One day in the spring of 1899, “at some ceremony or other” in Great Queen Street, Crowley became aware of what he felt was great spiritual and magical force emanating from another Golden Dawn member. This was Allan Bennett (Frater Iehi Aour: ‘Let There Be Light’), a gaunt-looking man in his twenties with dark hair and striking eyes, who was held in awe by other Golden Dawn members – as a practical magician he was second only to Mathers, who had informally adopted him.
“Little Brother,” he said to Crowley, “You have been meddling with the Goetia” (a magical grimoire).1 Crowley claimed innocence, but Bennett wasn't convinced: “In that case,” he said, “the Goetia has been meddling with you.”
Next day Crowley sought Bennett out, and found him in south London at what he described as a squalid tenement (“a tiny tenement in Southwark or Lambeth – I forget which. It was a mean, grim horror”). The word tenement suggests slummy redbrick flats in several storeys, but it was a suburban house at 24 Barrow Road, Streatham, not so far from Crowley's own childhood house at Polworth Road. Bennett was lodging there with Charles Rosher (Frater Aequi Animo) and his wife Lily. Rosher – not to be confused with Charles Rosher the cinematographer and cameraman, who was his son – had travelled the world as an adventurer, “invented a patent water-closet and been court painter to the Sultan of Morocco”, and he also wrote terrible poetry. “If his talents had been less varied,” says Crowley, “he might have made a success of almost anything.”
Crowley made Bennett an offer: if he would teach Crowley magic, he could come and lodge with him in Holborn.