Perdurabo: The Life of Aleister Crowley, Revised and Expanded Edition

The year 1943 brought support from Agape Lodge in an American edition of The Book of the Law , a proposed resuscitation of The Oriflamme magazine, and “parcels of food and not-so-food,” ¹ a problem that Crowley eased with the following telegram to Regina Kahl: “ORDER DISAPPROVES CHEMICAL TREATMENT FOODSTUFFS DISAPPROVES SEALED CANS INSISTS CLOSEST APPROXIMATION NATURAL STATE.” ² Meanwhile, he anxiously awaited the news of Leffingwell’s turkey ranch, the proceeds of which were earmarked for Crowley’s trip to America and OTO’s publication fund. “I keep on hanging around day after day in the hope of hearing something about these unfortunate turkeys,” Crowley wrote in February of 1943. ³ Alas, the Thelemic turkeys suffered some catastrophe that required their immediate slaughter or sale. With this tragedy, Crowley’s American publication fund vanished.

In other order business, Crowley entrusted Jane Wolfe, his disciple of twenty-three years, to carry out orders to depose Smith. Although she had defended the lodge master in the past, she obediently complied with AC’s wishes, writing Smith on January 13:

Pursuant to instructions from Baphomet, it is my duty to inform you that, for the time being, you will be relieved from your function in the Lodge, and that you will retire from the Community House at 1003 South Orange Grove Avenue, Pasadena. Your full reinstatement will follow the achievement of some definite personal action conceived and executed by yourself alone to the advancement of the work of the Order. ⁴

The other lodge members, as loyal to Smith as they were to Crowley, objected. Parsons begged Baphomet to reconsider, stressing that the lodge was coming along well and that this division of authority would upset everything. Even Smith began a vitriolic exchange with Crowley on his own behalf:

In 1936 I was a whoremonger, dishonest, a black magician.… Now I am a clown, vile, and have a swelled head. Personally, I cannot take these criticisms too seriously because I do not take myself too seriously because the accusations are so positively stupid and false.… You seem so often to be responsible for the continual disturbances. Just as we are trying our hardest to get out a small monthly publication of dignity and quality which we hope will please you, got a quotation on it, figured how we can squeeze it into our expenses, you let fly another charge of buckshot or tell somebody else to. I say, “Hell, what’s the use!”, write a few strongly worded letters, throw them in the fire, clench my teeth, and make another effort. Oh, yes, feeble if you will: We are not all A.C.s. ⁵

Crowley responded by criticizing Smith for sending lodge reports irregularly and for lacking the proper stature to act as priest in the Gnostic Mass. AC, who sought a Hollywood production of the rite, imagined someone with more stage presence. “I do not think that in 20 years or more you contributed more than £150 at the very outside.” ⁶ This accusation was completely false, and ignited an angry spate of hostility between them. “Wherever Smith was,” Crowley complained, “there was a ferment about A objecting to B sleeping with C because D wanted E to sleep with F and so on through the alphabet about six times round. In the early days in California, the only letters I ever got were asking me to settle all sorts of rather dirty complications.” ⁷

Yet another problem arose that spring when the FBI scrutinized Jack Parsons’s OTO membership. Because he worked on classified projects for the government, his ties to a group “alleged to have been involved in immoral activities” ⁸ concerned them. Parsons explained that the Church of Thelema, which he had joined three years previously, was a small fraternity modeled after England’s Order of Oriental Templars. Their ideologies, he assured them, opposed communism and fascism, and agreed entirely with the war effort. “We are entirely tolerant and concerned with the brotherhood of all mankind, and dedicated to individual freedom and liberty.” The investigators searched the lodge with Smith’s permission, including his correspondence with AC, and found nothing subversive.

Crowley pushed on with Olla for the first months of 1943, hoping for its ceremonial publication on the spring equinox. When informed in February that Chiswick couldn’t possibly have an entire book ready by then, AC decided, “Fine, we’ll do The City of God instead. It will save me a lot of immediate cash.” ⁹ It would also make a nice companion to “The Fun of the Fair.” So, Churchill prepared a new set of photo proofs, and on March 13, Crowley finished the dedication and preface. By then, however, it was too late to set up and print The City of God by the equinox; they were already quite busy with the tarot book. Anxious to release the book on an auspicious date, Crowley took the delays ungraciously. “Chiswick Press calmly announces ‘City’ not ready ’till Wednesday next!” he noted in his journal for April 15, 1943. “What bastards of bastards!” ¹⁰ The book finally appeared on April 20, in a format uniform with the gray paper covers of Fun of the Fair and in a limited edition of two hundred. From there, he continued with other book projects.

While revising his text for the small tarot cards that summer, the solution to his problems with Smith occurred to him: it was, in a word, apotheosis. W. T. Smith was not a man but a god. AC decided that Smith’s astrological chart indicated a latent deity within him, and that realizing his divinity would require a protracted Great Magical Retirement, during which time he could have contact with nobody but Germer. While Smith retired to the desert to live in a shack, meditating until the god within him spoke, Parsons would take charge of Agape Lodge. Crowley sent these instructions to Smith as “Liber Apotheosis” and telegrammed instructions to Agape Lodge that Smith was off limits under threat of expulsion. Proud of his scheme to dump Smith and appoint young Jack Parsons as the new lodge master, Crowley bragged to Max Schneider, “I had Machiavelli under my pillow and dreamed it.” ¹¹

Smith recognized “Apotheosis” as an inelegant plan to depose him yet had no choice but to comply. Frater 132 withdrew to the desert on June 3, bringing the letters Crowley had sent him over the years. At age fifty-eight—having devoted the last thirty-seven years of his life to seeking occult wisdom, twenty-nine years after helping Achad found the original Agape Lodge in Vancouver—he finally gave up. On August 13, Wilfred T. Smith left the desert for the mundane world. ¹²

Having moved to Piccadilly Circus under the assumption that the bombings in London had stopped, Old Crow was dismayed when they resumed that spring. By summer they got so bad that Hamilton left the city. Lord Evan Tredegar, an MI5 acquaintance and student of magick who was pouring his wealth into properly outfitting a temple, invited AC to stay with him. On June 17, 1943, having sent “Apotheosis” to California, he left for Tredegar Park. The lord was working on his own tarot book, and the occultists passed time comparing notes. Of his host, Crowley wrote, “He’s one of the very few people I know who can throw a party,” and “Tredegar owns 121,000 acres in S. Wales (mostly coal) and whole streets in London (mostly bombed).” ¹³ During his stay, AC also befriended Cordelia Sutherland (1894–1980). Born Emily Cordelia Landers, she married John J. Sutherland at Middlesex in 1926 and worked for the past fourteen years as Tredegar’s housekeeper, secretary, and manager. ¹⁴ Being released when Tredegar sold his country home, she began a long correspondence with AC, occasionally sending powdered chocolate and plover’s eggs his way. After staying for two weeks in Tredegar’s best room, Crowley returned to London to continue his tarot work.

At the end of October a gray and withered Crowley answered a knock on the door of his 93 Jermyn Street apartment. Standing before him was a young American army captain with round glasses, a mustache, and a smirk. “News from the front indeed!” Crowley remarked. ¹⁵ Grady McMurtry—along with the rest of his ROTC class—had been called to active duty in February 1942. Since the Italian government had surrendered to the Allies on September 3, 1943, McMurtry was on leave from the 1803rd and decided to visit the master. During his visits in the following weeks—when he and AC generally talked late into the night—he met Yorke, Harris, and Wilkinson. Although his visits only numbered about six in all, he endeared himself greatly to AC, loaning him £50 and buying copies of his books. He was young yet level-headed, a breath of reason amidst the California madness. Crowley seized the opportunity to advance him to the IX°, skipping the II° through the VIII°. As a IX° member, Grady needed a magical motto but uncertain about a fitting one, he deferred to AC. Agonizing over the matter, Crowley came up with the Greek motto “Hymenaeus Alpha,” which added up to the mystical number 777.

