Even as his solicitors lodged a notice of appeal for the so-called “Black Magic Libel” case, Crowley felt repercussions from the trial. Arraigned on charges of feloniously receiving stolen letters—four originals and one copy—he pleaded not guilty and was released from the Marylebone police station on £10 bail until his trial. Although Kerman announced, “Mr. Crowley has a complete answer to this charge,” Captain Eddie Cruze, from whom Crowley had purchased the letters to use against the Tiger Woman in court, was nowhere to be found despite a warrant for his arrest.
Judge Whiteley tried the case at the Old Bailey on July 24 and 25. Although Betty (May) Sedgwick testified that Cruze had stolen the letters from her Seymour Street residence, Constantine Gallop (c. 1893–1967) 1 argued on Crowley’s behalf that she had given Cruze the letters as a guarantee of money she had promised him; and, since they were therefore his letters, he was free to pass them along to Crowley.
“Is this the first time there has been any charge against you in any place in the world?” Gallop asked Crowley.
“Yes,” he agreed.
“Apart from the criticism justly or unjustly leveled against you for your book, has anything ever been leveled against your character in any court?”
“Not in any court.”
“Were you plaintiff in the action Constable and Another? ”
“I was and I am,” Crowley answered, alluding to his appeal.
“In the course of that action, did you hear that Mrs. Sedgwick would probably be called as a witness against you?”
“Yes.” He testified that in December 1933 he learned that Cruze knew all about her plans. “Betty May was preparing to commit perjury. That I already knew from several sources.… I wanted to know whether these letters did prove the plans of Mrs. Sedgwick.” He paid £5 for the letters.
“Did you at any time suspect that these letters had been stolen?”
The jury deliberated half an hour before reaching a verdict. Believing Betty May’s letters to be valueless, and hence useless as a security, they disbelieved Crowley’s story and found him guilty. Because of his clean record, Judge Whiteley let him off lightly. “These letters ought not to have been used, ought never have been in your possession, or handed to your solicitor at all. However, they were used, and no harm had in fact been done; therefore I am not going to send you to prison.” Whitely put AC on probation for two years and ordered him to pay fifty guineas toward costs for the prosecution. 2
“Thank you, my Lord,” Crowley replied. In the back of his mind, however, he was screaming: “Idiots! Even a scapegoat is liable to butt.” He planned an appeal, but advised against it by both his lawyer and the I Ching, he dropped it.
On November 8, however, Crowley’s appeal of the “Black Magic Trial” made it to court. After three days of testimony, Lord Justices Greer, Slesser, and Roche decided that, although the case was well argued, it was unfair to take the objectionable passages out of context, where they were clearly not libelous. They sustained Swift’s judgment and dismissed the case. 3
The day after losing his appeal, Crowley, sick with pneumonia, was evicted from his room in Grosvenor Square. All told, 1934 had been a bad year.
Another unfortunate upshot of Crowley’s popularity in the daily law reports was that his creditors now knew where to find him. On February 14, 1935, Crowley faced the Official Receiver as case number 38 in bankruptcy court, with liabilities from thirty-eight unsecured loans and ten partly secured loans totaling £4,695. AC described himself as an author and psychiatrist. When asked why, during the years in which he was affluent, he never paid income tax, Crowley replied that he never received any forms, nor was he ever asked to pay taxes. Questioned about his lifestyle, he remarked that he always bought the most expensive clothing and paid £25 per pound for tobacco. Although he valued his stock of books at £20,000 and his life story at £2,000, he claimed to be unable to sell them because of a boycott of his works in England and the damage done to his reputation by recent lawsuits. For these reasons, he had earned only £78 in book sales and £135 from articles since January 1932; loans and his family trust covered his remaining expenses. He also blamed his insolvency on mismanagement by Yorke. “The assets comprised a large claim in a pending action against a person now said to be in Shanghai,” Crowley reported, claiming that once the suit was settled he would again be solvent.
At that, Yorke’s representatives, who attended the trial in case Yorke was dragged into this, informed the Receiver that the claim to which Crowley referred was two years old and that he had made no attempts in that time to pursue it. The receiver invited Crowley’s creditors to help him bring his case to court and thereby reclaim their money. None took up the gauntlet.
It was settled: Crowley was bankrupt. Finding he had no household furniture, creditors seized his manuscripts and diaries. (Fortunately, his trust fund payments were not subject to this ruling.) Not until 1939 did he pay dividends on his debts, amounting to two pence on the pound. 4
The last time Hayter Preston saw Aleister Crowley—in May 1914—they were arguing over Victor Neuburg. He never expected to hear from AC again, so his invitation to dine at the Old Ship in Brighton was too curious to pass up. Crowley’s motives, however, became clear once he pitched an article to Preston for the Referee . Nevertheless, he accepted and, after considerable editing, “My Wanderings in Search of the Absolute” appeared in the March 10, 1935, edition. It was a digest of Crowley’s early life, focusing on travel and mysticism. 5
The next working day, AC strolled into the Referee offices wearing his black Homburg hat. “These,” he said, depositing a stack of manuscripts on the editor’s desk, “are the future installments of my article.” Crowley became livid when told that the Referee wanted no other articles. He claimed Preston had contracted a series of articles, and if that agreement was broken, he would sue for breach of contract.
And sue he did. As with his other lawsuits at this time, Crowley lost.
