Crowley's Confessions (Cape, 1969) – which he liked to refer to as his autohagiography, the autobiography of a saint – are abbreviated simply Hag. with page number.
Crowley's ‘Royal Court’ diaries of the 1930s and 1940s (with transcripts in the Yorke collection as their standard referent, although now superseded in places by the OTO edition-in-progress that I have used) are cited simply by dates thus: 27.vi.32.
Ordo Templi Orientis archive material is indicated with {OTO}.
Magick Without Tears has appeared in several editions but is in 83 very short chapters, so in preference to any particular pagination I have cited by chapter.
John Symonds’ several biographies are cited by dates, from The Great Beast (1951) to The Beast 666 (1997), and Richard Kaczynski's Perdurabo as Kac.
“I dreamed I was paying a visit…”: The Magical Record of the Beast 666 (Duckworth, 1972) p.157.
“The very streets testify….”: Hag.118.
“…I am a reactionary Tory…”: to George Cowie, 29 May 1913, Yorke NS4.
“…114, 278, 394 years penal servitude…”: letter to JFC Fuller re 1907 diary, in Hogg, Bibliotheca Crowleyana [individual items not numbered] p.22.
Jardins de Ste.-Clair: 25.xi.38.
fictional entry for partner to find: 25.iv.30, to put his wife Maria off the trail of his feelings for Hanni Jaeger.
asthma in witness box: 25.vii.34.
“…very dangerous to print…”: to Grady McMurtry, 25 September 1945 {OTO}.
“the ‘cat-feeling’…”: 29.i.35.
“untrodden regions of the mind”: Preface to ‘John St. John’, Equinox, Vol.1, No.1. Or as a later generation would put it, that of Alexander Trocchi and William Burroughs in the early 1960s, he was “a cosmonaut of inner space” (see Ted Morgan, Literary Outlaw, p.335).
“…Eleven things went wrong…”: 18.xii.36.
“a really charming gesture of the Gods…”: 11.iii.38.
“‘Small restraint’ at South Kensington Station…”: 9.x.39.
“…in London I have to swank”: to Karl Germer, c. 20 Sept 1930 {OTO}.
‘Diabolic Dandy’: published in The Bon-Mots of Samuel Foote and Theodore Hooke (Dent, 1894) p.104; sold by Sotheby's London Aubrey Beardsley 10 November 1999 Lot 18 untitled; catalogued with this title by Chris Beetles Gallery, London, 2000; also known as ‘Devil in a Morning Coat’ (1893), Aubrey Beardsley: A Catalogue Raisonné ed. Zatlin Vol.1, item 810, p.476.
Beerbohm's caricature of Matthew Arnold: letter to Ann Macky, published as Magick Without Tears Ch. XLIV.
“Far-off indeed…”; “…to whom the world was gracious”: ibid.
Symons, ‘Décor de Theatre: I: Behind the Scenes: Empire’; Wratislaw, ‘Etchings: 3: At the Empire’: Poetry of the Nineties, ed. R.K.R. Thornton (Penguin, 1970) pp.42; 74.
“…but in Jermyn Street…”: Bernard Bromage, ‘Aleister Crowley’, Light Vol. LXXXIX no.3440 (Autumn 1959) p.159.
“Suppose I were to start from Scott's…” John St.John, ‘Sixth Day’.
“…two dozen oysters and a pheasant…”: Hag.570.
Haymarket stores, Mapleton House etc: receipts, bills, correspondence: Yorke OS E10.
“…odd bits of London”: to McMurtry 29 Nov 1943 {OTO}.
“Brixton need not envy Bayswater…”: draft of Confessions, typescript p.321, not in published version. Yorke OS L14.
“Transitional space”: see Winnicott, ‘Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena’ [1953] reprinted in Playing and Reality (Tavistock Publications, 1971). Psychoanalyst Winnicott derives the idea of transitional phenomena from what he calls ‘transitional objects’, neither entirely me nor entirely not-me, such as an infant's comforting piece of cloth. The idea of this intermediate space has since been applied to areas as varied as play, art, culture, fantasy, lying, drug taking, gambling, and more. It is certainly relevant to religious and occult experience; Winnicott is only in the second paragraph of his introduction when he raises the theological issue of transubstantiation.
