more attention to his own magical development. He went to Paris and
summoned Neuburg to join him with the intention of embarking on a series of magical operations known as the Paris Working. These operations involved copious amounts of sex magick and
began on 1 January 1914, lasting for six weeks without interruption. It was shortly after this that Neuburg, too, drifted away from Crowley. He eventually died in May 1940.
Crowley spent the whole of WWI in America, sailing from Liverpool on the SS Lusitania on 24 October 1914. He claimed he had been refused entry into any of the services because of phlebitis in his
leg, but was hoping to work for the intelligence services. Consequently, he was slightly narked to think that his offer to do so from a man of his intelligence and integrity had not been accepted.
His so-called exploits ‘helping the German war machine’ in the USA are well known and the reason he was branded a traitor by many. He worked for Viereck’s anti-British publication The
Fatherland writing pro-German, pro-Sinn Fein and anti-British propaganda, but, as one would expect, his own account reports his deeds differently, and working for Viereck did at least provide him with
a meagre income. What was more, he was working for that income, something completely foreign to Aleister! In addition to this he was asked to submit articles to
The International, and eventually more or less took over writing the paper single-handedly under different guises from 1917. He used The International not so much for political purposes
or to ‘send up’ the Germans, but as a means of promoting the Law of Thelema. His detective stories, The Scrutinies of Simon Iff were also serialised in this newspaper.
Leila Waddell joined him during 1915 but it is not known for how long she stayed. Her visit was completely out of the blue, and her company pleased him immensely, although he was not without women. Leila eventually returned to Australia and, rather ironically, took a position as a music teacher in Sidney. She died in 1932 of uterine cancer. In the spring of 1915 Crowley met two potential Scarlet Women at a party, Jeanne Foster (the Cat) and Helen Hollis (the Snake). Jeanne Foster (Soror Hilarion) won his approval, and it is reported that he came close to marrying her. He wanted a son to fulfil the prophecy in Chapter 3, verse 47 of the Book of the Law ‘one cometh after him, whence I say not, who shall discover the Key of it all.’ What the Cat did produce was not a physical son but a metaphysical son, a magical son.
Charles Stansfield Jones was a member of the A
During this period in America Aleister conferred the grade of Magus
upon himself and finalised this on a retirement to New Hampshire in 1916. According to Colin Wilson in Aleister Crowley, The Nature of the Beast 'This involved catching a live frog, baptising it as Jesus of Nazareth, then crucifying it on a cross and stabbing it with a dagger.' It was after this that he took the motto To Mega Therion (see Liber LXX - The Cross of a Frog). This act symbolised the removal of the dying god Osiris, thus bringing in the Aeon of Horus which would enable him to establish a new religion, Thelema, the very thing he had been chosen to do by the Secret Chiefs when taking dictation of the Book of the Law in 1904.
Crowley’s mother died while he was away in the United States, in 1917 - although he 'despised' her, it is said he felt terribly alone after her death. In late 1917 he met Roddie Minor (Soror Achitha,
known as the Camel because she carried him through the 'desert' of his life). She was a qualified pharmacist with a regular income and, more importantly, had unrestricted access to
drugs! In January 1918 she had a vision of an egg under a palm tree, the very thing in the very location that Crowley and Mary d’Este Sturges had been told to look for by Ab-ul-Diz. Crowley wondered if Ab-ul-Diz was controlling her, but eventually discovered it was another entity called Amalantrah (see Liber XCVII the Amalantrah working). For several months they worked together and regularly contacted this being from whom Crowley gained a substantial amount of magical knowledge.
He returned to London, penniless, a few days before Christmas 1919. Considering his well-publicised exploits in America, he might well have been arrested as a traitor, but for some unknown reason the authorities
ignored him. Some suggest it was because the US authorities chose to ignore him after America entered the conflict, maybe having realised that Crowley really was writing anti-British and pro-
German columns in The Fatherland 'tongue in cheek'. Or maybe the British authorities had bigger fish to fry at the time. Even so, his activities had been noted in his ‘file’.
Back in England he went to live with his aunt in Croydon, but was spurned by his former acquaintances. Unable to raise desperately needed cash he moved to Paris at the beginning of January
where he was joined later in the month by a heavily pregnant Leah Hirsig along with her two (some say three) year old son, Hansi, from a previous relationship.
He needed cash, and needed it now, so set out to determine the value of any assets held by the O.T.O. in Britain. Prior to his departure for America he had conveyed ownership of Boleskin to the
M
In February 1920 Leah, now known to A.C. as Alostrael, the Ape of Thoth or simply the Ape as well as being his Scarlet Woman, gave birth to their child, Ann Léa, nicknamed
Poupée. Shortly after Leah's arrival Lady Luck paid him a most welcome visit. The money he had been craving for dropped in his lap by way of an inheritance (some reports suggest a
sum of £3,000 from an aunt, although another figure quoted is £700). They engaged the services of Ninette Shumway as a housekeeper and nanny. She was an unmarried mother with a
three-year old son (Howard) whom Leah had met on the crossing from America.
Crowley ‘borrowed or stole’ the name
Abbey of Thelema from François Rabelais (c.1495-1553), a Benedictine monk, physician, and humanist scholar. Gargantua and Pantagruel was Rabelais' epic, in which he attacked clerical education and monastic orders and expressed an appreciation for secular learning and a confidence in human nature. Like other humanists, Rabelais criticised medieval philosophy for being concerned with obscure, confused, and irrelevant questions, and expressed his aversion to medieval asceticism. He attacked monasticism as life-denying, and regarded worldly pleasure as a legitimate need and aim of human nature. His Abbey of Theleme is described as a kind of 'anti-monastery', the inhabitants of which were not governed by laws, statutes, or rules, but lived according to their own free will. It was from here that the System of Thelema developed. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Poupée died in October, shortly after the abbey had been established. Crowley's inheritance had been squandered along with his other windfalls and inheritances, and he was also burdened with the responsibility of two mistresses and several children (not all his own). After the loss of Poupée he was not sure of which way to turn despite being a Master of every kind of magick, and spent long periods away in Paris and London.
