On April 10, 1934—the thirtieth anniversary of writing chapter three of The Book of the Law —Justice Swift and a special jury heard the case of Crowley v. Constable and Co., Limited and Others , informally known as the “Black Magic Libel Case.” 1 J. P. Eddy and Constantine Gallop represented Aleister Crowley; Malcolm Hilbery represented the publishers, Constable and Co.; and Martin O’Connor, one of the bar’s most famous personalities, represented author Nina Hamnett. For what promised to be the most sensational trial in recent memory, droves of reporters and curiosity seekers turned out, ranging from a nineteen-year-old girl named Deirdre MacAlpine to editor and author Anthony Powell, who worried that if Crowley won he would next sue Duckworth over Tiger Woman .
This trial did not disappoint, with newspapers devoting pages to its coverage over the ensuing four days. While the full transcript cannot be reproduced here, some gems of testimony passed Crowley’s lips in response to questions from both the prosecution and the defense; selected highlights are reproduced.
John Percy Eddy (1881–1975) was a former Daily Chronicle reporter who was called to the bar in 1911. Serving as Judge of the High Court of Judicature in Madras in 1929, he returned to the bar in England the following year. He published The Law of Distress the same year as this trial. Although not a brilliant orator, he was known for his calm manner, his deliberate walk, and his plodding and persistent advocacy. 2 His opening statement summarized Crowley’s complaint: “The Laughing Torso purports to be an account of the author’s own life, with intimate studies of her friends and acquaintances. Mr. Crowley complains that in the book he is charged with having practiced that loathsome thing known as Black Magic. There is White Magic, which is on the side of the angels, and rests on faith in the order and uniformity of Nature. Black Magic is a degrading thing, associated with the degradation of religion, the invocation of devils, evil in its blackest forms, and even the sacrifices of children.” Crowley, Eddy explained, had fought black magic for years, stressing the importance of the Will. He was so serious, in fact, that he started a community in an old farmhouse at Cefalù, Sicily, in 1920 to study this principle. Hamnett’s depiction of the Abbey, however, was damaging. Eddy insisted, “No child disappeared mysteriously, and the only goat on the premises was kept for its milk.”
“Are you familiar with the words ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law’?” Eddy asked at one point.
A smile crossed Crowley’s face in spite of himself. “I am.”
“Did they have any reference to this house?”
“They are the general principles on which I maintain all mankind should base its conduct.”
“What do they mean?”
“The study of those words has occupied the last thirty years of my life,” Crowley explained proudly. “There is no end to what they mean, but the simplest application to practical conduct is this: That no man has a right to waste his time on doing things which are mere wishes or desires, but that he should devote himself wholly to his true work in this world.”
“Have those words anything to do with black magic?”
“Only indirectly. They would forbid it, because black magic is suicidal.” Asked about the difference between black and white magic, Crowley continued, “In boxing you can fight according to the Queensberry rules or you can do the other thing.”
Malcolm Hilbery, for the defense, interjected, “Does that mean that his definition of Black Magic is the same as all-in wrestling?” Laughter filled the courtroom.
“I approve some forms of magic and disapprove others,” AC elaborated.
Eddy continued with his questions. “What is the form you disbelieve?”
“That which is commonly known as black magic, which is not only foul and abominable, but, for the most part, criminal. To begin with, the basis of all black magic is that utter stupidity of selfishness which cares nothing for the rights of others. People so constituted are naturally quite unscrupulous. In many cases, black magic is an attempt to commit crime without incurring the penalties of the law. The almost main instrument of black magic is murder, either for inheritance or for some other purpose, or in some way to gain personally out of it.”
Malcolm Hilbery, hands in his pockets, questioned Crowley about his identification with To Mega Therion , the beast in the Book of Revelation. “Did you take to yourself the designation of ‘The Beast 666’?”
“Yes.”
“Do you call yourself the ‘Master Therion’?”
“Yes.”
He nodded. “What does ‘Therion’ mean?”
“Great wild beast.”
“Do these titles convey a fair impression of your practice and outlook on life?”