Novel with Soho door: M. John Harrison, The Course of the Heart (Gollancz, 1992).
Gentleman: the idea of being a gentleman is central to Crowley, running like a motif through the Confessions and elsewhere: his much-admired father was a “gentleman” [Hag.40]; Douglas, his splendid tutor who advocated “smoking, drinking…racing, billiards, betting, cards and women” was a gentleman [Hag.75]; MacGregor Mathers, for all his faults, was a “scholar and gentleman” [Hag.194]; his friend “J-” in Paris is a “great surgeon and a true gentleman” [Hag.346]; when Crowley himself shoots at “a band of common robbers” in India with his Webley revolver, he does so in the persona of “English gentleman” [Hag.455]; thinking of his future career as an advocate of Magick, walking across Spain in 1908, he decides firstly “the most important point was never to forget that I was a gentleman” [Hag.582]; travelling in remote China, “I knew, as I know that two and two make four, that it is only necessary to behave like a gentleman in order to calm the apprehensions of the aborigines” [Hag.466-67]. This is not to be confused with being overbred or gently behaved, which overlaps with what Crowley means when he sent Gerald Kelly a manifesto-paean to the idea of a new and ultra-virile magic in 1905, just after the disastrous Kanchenjunga expedition: “I want blasphemy, murder, rape, revolution, anything, good or bad, but strong. I want men behind me, or before me if they can surpass me, but men, men not gentlemen.” (to Gerald Kelly, 31 October 1905, Yorke OS D6). Most telling of all, perhaps, in a dignified and affectionate first letter to his ten-year-old son Ataturk, he insists on the importance of learning Latin, even though some people might say it is not useful, “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 gentleman, you must know Latin.” [reproduced Kac.545] Meanwhile, in a characteristic irony of the British class system (difficult to explain, and not to be confused with socio-economic status), people slightly higher – Anthony Powell, Gerald Kelly, Augustus John, even Arthur Calder-Marshall – seem to have been uniformly struck by the sense that Crowley wasn't quite a gentleman.
“ …as many miracles in London…”: ‘Preface’ to ‘John St.John’ Equinox Vol.1 no.1.
“…every sin in the Decalogue”: Brodie, The Devil Drives, p.3.
“Quite jolly, what about you?”: widely cited in this form with no reference. The most primary source seems to be (to a Doctor Bird) “Oh, quite jolly! How do you?” in The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton, by Isabel Burton Vol.1 [Ch.X, At Last] (Hutchinson, 1897), p.166.
“the scrotum…”: The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (Benares, Kamashastra Society, 1885), Vol.X, Terminal Essay, Section D, p.205 n.2.
“…whole life and all my life blood…”: T. Wright, The Life of Sir Richard Burton Vol.2 p.317, cited in Jason Thompson, ‘Burton, Sir Richard Francis’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
“not one dull paragraph”: Hag.375.
model for Dracula: see e.g. Paul Murray, From The Shadow of Dracula (Cape, 2004) p.178.
railway shares: ‘Preface’ to The World's Tragedy.
“No more cruel fanatic…”: Hag.55.
“…lachrymal glands of a crocodile…”; “what he called sin…”; “nondescript…”: Hag.54-56.
“dinginess”: Hag.58. cf Equinox Vol.1 no.8 (1912), pp.248-9.
“…name has since been changed…”: Hag.55.
“London's most suburban ‘subbub’”: ‘My Crapulous Contemporaries no.VI: An Obituary’, The Equinox Vol.1 no.8 (1912), p.248.
took up climbing: Magick Without Tears Ch. LXIII ‘Fear’.
“what all the others are afraid to touch”: Stephen Calloway, Aubrey Beardsley (V&A, 2020) p.18.
Wilde on limited editions: Wilde to Smithers, May 1898, Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde p.1063.
Gladstone bags: James G. Nelson, Publisher to the Decadents, p.55.