But it would seem that the gods had not deserted him for 'in a flash of intuition, which came upon him with shattering force', he penetrated the ultimate mystery. This was the meaning of Crowley’s ‘godhead’. He was already a Magus, but now aspired to become the Ipsissimus, who is free from all limitations whatsoever, including good and evil, someone who is basically indescribable (see Ain Soph of Kabbalstic doctrine), and above the grade of Magus, that is, the highest grade attainable. Crowley, for whom nothing was impossible, was not going to be restrained from 'reaching' this grade. The ceremony took place in the spring of 1921 when he was forty-five. As Ipsissimus he was beyond the gods, beyond all mental concepts, which is probably why he had to 'steel himself for the deed, to acknowledge that he, even he, who was known among men as Aleister Crowley, was by both insight and initiation the Ipsissimus.' He wrote in his diary (The Magical Record of the Beast 666), 'I am mortally afraid to do so. I fear I might be called upon to do some insane act to prove my power to act without attachment.' He entered the temple, followed by his trusty Ape of Thoth, but of the actual ceremony he says nothing, and at the conclusion, only 'As a god goes, I go.' He left the temple as naked as he had entered it, no longer as a saint (Saint Aleister Crowley, of the Gnostic church - hence the autohagiography) but as a god. It should be noted that the Ape of Thoth found him unbearable after he had attained the grade of Ipsissimus, and shortly afterwards wrote about him in her magical diary that it was ‘damn hard’ to think of ‘the rottenest kind of creature’ as a Word (by this she meant 'Thelema').
In 1922 he went with Leah to London where he signed a contract with the publishers William Collins to write a novel, The Diary of a Drug Fiend, and received a meagre £60 advance payment.
He rented a room in London and dashed it off in four weeks, Leah taking dictation. He promptly took the manuscript to the publishers who gave him another cheque for £125 as payment of advanced
royalties on his autobiography. The couple returned to Sicily immediately - with much needed cash. When The Diary of a Drug Fiend was published, the press realised Crowley had raised his ugly head once again. James Douglas of the Sunday Express said it was ‘A Book for Burning’, and started to print stories about his past and the evils happening in his abbey. The press reports caused the initial print of 3,000 copies to be sold quickly, but the publishers chose not to reprint it. They also cancelled the order for Crowley’s autobiography (but he did keep the advance).
Despite the fact that many people came and went (several stayed) the abbey was not to succeed, although Thelema still thrives through the auspices of the O.T.O. It was after an undergraduate named Raoul Loveday, one of Crowley's devotees, died after developing acute infectious enteritis that the Abbey's fate was sealed. Loveday's wife, Betty May, who had disliked Crowley from the outset and had begged her husband not to go to Cefalu, returned to England and sold her story to a London reporter – you’ve got it – James Douglas of the Sunday Express. The headline on 23 February 1923 read 'NEW SINISTER REVELATIONS OF ALEISTER CROWLEY.' It concerned testimony that Crowley had been responsible for the death of her husband at the Abbey of Thelema in Cefalu, Sicily. Bear in mind that this was all following on from the Drug Fiend stories – Crowley really was an evil man according to some of the press.
Crowley left the island on 1 May with Leah, who although losing interest in and respect for him, was very concerned about his deteriorating health. After consulting the I Ching they travelled to Tunisia
where he began a new diary which has been published under the title The Magical Diaries of Aleister Crowley Tunisia 1923. Mudd joined Crowley in Tunis on 20 May. They performed
magick together for several months, before Crowley took what pittance was left and abandoned the others at the end of the year. Through various dubious means and unbelievable hardships they eventually returned to Paris where they rejoined Crowley.
Crowley was now becoming bored with Leah; the end was nigh for their relationship. He met Dorothy Olsen, a wealthy 32 year old American, and initiated her into the
A
During the summer Crowley, Dorothy, Leah and Norman Mudd were invited to an O.T.O. conference held in Hohenleuben, near Weida in Germany, but first there was a small matter of a large hotel bill and
fares for which the O.T.O. coughed up. The attendees were divided over the fact that Crowley had appointed himself head of the O.T.O., ousting Reuss with whom he had had a disagreement some
years before. Crowley maintained he had a letter from Reuss asking him to take control of the Order, but that letter has never been seen. The Germans were not convinced about
The Book of the Law, of which they had previously been unaware (it had only recently been translated into German). Heinrich Tränker had temporarily taken over the German faction.
Fräulein Martha Künzel and Karl Germer sided with Crowley, Tränker eventually doing the same realising he could be a threat, but others decided to keep the Lodge independent from the Master
Therion. Nevertheless, Crowley left the meeting as the undisputed Head of the Order. Germer spent most of his time promoting the organisation in America, and became one of Crowley’s
invaluable sources of income.
The relationship between Crowley and Leah Hirsig worsened during this period, and she eventually returned to America. At more or less the same time as Regardie was
discovering Crowley, so was Gerald Joseph Yorke (1901 – 1983). Crowley invited him to Paris, and naturally took to him because he appeared to be wealthy - he had actually flown to Paris – commercial flight was reasonably new and the domain of the very rich. Yorke joined the A
He returned to Britain with Maria and Regardie, but his two companions were refused entry. They were immediately sent back to France (on the same ferry on which they had arrived), from where
they went to Brussels in Belgium, another country which considered them to be undesirables. Crowley decided the only way to get Maria to England was to marry her. The Belgian
authorities were not keen on marrying foreigners, so he decided to take a chance on Berlin, which obviously paid off. They were married on 16 August 1929. They eventually returned
to London where Regardie, who had been working on Crowley’s publishing program and now having got permission to enter the country, joined them.
While staying in London, Aleister met the proprietors of the Mandrake Press. One of them, P.R. Stephensen, was actually impressed with a lot of Crowley’s work and persuaded his partner
(Goldston or Goldstein) to begin publishing some of it. Meanwhile, Crowley became ill again and moved to a rented house in Knockholt, Kent, near to where Stephensen was living at the
time. Regardie moved with the Crowleys but the household was not a happy one, so he spent a lot of time with Stephensen advancing his literary skills.
Crowley was invited to speak at a meeting of the Oxford University Poetry Society on 3 February 1930. Knowing that the Gilles de Rais case had been a classic example of the suppression of knowledge by a theocracy, he was about to tell the Oxford University Poetry Society the truth. His lecture was in reality an attack on the Establishment with an explanation of how the Orthodoxy had always tried to suppress free thinkers. The University's Roman Catholic Chaplain, Father Ronald Knox, got wind of this and succeeded in getting the lecture banned at the last minute, but this did not frustrate Crowley who immediately had the Banned Lecture printed and distributed.
By this time, Norman Mudd was nearing the end of his tether, and eventually realised that Crowley had no real interest in anyone but himself, simply discarding all those around him once they were of no
more use. He ended up as a down-and-out, and eventually committed suicide on the island of Guernsey in May 1934.