“It depends on what they mean.”
“The Great Wild Beat and Beast 666 are out of the Apocalypse?”
“It only means sunlight; 666 is the number of the sun,” he dismissed, then cracked a smile. “You can call me ‘Little Sunshine.’ ”
At one point, Hilbery produced a book, to Crowley’s great surprise. He only knew of one or two other surviving copies. “Is White Stains a book of indescribable filth?”
Crowley remembered his lawyer’s warning that, if the defense had that book, he would lose the case. In fact, Crowley identified himself as its author in his Confessions , thus tipping off the defense. 3 Early on in preparing their case, Constable & Co.’s lawyers had tracked down a copy of White Stains , apparently borrowed from Scottish novelist Compton Mackenzie (1883–1972). 4 When they finally read the book, they declared, “I regard White Stains as an important find, especially as it is admitted by Crowley to have been written by him.” 5
Crowley quickly tried to explain. “The book is a serious study of the progress of a man to the abyss of madness, disease and murder. There are moments when he does go down into all those abominations, and it is a warning to people against going over.”
“Have you made sonnets about unspeakable things?”
“Yes. I have described in sonnet form certain pathological aberrations.”
“White Stains is described as ‘Being the Literary Remains of George Archibald Bishop, a Neuropath of the Second Empire.’ ”
“Yes,” he agreed. “I think only one hundred copies were printed and handed to some expert on the subject in Vienna.”
“Was that done because you feared there might be a prosecution if they were published in this country?”
“It was not,” he denied flatly. “It was a refutation of the doctrine that sexual perverts had no sense of moral responsibility and should not be punished. I maintained that they had, and showed the way they got from bad to worse.” Crowley had argued the same point twenty years earlier when explaining to John Quinn that White Stains was written as a response to Krafft-Ebing.
“You know it is an obscene book.”
“I don’t know it. Until it got into your hands, it never got into any improper hands at all.”
On April 11, the second day of the trial, Crowley’s cross-examination continued. Hilbery quoted Crowley’s articles in the Sunday Dispatch . “ ‘I have been shot at with broad arrows. They have called me the worst man in the world. They have accused me of doing everything from murdering women and throwing their bodies into the Seine to drug peddling.’ Is that true?”
“I hear a new canard about me every week. Any man of any distinction has rumors about him.”
“Does any man of any distinction necessarily have it said about him that he is the worst man in the world?”
“Not necessarily: he has to be very distinguished for that.” Observers chuckled, and Crowley smiled.
Hilbery asked pointedly, “Do you believe in the practice of bloody sacrifice?”
“I believe in its efficacy.”
“If you believe in its efficacy, you would believe in its being practiced?”
Crowley scowled. “I do not approve of it at all.”
“Do not approve it?” Referring to page 96 of Crowley’s Magick in Theory and Practice , he read:
Those magicians who object to the use of blood have endeavoured to replace it with incense. For such a purpose the incense of Abramelin may be burnt in large quantities. Dittany of Crete is also a valuable medium.… But the bloody sacrifice, though more dangerous, is most efficacious; and for nearly all purposes human sacrifice is the best.
From page 95 of the same book, Hilbery read:
For the highest spiritual working one must accordingly choose that victim which contains the greatest and purest force. A male child of perfect innocence and high intelligence is the most satisfactory and suitable victim.
A footnote that accompanied this text read, “It appears from the Magical Records of Frater Perdurabo that he made this particular sacrifice on an average about 150 times every year between 1912 and 1928.”
Crowley argued that the passages were statements about ancient practices, and not meant seriously. What he did not explain was that his words were entirely allegorical. “Sacrifice” meant to “make sacred,” and, to him, symbolized the most sacred act of all: sex. He referred not to the sacrifice of a life, but to making the sacred “elixir,” or combined sexual fluids of man and woman.
Hilbery went on. “In March, 1923, did a Sunday newspaper publish about you an article headed, ‘Black Record of Aleister Crowley. Preying on the Debased. Profligacy and Vice in Sicily.’ ”
Crowley agreed.