At this time, Crowley offered McMurtry a fifty percent share of the tarot book in exchange for a $200 investment. AC figured he could defray the prohibitive cost of publishing Olla by having Chiswick buy an extra-large stock of paper for the tarot book at a better discount and use the surplus to print Olla . By the end of March 1944, McMurtry accepted the offer.

As 1943 drew to a close, AC’s projects became even more ambitious and consuming. Besides Olla and the tarot he encouraged his friends to ask him for letters of instruction on remedial points of magick; these he hoped to collect and publish under the working title of Aleister Explains Everything . Questions posed to Crowley ranged from “Do angels cut themselves shaving?” to “Why accept so revolting a book as Liber AL? ” Its writing filled most of the months to follow and would take years to complete.

Early in 1944 some metaphysical literature distributed by Dr. William Bernard Crow (1895–1976) caught his attention. Crow was a lecturer in biology for several colleges, the latest being South West Essex Technical College. Educated at the University of London, he was a fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, Linnean Society, and Zoological Society of London. ¹⁶ He wrote extensively not only on biology but also on many occult topics ¹⁷ and was a contributor to the Occult Review . ¹⁸ He was also connected with various spiritual groups like the Institute for Cosmic Studies and the Ancient Orthodox Catholic Church; on June 13, 1943, he was consecrated bishop as Mar Basilius Abdullah III, enabling him to act as autocephalous head of his own church, the Order of the Holy Wisdom or Ekklesia Agiae Sophiae . The purpose of this church was to teach the “Orthodox Catholic Faith” to occultists in their own vernacular. According to one of his fliers, the church incorporated the traditions of the Hindus, kabbalists, gnostics, Zoroastrians, Rosicrucians, Druids, Buddhists and Sufis.

When Crowley sent him comments in early February, a correspondence ensued. Crow was a serious and knowledgeable student of the occult, was curious about Crowley’s Memphis-Mizraim lineage, and wished to work the Gnostic Mass. Before long, Crow’s advisor, Hugh George de Willmott Newman (b. 1905), also known as the Archbishop Mar Georgius I, Metropolitan of Glastonbury in the Catholicate of the West, ¹⁹ contacted Crowley to negotiate an authorization. The EGC and Gnostic Mass were particularly sacred to Crowley, and he felt Crow out carefully before granting anything. Crowley was amused by these episcopi vagantes , or wandering bishops: Crow reportedly kept a statue of Buddha that he called St. Jehosaphat. ²⁰ Newman, meanwhile, signed his name with numerous titles and initials.

The Beast yawned elaborately. Mottoes and titles had long since failed to impress him, ever since he filled pages of The Equinox with all the titles conferred upon him after the Mathers lawsuit. Masonic authority and succession, another of their concerns, were subjects that bored Crowley even more. He nevertheless strived to set them on the right path. About the EGC, Crowley said, “I never wrote any rituals of ordination and such things, and I am certainly not going to start at my time of life. The people in America go on perfectly well without anything of the sort.” ²¹ Regarding the Mass, he advised, “Keep one eye fixed firm on Hollywood. You mustn’t have a Priest with a squeak or a drone or a drawling, and you mustn’t cast some frightful hag as the Virgin Harlot. The furniture, robes, etc. may at first be severely plain, but as pestilence is the pretentious, the theatrical or the tawdry.” ²²

Crow pursued this for a while, distributing flyers to drum up interest in the Mass, but he and Newman eventually parted. In Crowley’s mind the doctor had a ways to go. “You are quite wrong in thinking that The Wizard of Oz has anything to do with me,” he told Crow. “That was the title of a film which I did not see, but I could not change the title of my book because … Hollywood chose to pinch the word.” ²³ To be fair, L. Frank Baum’s (1856–1919) The Wonderful Wizard of Oz , on which the movie is based, came out in 1900, the year of the GD revolt against Mathers and over forty years before Crowley penned Liber Oz . Ironically, a few years later the film came to Hastings while Crowley was living at Netherwood House; AC very much wanted to see it, only to be told by the proprietress, “It wouldn’t interest you at all, it’s a children’s thing.” ²⁴

The year 1944 started off with a bang as intense air raids frequently shook Crowley’s abode. As he wrote to Louis Wilkinson, “My nerves just went with a bang.” ²⁵ His diaries record many episodes, including the following:

Blast knocked house about quite a little. Other tenants behaved very well (i.e., they go to the kitchen & huddle, & ‘make cheerful talk’: They cannot bear to be alone: it comforts them to hold each others’ hands! They depressed me almost more than the company of such people normally does). ²⁶

Shortly after he received an eviction notice on February 16, a bomb landed 250 yards southwest of 93 Jermyn, leveling most of King and Duke streets. Ducking outside to look, Crowley stepped into a hailstorm of rubble and shrapnel. When he sought shelter indoors and started upstairs, an explosion blew the lock off the door and knocked him over.

Although Crowley tried fairly successfully to maintain a normal lifestyle, the constant raids took their toll. Driven north of London on April 8, he took a room at the famous Bell Inn at Aston Clinton, Buckinghamshire. It was a stately seventeenth century country hotel with twenty rooms, huge bathtubs, a large open fire, and a talented cook; Crowley however felt far from his friends, bored, and lonely.

That spring he prepared an eight-page prospectus for the tarot book, officially dubbed The Book of Thoth , and began selling subscriptions in May. He enthusiastically claimed “These cards, with the explanatory Essay, are destined to be the Atlas and Practical manual of all Magick for the next 2,000 years.” ²⁷ He found takers in McMurtry, Sutherland, Tredegar, and Bayley as well as E. N. Fitzgerald, Dion Fortune, and others. Yorke even contributed £100 toward publication costs. These prospectuses were the source of some concern after they were mailed, owing to wartime rationing. As AC wrote:

it seems that I may have technically infringed one of those fool regulations about sending out prospectuses free of charge, but luckily The Book of Thoth is No 5 of Vol III of The Equinox , which constitutes it a periodical and therefore not subject to the paper control at all. Of course it is very trivial and technical: but considering how I have been framed up in the past, and how many wolves are out after my blood, I must confess to more than a little apprehension. ²⁸

Although The Book of Thoth gives a publication date on the spring equinox of 1944, Crowley was still signing the unbound sheets that August; indeed, he arranged with legendary bookbinders Sangorski and Sutcliffe to bind the books as orders arrived; hence not all copies were bound at the same time. Nevertheless, the signed and numbered edition did appear that year. In November, Crowley expressed delight at the initial sales of the book: “To my amazement I have sold over fifty copies of The Book of Thoth . If you had told me six months ago I would have said, in my most optimistic mood, that I could get rid of a dozen.” ²⁹ It was a spectacular book, with eleven copies bound in half morocco leather and the rest in quarter-leather, gilt-samped with the OTO logo and seal of Ankh-f-n-Khonsu on the spine. It was printed on mold-made paper, which was not only elegant but also exempt from wartime paper restrictions. The book contained nine color plates of the cards, technical appendices, and a bibliographic note (by Crowley but attributed to Martha Küntzel). Authorship was attributed to “The Master Therion,” with Frieda Harris listed as artist executant. Crowley inscribed her copy,

To my dearest Sister TzBA 93,

My admired accomplice in the perpetration of this atrocity.…

To Mega Therion 666 ³⁰

The book has since become the definitive work on the tarot and has enjoyed many reprintings. Although test printings of several cards were made at this time, the deck was was not printed in either collaborator’s lifetime despite repeated attempts. The first color edition was produced by Llewellyn in 1971. ³¹

The fall of 1944 was also notable not for anything that Crowley accomplished but for a fascinating glimpse of what could have been. The American OTO members were still hoping to import Old Crow to California, and a new twist developed: Jean Schneider was working as a housekeeper for film director Orson Welles (1915–1985). She sent AC the book for Citizen Kane; although the 1941 film—which Welles wrote, directed, and performed in—is considered by many the best movie ever made, it was a financial failure in its theatrical release. Schneider hinted that Welles was interested in magick. In December she sent the telegram GAVE ORSON WELLES MORTADELLO. Crowley must have been excited, as this was the play he had been shopping around to producers for years. He also asked her to give him “Across the Gulf” and The Three Wishes to consider for screenplays. ³² Alas, no movie deals were forthcoming.