The first two volumes of Crowley's six-volume Confessions were published in 1930 by the Mandrake Press, but the other four never saw print – Crowley, completely out of character, fell out with the publishers!. In an attempt
to raise funds he tried to exhibit his paintings in London, but no gallery would accept them. Aleister Crowley was becoming famous, or should that be notorious? Undaunted, he took a large
quantity of them to Berlin (160 is the number suggested), which was where he met Hanni Jaeger, a nineteen year old artist. Despite their age difference and Crowley's flabby appearance, she was
fascinated by him, as nearly all the women he encountered seemed to be. While Crowley was having a ball and living the high life with Hanni, Maria, like his previous Scarlet Women, had been dumped, and was struggling to exist in London. Yorke took pity on her and helped her out by giving her money for food and rent. His appeals to Crowley on her behalf fell on deaf ears. Maria later became an insane alcoholic and was committed to Colney Hatch asylum in what is now the London borough of Barnett.
Hanni and Crowley travelled together to Portugal. However, because of the painful sexual experiences while performing 'sex-magick' with Crowley (she apparently disapproved of the orifice he was using) it
wasn't long before she returned home. Crowley then faked his own death at Boca do Inferno (Hell’s Mouth), where he left a suicide note, before returning to Germany to patch things up and continue
his relationship with Hanni, who actually did commit suicide later.
Meanwhile, Regardie, who was receiving no worthwhile instruction from Crowley because of his flightiness, became fed up with being let down and decided to leave his mentor. He went on to have a
highly successful career in the United States as a chiropractor, psychotherapist and magician, while acknowledging that everything he was he owed to Aleister Crowley. He even wrote his own
biography of the great man under the title The Eye in the Triangle to put right some of the biased and disgusting remarks made by John Symonds in The Magic of Aleister Crowley.
Like Regardie, Gerald Yorke came to realise that Crowley was only interested in his own well-being, and he too was slowly drifting away from him, but they never fell out completely. Crowley
later accused him of bungling his affairs, after which he withdrew his financial and moral support.
His relationship with Hanni began its decline in January 1931. During the spring and summer of that year he met several women, but in August he met a 36 year old divorcee by the name of Bertha
Busch, nicknamed ‘Billie’. They lived together in Karlsruherstrasse in Berlin, where she became The Monster and his Scarlet Woman. They had a violent argument in December during which Bertha stabbed Crowley below his shoulder blade causing a deep wound from which he lost several pints of blood.
On 24 December, he wrote to Gerald Yorke asking for money with the pretext that he would be ejected from his flat for non-payment of rent, and with nowhere to live claimed exposure to the elements,
particularly with his shoulder wound, would certainly kill him. He wrote his will naming Yorke as the executor, and asked to be buried in Poets’ Corner (a section of the South Transept of Westminster
Abbey where a number of famous poets, playwrights, and writers are buried and commemorated). Needless to say, even without Yorke's support, Aleister continued to exist. He was eventually ejected from
his flat in June 1931, after which he returned to England with Bertha. Despite the ups and downs of their rocky relationship, they remained together until March 1933 when he met a Bulgarian
woman by the name of Marianne. But Marianne wasn’t to last long, for in August he discovered Pearl Brooksmith, who became the next of his many Scarlet Women. Although their partnership ended in 1936, they remained friends.
Although already virtually penniless, Crowley was totally ruined financially and declared a bankrupt. He was now not only a junkie, but a bankrupt junkie without a publisher or income. After
losing the case he eked a living from handouts, donations, small amounts received from sales of books, and money from Germer’s initiates into the O.T.O. in America. For most of the time he
looked dishevelled and a true down and out, but he also had many periods of opulence, particularly with his numerous new Scarlet Women who willingly, although unwittingly, spent their
money on him. But as per the norm for Aleister, as soon as he considered himself ‘wealthy’ he left them and lived the high life until he became destitute again – the debts he managed to accrue
were quite considerable.
Charles Richard Cammell, who was later to write his own potted biography of Aleister Crowley (he became his first biographer), had read a lot of Crowley’s poetry as well as other articles by him and about
him, including much of his bad press. Viola Bankes, in her book Why Not?, had written an interesting article on Crowley which only served to increase his curiosity about the man, so in early spring
1936 he accepted her invitation to have tea with her while she was entertaining this legend. Crowley was 60 years old when Cammell met him He soon came to have the greatest respect
for his genius, although he certainly did not accept the majority of his views, and eventually got to know Crowley as well as most people ever knew him. In his biography Aleister Crowley The
Black Magician he tells us:
“Almost any other man would have abandoned hope in such a position, would have gone into hiding, humiliated and desperate. Not so Aleister Crowley. His imperious spirit remained unquelled; his pride unshamed; his courage undaunted. His belief in his mission, real or imagined, his determination to dominate, remained inviolate. His stoicism was extraordinary and admirable. He never yielded to misfortune; he despised, and therefore stood above, disgrace. His personality remained confident and commanding.”
It is said that Crowley wrote his one and only letter to his son in 1947 offering advice on handwriting, and suggesting he learn Latin and Greek, how to play chess, but most of all, to master
the English language by reading the Old Testament and works such as those by Shakespeare.
The gutter press of the day naturally took great delight in reporting what it claimed was a 'shocking and irreverent' funeral – in reality it was said to have been quite dignified – after which the local
council 'took appropriate steps' to ensure this sort of thing could not happen again. It would seem Aleister Crowley was still capable of shocking people, even after his death.
Like so many other outstanding men who preceded him, Aleister Crowley was undoubtedly a man born before his time. He lived in a society that could neither understand him nor even begin to
appreciate his true genius. He certainly did not suffer fools gladly, and his writing so shocked the vast majority of the people of the time that he was probably robbed of the praise that much of it
deserved – or was he really the wickedest man in the world? Fortunately the world today is a much more enlightened place, and even more fortunately for those of us still
living in it, his publications live on albeit mostly as costly reprints.
|
||
|
a | |||||||
|
In Summary
An appropriate entry from Crowley's diary in June 1923 with which to begin this short summary reads, “I may be a Black Magician, but I’m a bloody great one.”
It is quite clear that Edward Alexander Crowley sought fame and recognition throughout his life; the fact that he changed his name to Aleister for the reasons described near the beginning of this short biography make that patently obvious. But despite his exploits and the publication of his entire works (mostly privately funded), and even 'persuading' Captain J.F.C. Fuller to write a book declaring him to be the greatest man of his generation (The Star in the West), it was all to no avail. The vast majority of the great British public remained completely unaware of his existence.