Peter Fryer, “the filthiest verse in the English language”: cited Symonds (1971) p.16.
“…hys fyrst booke”: cited d’Arch Smith, Books of the Beast, p.24.
“jobbing printer in the Brompton Road” and Murray details: d’Arch Smith, The Times Deceas'd, p.112.
Sangorski for vellum: to Grady McMurtry, 25 Sept 1940 {OTO}.
“…truly spiritual intercourse”: Hag.148.
“It was a windy night…”: Aceldama [p.5, unpaginated].
“…communication with the devil…”: Hag.126.
“…foolish mysteries…”: Waite, The Book of Black Magic and Pacts, p.232.
“…ignorant and affected dipsomaniac…”: Hag.126.
“if it had not been for Waite…”: to Louis Wilkinson 7 April 1945, cited in Gilbert, A.E. Waite: Magician of Many Parts, p.11.
“emblazoned over, within and without…”: Waite, Shadows of Life and Thought, p.71.
Jagger and “stack of occult books”: Devereux, The Long Trip, Introduction p.14, cited in Lachman, Turn Off Your Mind, p.294.
Black Arts bedside reading in 1969: Richard Cavendish obituary, Daily Telegraph, 3 November 2016.
“…Eckenstein his modern representative”: Hag.166.
“…immense amount in his life mysterious and extraordinary…”: Hag.155.
Eckenstein story, and discussion: Hag.156-58.
“Suddenly, at the end of one of these alleys…”: Proust, ‘The Fugitive’ [Albertine Disparue, 1927], Remembrance of Things Past Vol.3 (Chatto and Windus, 1982) p.665.
Meets Baker and Jones: Hag.164-5; 172-3.
entomb body in a secret place: 1905 instructions quoted in Symonds (1971) p.75.
“Feminine Hermes on cubic stone…”: diary November 1898, no date, next entry 14.xi.1898.
“Beware of Sods” signs around Charing Cross in later nineteenth century: see Colin Simpson et al, The Cleveland Street Affair, pp.5-6.
“…as if it were the Strand”: Hag.495.
Milliken and Lawley skeleton: recalled by Crowley during the 1934 ‘Black Magic libel case’, cited Booth, A Magick Life, p.449.
“The city is monstrous and misshapen…”: Moonchild (Sphere, 1972) p.19.
a “club”: as Jones described it to Symonds, quoted Symonds (1971) p.17.
Cipher Manuscript and Kenneth Mackenzie: see e.g. R.A Gilbert, Golden Dawn Scrapbook p.5.
“…found on a bookstall…”: Hag.175.
“…nothing dishonest about the Farringdon Road…”: early typescript draft of The Book of Thoth, ‘Prefatory Note’ p.4: Yorke OS L11.
“church and university”: see Brenda Maddox, George's Ghosts, p.8, and Roy Foster, Yeats: A Life: The Apprentice Mage, p.106.
“obvious and melodramatic…”: Yeats, ‘The Hermetic Brotherhood’ note for ‘The Trembling of the Veil’, Autobiographies (Macmillan, 1955) p.576.
“…a stumer…did nobody any harm.”: Arthur Machen, Things Near and Far, p.153. He discreetly calls it The Order of the Twilight Star.
asked Baker if anyone had died: Hag.176.
“…deadly and hostile current of will…”: Hag.177.
“any schoolboy in the lower fourth could memorize the whole lecture”: Hag.177.
“…abject assemblage of nonentities…”: Hag.177
“…British middle-class dullness”: Maud Gonne, A Servant of the Queen: Reminiscences (1938) p.258.
“at some ceremony or other”: Hag.178.
Milliken and Lawley: Booth, A Magick Life, p.449.
“demon servant”; “not a real cat, either”; “Round and round the big library tramped the devils…”: ‘The Revival of Magick’ Part 1, The International, Vol.XI, no.8. August 1917.
“As we went out, we noticed semi-solid shadows on the stairs…”: Hag.182.
“…talismans which got on the job, and stayed on the job”: ‘My Wanderings in Search of the Absolute’, Sunday Referee, 10 March 1935.