“Have you taken any action about that?”
“I have not.” When that article appeared, Crowley explained, he did not have enough money to begin proceedings; he considered it a compliment to be “blackguarded in such an obviously filthy way.”
Swift interposed at this point. “When you read, ‘it is hard to say with certainty whether Crowley is man or beast,’ did you take any action?”
“It was asked of Shelley whether he was a man or someone sent from Hell,” he answered vaguely.
“I am not trying Shelley. Did you take any steps to clear your character?”
“I was 1,500 miles away,” Crowley replied. “I was ill. I was penniless.”
Swift’s patience wore thin. “I didn’t ask about the state of your health. Did you take any steps to clear your character?”
“Yes.” Crowley said his solicitor advised that the action would last fourteen days and cost £10,000; thus, he could do nothing.
“Now you see how absurd that advice was, because this case won’t take anything like fourteen days. It has now taken two whole days, and it will probably take the whole of tomorrow. It may go into Friday, though I am not sure about that. It won’t last more than four days. I imagine you have not found £10,000, have you?”
“You said yesterday that as a result of early experiments you invoked certain forces with the result that some people were attacked by unseen assailants,” Martin O’Connor asked Crowley on the morning of Thursday, April 12, when the third day of the black magic libel case opened. “That is right, is it not?”
“Yes.”
“Will you try your magic now on my learned friend?” He pointed to Hilbery.
Tempting though the prospect must have seemed, Crowley replied promptly, “I would not attack anybody.”
“Is that because you are too considerate or because you are an impostor?” He chuckled at his debunking of the magician.
“I have never done willful harm to any human being.”
“Try your magic now,” he taunted. “I am sure my learned friend will consent to you doing so.”
“I absolutely refuse.”
Justice Swift intervened, stating, “We cannot turn this court into a temple, Mr. O’Connor.”
O’Connor nodded. “There is one other question. You said, Mr. Crowley, ‘On a later occasion I succeeded in rendering myself invisible.’ Would you like to try that on? You appreciate that if you do not I shall denounce you as an impostor.”
“You can denounce me as anything you like,” Crowley replied. “It will not alter the truth.”
“Have you at any time practiced black magic?” J. P. Eddy asked of his client for clarification.
“No. I have always written in condemnation of black magic.”
“What is the object of the magic in which you believe?”
“My particular branch is the raising of humanity to higher spiritual development.”
When Crowley prepared to leave the stand, Justice Swift asked one last question. “I would like to ask if Mr. Crowley could give the court the shortest and, at the same time, most comprehensive definition of magic which he knows.”
He happily obliged, quoting his own work on the subject. “Magick is the science and art of causing change to occur in conformation with the Will. It is white magic if the Will is righteous and black magic if the Will is perverse.”
“Does it involve the invocation of spirits?” Swift asked.
“It may do so. It does involve the invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel, who is appointed by Almighty God to watch over each of us.”
“Then it does involve invocation of the spirits?”
“Of one spirit. God is a spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.”
“Is magic, in your view, the art of controlling spirits to affect the course of events?”
“That is part of magic, one small branch.”
“If the object of the control is good then it is white magic?”
“Yes.”
“And if the object of the control is bad, it is black magic?”
“Yes.”
“When the object of the control is bad, what spirits do you invoke?”
This was becoming technical, and Crowley tried to be clear. “You cannot invoke evil spirits; you must evoke them or call them out.”
“When the object is bad, you evoke evil spirits?”
“You put yourself in their power. In that case, it is possible to control, or bind, evil spirits for a good purpose, as we might if we use the dangerous elements of fire and electricity for heating and lighting, and so on.”
“Thank you.”
After two days of testimony, Crowley stepped down from the witness stand.
Karl Germer appeared on the stand as a character witness for Crowley. When Martin O’Connor cross-examined Germer, he asked incredulously, “Have you ever seen Mr. Crowley invoke spirits?”
“Yes.”
“What spirits?”
He answered proudly, “The spirit of magnanimity.”