 He who laughs last ................. ! Crowley was now the (in)famous person he had yearned to be for so long, and appeared to revel in his nickname of The Wickedest Man in the World, but he soon discovered this was to cause new problems from which he would not find an escape route, either with or without the aid of the Secret Chiefs. Publishers shunned his work, and apart from a small band of loyal friends and followers very few people wanted to be associated with him. For the last fifteen years of his life he remained in relative obscurity, dying a penniless heroin addict in a boarding house in Hastings. During his magical career, he used several mottos:
He never saw his daughter Lola Zaza again, but Deirdre McAlpine visited him quite often with his son (officially called Aleister McAlpine) for whom he supposedly made provision through the O.T.O. Despite a great deal of research I can find no details about 'Aleister Ataturk'. We know how prolific a writer Aleister was, but on reflection, what a pity he not devote some time to writing travel guides as well. Considering the travelling he did and the places he saw during his lifetime, I’m certain they would have made very interesting and descriptive reading, and just imagine comparing those places with how they are today.
Note
Throughout his life Crowley claimed to be a 33rd Degree Mason, but it transpired that the regularity of his initiation with the United Grand Lodge of England (UGLE) has been not only questioned, but disputed. In a letter from the Supreme Council of Freemasonry we learn that the title of SOVEREIGN GRAND INSPECTOR GENERAL conferred upon him by John Yarker (1833 - 1913), a 33rd Degree Mason, on 29 November 1910 (the date shown on the charter to the right) is worthless because the Grand Lodge of England's records show that John Yarker was expelled from the Masonic Fraternity in 1870, some forty years before this. Remember also, Crowley told us Don Jesus Medina had granted him the 33rd Degree in Mexico in 1901. Click on the image to the right
to see a larger version of the charter.
| |||||||
|
a | ||
|
Life after Death
That, more or less, was the end of Aleister Crowley and probably would have remained so, but in 1955 Kenneth Anger went to Cefalu to record a documentary about the Abbey of Thelema. He peeled off layer after layer of whitewash from the walls of the abbey to reveal Crowley's artwork (see Images). Today, The Beast 666 has become a household name once again and he is certainly more famous now than ever he was during his lifetime. This began twenty years after his death when the 'Fab Four', aka The Beatles, from Liverpool included his portrait as one of the people they admired on the sleeve of their huge-selling 1967 LP - Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Crowley is circled, second from the left in the back row). He soon became the 'patron saint' of Hippies and Flower-power children, his former places of residence becoming shrines for their pilgrimages.
Rock artistes such as the Rolling Stones, David Bowie and Jimmy Page (formerly of Led Zeppelin) all mentioned him by name or referred to Thelema in song. Jimmy Page used to run The Equinox Bookshop in London, which specialised in Crowley's publications. He also owned Boleskine, Crowley's 'manor' on the banks of Loch Ness, for twenty years between 1971 and 1991, and has a huge collection of Crowleyana including books, manuscripts and robes.
This list is far from exhaustive, but it reflects the continuing interest in the legendary Aleister Crowley. |
||
|
a | ||
|
In ConclusionIf you wish to learn more, or even try to understand this incomprehensible enigma of a man, I would certainly recommend that you begin by reading his autohagiography titled The Confessions of Aleister Crowley. Apart from being a tremendous read, it may well alter any preconceived impression you had of him irrespective of what your thoughts were originally, saint or sinner.When alive he could hardly sell a copy of a book, but since his death the cost of Crowley's publications has rocketed so you may well feel that the expense is not worth it. In this case I would suggest you try the Public Library, which is from where I obtained my first copy, but you should bear in mind the fact that truly rare books can turn out to be a sound investment - I now own several different editions of his autohagiography along with many of his other important printed works. They won't amount to a comfortable retirement yet, but I'm working on it. The only problem is I don't have enough time - woe is me, I should have begun my collection in 1967 when he came back into fashion! N.B. In September 2007 I emailed the Grand Secretary General of the UK Grand Lodge of the Ordo Templi Orientis simply to enquire as to whether he knew of any intention to reprint Crowley's Confessions. This is Frater Spiritus' reply, for which I thank him for taking the time and trouble:
|
||
|
a | ||
|
And Finally ...You may or may not have heard of 'Amado Crowley', an occult writer, magician, and head of a long-established magical order (called what?), who claims to be the biological son of Aleister Crowley. He was born on 26 January 1930, he says, as a result of a magical operation 'Uncle Aleister' performed in 1928. Amado tells us his mother is 'Stella Taylor' who was twenty-two at the time she allegedly met Crowley on a ferry to Boulogne. Aleister's illegitimate 'son' announced himself to the occult world in 1971 in a letter to 'Man, Myth, and Magic', but why did he wait for nearly a quarter of a century after Crowley's death before making this announcement? And why was it only after the resurgence of Aleister Crowley's name and works?In the same way as 'his father' did, Amado uses and teaches a combination of different Western Magical Techniques along with Eastern methods which include meditation,Yoga and Tai Chi. However, he also teaches that the cornerstone of 'his father's' religion of Thelema, The Book of the Law, is a fraud, claiming that Aleister gave to him an as yet unpublished text, The Book of Desolation, which is the only true holy text by the Master. I can't wait for the publication of this, or maybe I won't get to read it because he too has passed it on to his own unknown 'illegitimate son'! Dave Evans Ph. D and lecturer, has researched in detail the claims and proven biographical details of the individual in question. He tells us, "Amado is important ... for being the only occultist to claim that Aleister's work is totally and deliberately fraudulent." Those few words sum up his opinion very well. Gerald Suster (2 August 1951 - 3 February 2001) was a British historian, occult writer, and novelist. He doubts Amado's claim of parentage, writing "Amado claims in his book that Aleister taught him between the ages of 7 and 14: i.e. 1937-1944. If so, why isn't there a single mention of this vital matter in Crowley's Diaries? There he records matters as trivial as the breaking of a tooth or the quality of his dinner: but he does not see fit to record meetings with the initiation of a son destined to be his successor." You can read a full review of Amado Crowley's 'book' The Secrets of Aleister Crowley [Diamond Books, Leatherhead, 1991, £5.99] by Gerald Suster if you click HERE. To read another interesting review by G. M. Kelly, click HERE.
If someone can answer me this question ..... Why would a man such as 'his father', who was convinced of his own several incarnations on this earth, require someone to continue his work if he naturally assumed he would be reincarnated and thus able to continue that work in his own right albeit in a different existence? ..... then I will believe in Father Christmas and the Tooth-Fairy again, but still not in his 'biological son' Amado Crowley! |
||
|
a | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Some Quotes from the MasterThe majority of these quotes, all taken from Aleister Crowley's hagiography Confessions can be found in several other places on the internet. The reason for my including them on this site is that not one of the other sites tells you where to find them within his great tome. Some of them are not really worthy of inclusion as quotes per se, so as time constraints permit I shall glean some others and add them to this section.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
a | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
The Magical Mottos of A.C. & his AssociatesMagical mottos are the magical nicknames, noms de plume, or pseudonyms (normally in Latin) taken by various individuals in magical organisations, the motto generally being adopted upon initiation into the neophyte grade of the organisation. These members were known by, and often referred to in many publications by their mottos. Users of magical mottos typically referred to each other in their capacity as initiates as Frater (men) or Soror (women), Latin for brother and sister respectively, followed by the initials of their magical mottos.