During his last visit, McMurtry accompanied Crowley on a drive along the Seine up to the cathedral town of Chartres. AC had already called him “the most serious and intelligent of the younger lot.… This singles you out as the proper man to take charge of affairs when the time is ripe. It is supremely important that you should understand fully the 9th degree.…” ³³ Now—having participated in the Invasion of Normandy and the liberation of France and Belgium—McMurtry was again visiting. As they drove, they discussed the future of OTO, Crowley spoke for the first time of the office of Caliph. Denoting the successor to a prophet in Islam, such a position exists in none of the official OTO documents, its charter, the blue Equinox , or anywhere else. Thus, when Crowley later referred to the Caliphate in an October 16 letter to McMurtry, the puzzled serviceman replied, “As for the Caliphate, I remember no concrete proposal—just a vague reference once.” ³⁴ Crowley responded at length:

“The Caliphate.” You must realize that no matter how closely we may see eye-to-eye on any objective subject, I have to think on totally different premises where the Order is concerned. One of the (startlingly few) commands given to me was this: “Trust not a stranger: fail not of an heir.” This has been the very devil for me. Frater Saturnus is of course the natural Caliph; but there are many details concerning the actual policy or working which hit his blind spots. In any case, he can only be a stopgap, because of his age; I have to look for his successor. It has been hell; so many have come up with amazing promise, only to go on the rocks.…

But—now here is where you have missed my point altogether—I do not think of you as lying on a grassy hillside with a lot of dear sweet lovely woolly lambs, capering to your flute! On the contrary. Your actual life, or “blooding,” is the sort of initiation which I regard as the first essential for a Caliph. For—say 20 years hence—the Outer Head of the Order must, among other things, have had the experience of war as it is an actual fact to-day. ³⁵

Just as Crowley left behind a son and a publishing program, he also planned a line of succession. He gave McMurtry “more solid instruction in IX° than I ever gave before to any one.” ³⁶ He was grooming McMurtry for bigger things.

“It is infinitely dark, dull, damp, depressing, dirty, drear, dead and decomposing in this hideous hell-hole,” he wrote of the Bell Inn when the bombings and loneliness became too much, ³⁷ and he asked Louis Wilkinson to help him find a new home. It turned out that his son, Oliver, knew E. C. Vernon Symonds through the Hastings Court Players. Symonds was an ex-alcoholic, actor, and playwright who in 1930 wrote The Legend of Abd-El-Krim . ³⁸ He and his wife Kathleen, who went by the name “Johnny,” had turned a gloomy Victorian mansion into an “intellectual guest house” named Netherwood. They tempted various luminaries to come for a visit and offer a talk to the other guests in exchange for a free room and meals. Some of their speakers included philosopher and broadcaster C. E. M. Joad (1891–1953), geneticist and evolutionary biologist J. B. S. Haldane (1892–1964), aristocrat and communist Edith Hajós Bone (1889–1975), and mathematician and biologist Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974). In addition, a young Julian Bream (b. 1933) occasionally played classical guitar for the guests. ³⁹

Surrounded by four wooded acres and located on the Ridge, the highest point of Hastings at an elevation of five hundred feet, it offered panoramic views of the town, the sea, and Crowley’s childhood haunt, Beachy Head. It was the perfect place for an aging magician to retire, with Symonds’s house rules reading:

Guests are requested not to tease the Ghosts.

Guests are requested to be as quiet as possible while dying of fright.

Breakfast will be served at 9 a.m. to the survivors of the Night.

The Hastings Borough Cemetery is five minutes walk away (ten minutes if carrying body), but it is only one minute as the Ghost flies.

Guests are requested not to dig graves on lawns, but to make full use of newly filled graves under trees.

Guests are requested not to remove corpses from graves or to cut down bodies from trees.

The Office has a certain amount of used clothing for sale, the property of guests who have no longer any use for earthly raiment. ⁴⁰

Also staying at Netherwood House was world-famed chess champion Edward Mackenzie Jackson (1867–1959), eleven-time winner of the Hastings Chess Club Championship. ⁴¹ There was also another skilled player named Kirk.

In advance of his arrival, Crowley reputedly telegrammed Netherwood House to expect a consignment of frozen meat. This rather perplexed the Symondses, who had placed no such order. All became clear when Crowley arrived on the appointed day in an ambulance. bearing his belongings, He insisted on having room number 13. ⁴² He moved in on January 17, 1945, lining his small room with his books and paintings. In gratitude, he sent a box of cigars to Oliver. When Oliver smoked them all before realizing they were the world’s most expensive cigars, Crowley sent him a second box.

Netherwood House, The Ridge, Hastings, where Crowley spent his last years. (photo credit 22.3)

Kenneth Grant (b. 1924) had a dream in 1939 of a powerful magical symbol and its associated name, spelled variously A’ashik, Oshik, or Aossic. Becoming a young student of magick three years later, he adopted the emblem and nomen. He had tried in vain to reach Crowley through the address given in Magick , which was over a decade old at the time. Then, when The Book of Thoth appeared in 1944, Michael Houghton refused to give him AC’s current address, fearing young Grant to be “mentally unstable”; ⁴³ Grant presumed that Houghton merely wanted to recruit him into his own Society of Hidden Masters. ⁴⁴ He persevered and finally tracked down Crowley at the Bell Inn, where he first visited and met the master in late 1944. During these years, Grant had, volunteered for the army at age eighteen and by age twenty was invalided from service for an unspecified medical condition. ⁴⁵

Through the winter of 1945, Grant sent letters and books to Crowley. Thus when Crowley decided at the end of February that he needed a secretary, this eager young student, as Regardie before him, seemed the logical choice. What Grant lacked in secretarial skills he made up for in exuberance. “I made a bargain with Symonds,” Crowley wrote. “It’s supposed to cost me £1.0.0 a week to have him here.” ⁴⁶ Accepting the offer, Grant arranged to join Crowley on March 9. On the appointed day he wired Crowley that he had been delayed and would arrive on Sunday, March 11. He finally appeared on March 12.

Using ether as an aid, Crowley taught Grant astral projection until he could obtain similar, although less spectacular, results without drugs. ⁴⁷ He was a good student, and Crowley saw great promise in him. “I am trying to get him to look after me and my work,” he wrote to Louis Wilkinson. “A definite gift from the Gods.” ⁴⁸ Grant, however, was far from home and pining for his lady love; in addition, as he recalls, “I was unable ever to acquire a practical approach to mundane affairs … which so exasperated Crowley.” ⁴⁹ Thus, AC’s patience for Grant wore thin. When Grant disingenuously tried convincing his employer to return to London, Crowley mused, “The murderer’s puzzle, how to get rid of the body, has been on my nerves for the last two days.” ⁵⁰ Two weeks later, Crowley’s tongue sharpened and, during an argument with Grant, he blurted, “You are the most consummate BORE that the world has yet known. And this at 20!” ⁵¹ Later, however, Crowley reflected, “I feel that I may have treated him too severely.” ⁵²

On April 11, Crowley certified McMurtry a IX° member of OTO and owner of twenty-five percent of the copyright of “Aleister Explains Everything,” now officially Magick without Tears . A greater honor fell on him when Crowley expressed his umbrage over the situation in California and the contradictory accounts he received by mail. “I may be the world’s greatest magician, but I need some facts to go on!”