Martha Küntzel had been overjoyed when Adolf Hitler became Führer on August 19, 1933. She had considered Hitler her Magical Son, and intended to convert him to Thelema because The Book of the Law claimed that the first nation to accept it would rule the world. Although she attempted to get a copy of The Book of the Law to Hitler in the 1920s—and Crowley heavily annotated a copy of Hitler Speaks , 6 claiming references to Thelema were interspersed throughout its pages—this was certainly not the case. Hitler’s ideology was formed long before Küntzel entered the picture. The Nazis began gunning for magicians in 1933, first banning fortune-telling, next confiscating occult books and outlawing secret societies, and finally imprisoning high-ranking occultists, including those from Freemasonry to the Fraternitas Saturni. Eventually, Küntzel’s own papers—including the stock of Crowley paintings stored with her after the Berlin exhibit—were seized and destroyed. Although AC initially supported the idea of converting a political leader to Thelema, his support of Hitler quickly dissipated when the chancellor showed his true colors.
When the British Home Office refused to extend Karl Germer’s temporary visa, it forced him to return to Germany on February 2, 1935. He was arrested at a relative’s house in Leipzig on February 13, charged with having illegal Masonic connections. He was taken first to Berlin, then to Esterwegen, a camp on the Dutch frontier.
Cora sought help from the American consul, but when she sent him a telegram from the States, the Nazis intercepted it and placed Karl in solitary confinement. He maintained his sanity by reciting the Thelemic Holy Books from memory and aspiring to his holy guardian angel. Cora’s constant inquiries to the American consul finally resulted in Germer’s release on August 1. That he was a German and had served as a major during the Great War helped.
A condition of his release forbade Germer to leave Germany and required him to report his residence and movements regularly. Thus Karl took an apartment near Belgium and reported it as per his parole, but also took another residence under an assumed name. One October night, he sneaked across the border to Belgium. Although he returned to England on a Belgian refugee passport, Germer was ultimately forced back to Belgium, where he stored his belongings and worked for an exporter of farm machinery in Brussels.
On April 14, 1934—the day after Crowley lost his court case against Constable and Company—W. T. Smith incorporated the Church of Thelema. This act was a bone of contention because Crowley wanted his American students to incorporate OTO, while Smith and Jacobi both argued that a church would net them tax-exempt status.
In June 1935, Smith wrote to Crowley about an influx of students to their group. C. F. Russell had set up his own OTO spin-off groups, “The Choronzon Club” and “G
B
G
,” which advertised a shortcut to initiation. “It appears that, in a few short weeks, one may become 7°=4° or more,” Smith wrote.
7
It had started five years previously—in spring 1930—when Russell wrote a series of articles for Chicago’s The Occult Digest
.
8
Coinciding with his first article, “Viens,” in May 1930, he began running a banner ad that read:
SPECIAL NOTICE TO ADVANCED STUDENTS
We will disclose a short cut to INITIATION to ALL those who are willing to perform THE GREAT WORK! Here is the TEST. Can you do exactly as you are told, just one simple easy thing and KEEP SILENT FOREVER about your success? Then send your name and address with one dollar to C. F. Russell, Secretary.
CHORONZON CLUB, P. O. Box 181, Chicago
MAKE SURE YOU KNOW YOUR OWN MIND BEFORE YOU ANSWER!
This ad ran for twenty-six months, from May 1930 to June 1932. The following month he switched to a new banner ad which ran until February 1933:
THERE IS A SHORTCUT TO INITIATION
The ANCIENT WAY to the Adeptship and beyond the ULTIMATE ATTAINMENT is now opened to Members of the CHORONZON CLUB by a scientific technic based on the Supreme Secret of all PRACTICAL MAGICK. The enrollment fee is one dollar. The final fee is six dollars. There are absolutely no further fees, dues or alms of any kind. Our business is to Initiate, not to make money. If you are willing to do exactly as you are told and can keep silence, apply today to any Member in your own town or send your application with the enrollment fee directly to:
MR. C. F. RUSSELL, Secretary, P. O. Box 181, Chicago.
After that, he ran a series of shorter classified ads that ran until December 1933.
C. F. Russell’s later advertisements in The Occult Digest for the Choronzon Club (clockwise from upper left: June, September, October, and November/December, 1933). (photo credit 22.1)
From what Smith had gathered, the system provided financial incentives for people to initiate more members and set up more lodges: while membership cost $1, the Lodgemasters split the $6 Neophyte initiation fee with Russell in Chicago. The group boasted five hundred members in Denver alone. However, Russell announced the beginning of the order’s five years of silence that summer: no more initiations would take place, and all typescript instructions were to be returned or destroyed. In response, members flocked to Crowley’s group.
Appalled by the details of Russell’s activities, Crowley asked Jane Wolfe to talk sense into him. When Russell refused to cooperate, Crowley expelled him from OTO and circulated the following encyclical:
To those whom it may concern,
The Master Therion warns all aspirants to the Sacred Wisdom and the Magick of Light that initiation cannot be bought or even conferred. It must be won by personal endeavour. Members of the true Order of the A
A
are pledged to zeal and service to those whom they supervise, and to accept no reward of any kind for such service. Nor does the Order receive any fees whatsoever when degrees of initiation are conferred by its authority.
He especially warns all persons against C.F. Russell of Chicago, Illinois, and his agents. He is a thief, swindler, and blackmailer. He has stolen the property of the Order, and used it to enable him to pose as its representative and so to carry on his swindles upon would-be initiates. Russell is a man of no education; he cannot even spell correctly. Steps have already been taken to prosecute him for his frauds.
Therion.
