An early entry in Crowley's sex-magical diary, Rex de Arte Regia (King of the Royal Art), records that on the 6 September 1914 he had an all-day session with a Piccadilly prostitute, Christine Rosalie Byrne, “a sturdy bitch of 26 or so” who went under the working name of ‘Peggy Marchmont’ (as in Marchmont Street, then a street of cheap lodgings in Bloomsbury). The “object”, since from now on Crowley generally had an object when he had sex, was “Knowledge of the Mysteries of the IX0 and power to express same.”
Within the Masonic-style language of the O.T.O., the IX0 was magically consecrated heterosexual intercourse (with the XI0, added by Crowley, being anal sex, and VIII0 masturbation – “manibus”, by hand – also a useful option). The whole procedure – once explained to me as “Have a fuck and make a wish” 1 – involved consecrating a sexual act to a particular purpose (such as money, or healing, or success with a particular project) and maintaining concentration during sex and orgasm, such that visualising a shower of gold during orgasm might (for example) result in a seemingly coincidental lottery win or windfall a week later. Sealing the operation with a further sacramental-alchemical turn, Crowley also liked to consume the combined male and female fluids afterwards, the “elixir”.
Crowley had immense faith in this, and writes that if the secret were understood there is nothing that could not be achieved (“if it were desired to have an element of atomic weight six times that of uranium that element could be produced”). He claimed Cowie was a fool not to cure his deafness with it, and writes of his own work that it had replaced ritual magic: from 1914, although he had known of it earlier,2 “I made it my principal engine”.
On this occasion he reported great success: he was seized with the inspiration and energy to write De Arte Magica, De Homunculo, De Natura Deorum, and De Nuptiis Secretis Deorum cum Hominibus (Concerning the Magic Art; On the Homunculus; On the Nature of the Gods; Of the Secret Marriages of Gods with Men). At the same time he felt something had gone wrong (“I suppose that I had made some great error”) because he developed a thrombosis in his leg, needing a month of rest. Or perhaps, he wondered, “might the ill-health be part of the success, giving me time to write?”
He was back at work in October, this time with chorus-girl Violet Duval, assisted in a threesome by Leila Waddell (now “Grand Secretary General IX0 OTO”), and this time the object was “Health”.
Piccadilly Circus was already London's focal point, seeming like the centre of the world in the days of the British Empire, and it already had its celebrated advertising hoardings, along with flower sellers around the statue of Eros, and prostitutes. The association with prostitution was strong enough for Crowley – writing about the aphrodisiac properties of hashish – to contrast the purity of his own mind with those sex-obsessed people “who associate nudity with debauchery, and see Piccadilly Circus in [the] Mona Lisa”. The whole Piccadilly area continued to be a lifelong Crowley stamping ground. His occasional drinking companion of the 1940s, Collin Brooks, notes that as the twentieth century got under way the pleasure centre of London shifted from the Strand towards Regent Street and Piccadilly, and Crowley's use of the city is largely in accord with this.
In his later years Crowley would walk around Piccadilly raising his hat to courting couples and cursing priests with “Save us from every evil demon” in classical Greek. He only cursed Catholic priests because, as he explained, they are the only real priests.