Members of the Argenteum Astrum needed ceremonial robes, which could be obtained from the firm of W. Northam at 9 Henrietta Street. These were available in different ranks, from Probationer at five pounds and Neophyte at six pounds, through to Magister Templi at fifty pounds (around £5000 today; so even the Neophyte robe would be around £600).
Northam's advertisement was clearly written by Crowley himself, with mysteries of which Northam's knew nothing. The Dominus Liminis robe, for example, was “fitted for the infernal rites of Sol, which must never be celebrated”; “The Babe of the Abyss has no robe”; and the Magister Templi robe was fitted for “the supernal rites of Luna, and for those rites of Babylon and the Graal. But this robe should be worn by no man, because of that which is written, ‘Ecclesia abhorret a sanguine.’”
The overall look was a cloak with a hood, in red. One was sold at Sotheby's in 1996,1 and illustrated in the catalogue: it is red, with a Rosicrucian cross embroidered in gold and coloured thread on the chest and the Eye of Osiris in a starry triangle on the hood. More can be seen in Crowley's painting Four Red Monks Carrying a Black Goat Across the Snows to Nowhere.
Jean La Fontaine, in her debunking of the 1990s ‘Satanic abuse’ scares, Speak of the Devil: Tales of Satanic Abuse in Contemporary England, makes the point that hooded robe outfits are now associated in popular culture with the Black Mass: “This is the garb of devil worshippers, as described in horror stories by Dennis Wheatley…”
This is largely true, and it is no disrespect to La Fontaine's sound and important study to acknowledge that although such spurious “Dennis Wheatley outfits” are overwhelmingly fictional, they have existed – we need look no further than the Argenteum Astrum.