“Well,” Grady suggested, “you know me, and I know them. When I get home, I’ll survey the situation and write you a report.” Crowley thereupon appointed him Sovereign Grand Inspector General of the Order. ⁵³

The months that followed were tumultuous: President Roosevelt died on April 12 during his fourth term in office, Russian troops entered Berlin eight days later, Mussolini was assassinated on April 28, and Hitler committed suicide shortly thereafter. The Allies announced victory in Europe on May 8.

Days after Hitler was announced dead, AC gave Grant the sketch that had accompanied his commentary on “The Voice of the Silence” in the blue Equinox . Then, on May 14, Grant announced that he was returning to London. This angered Crowley, but also came as a bit of a relief.

In London he had been A1; here he broke down altogether. Memory went west; you couldn’t trust him to do anything; he would leave me with the impression that he had done it when he had shelved it or forgotten altogether. Then, silly things like signing & posting letters that should have come to me fair-copied for revision & signature. He got worse every week. ⁵⁴

After returning to London, Grant helped AC oversee business there. May 16, the day of Grant’s departure, would be the last time he would see Crowley alive. That June, AC complained to Wilkinson that he was still “dog-tired trying to clean up after Grant!” ⁵⁵

It was difficult for Crowley to fault him for wanting to be with his love. Looking back over his own romantic conquests, Crowley listed eighty names he could recall and saw how devoid of true love most of them were. “Henceforth,” he solemnly vowed, “I, Perdurabo, whose benign bum now permits him to stroll the streets of Hastings, shall never fail to tip my hat to every courting couple I encounter.” ⁵⁶

During the goings-on with Grant and McMurtry, the Occult Review published a six-page appreciation of AC titled “Aleister Crowley, Poet and Occultist.” Its author, Frederick Henry Amphlett Micklewright (1908–1992), was an Anglican priest (1935) and fellow of the Royal Historical Society who had been educated at Oxford and the Anglican theological college Ripon Hall. Interested in unusual forms of religion, he contributed a series of articles to the Occult Review during the 1940s; his article on Crowley was quite laudatory:

It is not always the case that the poems of occultists are essential to an understanding of their work. But Aleister Crowley is fundamentally an artist. He is a creative personality, expressing his individuality in terms of rhythm. His sense of the rhythmic, which ultimately implies the sense of a fundamental beauty, is aptly expressed whether in prose or in verse; his art is a necessary entrance to an understanding of his occultism. ⁵⁷

Crowley might have missed the article had W. B. Crow not asked if he’d seen the latest issue. Crowley responded, “I have not seen a copy of the Occult Review , unless by accident, since [Ralph] Shirley left it [in 1925]. I did not know that it printed anything serious at all nowadays.” ⁵⁸ Even so, it appears from his diary that AC did not see the article until 1946. He was very pleased, writing to Crow that Amphlett Micklewright “has done a supreme thing; he has shown a coherent and consistent pattern in my work from first to last.… He has shown me what I didn’t know about myself.” ⁵⁹ He told his student Frederick Mellinger that it was the “best thing that’s happened to me in 100 years!” ⁶⁰

The world would never be the same after July 16, 1945. That day, the first atomic bomb test occurred in New Mexico; weeks later on August 6, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Crowley pondered if this was the war engine mentioned in The Book of the Law , writing to Louis Wilkinson, “The ‘Atomic Bomb’ is interesting, not only because of Liber AL III.7–8, but because one of the men who were working on it was for some time at the Abbey in Cefalù.” ⁶¹ After the second bomb fell on Nagasaki, AC left a cryptic entry in his diary:

O.T.O. Ophidian vibrations. Non-filterable virus. X-ray dermatitis. “Galloping cancer.” Amrita. NUITh Nitrogen Uranium Iodine (& sea-life) Theriumm = New Atom 666. Atomic No.: 93. H A D 6 plus 5 A D = He. ⁶²

A cold, black sky scowled at the world on New Year’s Day 1946. Professor E. M. Butler looked out her train window at the turbulent sea, too nervous to prepare to interview Aleister Crowley for her book The Myth of the Magus . Crowley’s reputation was as enormous as it was sinister, and she feared the inclement weather was somehow wound up with his evil.

Eliza Marian Butler (1885–1959) was the third of seven Anglo-Irish children to Theobald Fitzwalter Butler (1845–1914) and Catherine Elizabeth Barraclough (d. 1946). Educated at Newnham College (Cambridge) and Bonn University, she became a lecturer at her alma mater in 1914, where she would remain for much of her career, writing books on language and literature, especially German. From 1936 she was professor of German at Manchester University, but returned to Cambridge in 1945, where she remained until her 1951 retirement. She would be Professor Emeritus at Cambridge and receive an honorary doctorate in literature from Oxford in 1958. ⁶³

She was surprised to arrive at Hastings to find not the Prince of Darkness but a polite and friendly scarecrow of a septuagenarian. “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law,” he greeted her. “And a Happy New Year to you, Miss Butler.” After Crowley’s lunchtime discussion of Thelema failed to impress her, they retired to his room for cognac and the interview. She did it in two sessions: from lunch until high tea, then again that evening.

Butler had a structuralist model of the myth of the magus, much as Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009) had developed the traditional pattern of the hero myth. According to her research, great magi usually claimed a supernatural birth, with a childhood surrounded by portents and perils, and so on. Crowley denied these traits but admitted having undergone initiations. He cited the GD and his contact with Aiwass as instances of these. When Butler asked about a period of questing to distant lands for occult knowledge, Crowley listed his voyages to Mexico, India, Ceylon, Burma, Egypt, and China.

When asked about having blinding visions of beauty, glory, and truth, Crowley readily agreed. He took up The Book of the Law and read:

Behold! the rituals of the old time are black. Let the evil ones be cast away; let the good be purged by the prophet! Then shall this Knowledge go aright. I am the flame that burns in every heart of man, and in the core of every star. I am Life and the giver of Life, yet therefore is the knowledge of me the knowledge of death. I am the Magician and the Exorcist.

When Butler looked up from her note-taking, she saw him crying. Wiping his eyes with his hand, he whispered, “It was a revelation of love.”

Crowley was a gentleman, escorting her back to her hotel and paying for her meals at Netherwood; he would later send her Frieda Harris’s “Punch and Judy” sketches as a gift. Butler nevertheless sneaked away from Netherwood early the next morning, shuddering as if she had just vacated a shunned house; she later confessed to Yorke that the Beast had frightened her. His statement “Magic is not a way of life, it is the way of life” echoed menacingly in her head, and she wrote only a couple of sentences about him in The Myth of the Magus .

Ironically, AC described their meeting in an entirely different light: “Professor Butler of Newnham came … and talked (and made me talk) with such sympathy, consideration, and understanding that the day was a dream of joy!” ⁶⁴ It was a pleasant change from his incessant sickness and chronic depression.

He spent the next months correcting Olla , sending the finished proofs to Guys on March 25. When he wrote his old friend Augustus John to request a sketch for the book, the artist gladly obliged and planned to visit that summer. “So glad to hear you keep signing ‘do what thou wilt,’ ” he wrote. “How right you are.” ⁶⁵ With that settled, Crowley took up one other project: prodding Wilkinson to edit a popular edition of The Book of the Law and its comment.

After Helen jilted him in 1945, Jack Parsons transferred his affections to her sister, Sara Elizabeth Northrup (1924–1997). Known as Betty, she was a student at the University of Southern California, although she soon dropped out and moved in with Jack, becoming his partner in sex magick rituals.