“How do you know it was the spirit of magnanimity?”
“I suppose you have got to be sensitive in order to perceive.”
Justice Swift asked Germer, “Can you point to any difference between the spirit of magnanimity and the spirit of hospitality?”
Karl mused and answered, “I think that is very easy.”
O’Connor pressed him, “You are sure it was the spirit of magnanimity which came, and not the spirit of hospitality?”
The highlight of this ridiculous bit of testimony, according to an observer, was “the unforgettable scene of an Irish barrister requesting a German witness to read an alleged obscene poem that Crowley had written in French.” 6
Images from the trial (left to right): Aleister Crowley giving the sign of silence; Betty May; and Karl Germer. (photo credit 1.1)
It was Friday the 13th. As Justice Swift predicted, the trial entered its fourth day. Betty May had been called by the defense, and J. P. Eddy attempted unsuccessfully to discredit her the same way the defense had discredited Crowley. An unexpected incident, especially damaging to Crowley, came out of this questioning. “In regard to your position in this case,” Eddy proposed, “I put it to you plainly that you are here as a ‘bought’ witness.”
“I am here to help the jury,” Betty May replied.
“I am suggesting, without making any imputation against the solicitors, that you were obviously unwilling to come unless you were paid to come.”
“No.” She said she received £20 at most from the defendants’ solicitors.
“What was it for?”
“It was for my expenses.”
“What expenses?”
“I lived in the country and they wanted me in London, and they had to pay my expenses.”
“In reply,” Eddy addressed the court, “she received a letter stating, ‘I am afraid I cannot send you as much as another £5. I am grateful for your help, but I thought previous remittances covered a good deal.’ ” The reading of that letter staggered everyone—the witness and the defense included. Betty May admitted she received £5 from Messrs. Waterhouse, the solicitors. Without missing a beat, he handed another letter to the witness and asked, “Are you known as ‘Bumble Toff’?”
“Lots of people call me by that name.”
“Do you know anyone by the name of ‘Poddle Diff’?”
“Yes, he is an old friend of mine.”
“Is that letter signed by an old friend of yours?”
“I don’t know, I have not seen him for so long.”
“Do you swear you have not received that letter addressed to ‘dear Bumble Toff’?”
Before she could answer, Hilbery voiced an objection, which Swift sustained. “The witness says she does not remember receiving the letter,” the Justice ruled. “There the matter must stop.” Betty returned the letter to Eddy.
“Did you not discuss with ‘Poddle Diff’ the question of your giving evidence in this case?” Eddy asked.
“No,” she answered. “He had enough troubles of his own without troubling about mine.”
With that, Eddy rested his unusual cross-examination.
Hilbery reexamined Betty, who stated she hadn’t seen the letters produced by Eddy for a long time: they’d been removed from a small box of her personal papers. “Did you ever authorize anyone to extract those documents from your box of private papers and give them to Mr. Crowley?” Hilbery asked.
“Certainly not.”
Justice Swift asked, “Are these the ones produced by Mr. Crowley?”
“Yes,” she answered.
“Do you know how Mr. Crowley got possession of your letters?” Swift probed.
“I cannot imagine how he got them.”
“Were there other letters in the case?” Hilbery asked her.
“Yes. Everything was taken from the case but the case was left. The contents were all stolen.”
Martin O’Connor opened the case for Nina Hamnett’s defense with an attack not only of Crowley’s credibility but his very beliefs. “It is appalling that, in this enlightened age a court should be investigating magic which is arch-humbug practiced by arch-rogues to rob weak-minded people. I hope this action will end for all time the activities of this hypocritical rascal. As to his reputation, there is no one in fact or in fiction against whom so much inquity has been alleged. I suggest the jury stop this case, say they have heard enough of Mr. Crowley, and return a verdict for the defendants.”
Noticing two jurors talking, Swift interrupted O’Connor’s statement. The two jurors looked up at Swift inquisitively. “Members of the jury,” he explained to them, “I thought that you were speaking to each other.” After a few sheepish looks, he added, “There is no reason why you should not whisper to him.”