“…World behind the Veil of Matter”: Bennett (via Crowley), widely cited e.g. Symonds (1971) p.24; Regardie, Eye in the Triangle p.117.
“exploring the pharmacopoeia for the means of grace”: Hag.386.
“…Chancery Lane rule…”: Crowley, ‘The Herb Dangerous: The Psychology of Hashish’, reprinted in Roll Away the Stone, ed. Regardie, p.102.
“…favourite rendezvous…”: Hag.546.
“People of all ranks”; “ …understood human frailty…”: ibid.
‘A Pharmaceutical Study of Cannabis Sativa’ by E. Whineray (Part I of ‘The Herb Dangerous’, with Haddo [Crowley], Baudelaire, and Ludlow), The Equinox, Vol.1, No.1 (1909). Whineray's firm, Lowe's, also advertised in The Equinox: Vol.1, nos. 3, 4, 5 and 6.
Warlock rhyme: letter to Cecil Gray, 22 January 1923, The Collected Letters of Peter Warlock Vol.IV 1922-30, p.65.
Abramelin dabbling and suicide (re “the late Philip Heseltine, a composer of genius”) see Magick Without Tears, Ch.XX, ‘Talismans […]’
“…‘wish-fulfilment’ (no doubt) dream…”: 17 July 1920, Magickal Record of the Beast 666, p.222.
1924 heroin letter: to Norman Mudd from Paris, 18 March 1924, Yorke NS 5.
Whineray and trouble with the police: Booth, Cannabis (2003), p.107.
Whineray review of Chronicles of Pharmacy by A.C. Wotton, Equinox Vol.I no.VI. p.170.
“such as kyfi …onycha…”: Hag.546.
“Dear Sir Aleister…”: Driberg letter 7 April 1926, Christ Church Library, Oxford.
investigating corpses and not raising them: “paid to sit on corpses not raise them” [in the sense of a court sitting] Crowley, The Rosicrucian Scandal [1911] reproduced in Robertson, The Aleister Crowley Scrapbook pp.64-81; quote on p.68.
“…human and living upon this earth…”: Howe, Magicians of the Golden Dawn, p.129.
“…no Golden Dawn and no nuffin’”: Howe op.cit. p.37.
“a reformatory”: Yeats to Lady Gregory, 25 April 1900 (“We did not admit him because we did not think a mystical society was intended to be a reformatory.”) Collected Letters of W.B. Yeats, Vol.2 1896-1900, p.515.
“black, bilious rage”: Hag.166.
“lank, dishevelled demonologist”: Hag.177.
“…the Order in its existing form came to grief…”: draft ‘Preface’ to The Book of Thoth (typescript p.8). Yorke OS LII.
HGA definitions: to Frank Bennett, see Kac. 374-76, Symonds (1997) 290-97; to Ann Macky, see Magick Without Tears, Chapter XLIII, ‘The Holy Guardian Angel is not the “Higher Self” but an Objective Individual’.
Baptising dried peas, see e.g. Francis King, Ritual Magic in England: 1887 to the Present Day pp.71-2, and Gerald Yorke, ‘Magic and the Golden Dawn’ in Aleister Crowley, The Golden Dawn and Buddhism, p.75. Crowley seems to launch this story in ‘The Magician’, a section of ‘The Temple of Solomon the King’ in The Equinox, Vol.I no.3 (March, 1910).
Georg Witkowski, Von Menschen und Buchern (Leipzig, 2000) p.161, translation courtesy William Breeze.
entering daughter's room in astral body: Hag.225; Kac.92.
Horses, cab lamps, fires, mackintosh etc: 13/14/16.iv.1900. {OTO}
Horos case: see Gilbert, Golden Dawn Scrapbook pp.7-20.
“…most powerful medium living”: Mathers to Yeats 12 January 1901, cited Howe, Magicians of the Golden Dawn p.203.
Lola Montez: Golden Dawn Scrapbook p.14.
“…exuberant vista of gilding and crimson velvet…”: Beerbohm ‘Enoch Soames’, in Seven Men and Two Others (Heinemann, 1950) [1919], pp.3-51. Quotation pp.5-6; 15; 8-9.