In August of 1945, L. Ron Hubbard appeared on the scene. He had not yet written on Scientology, for which he is best known; at this time he was known simply as a science fiction writer and naval lieutenant. Lafayette Ronald Hubbard (1911–1986) was born in Tilden, Nebraska, to a military family and moved around a lot as a child. He attended George Washington University but, more interested in contributing to the school newspaper and literary journals, he left after two years without taking a degree. During the 1930s he published several novels and dozens of short stories in pulp magazines like Astounding Science Fiction and Unknown Worlds , becoming well-known in the science fiction and fantasy communities. He had entered the navy in 1941 and served for four years. When science fiction illustrator Lou Goldstone, a frequent visitor to the mansion on Orange Grove, introduced him to Agape Lodge, Parsons, a fan of science fiction, befriended Hubbard. Together with Betty, they soon founded the company “Allied Enterprises” to buy yachts on the east coast and sail them to California, where they could be resold at a profit. ⁶⁶

Their friendship became strained, however, when Hubbard, although married, began sleeping with Betty. As Parsons described:

About three months ago I met Ron … a writer and explorer of whom I had known for some time.… He is a gentleman; he has red hair, green eyes, is honest and intelligent, and we have become great friends. He moved in with me about two months ago, and although Betty and I are still friendly, she has transferred her sexual affections to Ron.

Although Ron has no formal training in magick, he has an extraordinary amount of experience and understanding in the field. From some of his experiences I deduce that he is in direct touch with some higher intelligence, possibly his guardian angel. Ron appears to have some sort of highly developed astral vision. He described his angel as a beautiful winged woman with red hair, whom he calls the Empress, and who has guided him through his life, and saved him many times. ⁶⁷

Twice jilted, Parsons began on January 4, 1946, a series of rituals known as the Babalon Working. He wished to summon an air elemental and thereby cause Babalon to be born in this world. The workings involved a variety of systems, including the Enochian tablet of air, the invoking ritual of the pentagram and the Augoeides. In the Mojave Desert on January 18, while conducting another of the rituals with Hubbard, Parsons watched the setting sun and declared flatly, “It is done.” Returning to Agape Lodge, Parsons found a new visitor there: Marjorie Cameron. He concluded his ritual had been a success.

Marjorie Cameron Parsons Kimmel (1922–1995) was born on April 22, 1922, in Belle Plaine, Iowa. ⁶⁸ She was the first of four children to a churchgoing family whose father, Hill L. Cameron (1902–1962), was a railroad worker. ⁶⁹ After graduating from Davenport High School in 1940—finding her artistic and mystical bent at odds with her small-town community—she enlisted in the Navy, where she worked in a photographic unit and drew maps. During the war she learned that her brother James, a tail-gunner, had been injured in action and rushed back home to Iowa to be by his side; declared AWOL, she was confined to base from the time of her return until her honorable discharge in 1945. From there she, along with her family, resettled in Pasadena. No longer a map-drawer, she began working as a fashion illustrator. Shortly thereafter she met Jack Parsons. ⁷⁰

For the next nine days, Parsons performed a series of invocations of Babalon, for which Hubbard acted as scribe. Shortly thereafter, on February 28, Parsons was back in the Mojave Desert, where he received The Book of Babalon , ostensibly the fourth chapter to The Book of the Law . When Cameron became pregnant, Parsons concluded she would give birth to Babalon.

Describing his success to Crowley, Parsons attributed his devastating success to “the IX° working with the girl who answered my elemental summons.… I have been in direct touch with One who is most Holy and Beautiful, mentioned in The Book of the Law .” ⁷¹ AC’s reply was lukewarm:

I am particularly interested in what you have written to me about the elemental, because for some little time past I have been endeavoring to intervene personally in this matter on your behalf. I would however have you recall Lévi’s aphorism: ‘The love of the Magus for such things is insensate and destroys him.’ ⁷²

With Germer, he was more candid: “Apparently he … is producing a Moonchild. I get fairly frantic when I contemplate the idiocy of these louts.” ⁷³ In the midst of escalating problems with Agape Lodge, Crowley gave McMurtry the following document:

This is to authorize Frater Hymenaeus Alpha (Capt. Grady L. McMurtry) to take charge of the whole work of the Order in California to reform the Organization in pursuance of his report of January 25, ’46 e.v. subject to the approval of Frater Saturnus (Karl J. Germer). This authorization is to be used only in emergency. ⁷⁴

He followed this letter with another stating, “These presents are to appoint Frater Hymenaeus Alpha, Grady Louis McMurtry IX° O.T.O., as Our representative in the United States of America and his authority is to be considered as Ours, subject to the approval, revision, or veto of Our Viceroy, Karl Johannes Germer IX° O.T.O.” ⁷⁵ These documents assured Crowley that if everything in Pasadena crashed, McMurtry was empowered to step in and put it back together. “I think it is best to leave as much in your hands as possible,” Crowley told him, “as you are more or less on the spot and appear to be full of youth and energy as ever.” ⁷⁶

The time soon arrived for Allied Enterprises to purchase its first yacht, and Jack agreed that Ron and Betty would take $10,000 of his money to the East Coast, buy the boat, and sail it back to California. Unbeknownst to Parsons, Hubbard had asked the Chief of Naval Personnel for permission to sail to South America and China; he had no intention of returning. After a couple of weeks passed with no word from his partners, Parsons deduced this for himself. Not to be taken in, Jack took a train to Miami and discovered that Allied Enterprises had purchased three boats in all: a yacht plus two schooners that they bought on mortgages exceeding $12,000. He tracked down the schooners but could find no trace of Ron or Betty.

Several days later, a phone call from Howard Bond’s Yacht Harbor informed Parsons that Ron and Betty’s yacht had sailed at 5 o’clock earlier that afternoon. It was now 8 p.m. and he could do little about the situation. So he evoked Bartzabel, the spirit of Mars, to stop his dishonest partners. As if in response, a squall struck the yacht off the coast, tearing off its sails and forcing it back to port, where Parsons had them arrested. The Circuit Court of Dade County, Florida, slapped them with a restraining order that prevented their selling the boats or leaving Miami until the courts settled the charges. At this time, Jack wrote despondently to his “Dear Father” at Netherwood:

Here I am in Miami pursuing the children of my folly. I have them well tied up. They cannot move without going to jail. However, most of the money has already been dissipated. I will be lucky to salvage $3,000 to $5,000. ⁷⁷

On July 11, Hubbard and Northrup agreed to a deal drawn up by Parsons’s lawyer: Jack got the yacht and one of the schooners. Ron and Betty kept the other schooner, split his legal costs, and signed a promissory note of $2,900. Parsons returned to Pasadena, feeling fleeced but having salvaged as much as he possibly could. Hubbard would later claim that he was working undercover for the FBI to break up an immoral secret society.

Lilliput magazine wanted Aleister Crowley to contribute an article to their June issue and sent their assistant editor, John Symonds (1914–2006), to meet with him on Friday, May 3. Symonds was born on March 12, 1914, in Battersea, London, to a single mother, Lithuanian Jewish immigrant Lily Sapzells, who ran a boarding house in Margate. He was estranged from his father, architect and antiques expert Robert Wemyss Symonds, who had married and refused to acknowledge John as his son. Spending his spare time in the British Museum reading room, Symonds’s first job was as a journalist for the Picture Post , where he befriended Dylan Thomas and poet-novelist Stephen Spender, whom Crowley had met back in 1931. During the war he was exempted from military service and edited Lilliput magazine; in 1946 he completed his first novel, the gothic fantasy William Waste . ⁷⁸ Clifford Bax had encouraged him to visit Crowley, saying, “He will die soon and then you would have lost your chance.” Symonds—living at 84 Boundary Road, Hampstead, the very house where Victor Neuburg had died in 1940—already had an interest in AC. So he and astrologer Rupert Gleadow (1909–1974) journeyed to Netherwood. Crowley greeted them in the drawing room with his customary “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.” As Symonds and Gleadow checked him out, AC incited them by stating his disbelief in astrology. At one point, he examined his small, bony arm and explained that he needed an injection of heroin. “Do you mind?” he asked.

Smirking, Crowley related the squeamish reaction of a visiting army officer—most likely either McMurtry or Mellinger—when he went to the bathroom to inject himself. “I left the bedroom door open, and from behind the bathroom door I bent down to the keyhole and began to squeal like a stuck pig. When I came out, I found my poor friend had almost fainted.” ⁷⁹

“I wish I did,” he deadpanned. “I’ve been trying to learn for the last sixty years,” then presented each of them with a copy of the blue paper-covered Book of the Law published by the Church of Thelema.