E.&.O.E. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
a | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Crowley's BiographersAleister Crowley has been the subject of numerous biographies and studies, not always accurate, with some showing outright hostility towards the man while others give a true account of his life, including his eccentricities. Some of the more well known are listed below.
I feel this first piece is of vital importance to balance what has been written about Crowley since his death. Israel Regardie in his Introduction to P.R. Stephenson’s The Legend of Aleister Crowley (1970) throws some interesting light on John Symonds (another biographer):
“Crowley died in 1947. Why he appointed John Symonds as one of his literary executors is a mystery that will never be divined. It is perhaps another example of Crowley’s poor judgement about people. Symonds wrote a disgusting book over a decade ago entitled ‘The Great Beast’. It is a malicious contemptible piece of work crammed with deliberate misinterpretation and ignorant understanding of what Crowley stood for. This wretched work was followed by another, ‘The Magick of Aleister Crowley’. In this second book, Symonds has extrapolated from the diaries and other works by Crowley in such a contemptible manner as to make ‘the old man’ look like a complete idiot.
Not content with this insolence, Symonds has steadfastly refused permission to me and several other writers to use any of Crowley’s published material. Evidently he has assumed that his literary executorship, instituted on behalf of and for the Ordo Templi Orientis, should be for his own personal gain.”
“Whatever Crowley was, he was not a charlatan. He believed, he worked, he suffered, he had power. He failed to put over the religion of Thelema in his lifetime, which, considering its nature, is not surprising. The Christian world regards him as one of the Devil’s Contemplates. His few friends will not see his like again; but his still fewer disciples mourn the passing of a Magus.”
"Aleister Crowley is a man. . . . . . . Moreover he is an interesting man, an extraordinary man; and, further, he is a dangerously good poet both in his poetry and in his life. Nothing much is known publicly about either of these activities. There is a great deal of dirty rumour. I am satisfied, after investigation, that rumour has lied, as usual; but more disgracefully and filthily than usual about this man."
“Crowley is, admittedly, a complicated case. One can hardly blame people for feeling hatred and fear toward Crowley when Crowley himself so often exulted in provoking just such emotions. Indeed he tended to view those emotions as inevitable, given what he regarded as the revolutionary nature and power of his teachings and the prevailing hypocrisy of society ... Revile Christianity (but not Christ, mind you) as he might, seek its downfall as he did, Crowley desired nothing less than a full-fledged successor religion — complete with a guiding Logos that would endure for millenia, as had the teachings of Jesus. "Thelema" was the Logos Crowley proclaimed, Greek for "Will." "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" was its central credo. Let us concede that this credo — so redolent, seemingly, of license and arnarchy, dark deeds and darker dreams — terrifies on first impact, as does Crowley the man. ... Say what you will of Crowley, judge his failings as you will, there remains a man as protean, brilliant, courageous, flabbergasting, as ever you could imagine. There endure achievements that no reasoned account of his life may ignore...”
“I would like to forget Crowley’s foibles, his sins, his fabulous claims, his ‘Magick’. I would remember rather his good-fellowship, his heroism, his learning, his genius. And, when all else has
been said about him, there remains to say what Louis Wilkinson has said truly, that he had never quite ‘grown up’, that there was in fact a ‘pathos’ about him, something irresistibly ‘lovable’.” |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
a | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
A Short but Concise ChronologyThis section is designed to provide a 'snapshot' of some of the major incidents in Aleister Crowley's life. Not all known occurrences have been included at this stage, but, as I have mentioned on other pages, it will be updated as and when time constraints permit. I am not including details of Aleister's publications as these are the subject of a separate section.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Return to top of page. |
|
|
A
Edward Alexander Crowley (his surname being pronounced, ironic as it may seem to those who know anything about Aleister, as one would pronounce the word ‘holy’) was born on 12 October 1875 at 30
Clarendon Square, Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, into a wealthy and strictly religious Victorian family. His father, despite having been a brewer, was a staunch member of the
In June 1881, the family moved to The Grange in Redhill, Surrey, the reason for the move possibly being as a result of the death of Grace. Here, he had the luxury of private tutors, and
was thoroughly grounded in geography, history, Latin and arithmetic. Later, Alick, as he became known, attended Malvern and Tonbridge public schools. Just like many mischievous
schoolboys did he amused himself through numerous diverse activities. For example, he created a very powerful explosive device with which he caused considerable damage and very nearly killed
himself. Another memorable episode was his killing of a cat in several horrible ways (but not maliciously so he assures us) simply to test the theory of its nine lives. The
experiment obviously worked, because he concluded that it had only the one. He was an unhappy child at school, and became seriously ill as a result of the constant bullying, deprivation and
punishments he had to endure. He was diagnosed with albuminuria, a sign of significant kidney disease, and for a while it was touch and go as to whether he would survive. It was probably through experiencing these
hardships at school at such a tender age that he developed a survival instinct that would stand him in good stead in later years on his mountaineering expeditions and arduous treks through barren countries.
Easter 1898 saw another turning point in Crowley’s life. He had gone to Wastdale Head in the Lake District with Pollitt, but besides climbing, he spent a lot of time reading The Cloud upon the
Sanctuary, much to Pollitt’s dismay. It was at Wastdale Head where he met Oscar Eckenstein (1859 - 1921), a railway engineer, but more importantly to Aleister an experienced rock climber and mountaineer of some repute. He took an immediate liking to this man for several reasons. Firstly, he was an expert mountaineer (who was to teach Crowley a lot in the art), secondly, Eckenstein’s obvious disdain for ‘The Alpine Club’ which he described as ‘a retreat for self-advertising quacks who could barely climb a ladder without a guide’, and thirdly, the fact they both admired the works of the explorer Sir Richard Burton (1821 - 1890). Although they had similar thoughts about the Alpine Club, they had completely different climbing techniques. Eckenstein was a born leader who climbed logically without taking unnecessary risks, whereas Crowley was impulsive. Where Eckenstein studied each move before selecting which muscles to use Crowley tended to use his whole body. Despite this, they made a great partnership and planned to meet later that year in the Alps.