Aleister Crowley.
9
That fall, far from the depredations of the German war machine, OTO took its first steps in California. On September 21 at 7 p.m., Jane Wolfe escorted seven aspirants into the desert. Here, Smith, Schneider, Jacobi, and Kahl conducted the 0° initiation, admitting the seven seekers into the OTO grade of Minerval. Afterwards, Smith announced the name of their lodge: Agape . It was the Greek word for “love,” and, like thelema , added to 93.
At this time, a war that had nothing to do with Hitler or Europe raged. The battlefield was the United States, but the combatants never faced each other, and no casualties resulted. Sounding like the 1910 Mathers v. Crowley case, both sides of the skirmish—the Fraternitas Rosae Crucis (FRC) and the Ancient and Mystical Order Rosæ Crucis (AMORC)—deemed themselves the “true” Rosicrucian Order and their opponents “Black Magicians.”
The Pennsylvania-based FRC was descended from Paschal Beverly Randolph (1825–1875), whose psychosexual doctrines in Eulis! 10 and other books influenced OTO system of sex magic. Randolph had received a charter from the Societas Rosicruciana, and over the years the mantle of leadership passed to Freeman B. Dowd then to R. Swinburne Clymer (1878–1966). Now Clymer was slugging it out with a Mr. Lewis.
Before H. Spencer Lewis (1883–1939) founded AMORC in 1915, he was simply Harvey Lewis, illustrator for a New York mystery magazine. He was initiated into a French Rosicrucian tradition in 1909, then founded his own branch in the United States. As mentioned previously, he met Crowley in New York in 1918, shortly before moving the AMORC headquarters to California, where it has flourished ever since. Crowley had recognized Lewis as an honorary VII° and in 1921 Theodor Reuss issued a “Gauge of Amity” stating that OTO and AMORC worked along cooperative lines. Since his degree was honorary, Lewis took no initiation or instruction; it was simply Crowley’s (and, later, Reuss’s) recognition of Lewis’s other accomplishments to which the VII° corresponded. Lewis admittedly drew on Crowley, Eckartshausen and Franz Hartmann as sources of information, and even borrowed the GD’s Rosy Cross and the Thelemic motto “Love is the law, love under will.” In his Militia (1933), Lewis claimed his authority derived from OTO.
Clymer, having read and thoroughly misunderstood Crowley, accused Lewis of following the tenets of a black sex magician. Ironically, Clymer’s organization, descended from Randolph—who was, in turn, one source of OTO’s sex magical teachings—denied and shunned Randolph’s doctrines and branded them evil. To discredit Lewis as head of a competing Rosicrucian organization, Clymer issued a two-volume diatribe titled The Rosicrucian Fraternity in America . 11 Its sole purpose was to expose Lewis and the people connected to him. Lewis responded to these attacks by publishing Audi Alteram Partem —also known as White Book “D” —sending copies to various libraries and adding another stack of paper to the fire. 12 Next, Crowley added gasoline.
In Crowley’s opinion, Lewis’s sole authority stemmed from OTO. Reuss had given Lewis a diploma and, now that Crowley was OHO, Lewis was acting “entirely without my knowledge and approval, in complete disregard of, and in opposition to, my principles.” 13 The solution was simple: Since Lewis owed everything he had to OTO, Crowley proposed that he give it all back to OTO. The entirety of AMORC and its property was valued at £150,000 (about $7 million by contemporary standards). Crowley thereby hoped to run AMORC honestly and to dispense authentic teachings. To get his way, he was prepared to go to the Federal Trade Commission and if necessary to go to California himself.
Correspondence proved fruitless. Lewis argued that even if Crowley did control OTO and the Rites of Memphis and Mizraim, AMORC was Rosicrucian, not Masonic. Furthermore, American Masons recognized neither OTO nor Memphis-Mizraim. In the end, Lewis saw Crowley making claims without documentation of his authority, running a spurious British order—and he claimed to have correspondence with Reuss and Krumm-Heller to prove it. Crowley, however, was also in contact with Krumm-Heller, writing:
Spencer Louis [sic] was never a disciple, either of Reuss or myself in any sense of the term. He had been knocking about for years trying to run a fake Rosicrucian Order. He cast about everywhere for authority and when I first met him in New York in 1918 E.V., he was showing a charter supposed to be from the French Rosicrucians in Toulouse. He devoted so much time to the conquest of the innermost secrets of nature that he had not been able to spend any to learn French. Now even in New York there are a few people who know French and this ridiculous forgery made him a general laughing stock so that he withdrew it.
Now in the last 2 or 3 years of his life Peregrinus Reuss was sick, impoverished and desperate. He was anxious at any cost to find people to carry on his work. He, accordingly, handed out honorary diplomas up to the 95th degree and sometimes very foolishly the 96th . That is how people like Spencer Lewis and Tränker get their standing.…
It is amusing to notice that my own personal seal is on the documents quoted by Lewis as his authority and the words ‘Ordo Templi Orientis’ are sprawled all over the document … Either he had no authority at all or he had mine. If he had none he can be prosecuted, if he had mine he must account for the 900,000 dollars odd which he had amassed in the last few years. 14
To get the wheels moving, Crowley circulated this document:
MEMORANDUM
Aleister Crowley is the head of the O.T.O. (Ordo Templi Orientis).
His authority is sole and supreme, and the property of the Order is vested in himself and his Grand Officers, who are his nominees.
The Order is international in scope.
