Crowley went to New York in November 1914 and spent the First World War in America. While there, as well as writing propaganda, he assumed the magical grade of Magus, one step up from Magister Templi, now making him equal to Christ or Mohammed. The great Magi pronounce a word which defines their teaching, as in agape, love, in the case of Christ, or Allah (God is one) in the case of Mohammed; Crowley's word was thelema, will.
He also visited New Orleans, where he wrote The Green Goddess, an essay on absinthe with a strikingly 1890s-ish ethos and even style (redolent of the King James Bible, Malory's Morte d’Arthur, and Enoch Soames). Absinthe, he writes, can stimulate the truly artistic point of view, “…till you become as gods, knowing good and evil, and that they are not two but one”. Understanding this “solves every problem of life and death – which two are also one.”
At one point he asks the reader “Do you know that French sonnet ‘La legende de l’Absinthe’?” It is unlikely many readers did, because he had written it himself, and published it in the pro-German propaganda paper The International. He was a contributing editor and main writer, defending the German execution of British nurse Edith Cavell and comparing Kaiser Bill to Christ.
Much of it is written with a cheery facetiousness, and when the Zeppelin raids took place he wrote
For some reason or other in their last Zeppelin raid on London the Germans appear to have decided to make the damage as widespread as possible, instead of concentrating it in one quarter. A house close to my lawyer's office in Chancery Lane1 was entirely destroyed… A great deal of damage was done at Croydon, especially at its suburb Addiscombe, where my aunt lives. Unfortunately her house was not hit… Count Zeppelin is respectfully requested to try again. The exact address is Eton Lodge, Outram Road.
Or to be really exact, Eton Lodge, 55 Outram Road.2 It was fortunate number 55 escaped because, returning from America with no money and nowhere to stay, he lived there on his aunt's Christmas hospitality though December 1919 and January 1920. “Not only has the war changed nothing,” he noticed, “but they haven't altered the position of a piece of furniture since Queen Victoria came to the throne.”