“EPICURES are invited to taste the special dishes invented…”: e.g. Equinox Vol.1. No.8, cf draft in Yorke PD72 c.2.
Crowley's account: Hag.644-46; 648;
Epstein's brief neutral account: Jacob Epstein, An Autobiography p.54.
Entertained a party of guests: Guy Deghy and Keith Waterhouse, Café Royal: Ninety Years of Bohemia, p.186. There is an entire if not entirely reliable chapter on Crowley, ‘The Magus of the Café Royal’, pp.177-186. Deghy and Waterhouse also recount the story of Crowley's “60th” (in fact sixty-first) dinner for about twenty people when Countess Lewenhaupt picked up the bill as intended, but the management were reluctant to accept it (p.185), also remembered by Cammell, 177-79 and in diaries 12.x.36.
Conical hat with stars: Deghy and Waterhouse op.cit. p.177; quoted as joke by Cammell p.164.
“That's just Mr. Crowley being invisible.” I used this particular wording in a book on Austin Osman Spare, and now see it drifting around the internet from that book. It is from a man at the Secret Chiefs speaker meetings, Princess Louise pub, Holborn; the same man who said “Have a fuck and make a wish.” See p.100, footnote 1.
“…eyes of Jesus”: The Book of the Law (Liber AL) III 51.
“…face of Mohammed…”: AL III 52.
“…crapulous creeds”: AL III 54.
“…I was Ankh-f-n-khonsu…”: Hag. 665.
“To worship me take wine and strange drugs…”:, AL II.22, p.41.
“The kings of the earth shall be Kings forever…”: AL II.58, p.47.
“We have nothing with the outcast and the unfit…”: AL II.21 p.41.
“…between Wilde and Hitler”: Cyril Connolly, ‘Engendering monsters’ [review of Symonds’ The Great Beast and other books] Sunday Times 14 Nov 1971.
“acute nomenclature”: cited e.g. Symonds (1997) p.102.
Opal in Bond Street: 12.iii.07. Possibly in the window of Hunt and Roskell, jewellers to Queen Victoria, a shop Crowley certainly knew: their name is jotted on an unrelated scrap among his papers in the Yorke collection. But there were other jewellers, including Asprey's.
Razor cuts; Rose angry: 9.iii.07.
Crowley moves out: 23-24.iii.07.
“…obvious from the style, in Paddington”: ‘Preface’ to The World's Tragedy, p.xxxvii.
Earl of Coke and Crankum: Hag.547.
150 bottles of whisky (figures for this vary from 120 to 159 – Symonds (1997) p.132 – but in the Confessions Crowley goes for a round 150): Hag.535.
Burlington Arcade girl: Miss Zwee, widely reported in accounts of the divorce proceedings, e.g. Dundee Courier, Nov 25 1909, ‘Amusing Divorce Evidence’. Having met in Soho, they had tea at the Criterion Brasserie, still there, and dinner at the long-gone Restaurant Venice, off Oxford Street, in what was then the notorious institution in restaurants of a ‘private room’ where sex took place, as well as at Warwick Road and 3-5 Orange Street, Haymarket, where Crowley had rooms. She lived at 48 King's Cross Mansions, Hastings Street, where Crowley also visited her, and they had a son on 28 October 1909. I am very grateful to William Breeze for sharing the divorce court papers with me.
Layout of house at no.21: Hag.569.
“life with Rose is intolerable…”: to Dr Murray Leslie, June 3 1908, copy in Fuller papers, King's College, item 4/12/18.
The servant or charlady was Bella Danby (or Dauby; variously transcribed in records) and the bejewelled woman she remembered was Jenny Zwee.
Two Englishmen invited: Symonds (1997) p.104. The other was Lord Brocket.
“abyss after abyss”; “ledge labelled Battersea”: ‘The Bismarck of Battersea’, Equinox Vol 1. No.7, p.403.
“moral pygmies”: Gilbert, Golden Dawn Scrapbook p.184.