In the summer of 1898 Aleister left Trinity College and Pollitt, but before doing so met a young undergraduate and aspiring artist, Gerald Festus Kelly (1879 - 1972), who had read
his first published poem, Aceldama, a Place to Bury Strangers in, which had interested him. Kelly had two great passions, cricket and painting, but was reading political science at
Cambridge when Crowley met him. He was to continue a relationship with Kelly (who would later be knighted and appointed President of the Royal Academy) for a number of years during which
their paths were to cross often. He never bothered to achieve a degree at Cambridge; in his own words, “I saw no sense in paying fifteen guineas for the privilege of wearing a long black gown more cumbersome than the
short blue one, and paying thirteen and fourpence instead of six and eightpence if I were caught smoking in it; to write B.A. after my name would have been a decided waste of ink.”
Aleister Crowley had money, lots of it, so no time was wasted in recruiting him. He joined the G.D. on 18 November 1898 as a Neophyte and took his membership very seriously, advancing quickly
through its grades (its rituals have been printed in The Equinox, Vol. I, Nos. II and III). Upon initiation he took the magical motto Frater Perdurabo (Latin for 'I Will Endure'), and was shown the secret signs, handshake and steps of the Order. He was entrusted with some ‘priceless secrets’ including the 
But his life changed dramatically in the spring of 1899 when he met someone in the Second Order by the name of Charles Henry Allan Bennett (1872 - 1923), known simply as Allan Bennett, who was already
well-known as a magician and considered second only to Mathers in this craft. When Crowley discovered Bennett was living in London in rather squalid accommodation he invited him to stay at his
more luxurious apartment in Chancery Lane. On their first meeting Bennett knew instinctively that Crowley had been experimenting with Black Magick, i.e. Abra-Melin, and warned him of its
hidden dangers to someone so inexperienced. Nevertheless, he accepted the offer, and thereafter took Crowley under his wing, showing him not only where to find 
Throughout 1899 Crowley spent a lot of time working from his magical text, The Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin the Mage. By the end of the year, partly through Bennett's assistance and
instruction, Crowley had completed the work necessary to advance to the Second Order of the G.D. in the grade of Adeptus Minor, but the London controllers of the Order, Florence Farr and William
Butler Yeats in particular (who disliked the ‘demonic upstart’ intensely - the feelings were mutual), refused to advance him. Crowley, although annoyed, was not too concerned. He went
immediately to Paris, where Mathers was now living permanently. Being in desperate need of an ally in the G.D. at the time, Mathers performed the necessary ceremony without hesitation in
January 1900, an act which only served to outrage the fractious London members.
Two of the other countries he visited were Burma and India, and it was during this lengthy trip to the Far East that the prearranged assault on K2 (known locally as Chogo Ri) was attempted, in 1902. Eckenstein was the natural leader of the expedition, with Crowley appointed Second in Command (he had financed the operation). Eckenstein had engaged the services of two young Austrian climbers and a Swiss doctor by the name of J. Jacot Guillarmod as part of the team. They suffered many hardships and logistical problems before eventually establishing Camp 10 at 18,733’. Regrettably the attempt on the summit was to prove unsuccessful due to terrible weather conditions preventing the party from reaching it. Crowley claimed to have climbed to about 22,000’ but records show it was slightly less, at a mere 21,653’. Even so it was a truly remarkable effort at the time. A new record was set for the length of time spent on a glacier (65 days on the Baltoro glacier), and debatably, a world altitude record. When we consider the extremely adverse conditions, lack of modern-day communications and equipment, including clothing, footwear and provisions, it is no wonder the expedition was unsuccessful. It is certainly worthy of note that no other person climbed higher on K2 until 1939, and the summit was not reached until 1954, six years after Crowley’s death and more than half a century after this attempt.
It was 1903 when he eventually returned to Boleskine, a 'manor' he had bought in August 1899 (for twice its market value) on the south-east side of Loch Ness in Scotland, for the purpose of
performing The Operation of Abramelin the Mage. He had already spent a great deal of time at Boleskine during the last quarter of 1899 and the first six months of 1900 preparing for the
operation, and the ‘manor’ had gained a reputation among the locals who would walk miles out of their way to avoid the ‘demons’ living there. But the operation, which requires six months of
preparation. was to be put on hold after he met and married his first wife, Rose Kelly, the sister of Gerald Kelly, on 12 August. Aleister called her Ouarda, an Arabic word for rose.
The marriage was supposedly one of convenience, Crowley, being the gentleman he was, doing the young lady a favour to get her out of an awkward predicament, but it didn’t work out as planned
because he was to fall in love with her and she with him. Their belated honeymoon took them initially to Paris, where they saw Mathers' wife, Moina, looking like a 'streetwalker' (as he put it) while
walking over the newly constructed Pont Alexander III near the Eiffel Tower. He assumed Mathers must have fallen on hard times. From Paris they went to Marseilles, where they boarded a
boat bound for Egypt. Here, they spent a night together in the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid. To quote Crowley:
We reached the King's Chamber after dismissing the servants at the foot of the Grand Gallery. By the light of a single candle placed on the edge of the coffer I began to read the invocation.
But as I went on I noticed that I was no longer stooping to hold the page near the light. I was standing erect. Yet the manuscript was not less but more legible. Looking about me, I saw
that the King's Chamber was glowing with a soft light which I immediately recognised as the astral light. I have been accustomed to describe the colour as ultra-violet, from its resemblance to those
rays in the spectrum - which I happen to be able to distinguish. The range varies, but it is quite noticeably beyond that visible to the normal human eye. The colour is not unlike that of an arc
lamp; it is definitely less coloured than the light of a mercury lamp. If I had to affix a conventional label, I should probably say pale lilac. But the quality of the light is much more striking than the
colour. Here the word phosphorescence occurs to the mind. It is one of the mysteries of physics that the total light of the sky is very much greater than can be accounted for by the luminous
bodies in the heavens. There are various theories, but I personally believe that the force now called radio-activity which we know to be possessed in some degree by every particle of matter, is
responsible. Our eyes are affected with the impression of light by forces which are not in themselves recognised as luminous.