The foreman asked, “May I be given an opportunity to do so?”
“I have stopped learned counsel so that you might speak to each other, if you want to do so.”
The jurors conferred; the foreman addressed the bench. “It is unanimous amongst the jury to know whether this is a correct time for us to intervene.”
“You cannot stop the case as against the defendants. You may stop it against the plaintiff when Mr. Eddy has said everything he wants to say.”
Feeling success imminent, O’Connor added nothing more and called no evidence, passing the trial back to Eddy to close. He did his best to argue Crowley’s case. Sticking to strictly legal ground, he pointed out that no evidence supported the allegation that a baby had disappeared from the Abbey, or that local peasants were afraid of Crowley. Moreover, Mrs. Sedgwick’s testimony on the events at Cefalù was wholly unreliable. “No reasonable jury can do other than find a verdict in favor of Mr. Crowley. The defendants’ views notwithstanding, the law of libel is available to everybody, whether he is of good or bad character.”
When Eddy finished, Swift addressed the jury. “Thirty minutes ago you intimated to me that you had made up your minds about this case and that you did not want to hear any more about it. I pointed out to you that before you could stop it, Mr. Eddy was entitled to address you. I also pointed out that before I could take your verdict I must be satisfied that you understand the issues you are trying.
“I have nothing to say about the facts except this: I have been over forty years engaged in the administration of the law in one capacity or another. I thought I knew of every conceivable form of wickedness. I thought that everything which was vicious and bad had been produced at one time or another before me. I have learnt in this case that we can always learn something if we live long enough. I have never heard such dreadful, horrible, blasphemous, and abominable stuff as that which has been produced by the man who describes himself to you as the greatest living poet.
“If you think that the plaintiff fails on the ground that he was never libeled, or that his reputation was never damaged, or if you think the defendants have justified what was written, then your verdict should be fore the defendants. Are you still of the same mind or do you want the case to go on? If there is any doubt about the matter, the case must go on.”
They returned a unanimous verdict for the defendants with costs. Crowley had lost.
In retrospect, Crowley v Constable and Co . was a truly bizarre case. It is difficult today to imagine the events of this trial: the notorious self-styled Great Beast—who explained to the court that this name simply meant “Little Sunshine”—testifying on the differences between white and black magic; the prosecution challenging Crowley either to magically attack Malcolm Hilbery or to render himself invisible in the courtroom; poor Karl Germer being chided about the differences between the spirit of magnanimity and the spirit of hospitality; and a stupefied Betty May being asked on the stand to admit to irrelevant pet names like “Poodle Diff” and “Bumble Toff” from stolen letters. In the end, the trial was much like Jones v. The Looking Glass over two decades earlier: Crowley was a person of such notoriously bad character that he had no basis for claiming damage from what, to the jury, appeared to be factual statements. In this case, Crowley’s past failures to take legal action to protect his reputation worked against him. Ultimately, Hamnett’s book did not accuse Crowley of black magic but reported what villagers near the Abbey purportedly believed.
“Case violated by collapse of Swift & Nina. General joy—the consternation of Constable & Co. & co.,” Crowley mysteriously recorded in his diary for Friday the 13th of April—a decidedly unlucky day. He filed out of the courtroom past the reporters who would plaster his name and face all over their papers. His only remark, to the puzzlement of the paparazzi, was a quote from Rudyard Kipling’s “If”:
If you can meet Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same.
After the trial, Robin Thynne introduced Crowley to his nineteen-year-old mistress, Deirdre Patricia Maureen Doherty (b. 1915). 7 Granddaughter and legal ward of Newlyn painter of children Thomas Cooper Gotch (1854-1931; Royal Society of British Artists, Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour), she had been sent to London to stay with a relative, Lord Justice Slesser. For her amusement, Slesser suggested she watch a trial in progress: Crowley v. Constable and Co . While they were, for the time being, casual acquaintances, “the girl Pat,” as Crowley would come to know her, would give AC the thing which neither Bill nor Pearl nor any other Scarlet Woman could: an heir.