A Mr. H. Lewis Spencer has been in control of an Order with headquarters in California under the title of AMORC. His authority is, however, derived from the O.T.O.
The property of the AMORC is, therefore, by the Constitution of the Order, legally the property of Mr. Aleister Crowley.
The real and personal property of the AMORC is estimated at $900,000 by his ex-Grand Treasurer, and its annual income is said to amount to about $350,000.
Mr. Crowley proposes to go to California and claim the property.…
There should be no difficulty in getting lawyers in San Francisco or Los Angeles to undertake the prosecution of the claim on a contingent basis.…
[Mr. Crowley’s] ultimate aim is to establish the Order on a large scale in the U.S.A. and elsewhere, on a basis of the most scrupulous honesty.
We require $5,000 to finance Mr. Crowley’s journey.
The details of this proposition, with documentary corroboration, will be shown to interested parties on application, and if a satisfactory basis of action can be agreed, the terms of the loan will be discussed by us on his behalf. 15
When Lewis suffered a stroke around this time, Crowley wrote to Smith, “This is where you jump in and file a claim on my behalf to the whole property of the AMORC.” 16 Alas, like so many of AC’s schemes, this never transpired.
Over the past two years, Crowley and Pearl tried desperately to conceive a child together. Yet AC’s diary notes with disappointment the start of her every period. Then, on January 14, 1936, Pearl went into the hospital. The following day, doctors removed her uterus and fallopians. While Crowley loved her and stood by her, he realized she could never be the mother of his child.
As fate would have it, Patricia Doherty reentered the picture. Her relationship with the much older Thynne ended with his death in 1935. She mournfully traveled abroad, returning to England in spring 1936. She looked up Crowley and resumed a platonic friendship with him … until that summer when out of the blue he asked her to bear his child. She agreed, and on May 2, 1937, Deirdre produced an heir. 17
Crowley inaugurated 1936 with yet another pastime: cooking. Though he had been a bit of a chef in the past, this time he was serious. He planned to start “The Exotic Restaurant”—another pipe dream. Nevertheless, he delighted the palates of his many friends, with Louis Wilkinson ranking him among the best cooks in the world and Clifford Bax reporting AC’s to be “the most delicious curry which I have tasted.” 18 This same curry was reputedly so spicy that decades ago it sent Eckenstein headlong into a snowbank in search of relief.
His first dinner for Charles Richard Cammell—remembered today as a poet of both children’s verse and of World War I—was a gastronomic spectacle. They’d met at a luncheon with their mutual friend Gwen Otter where Crowley impressed Cammell by correctly guessing his sun sign. “How did you guess?” the dumbfounded poet asked.
“I didn’t guess,” Crowley replied blankly. “I knew.”
Shortly thereafter, AC called him with a dinner invitation. Asked if he liked curry, the poet, a connoisseur of spicy food, taunted Crowley with the response, “Yes, but very mild please.” Crowley, of course, conjured his most infernal curry, which to his surprise Cammell devoured with impunity. Astonished that his liquid fire had failed to burn a hole in Cammell’s tender tongue, he finally asked, “Did you like it?”
“It was delicious,” Cammell remarked.
“Not too hot?”
“No, not at all. In fact, it was rather mild.”
Mild? “Would you like more?”
“Please, and make it plenty.”
This was all too much. “I suppose you’d like some vodka after your wine.”
“Yes,” he nodded, “I would.” 19
With that, Cammell passed into the ranks of Crowley’s closest friends.
The Great Beast seemed to be vanishing into a purely mythical status. His last book had appeared in 1930 when Mandrake Press was still a going concern. Since then he had published almost nothing. Only the newspapers kept him in the public eye. Thus Crowley began working in the spring of 1936 on a republication of The Book of the Law that would do the book justice. He wanted to publish the text along with a complete account of its receipt and a thorough commentary on its contents—just as Aiwass had instructed him to do thirty-two years ago. A facsimile of the original pages, again according to Aiwass’s instructions, would be included. However, such a tome was more than just The Book of the Law , and only one title fit this sweeping collection of papers. Crowley prepared to publish it as The Equinox , Volume III Number 3, otherwise known as The Equinox of the Gods .
This new Equinox was a different breed from its predecessor. It had no contributions from other authors; neither poetry, plays, nor short stories; no serialized features; no book reviews; and most significantly, no plan of regular publication. He had no idea how often he could bring issues out. Thus The Equinox became an irregular publication, each issue a self-contained book with its own title and format. Crowley designed a prospectus and subscription form for the book in June. On the 25th, after minor difficulties with his printer, the four-page flyer was completed.
On April 8, 9 and 10, 1904 e.v. 20 this book was dictated to 666 (Aleister Crowley) by Aiwass, a Being whose nature he does not fully understand, but who described Himself as “the Minister of Hoor-Paar-Kraat” (the Lord of Silence)
The contents of the book prove to strict scientific demonstration that He possesses knowledge and power quite beyond anything that has been hitherto associated with human faculties .
The circumstances of the dictation are described in The Equinox , Vol I, No. vii: but a fuller account, with an outline of the proof of the character of the book, is now here to be issued.
The book announces a New Law for mankind .
It replaces the moral and religious sanctions of the past, which have everywhere broken down, by a principle valid for each man and woman in the world, and self-evidently indefeasible .
The spiritual Revolution announced by the book has already taken place: hardly a country where it is not openly manifest.
Ignorance of the true meaning of this new Law has led to gross anarchy. Its conscious adoption in its proper sense is the sole cure for the political, social and racial unrest which have brought about the World War, the catastrophe of Europe and America, and the threatening attitude of China, India and Islam.