Shortly thereafter, Lilliput received his story “The Young Man and the Post Office” (printed as “How to Tell an Englishman from an American”). ⁸⁰

His publication plans forged ahead, with Lady Harris designing a cover for Olla , which was due out that summer. Crowley realized this plan was optimistic and, receiving the proofs on June 6, knew its publication date would be later than anticipated. He nevertheless proceeded with other projects. “My main object in this revived burst of activity is to get my principal works published somehow—anyhow—so as to have them in a definite form while I still encumber this planet,” Crowley explained to John Symonds, ⁸¹ who had offered to help however he could. Although Symonds preferred Magick without Tears , AC wanted the long-completed Liber Aleph to be his next book in print, with a Christmas release date every bit as tentative as that for Olla . ⁸²

His worsening eyesight, however, interrupted the Great Work. As far back as April, he had complained to McMurtry, “My eyes are really bothering me so much that I feel totally unable to deal with your letter as I should like.” ⁸³ Glasses did not help. A London optician, Dr. McGowan, diagnosed him with amblyopia or “lazy eye,” and insisted Crowley quit smoking “immediately and forever” in order to save his vision. That noon, Crowley ceremonially renounced tobacco. Although optical and dental problems continued to plague Crowley, his vision had improved so much by July 20 that he “Decided to risk half a pipe at 6 p.m. chiefly to make sure that this did not bring about an immediate relapse.” ⁸⁴ By September, Crowley happily noted, “Eyes quite o.k. so far, despite moderate resumption of smoking.” ⁸⁵

When Augustus John did Crowley’s portrait that summer, it was the first time he had seen the mage in decades. Frankly, the sight of his shrunken friend, with vacant eyes staring out of his wrinkled, gray head, frightened John; only his sharp mind retained its youthful vigor. “A glorious sketch!” Crowley congratulated the artist, who offered to help Crowley by arranging for collotyping by Chiswick Press himself.

He gave the Olla proofs a final inspection, setting its publication date for December 22. He printed fifty prospectuses and on December 11 sold the first copy. On December 22, 1946, at 10:54 a.m., the moment of the winter solstice, Olla: An Anthology of Sixty Years of Song was officially published in an edition of five hundred copies. The book listed Symonds’s 121 Adelaide Road address as OTO’s place of publication. “I think of it as a unique publication,” Crowley remarked. “I doubt whether anyone else can boast—if it is a boast—of 60 years of song.” ⁸⁶ The Occult Review concurred, devoting four pages to reviewing what would be the last book he would publish. In his review, Nicholas Sylvester introduced Crowley as “one of the foremost, as well as one of the most logical, investigators in the field” of magic, and said of Olla , “This collection of poems is the work of a great occultist and a great poet,” predicting “it may well prove that he will be remembered in the future as a poet of outstanding genius and ability.” ⁸⁷

Crowley continued making regular payments to his Hastings printer, who promised to have page proofs of Liber Aleph ready by the end of May.

When James Laver (1899–1975)—art historian, museum curator, and author of books on many subjects, including a recent one on the prophet Nostradamus ⁸⁸ —accepted Crowley’s invitation and visited him at Netherwood on March 27, he found the Mage sickly. He was on a special diet and left his boiled egg uneaten in favor of brandy and perique. Blood dotted his shirt sleeves, and only an injection of heroin cleared his dull eyes and perked him up. During their conversations on magick, Crowley made the insightful comment, “Ah, you realize that magick is something we do to ourselves. But it is more convenient to assume the objective existence of an angel who gives us new knowledge than to allege that our invocation has awakened a supernormal power in ourselves.” ⁸⁹ In his diary, Crowley recorded the day, “Most delightful interview, A.C. at his best.” ⁹⁰

Arnold Crowther (1909–1974) was another in the carnival of visitors who—in the tradition of Symonds, Butler, and Laver—came to Netherwood to see the quickly decaying mage, Aleister Crowley. Crowther was neither a disciple nor detractor; and, although he was a magician, it was not in the same manner as the Beast. His magic was sleight of hand, and he only knew of Crowley through the media and a discarded copy of Magick in Theory and Practice that had been given to him during one of his World War II performances for the army. He was also a ventriloquist, puppeteer, and puppet-maker who entertained the like of Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret at Buckingham Palace. ⁹¹ When, after one of his shows, someone asked him, “Are you that awful man?,” he realized the similarity between the names Arnold Crowther and Aleister Crowley. His curiosity piqued, he arranged to visit on May 1. He brought with him his friend Gerald Brousseau Gardner (1884–1964), a retired civil servant fascinated by magic and witchcraft. In later years, Crowther would become inolved in Gardner’s revival of paganism.

Gardner was born near Liverpool to a middle-class family, proprietors of the United Kingdom’s oldest hardwood importers, Joseph Gardner & Sons. He spent much of his life living abroad in exotic locations like the Canary Islands, Ceylon, Borneo, and Malaya. The cultures to which he was exposed—particularly their magical practices and their weaponry—fascinated him. Becoming an amateur anthropologist, he published a book on Keris and Other Malay Weapons in 1936. ⁹² That same year, at age fifty-two, he retired and settled back in England. Here, he joined the Folkore Society and contributed to its journal, and also became involved in groups based on Rosicrucianism and witchcraft. ⁹³

May 1, 1947, was the first of four visits for Gardner, who got along well with Crowley. Beast admitted him into OTO as Brother Scire (“To know”), advancing him to VII° and authorizing him to get OTO going again in England. “We are getting a Camp of Minerval started during the summer if plans go as at present arranged,” Crowley reported excitedly to Germer. ⁹⁴ Alas, Gardner never used his charter, explaining, “I tried to start an order, but I got ill and had to leave the country.” ⁹⁵

Two years later, Gardner would publish the novel High Magic’s Aid through Atlantis Bookshop. Since the eighteenth-century Witchcraft Act made the practice of witchcraft illegal, the title page bore as a pseudonym a garbled version of Gardner’s OTO motto: Scire O.T.O. 4°=7°. Although it was a novel, its description of a witch cult intrigued his readers. “A.C. read part of the MS, and highly approved,” Gardner reported. “He wanted me to put the witch part in full.” ⁹⁶ The book was, in fact, a springboard for introducing witchcraft to the world. Gardner, according to apocryphal reports, had paid Crowley $1,500, or £300, to write a pagan grimoire—the Book of Shadows —for his witchcraft revival; ⁹⁷ however, no record of such an arrangement exists in Crowley’s letters or diaries. The truth, according to long-time friend and student Doreen Valiente, is that Gardner borrowed liberally from various works, including Leland’s Gospel of the Witches ⁹⁸ and the works of his friend AC. ⁹⁹

Gardnerian witchcraft, particularly its early forms, clearly draws heavily from Crowley. The symbolic great rite comes from OTO’s VI° ritual; the pagan catchphrase “Perfect love and perfect trust” is drawn from “The Revival of Magick,” and the Wiccan III° initiation—the highest in the Craft—is essentially a Gnostic Mass. And, for all its evocative beauty, the Charge of the Goddess is largely a paraphrase of The Book of the Law . Even Gardner himself, in a cagey way, admits the lineage of his witchcraft movement: in his second book, Witchcraft Today , he writes:

The great question which people ask is: “How do you know the cult is old?”… The only man I can think of who could have invented the rites was the late Aleister Crowley. When I met him he was most interested to hear that I was a member, and said he had been inside when he was very young, but would not say whether he had rewritten anything or not.… There are indeed certain expressions and certain words which smack of Crowley. ¹⁰⁰

Gardner’s relationship with Crowley has become quite a fish story over the years, but the simplest account is still the accepted truth: Gardner met Crowley through Arnold Crowther; they met four times in all; Crowley gave Gardner authority, which he valued but never used, to operate an OTO body; and Gardner was so impressed with Crowley’s writings that he borrowed sections when developing the rituals for his coven. ¹⁰¹

“A miracle has just happened,” AC wrote excitedly to E. N. Fitzgerald. “The girl Pat and Aleister Ataturk, who I had long since given up for dead, are in London. She phoned me last night. I am delirious with joy. They come here Thursday.” ¹⁰² Pat and Aleister Ataturk, who just turned ten on May 2, came out from Cornwall to visit Crowley for three days in the middle of May. The visit pleased AC, who, old and lonely, missed his family. He was so happy to see them that on May 22 Crowley instructed members of OTO to ensure Ataturk’s care and education after his father died. He also seized the opportunity to write his son a fatherly letter while he still had the chance. His advice provides great insight into Crowley’s mind, and is quoted in full:

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

My dear son,

This is the first letter that your father has ever written to you, so you can imagine that it will be very important, and you should keep it and lay it by your heart.