He was trying (unsuccessfully) to summon 
After invoking Horus following Rose’s precise instructions, Crowley made the breakthrough. He was told that 
Shortly after this episode the couple returned to Europe, firstly to Paris where Crowley wrote a formal letter to Mathers to inform him that the Secret Chiefs had dismissed him and had appointed him
(Crowley) as the visible Head of the Order, and then on to Boleskine where they were to await the arrival of their child, a girl by the name of Nuit Ma Ahathoor Hecate Sappho Jezebel Lilith, born on
28 July 1904, and called Lilith (a mythological female Mesopotamian storm demon associated with wind) for short.
Wanderlüst now took over Crowley's life once again. He left Rose and Lilith behind to lead the planned but unsuccessful (some rightly say disastrous) expedition to Kanchenjunga. Oscar
Eckenstein declined to go on the expedition with Crowley and told him his entire plan was a recipe for disaster - how prophetic he was! Despite holding virtually every mountaineering record with
Eckenstein, Crowley was shunned by the mountaineering fraternity after this expedition, having walked down the mountain alone leaving several members of the party dead while others searched for their
bodies. Naturally, he gave a completely different account of events.
Upon the arrival of his wife and daughter they set off to cross China via Burma where he met Allan Bennett again. Bennett, who was now revered in Burma, was living in a monastery near Rangoon,
but his health was suffering badly again. Crowley was advised by many respected people not to go to China because of the recent unrest in the country caused by the Boxer Uprising, a violent anti-foreign, anti-Christian movement by the Righteous Fists of Harmony. Many Europeans had been murdered recently; diplomats, foreign civilians, soldiers and some Chinese Christians had been forced to retreat to the diplomatic quarter, but Crowley paid no heed to the warnings. After all, he was Aleister Crowley and if he decided to do something, he did it his way!
Aleister had begun publishing his ‘Collected Works’ privately in 1905, offering a prize of £100 (a considerable sum of money at the time) for the best essay discussing his poetry and other
works. Captain John Frederick Charles Fuller (1878 – 1966) of the 1st Oxfordshire Light Infantry was stationed in Lucknow and had written to Crowley when he was in Darjeeling to ask about the
competition and ascertain how he could obtain a copy of his book.
A
1907 was also the year in which he met Victor Neuburg (1883 - 1940), an associate of Captain Fuller and an English poet and writer, particularly on theosophy, and spotted his capacity for magick.
He regarded Neuburg as a new and important disciple, and spent a long time building up his strength and training him in magical work whilst he (Crowley) became extremely proficient in
In 1909 Crowley began publishing The Equinox, a biannual publication released on the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, which became the official mouthpiece of the
A
He also published Liber 777 in 1909, but became dissatisfied with the first version and began its revision. Unusually for Crowley, he never got round to completing it. The actual
revised version, Liber 777 and Other Qabalistic Writings, was edited and updated from Crowley’s own notes by Israel Regardie, his one-time secretary.
In 1910 (after the extremely well-publicised court case between Crowley and Mathers concerning the Equinox and the publication of some of the rites of the G.D.), Theodor Reuss a Grand Master of
the combined Scottish and Memphis Rites of Freemasonry in Germany , contacted Crowley. Reuss was not only a Grand Master of this organisation, but also the Head of the
Another celebrated event in 1910 was the performance of the Rites of Eleusis at Caxton Hall, Westminster. The Rites of Eleusis, a series of seven public invocations or rites written
by Aleister Crowley, centred on each one of the seven classical planets of antiquity. The rites were performed by Crowley, Leila Waddell on violin, and Victor Neuburg during October and
November, and were inended to bring Crowley's new organisation, the A
In the winter of 1917/18, after giving a lecture on magick, Crowley met Alma Hirsig, who in turn introduced him to her sister Leah some weeks later. Although he thought Leah was magnificent,
they did not begin a meaningful sexual relationship until twelve months after that first meeting. In other words, Leah did not become his Scarlet Woman immediately, although she was to attain that
status before Crowley left America.
Crowley considered he was now at his peak (besides being financially secure for a short while) and decided he was ready to release Thelema on the unsuspecting world. At the end of March,
after consulting the I Ching, he left Paris with Ninette and the two boys, while Leah and Poupée stayed with Crowley’s aunt in Croydon until suitable premises had been found. He soon discovered
the ideal place to establish his abbey, in a village called Cefalu on the island of Sicily. He rented the Villa Santa Barbara, which he described as made to order and fulfilled all his requirements
despite the fact that it was a run-down farmhouse, and set to work. Leah and Poupée joined them shortly afterwards. The one-storey rectangular farmhouse had 6 rooms, 5 of these radiating
from a central one which became his temple. There was no gas, electricity or sanitation, the only water coming from a nearby well. However, included in the rent was a 'bonus' in the guise
of a goat which provided the residents with milk.
Tales of horrors filled the pages of the newspapers in England for weeks and months afterwards: satanic rituals, black masses, animal sacrifice, and even human sacrifice were reported, or blatantly lied
about, for the majority of the stories were simply not true or just fanciful exaggeration. Horatio Bottomley of John Bull magazine libellously expanded on Douglas’ stories and ran headlines
such as 'THE KING OF DEPRAVITY', 'A HUMAN BEAST' and 'A MAN WE'D LIKE TO HANG.' Once again Crowley was advised to sue, but on this occasion he simply couldn’t afford to, even
though he was sure to win. Lord Beaverbrook, the owner of the Express Group, could afford to employ the best lawyers in the country, and Crowley was broke. These adverse press reports,
plus the imagined threat of secret societies, came during the time of the rise of Benito Mussolini’s regime in Italy. Shortly after these 'revelations' Crowley was summoned to the police who handed
him a deportation order signed by the Minister of the Interior expelling him from Italy, though he maintained no reason was given, and no accusation was made. Nevertheless, he was deported from Sicily in 1923. The day before Crowley left, Norman Mudd arrived in Cefalu. Mudd had been initiated into the O.T.O. by Charles Stansfield Jones (Crowley’s so-called magical son), and given the motto Omnia Pro Veritae.
For the next few years he travelled widely around Western Europe and North Africa. As usual he became bored with his latest Scarlet Woman - maybe her money had run out or was it
because she had no magical potential? Meanwhile an aspiring magician by the name of Israel Regardie (1907 – 1985) learnt of Crowley and wrote to him. Crowley replied and
suggested he contact Germer, who encouraged him to keep in touch with Crowley. In October 1928 Crowley agreed to tutor him in magick, for which he was to become Crowley’s (unpaid)
secretary. Naturally, Regardie handed over his savings to Aleister for ‘safe keeping’!
Crowley’s book Magick was published by Lecram Press in Paris at more or less the same time as he and his entourage were kicked out of France in March 1929. The reasons are
ambiguous and far from clear, with biographers differing. Some say the French authorities thought he might be a German spy because of his connections to the O.T.O. Others suggest it was
because of the actions of Regardie’s sister in America. She had read some of the material in copies of The Equinox which Regardie had left behind, and became concerned for her brother. She contacted the American authorities who in turn notified the French. This set the wheels in motion. They dug up his chequered past from police records in England (quite a portfolio had been built up by this time) and America, and the fact that he had been deported from Sicily. By now, Crowley had already met his next Scarlet Woman, Maria Theresa Sanchez (née Ferrari) de Miramar, a reasonably wealthy Nicaraguan, whom he referred to as Old Nile.