Its solution of the fundamental problems of mathematics and philosophy will establish a new epoch in history.
But it must not be supposed that so potent an instrument of energy can be used without danger.
I summon, therefore, by the power and authority entrusted to me, every great spirit and mind now on this planet incarnate to take effective hold of this transcendent force, and apply it to the advancement of the welfare of the human race.
For as the experience of these two and thirty years has shown too terribly, the book cannot be ignored. It has leavened Mankind unaware: and Man must make thereof the Bread of Life. Its ferment has begun to work on the grape of thought: Man must obtain therefrom the Wine of Ecstasy.
Come then, all ye, in the Name of the Lord of the Aeon, the Crowned and Conquering Child, Heru-Ra-Ha: I call ye to partake this Sacrament.
Know—will—dare—and be silent!
The book was priced at eleven shillings (eleven being a key number in Crowley’s magick), with an autumnal equinox publication date.
Within two days of receiving the prospectuses, he sent out nearly three hundred copies. He sold twenty-five books to poet and occultist Michael Juste, who, under his given name Michael Houghton (died. c. 1956), was the proprietor of London’s Atlantis Bookshop, which he, an Eastern European refugee, founded in 1922. By June 29 subscription checks began coming. On July 9, Simpkin Marshall agreed to distribute the book. Things were going his way.
While Crowley got his destiny firmly in hand, Pearl was quickly losing her grip. Her uncontrollable visions from the early part of their relationship became what Crowley called “almost constant hallucinations.” On May 12 he recorded in his diary that she was “showing serious symptoms of insanity.” Granted that after three years of trying to conceive a child with Crowley, she’d just had a hysterectomy and was experiencing tremendous hormonal and psychological changes. Then, on June 14, a woman she had never seen before—Elsie Morris—came by and insisted Crowley had gotten her pregnant that January; while Crowley nonchalantly replied, “Possible, but I paid 5 shillings at the time,” 21 it rubbed Pearl’s nose in her perceived biological inadequacy. Then there was Pat (Deirdre MacAlpine), who was out to have the baby she could never have. Pearl was more than jealous: she resented and loathed Pat for being able to give Crowley the one precious thing she could not.
A firm kick awakened AC on June 25. Another soon followed before he realized that Pearl was thrashing about in her sleep, bedeviled by a nightmare. Having worked late that night, he was too exhausted to do anything but wait for the episode to subside; but after forty-five minutes, he crawled out of bed and into his sitting room. Then Pearl burst in, gesticulating and shouting, “You shan’t sleep all night unless you come back to bed!” Crowley was speechless. When she started crying and apologizing, he thought it was just as bad. When he finally slipped into sleep at 4 o’clock, he told himself, “This won’t do.”
Alas the violent dreams continued, infrequent at first but growing more common as the weeks passed. By August they occurred regularly:
August 1, 1936 . A hellish night. Kicked out—much harder kicking than before—slept in chair? No! She started screaming & rushed in.
August 2 . To sleep. More violence.
August 3 . Pat to lunch. Foul remarks by Pearl.
August 4 . Kicked more violently than ever: much of it awake and deliberate.
August 7 . New nightmare of Pearl’s.
August 19 . 3rd Anniversary of Pearl … Pearl gave adequate demonstration of the kicking, moaning & muttering. Perhaps people will believe me in future.
August 21 . Pearl till 3 a.m. wakened by sudden & violent physical attack. She remembers nothing before finding herself in the room remaking the bed.
Pearl had snapped, and Crowley felt he might also.
On August 30 he moved out of what he called the “Doomed Bastion” and into Room 6 on 56 Welbeck Street. His new landlord was Allan Burnett-Rae, whom Crowley had met a few years previously at the Mayfair Hotel during one of Dr. Cannon’s teas. Crowley wore the same knickerbocker suit he had worn then—it, his books, asthma machine, and incense burner were his only remaining worldly possessions.
Alas, trouble followed. “Pearl started her Macbeth act,” Crowley wrote in his diary for September 3. “Had to throw her out. She fought like a tiger-cat. Hell to pay in house.” Tenants’ complaints resulted in Burnett-Rae storming upstairs and pounding on the door; judging from the noise, he assumed Beast was beating her. “Crowley!” he demanded. “Open this door!” When Pearl opened the door and apologetically explained that Mr. Crowley was having a nightmare, he believed none of it and insisted they see him in the morning.
Crowley and Pearl rose early the next day and ordered tea in their room. When the waiter arrived, Pearl screamed at him, “Go and shit yourself!” Crowley did his best to calm her before meeting their landlord. Burnett-Rae hadn’t even dressed when they called on him. Taking the rap for Pearl, Crowley explained to him that he had, in fact, had a nightmare. They were rare, and he promised it would never happen again. Convinced Crowley had been beating her, Burnett-Rae insisted they pay their rent immediately or be expelled. Crowley spoke vaguely of money from American supporters and a family trust, and Burnett-Rae prepared for the unpleasant business of eviction.
After the meeting, AC sent Pearl away for a bit so he could continue his magical work. Then he met again with his landlord, paid him cash for the rent, and cleared things up about Pearl. Burnett-Rae told Crowley he could stay—he would even tolerate his incense—if Crowley promised to stop sending his helper Adolphe out for pigs’ trotters in the dead of night. Crowley agreed.
This, combined with failing health, marked the beginning of Pearl’s inexorable passing out of Crowley’s life.