“A room, she reflected…”: Ethel Archer, The Hieroglyph, pp.7-9.
Northam's advert: in several issues, e.g. Vol.I, no.7, unpaginated advert section in final pages.
Dressing up box: d’Arch Smith, The Times Deceas'd, p.79.
Four Red Monks Carrying a Black Goat: illustrated e.g. Symonds (1997) facing p.244, and sampled on the cover of Symonds's The Magic of Aleister Crowley (Muller, 1958).
“…in horror stories by Dennis Wheatley…”: Jean La Fontaine, Speak of the Devil: Tales of Satanic Abuse in Contemporary England, p.53.
There is more on the popular Dennis Wheatley aspect in Peter Bradshaw's comic novel Lucky Baby Jesus: “… these recovered memory yarns were about as real as the ones with which the apple-cheeked bairns of Orkney or whey-faced pre-school shoplifters of Middlesborough had once regaled their social workers: the ones about them dancing in a circle around their tumescent scout-master in his front room with the curtains drawn, dressed up in little Dennis Wheatley outfits his wife had run up.” Lucky Baby Jesus (Little, Brown, 1999) p.64.
“If you are the one I seek…”: 13.xi.06.
“You pig-faced man!…”: Fuller with Crowley, ‘Half Hours with Famous Mahatmas’, The Equinox, Vol.1 no.4. (September 1910).
Guru's later downfall: Dick Weindling and Marianne Colloms, ‘Remembering the West Hampstead “holy man” and his cult of women’, Hampstead and Highgate Express online https://www.hamhigh.co.uk/lifestyle/heritage/remembering-the-west-hampstead-holy-man-and-his-cult-of-3488096. He was convicted of indecently assaulting Suzanne Allaveue and Maud Anderson at 110 Goldhurst Road.
“…management of line…”: The World, 29 October 1907.
“Mr. Spare's art is abnormal…”: Observer, 3 November 1907.
“Vicegerent of God…”: cited in Grant, Zos Speaks! p.43.
“…cannot afford the robe…”: cited in Semple, Two Tracts on Cartomancy p.19; Keith Richmond, ‘Discord in the Garden of Janus’, note 13.
“An artist. Can't understand organisation…”: Richmond op.cit. unpaginated.
Spaghetti; invisibility; “if I had to go to all that effort…”: Grant, Zos Speaks! p.43.
“Orridge”: Anthony Curtis, Lit. Ed.: On Reviewing and Reviewers (Carcanet, 1998) p.163.
“flies caught in a huge web”: Gissing, New Grub Street (Smith, Elder & Co., 1891), vol. i, pp.193-6.
“velveteen coat”: for Yeats on Mathers see ‘The Trembling of the Veil’, Autobiographies (Macmillan 1955) pp.182ff.
“…flavour that manuscripts only have in dreams”: ‘Diary of a Magus’ (Liber 63) 12.ix.16 {OTO}.
“One thing you can say about Satanists…”: Robert Irwin, Satan Wants Me, p.95.
Pearson's Magazine, August 1909.
discovered sarcophagus: 25.viii.30.
“imminence of world catastrophe”; “the New Zealander”: Hag.542.
Thomas Macaulay review of von Ranke's History of the Popes, The Edinburgh Review no.72 October 1840.
“…to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's”: Macaulay op.cit., cited David Skilton, ‘Contemplating the Ruins of London: Macaulay's New Zealander and Others’, Literary London: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Representation of London Vol.2 no.1 (March, 2004).
Walpole, “curious traveller from Lima” and visitor “from the banks of the Oronooko”, both in 1770s letters, Skilton op.cit.
“…Professor of Archaeology in the University of Lhasa…”: Hag.542.
“…wish to keep dark.”: Hag.268.
“…affection of a judge”: Symonds, e.g. Great Beast (1971) p.121.
‘Rosicrucian Rites: The Dread Secrets of the Order Revealed’: Morning Leader, 23 March 1910.
keeping probationers and higher grades apart: Hag.629.
“shameless masturbation or indecent advances”: Crowley, ‘Energized Enthusiasm’, The Equinox Vol.1 No.9, p.33.