Another notorious incident in Crowley's life happened in 1934 when he lost The Laughing Torso libel case against Nina Hamnett and her publishers. He had known Nina since 1913 when
she became a member of the A
One remarkable event in Crowley’s life, of which we read or hear very little, is the fact that he did eventually have a son, with a woman called Deirdre Patricia O’Doherty, later to become
Deirdre McAlpine. The circumstances are bizarre to say the least. She had watched Crowley during The Laughing Torso libel case from the public gallery and had been impressed
with his humour and attitude, although she was not in love with him nor was he with her. They met but never became close; it was more of a platonic relationship. Some years later they met
again, and were walking together to Pearl Brooksmith’s flat (Pearl was still his current Scarlet Woman) when he supposedly put his arm around Deirdre and asked her if she would like to have a child
with him, to which, for some unknown reason, she agreed – it apparently took a very long time and a lot of encouragement before Aleister was capable! Another story tells us Deirdre approached
him immediately after the libel case to express her outrage at the verdict of the court, and it was then she offered to bear his child. Whatever the truth, his son was born on 2 May 1937, and named
Randall Gair. Crowley nicknamed him Aleister Ataturk. Deirdre already had two illegitimate children with two other partners, and was to have another child.
While working on his now famous Book of Thoth, Crowley was looking for an artist to illustrate the Tarot cards. In June 1937 he was introduced to Lady (Marguerite) Frieda Harris - née Bloxam (1877 – 1962), whose interest in the occult was limited to say the least. In May 1938 she became his 'disciple' when he began her initiation into his Orders with the intention of starting the spiritual
training necessary for her to design the truly powerful and symbolic deck which it was to become. By Crowley’s own admission, the deck was originally intended to be purely traditional, but Lady Harris encouraged him to commit his occult, magical, spiritual and scientific knowledge to the project. Crowley had intended the Thoth deck to be a six-month project aimed at updating the traditional pictorial symbolism found in other decks. However, because he and Harris were extremely thorough in their work, Harris painting some of the cards as many as eight times before achieving the desired result, it was to take five years, from 1938 - 1943. Unfortunately, neither she nor Crowley lived to see the deck published, the first full colour edition being issued in 1969 by Samuel Weiser. This initial print proved to be of inferior quality, so in 1977 the original paintings by Harris were re-photographed to produce a second edition which has since been updated. They are now the most sought after design of Tarot cards in the world!
His exploits during the World War II years are not so clear. We know he was delighted when Churchill was made Prime Minister, for he even posed in a Churchillian manner wearing a bowler hat, smoking a huge cigar, and scowling. He carried on working on the Book of Thoth while flitting in and out of London as the bombing raids decreased or increased, eventually retiring to Netherwood in 1944. Some say he became a government secret agent because of his knowledge of the occult - it was a well known fact that Hitler was obsessed with the occult, and was particularly interested in Astrology, a subject with which Crowley was very familiar. He was also well connected in Germany through the O.T.O. To further substantiate this possibility it is also known that he met Dennis Wheatley several times before and during the war, after which Wheatley began writing his famous occult stories. Dennis Wheatley is said to have introduced Crowley to Maxwell Knight, a senior MI5 officer. Knight respected Crowley’s abilities despite his WWI activities, and they met and spoke often. Whether or not a combination of his knowledge of magick and the occult, complex code/cipher and/or the German language and people helped the cause remains a mystery. One extra snippet to make us ponder even more is Churchill’s prolific use of the
V-sign. According to Crowley it was particularly suited to the task of bringing victory because of its esoteric correspondences. In Magick, V was the sign of Apophis and
Typhon which opposed the sign of the swastika, something Hitler or his advisers would have been aware of. So, was it serendipity, or had the authorities been listening to Uncle Aleister? It
would be ironic if one day we discover that he really did work for the Secret Service after being branded a traitor during WWI.
In 1946, towards the end of his life, Crowley was introduced to the man now known as the 'father of modern Wicca', Gerald Brosseau Gardner (1884 – 1964), after whom Gardnerian Wicca is
named. His several meetings with Gardner led to controversy over the authenticity of Gardner’s Book of Shadows, the first draft for this book initially being titled Ye Bok of ye Art
Magikal. It was alleged that Gardner paid Crowley to write the book for him, but this has since been discounted.
Aleister Crowley gained much deserved notoriety during his lifetime and was (in)famously dubbed The Wickedest Man in the World, a title he certainly did little to refute and doubtless
encouraged. His experiments with drugs had developed a dependency upon heroin, a habit from which he suffered for the rest of his life. Almost destitute because no publisher would
touch his writings, he spent his remaining days in Netherwood, a boarding house in Hastings, England. He died from myocardial degeneration and chronic bronchitis on 1 December 1947,
aged 72, shortly after his doctor, William Brown
Thomson, had refused to supply the morphine upon which Crowley had become dependent. Many tales surround his moment of death, but the one that seems most plausible, and which is concurred
by Lawrence Sutin, one of his biographers, is the one I have included here. Deirdre McAlpine was at his bedside, but his son had left the room a few moments before his final breath, upon which the curtains were blown in by a gust of wind and a peal of thunder was heard.
His funeral was held at Brighton crematorium four days after his death, with readings from selected works as per his wishes. Apart from the throng of reporters, about a dozen people attended the
funeral, including Deirdre McAlpine, Louis Wilkinson, a friend of Norman Mudd by the name of Gilbert Bayley, Lady Frieda Harris and Gerald Yorke. It is worth noting that the Order of Service
pamphlet printed for the funeral service showed an incorrect date of birth (October 18th 1875). He never got to be buried at Poets’ Corner as per his wishes – apparently it was full!
It was not until 1923, at the age of 48, that he got the attention he desired - he had finally become a household name, but for all the wrong reasons. This came about after the Sunday Express printed
its (mainly untrue) 'revelations' about the Abbey of Thelema, and
Having read both The Secrets of Aleister Crowley and The Riddles of Aleister Crowley my personal opinion of Amado Crowley is that he is an 'uneducated fraud' without half the brainpower of a goldfish. Having achieved nothing of significance through his own means during his lifetime, and now virtually 'knocking on death's door', he is trying to make a killing out of the growing phenomenon that is Aleister Crowley without actually knowing a thing about him despite the wealth of information available from people far more intelligent and knowledgeable than I.