As the autumnal equinox approached that September, Crowley was quite busy. Despite previous failures in both Berlin and London, Crowley sought a play or film deal for Mortadello . Asked to produce the play, athlete, actor, scholar, and civil rights activist Paul Robeson (1898–1976) smiled and politely shook his head; he later confided in Cammell, “There are certain lines and gestures which the British public would not care to see enacted between a Negro and a white woman. As for the American stage, why, if I were to produce it there, somebody in the audience would stand up and shoot me with a revolver.” 22
By September 18, despite difficulties with papermakers and printers, Crowley held an advance copy of The Equinox of the Gods , his first book in six years. Germer, visiting from Brussels, bought dinner for the celebration. On September 23, 1936, the book was officially released. Selling at one guinea, it was an opulent volume: the pages were large—quarto in size—on handmade Japanese paper. The white buckram cover was stamped with gilt lettering. In a pocket in the back of the book was a facsimile reproduction of the manuscript of The Book of the Law . Its contents included an extract from “Aha!,” the text of The Book of the Law , a brief account of Crowley’s life, and the comment that emerged from the Cephaloedium Working. Although some typos marred this edition, one has become legendary: The plate of the Stele of Revealing was ironically mislabeled “The Stele of Revelling.” The book sold well, and Crowley contemplated the need for a second printing.
The autumnal equinox was indeed a special day for Crowley. His new book was out. That morning, he had a vision of four adepts representing four races of man presenting him with the Word of the Equinox. Then, celebrating with Pat that day, he first learned that she was pregnant.
Internal strife wracked Agape Lodge in California. Regina had entered an asylum late in 1935, shortly after Smith tried to seduce her. Schneider, who never seemed to be around anymore, blamed the Lodgemaster for her fate. Then, in August 1936, Jacobi flipped. It began on Thursday night, August 13, when Smith received an anonymous phone tip: Jacobi was under investigation by his employers, the gas company, for living openly with a woman and for belonging to an immoral order wherein candidates for initiation were stripped naked. He was certain to lose his job. 23 Smith, of course, immediately phoned Jacobi (Jake) with the information.
The next night, members of Agape Lodge anxiously awaited Jacobi’s arrival. A letter arrived special delivery in his stead, stating he had severed his relations with his friends and OTO. Although Smith contacted Jacobi, urging him to stick to his principles and speak to his boss, they heard nothing from him until August 20. “Regina saw him last night, and he would hardly open the car window to talk to her,” Smith reported. “In almost a frantic way, he told her he was through with us all, and did not want to see any of us again, that he would send all of the books of the order to you, a copy of Oo and I°.” 24
Outraged by this news and by Schneider’s lurid reports about Smith, Crowley promptly sent a vicious letter to the Agape Lodgemaster, accusing him of running OTO as a racket to sell sex. He declared the Lodge at Winona Boulevard off-limits until matters were cleared up and said, “If you have a defense, you better cable me.” 25 Although Smith promptly cabled Crowley that he was astounded beyond measure—denying the charges, professing his loyalty, and promising to write fully—AC simply rebuked him for sending such a long and costly telegram. Regarding charges of trafficking in sex, Smith wrote to Crowley, “in the last 20 years, up to last Sunday as a matter of fact, I have defended so many of the same and other attacks on yourself that I got quite hardened and merely considered the source.” 26
When Jane Wolfe sided with Smith and repudiated Max’s report, Schneider broke off from the Lodge, taking most of the students with him. Before long, other members—presumably warned off by Schneider—began avoiding the Lodge. On November 7, Smith wrote to Crowley that he was suspending the Lodge until they had a better core of initiates to work with.
Back in 1934, Crowley’s former secretary Israel Regardie had joined the Stella Matutina branch of the GD with Crowley’s blessing. His introduction came from occultist Dion Fortune (1890–1946), who had long admired Regardie’s first two books, writing glowing appraisals of them in the Occult Review . Although Waite had considerably revised, polished, and Christianized the rituals from their original Isis-Urania form, they deeply impressed Regardie.
In the following years he published GD influenced books like My Rosicrucian Adventure (1936) and The Golden Dawn (1936). The latter four-volume set contained the complete rituals and instructions of the Outer Order of the GD, and it quickly became a classic. Crowley, however, considered the book “pure theft”—particularly ironic since Crowley pirated much of “The Temple of Solomon the King” from Mathers.
Crowley, noting Regardie’s pen name “Francis,” wrote a glib letter to “Frank,” chiding his former pupil about his Jewish faith and inferiority complex. Regardie took criticism poorly, and the jeering struck his insecurities like a sledgehammer. He rifled off a nasty retort, beginning with “Darling Alice, You really are a contemptible bitch!” 27 It infuriated the Beast; perhaps, as Crowley’s letter triggered Regardie’s insecurities, something about this struck a nerve in him. In response, AC circulated a cruel letter about Regardie:
Israel Regudy was born in the neighborhood of Mile End Road, in one of the vilest slums in London.
Of this fact he was morbidly conscious, and his racial and social shame embittered his life from the start.
“Regardie” is the blunder of a recruiting sergeant in Washington on the occasion of his brother enlisting in the United States Army. Regudy adopted this error as sounding less Jewish. “Francis” which he has now taken appears to be a pure invention.
About the year 1924 he began to study the work of, and corresponded with, Mr. Aleister Crowley. He put up so plausible an appeal that the latter gentleman paid his passage from America and accepted him as a regular student of Magic.