First of all, let me tell you how intensely happy your reappearance has made me. I feel that I must devote a great deal of my time to watching over your career. I was very pleased to hear that you had decided to learn to read, and that, of course, means learning to write. A word of warning about this. In these last years, children have been taught to write script, as they call it, which is a very bad thing. You must write in such a way that it impresses your personality on the reader.

On top of that, I wanted to tell you something about yourself. One of your Ancestors was Duke of a place called La Querouaille in Brittany, and he came over to England with the Duke of Richmond, who was the original heir to the English throne, to help him turn out the usurper, known to history as Richard III. Since then, our family has made its mark on the world on several occasions, though never anything very brilliant. Now, I want you to take this very seriously. I want you to be very proud of yourself for belonging to such a family. Owing to the French Revolution and various other catastrophes, the Dukedom is no longer in existence legally, but morally it is so, and I want you to learn to behave as a Duke would behave. You must be high-minded, generous, noble, and, above all, without fear. For that last reason, you must never tell a lie, for to do so shows that you are afraid of the person to whom you tell it, and I want you to be afraid of nobody. I think that is all about now.

Now with regard to your education. I want particularly to insist on learning Latin, and I will give you my reasons. Firstly, anyone who knows Latin gains a greater command of and understanding of the English language than he would otherwise possess. He will be able to reason out for himself the meanings of words with which he is unfamiliar. Secondly, if you are well-grounded in Latin, you are halfway to a knowledge of French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, for all these languages, as well as English, are derived from Latin. Thirdly, the most important of all, much of the unconscious part of your mind has been formed by the writing of Latin and Greek authors. This implies that you should also learn a certain amount of Greek. One of the wisest men of olden time gave this instruction to his pupils: “Know thyself,” and learning Latin helps you to do this for the reason I have already explained above. I regard this as very important indeed. There are a great many people going about today who tell you that Latin is no use to you in the ordinary affairs of life, and that is quite true if you are going to be some commonplace person like a tradesman or a bank clerk. But you are a gentleman, and if you want to be an educated gentlemen, you must know Latin.

There is another matter that I want to put before you. It will be a very good plan if you learn to play chess. For one thing, it is a very good training for the mind, and, for another, it is the only game, of all the games worth playing, which lasts you throughout your life. You can get as much pleasure out of it when you are 60 as when you are 20.

I think that is all I have to say to you today, and I shall expect you to manage somehow to write me an answer. You see, much of the time we shall not be able to communicate face to face, and there will be a good many questions that you will want to ask me, which you cannot do unless you write good English.

That reminds me. There is one more point that I want to impress to you. The best models of English writings are Shakespeare and the Old Testament, especially the Book of Job, the Psalms and Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon. It will be a very good thing for you to commit as much as you can both of these books and of the best plays of Shakespeare to memory, so that they form the foundation of your style. In writing English, the most important quality that you can acquire is style. That makes all the difference to anyone who reads what you write, whether you use the best phrases in the best way. You will have to devote some time to grammar and syntax, and also to logic. Logic is the science and the art of using words, and it teaches you to think correctly without making blunders in reasoning, which nowadays everyone is liable to do just because they have not got the training which I am proposing to give you.

Now, my dear son, I will close this long letter in the eager hope you will follow my advice in all respects.

Love is the law, love under will.

Your affectionate father. ¹⁰³

Also visiting that summer was Harvard scholar Richard David Ellmann (1918–1987), who had a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to write a biography of Yeats. Born in Highland Park, Michigan, to Jewish Romanian immigrant James Isaac Ellmann and Ukrainian immigrant Jeantte Barsook, Ellman graduated from Yale University with exceptional distinction in English and received his MA in 1941. His position as an instructor at Harvard was interrupted by the United States’s entry into the war and his army enlistment. In 1945 he found himself in London with the Office of Strategic Services, where that September he met W. B. Yeats’s widow. Impressed with Ellmann’s knowledge of Yeats, she granted him access to her archive. Thus he began writing what would be Yale University’s first doctoral dissertation on a twentieth-century writer. ¹⁰⁴ Clifford Bax had passed AC’s address along to Ellmann, who wished to interview Crowley about his “magical war” with Yeats in the GD days. The result of this interview was a colorful article titled, “Black Magic against White: Aleister Crowley versus W. B. Yeats.” ¹⁰⁵

As his health deteriorated, AC had difficulty making more than an occasional diary entry or remembering names and dates. Reuss’s advice echoed in his mind, “Trust not a stranger: fail not of an heir.” He had already hastily awarded IX° honors to several students, ensuring the secret would survive his death. Now he wrote to McMurtry:

It seems a long time since I heard from you. This is a great mistake: I will tell you why in strict confidence . In the event of my death Frater Saturnus is of course my successor, but after his death the terrible burden of responsibility might very easily fall upon your shoulders; for this reason I should like you to keep closely in touch with me.

I am sending you a bound copy of “Olla” to remind you of me.… ¹⁰⁶

Any time you can spare a moment think of me, and remember that you can bring no greater happiness into my life than by dropping me a brief note: never mind whether there is anything to say or not.

I am very anxious indeed that you should keep in close touch with me, if only because I think it quite possible that after Frater Saturnus and myself have moved on into the next stage, you may find yourself saddled with the whole responsibility of carrying on the work of the Order. It is most important that you should have paid the greatest attention to practiced experience of every side of the work, because whenever you become the supreme head of everything you will find that people write to you from everywhere and anywhere asking all sorts of the most impossible questions, and you have to answer them not merely with tact and discretion, but with detailed knowledge.

Please remember this above all things … you never know at what moment you may find yourself in a position of supreme responsibility, and you must not shirk it or dodge it.… ¹⁰⁷

Mellinger was an actor in both his German homeland and in the United States, to which he emigrated as a Jewish refugee. He had a long-standing interest in the occult, publishing in 1933 while still in Germany Zeichen und Wunder: Ein Führer durch die Welt der Magie (Signs and Wonders: A Guide to the World of Magic) . ¹⁰⁸ He became a U.S. citizen in the mid-to-late 1930s and traveled to Europe on occasional military assignments. Living in Los Angeles he had various bit parts in Hollywood films ¹⁰⁹ and in 1940 met W. T. Smith. They became instant friends, and Mellinger joined both OTO and the A

under Smith’s sponsorship. In 1945, with Germer’s financial help, he returned to Germany and visited Crowley at Hastings. Judging from the above-quoted letter, he certainly made an impression. However, in the years following Crowley’s death, he would remain on the periphery of the Thelemic circle.

Although it may appear that Crowley was willing to give the IX° to anyone, he had a definite plan in mind. He described it to Germer:

You seem in doubt too about the succession. There has never been any question about this. Since your re-appearance you are the only successor of whom I have ever thought since that moment. I have, however, had the idea that in view of the dispersion of so many members, you might find it useful to appoint a triumvirate to work under you. My idea was Mellinger, MacMurtrie [sic] and, I suppose, Roy.… I shall leave it entirely to you to decide about your triumvirate after my death. ¹¹⁰

After writing his letter to McMurtry, Crowley prepared his last will and testament. Then, before he even finished correcting the proofs of Liber Aleph that August, he added Golden Twigs to the print queue.