Apart from his inferiority complex, he was found to be suffering from severe chronic constipation, and measures were taken to cure him of this and also his ingrained habit of onanism.
The cure in the latter case was successful, but Regudy abused his freedom by going under some railway arches and acquiring an intractable gonorrhoea. 28
This incident so embittered Regardie that he never again communicated with Crowley. Thirty years would pass before he overcame his resentment and regained his appreciation for Crowley.
With the popularity of the phonograph, Crowley spent that autumn cutting some wax 78 rpm records of himself reciting poetry and invocations. On November 18 and 19 he did the first and second Enochian Calls, followed on the 23rd by the “Anthem” from “The Ship” and “Hymn to Pan.” On December 1 he recorded “Hymn for July 4” and some other pieces. “I did make a record of the ‘Hymn to Pan,’ ” Crowley reported, “5 minutes all, but for 2 or 3 seconds continuous roaring and raging, so my lungs are not quite done for. The magical effect of that recording will soon be seen in London.” 29
That winter he returned to the more familiar role of teacher, appearing at the Eiffel Tower on Wednesday, January 13, 1937, to give his first of four lectures on “Yoga for Yellowbellies.” Crowley thought the talk went well, but it was an uncharacteristic understatement. His talks on yoga, given twenty-seven years after he wrote about it in Book Four , rank among the best available expositions: lucid, direct, and good-humored.
The remaining talks followed on January 20, January 25, and February 3. So favorable was the response that Crowley ran a second series of four lectures, “Yoga for Yahoos.” Beginning at the Eiffel Tower on February 17, the talks were every bit as sublime and witty as their predecessors—perhaps too clever. During his second lecture on February 24, Crowley found his audience staring blankly at him; Cammell thought they couldn’t distinguish his learned words from deadpan one-liners. To remedy this, Crowley paused at odd intervals and blurted out, “To hell with the Archbishop of Canterbury!” Instead of waking the audience, he only confused them more. The third and fourth lectures followed on successive Wednesdays. Crowley offered the lectures to Daily Express reporter Tom Driberg, but the paper passed on the opportunity to print them. Someday, he thought, he would have to publish them himself.
Although May 2, 1937, was one of the happiest days in Crowley’s life, his diaries are curiously silent on the matter. With no miscarriages or complications, Pat MacAlpine gave birth to a healthy baby boy at Newcastle-on-Tyne. Crowley had the heir he had sought. Contrary to popular rumor, he did not name the boy Mustapha because on seeing the mother for the first time he said, “I must ’ave ’er.” The mother named him Randall Gair Doherty, although Crowley would carry on the tradition that left AC with his father’s name, nicknaming the boy Aleister Ataturk. 30 A celebration followed the next day.
Since the start of 1937, Crowley was absorbed in the study of the Chinese oracle of I Ching, making some incisive observations and arriving at new theories. On June 7 Crowley recovered his I Ching sticks—a set of six turtle shell rectangles with a solid line on one side and a broken line on the other. This apparatus, which diverged from the traditional method of using fifty-one yarrow wands to produce a series of six broken, unbroken, and moving lines, provided a quick and dirty way of casting a hexagram. From this point on, Crowley consulted the I Ching daily for a general hexagram, and deferred to the Chinese oracle for many other decisions.
On June 9, Crowley met Clifford Bax for lunch at the Royal Automobile Club. Although over thirty years had passed since he and Bax first met at St. Moritz, when Crowley was a newlywed and Bax but a boy, they were still good friends. “What has happened to the Queen of Heaven?” Bax would ask Crowley, who dryly requested, “Year and name, please.”
That afternoon, three ladies escorted Bax to lunch. The first, artist Leslie Blanche, 31 Bax introduced as “la Comtesse de Roussy de Sales,” but Crowley knew Bax was merely attempting to titillate him. Next was Meum Stewart, 32 who spent much of the lunch asking for details about Raoul Loveday’s death. The last of these women, older and more staid, was Lady Harris.
Marguerite Frieda Harris, née Bloxham (1877–1962), was the daughter of Charing Cross Hospital’s consulting surgeon John Astley Bloxham (1843–1926) and wife of Sir Percy Harris (1876–1952), a member of Parliament. It was only a few years ago, in 1932, that Percy Harris was created a baronet, thus making his wife “Lady Harris” (although she preferred to eschew the formal title). She was also an artist, having illustrated her book Winchelsea: A Legend (1926) and having exhibited at the New English Art Club in 1929 under the name Jesus Chutney. 33 Lady Harris also professed an interest in magick: having at one time been an adherent of Mary Baker Eddy’s Christian Science, she would, at other points in her life, study Anthroposophy, Co-Masonry, Thelema, and Indian mysticism. 34 As her friend, sculptor Edward Bainbridge Copnall (1903–1973), described her, “She had an alive and virile brain, though she was inclined to be very absent-minded, and a most amusing sense of humour and a love of the bizarre.” 35 Bax had invited her at the last minute as an afterthought, and she failed to impress AC, who recorded their meeting only scantily in his diary. Nobody imagined that she would play a role in Crowley’s life every bit as important as Allan Bennett, George Cecil Jones, J. F. C. Fuller, Victor Neuburg, Leah Hirsig, Gerald Yorke, or Karl Germer.
For the next few weeks, the I Ching was right on the money for Crowley. When, on June 25, he met Bobby Barefoot, he asked for a symbol for their relationship. Kwai , hexagram forty-three, came the response. Crowley interpreted this correctly as “Plain fucking and no more.” She became one of several women Crowley bounced between in his sixty-second year. On August 9, AC got the first hexagram, and Frieda Harris contacted him again through Leslie Blanche. When Crowley received the second hexagram the next day, he noted in his diary, “I think I and II coming like this should announce a totally new current prepared, without my will or knowledge, by the Gods.” 36
That fall found Crowley in a publishing frenzy. He not only corrected page proofs for his next book, The Heart of the Master , but was also preparing a second printing of The Equinox of the Gods . When Simpkin Marshall threatened to renege on their agreement to distribute the reissue, on December 10 AC changed his personal British Monomark Corporation box BM JPKH to the commercial address BCM/ANKH through which to sell this and future books. The second printing of The Equinox of the Gods would appear in two formats: a standard issue uniform in paper and binding with the first edition; and a less elaborate subscriber’s edition of 250 copies on machine-made paper with cloth-backed boards, priced at eleven shillings. The production cost of both editions was roughly £400; those expenses not covered by subscriptions were paid by Pearl and OTO donations from California.
Crowley’s publication announcement for this edition of The Equinox of the Gods was more dramatic than that for the first printing:
THE FIRST PUBLICATION
nine months before the outbreak of the Balkan War, which broke up the Near East,
When this was done, it was done without proper perfection. Its commands as to how the work ought to be done were not wholly obeyed.… Yet, even so, the intrinsic power of the truth of the Law and the impact of publication were sufficient to shake the world, so that a critical war broke out, and the minds of men were moved in a mysterious manner.
THE SECOND PUBLICATION
nine months before the outbreak of the World War, which broke up the West.
The second blow was struck by the re-publication of the Book in September, 1913, and this time … caused a catastrophe to civilisation. At this hour, the Master Therion is concealed, collecting his forces for a final blow. When the Book of the Law and its Comment is published … in perfect obedience to the instructions … the result will be incalculably effective. The event will establish the kingdom of the Crowned and Conquering Child over the whole earth, and all men shall bow to the Law, which is love under will.”
Magick, pp 112–113, written in 1922 published in 1929.
THE THIRD PUBLICATION
nine months before the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War which is breaking up the Far East.
THE FOURTH PUBLICATION
6:22 a.m., December 22, 1937 e.v.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
The world is stricken to-day by an epidemic of madness.… On every side we are confronted by evidence of insanity which is sweeping across the earth like a pestilence.
Murder and terror in Soviet Russia; Concentration Camps and persecution in Germany; war fever and blood lust in Italy and Japan; civil war in Spain; economic crisis in U.S.A.; recurrent strikes and labour discontent in France—there is no corner of the Globe untouched!
What is the cause?
The old standards of human conduct, the ancient religions which have served humanity for thousands of years, have broken down.…
The old order has broken down, and mankind is searching frantically for a formula which will take its place—a standard of human conduct independent of tradition and dogma which will stand up to the stress of modern conditions, and create a new engine for the further progress of mankind.
The Bible , the Koran and other codes are proving incapable of resisting the shattering effect of modern thought; humanity is drifting rudderless through a stormy sea of doubt and despair. Belief is bewildered. Conviction is shaken. But there is a way out!
A universal law for all nations, classes and races is here. It is the Charter of Universal Freedom.
“The Law of Thelema,” revealed in Cairo in 1904, has come to replace the outworn creeds, the local codes; to help the peoples of the world to march on to a new era of peace and happiness.
Its power has been made evident time after time. On three occasions its publication has been followed by disaster—catastrophes to awaken mankind to its message. For the fourth time the Law of Thelema has been published.…
The prospectus following gives particulars of the book “The Equinox of the Gods” which contains in facsimile the manuscript of the “Book of the Law” of Thelema, and an account of how it came into existence.
You cannot afford to neglect the powerful message which it propounds, and the guidance it gives for your future and the future of the world.
Crowley was proud of this book as he believed its proper publication would cause such social and political upheaval that the Law of Thelema would sweep the world. On December 13 he presented an advance copy of the book to his seven-month-old son.
On December 21, he prepared to make a dream come true. The first time he published The Equinox of the Gods , he had a vision of adepts representing the earth’s different races presenting him with the Word of the Equinox. Crowley wanted to return the favor by presenting a representative for each race with his own word.
A representative for the white race was easy enough to find: Crowley chose Yorke. That evening, the two of them dined and embarked on a pub-crawl and gin-soak, accompanied by Daily Express reporter Tom Driberg. On their bizarre trek, they added a black dancing girl, a Bengali Muslim, a Jew, and a Malayan to their party along the way. The challenge, according to Yorke, was to keep the party going until 6 o’clock the next morning; this, presumably, they did by crashing a party at the Erskine. Crowley called it “a terribly dull party, brightening when we got rid of most of ’em and started whiskey.”
At 6:22 a.m., Crowley and Yorke took the group of puzzled strangers to Cleopatra’s Needle on the Embankment. There, as the sun entered Capricorn, Crowley made a brief speech: “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. I, Ankh-f-n-Khonsu, the Priest of the Princes, present you, as representatives of your race, with The Book of the Law . It is the charter of universal freedom for every man and woman in the world. Love is the law, love under will.” He presented each of them with a copy of the book, officially marking its publication. After the confused recipients staggered back to their homes, Crowley went to bed. “It was one of the craziest evenings I have ever spent,” Yorke remarked. The next morning, Crowley’s diary noted “Hangover very bad.”