Karl Johannes Germer (1885–1962), Crowley’s successor in OTO. (photo credit 22.5)

As AC grew progressively ill that summer, the Netherwood housekeepers prayed for his own sake that he would die soon. Karl planned to come to Hastings that autumn to care for Crowley, but British authorities denied him a visa. Thus, when Lady Harris found Crowley dirty and neglected, she asked him if he had any money for a trained nurse. “I have over £400 in banknotes in the strongbox under my bed,” he explained, “but that’s not for my personal use. It’s money from America, earmarked for the order.” Especially now, when publishing his works was so important, Crowley refused to dip into his publication fund. So, that September, Frieda hired a nurse herself. In addition, Mr. H. Watson of the Ridge Stores also helped look after him.

When Crowley turned seventy-two in October, his grip on life was slipping. “I have myself been very ill, confined to bed for six months or more,” he wrote. ¹¹¹ Wilkinson noticed the light fading in his eyes. Laying pathetically helpless in bed, he reflected despondently on his life and realized he hadn’t obtained the recognition he felt he deserved; he hadn’t completed the Great Work he had set out to accomplish. He was only a front-page sensation for the newspapers to trot out whenever circulation slipped. Even now, he insisted that reporters were hiding in the bushes, waiting for him to die. With a sigh, he remarked, “This is a good world to leave.”

“You are my greatest friend, Louis.” Crowley smiled sadly. “I’m sorry you have wasted your time visiting a log.” Those were his last words to his oldest friend.

GERMER:

PERDURABO BORN 49 YEARS AGO. THERION SENDS DEEPEST LOVE HIGHEST BLESSING YOURSELVES AND THELEMITES, THE UNIVERSE.

To Frieda, Louis, and Karl—the ones who really mattered—Crowley had said his piece and given his farewells.

His condition became so severe that Pat and her children, including Ataturk, came to his side on the last day of November. Frederick Mellinger and his wife also made the journey, finding Crowley disoriented and unsure of where he was. When he finally passed, the stillness of the day was interrupted by a peal of thunder and a gust of wind that blew the curtains across the room. “It was the gods greeting him,” recalled Deirdre.

On Monday, December 1, 1947, at 11 a.m., Aleister Crowley died of myocardial degeneration and chronic bronchitis. In his pocket was an Abramelin talisman “for a great treasure” and an old letter, tattered from repeated unfoldings and foldings. Dated September 10, 1939, it read: “The Director of Naval Intelligence presents his compliments and would be glad if you could find it convenient to call at the Admiralty for an interview.”

Wilkinson took the phone call at Netherwood, where he was staying to arrange Crowley’s funeral. Lifting the receiver to his ear, he greeted, “Hello,” then firmly replied, “I’m sorry, but the funeral is a private affair.” Since his death, everyone was calling for details of the evil Aleister Crowley’s demise; Wilkinson grew intolerant of the reporters, remembering how his friend, shortly before death, believed they were waiting outside his window for him to die. How right he was. The newspapers said it all in their headlines:

Black Magician Crowley Dies: “Wickedest Man in Britain.”

World’s Worst Man Dies.

Awful Aleister.

Rascal’s Regress.

Aleister Crowley Dies; Once the “Invisible” Man.

Mystic’s Potion to Prolong Life Fails.

“Worst Man in the World” Dies, Leaves Weird Pictures. ¹¹²

Crowley gained no respect while living and received even less in death. When it was discoverd that his attending physician, William Brown Thomson (c. 1889–1947), of 12 Park Way in Greenford, died within twenty-four hours of his patient, ¹¹³ rumors of a curse fueled further headlines, like “Crowley’s Doctor Dies: ‘Curse Put on Him.’ ” ¹¹⁴ The fact that Thomson was fifty-eight years old did nothing to deflect conspiracy theories of postmortem revenge.

Crowley’s will named Frieda Harris, Louis Wilkinson, and Karl Germer as his executors, charged with settling his debts. Revoking all previous bequests, he left his copyrights to OTO, which was to ensure Pat and Ataturk’s care. He named Wilkinson and Symonds his literary executors, charging them to collect his literary remains and ship them to Germer in New York. He asked that no religious service be performed at his funeral, wishing instead for Yorke or Wilkinson to read selections from his works.

Friday afternoon of December 5 was cold and dank. Mourners and spectators gathered inside the chapel at the Brighton cemetery where, at 2:45, Crowley’s flower-covered coffin was solemnly brought.

Carrying a copy of The Book of the Law and Magick , Louis Wilkinson took the rostrum and looked out at the group of fifteen mourners, including, according to the press, “five well-dressed women and six youths in need of haircuts.” ¹¹⁵ Among those he recognized were Gerald Yorke, Frieda Harris, John Symonds, J. G. Bayley, Pat and Aleister MacAlpine, and Kenneth Grant and his wife, Steffi. Yorke counted three reporters.

Wilkinson, tall and dignified, began without hesitation. “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.” Deep and articulate, his voice filled the chapel as he read “Hymn to Pan,” excerpts from The Book of the Law , the Collects from the Gnostic Mass, and the “Quia Patris” from “The Ship,” which Crowley had read at Raoul Loveday’s funeral:

Thou who art I, beyond all I am,

Who has no nature, and no name,

Who art, when all but thou are gone,

Thou, centre and secret of the Sun,

Thou, hidden spring of all things known

And unknown, Thou aloof, alone,

Thou, the true fire within the reed

Brooding and breeding, source and seed

Of life, love, liberty and light,

Thou beyond speech and beyond sight,

Thee I invoke, my faint fresh fire

Kindling as mine intents aspire.

Thee I invoke, abiding one,

Thee, centre and secret of the Sun,

And that most holy mystery

Of which the vehicle am I!

Appear, most awful and most mild,

As it is lawful, to thy child!

For of the Father and the Son

The Holy Spirit is the norm:

Male-female, quintessential, one,

Man-being veiled in Woman-form.

Glory and worship in the Highest,

Thou Dove, mankind that deifiest,

Being that race—most royally run

To spring sunshine through winter storm!

Glory and worship be to Thee,

Sap of the world-ash, wonder tree!

Glory to Thee from gilded tomb!

Glory to Thee from waiting womb!

Glory to thee from virgin vowed!

Glory to Thee from Earth unploughed!

Glory to Thee, true Unity

Of the eternal Trinity!

Glory to Thee, thou sire and dam

And Self of I am that I am.

Glory to Thee, beyond all term,

Thy spring of sperm, thy seed and germ!

Glory to Thee, eternal Sun,

Thou One in Three, Thou Three in One!

Glory and worship be to Thee,

Sap of the world-ash, wonder-tree!

Mourners’ ecstatic or tearful interjections of “Io Pan!” and “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law” punctuated the recital. The reporters just looked at each other, nonplussed.

Wilkinson closed the book and solemnly ended with “Love is the law, love under will.” He sat down, and Pat threw a spray of roses on the coffin. Rollers turned, and the coffin entered the furnace. ¹¹⁶

Reporters formed a gauntlet around mourners as they left the chapel, barking out questions and jotting down quotes to include in the next edition of their tabloids. “Beware what you write,” Symonds said, locking eyes with one reporter. “Crowley may strike at you from wherever he is.” The heavens released a downpour, and Wilkinson, riding back to Hastings, remarked of the weather, “Just what Crowley would have liked.”

Unable to fathom the meaning of the funeral, reporters described Crowley’s last rites as a Black Mass, running headlines like

Cremating “Great Beast”
Desecrated by Black Magic

The scandalized Brighton Town Council met to discuss this spectacle and assured the public that such a thing would never happen again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO The Great Turkey Tragedy: Or Heirs Apparent

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The Great Turkey Tragedy: Or Heirs Apparent