“…throbbing with jungle drums…”: Robert Fabian, London After Dark, p.77.
“…may be on to something”: Kac.216.
Account of performance: Raymond Radclyffe, ‘Aleister Crowley's ‘Rite of Artemis’’, The Sketch August 24 1910.
“By the power in me vested…”: Radclyffe op.cit.
“…elixir introduced by me to Europe”: ‘Energized Enthusiasm’, The Equinox Vol.1 No.9. In fact Crowley hadn't introduced peyote or mescaline to Europe: W.B. Yeats, Arthur Symons and Havelock Ellis had experimented with it in the 1890s. Nevertheless, as Mike Jay writes in Mescaline: A Global History, it is “probably true to say he was the first westerner to take peyote methodically over a period of years, and the first to adopt it as a ritual sacrament” (p.107). Crowley's first recorded use seems to be on the 12 March 1907, on the day he saw the opal in New Bond Street (see site 16); on the same day he had also visited Whineray, the drug supplier, at Lowe's chemist just off Bond Street. He mentions using a commercially prepared tincture (“presumably that of Parke, Davis”: Jay, p.108). Potter & Clarke at 60-64 Artillery Lane, near Liverpool Street station, were also noted suppliers of peyote at this time. Best known for Potter's Asthma Mixture and Potter's Asthma Cigarettes, which contained belladonna, they sold peyote buttons over the counter by the bagful.
Grave Diggers Journal: cover cartoon, The Looking Glass, Vol.II no.65, 23 December 1911.
“sham Buddhist monk…”: The Looking Glass, ‘An Amazing Sect no.3’ 26 Nov 1910 p.268.
“…notoriously evil character”: court transcript cited Kac.233, cf “one Crowley, who was alleged to be a person of disgraceful and criminal character”, Times April 27 1911 p.4.
‘The Rosicrucian Scandal’, reproduced Robertston, Aleister Crowley Scrapbook, pp.64-79.
“…trial in Alice in Wonderland”: Kac.232 cf Hag.641.
relative of Alice Liddell: I am indebted to Cecil Court bookseller Jake Fior for this information.
“…associate of the notorious Jones”: ‘Rosicrucian Scandal’, Robertson Scrapbook, p.79.
Postcards: Jean Overton Fuller, The Magical Dilemma of Victor Neuburg, p.165.
“If you wish to hoorosh down…”: Fuller to Crowley 2 May 1911 cited Symonds (1997) p.136.
“…wonderful days in Chelsea…”: Neuburg in Calder-Marshall, The Magic of My Youth, p.60.
“piles of tasselled cushions…”: Evelyn Waugh, A Little Learning, p.212.
“Pity that stuff had no effect.”: Laver, Museum Piece, pp.118-19.
Bankes on Crowley: Why Not? pp.160; 201-11. Bankes description of Crowley's eyes as green seems to be fanciful; Cammell and others remember them as brown.
“…always Sunday afternoon”; “…high priest of black magic…”: Ethel Mannin, Confessions and Impressions, p.195. “Gwen Otter represents that fin-de-siècle tradition of the 1890s, a tradition fast fading into the background.”: p.194.
“artistic furniture throughout”: advert in The Times, 6 August 1889 p.1 (and purely electricity: “no gas or other artificial light used”).
“exchanging electricity”: Hag.676.
Desti's nightclub: diary entry 1 Jan 1920 in The Magical Record of the Beast 666, p.88.
“great dinner at Simpson's…”: Magical Record of the Beast 666 p.88.
dream of being hanged: 4.iv.41.
Powell's account in Messengers of Day (1978): “…false top to his head” p.82; “horrible baby” p.83; “sinister if gifted buffoon” p.152; “ponderous gags” p.82; “unkindness and backbiting” p.83.
“boiled toads, Mother, or fried Jesus”: Fuller, Magical Dilemma of Victor Neuburg p.183. The published quote in Fuller is ‘Jesu’, coming second-hand via Preston, but Crowley refers to his childhood diet of “cold boiled Jesus” four times within a dozen lines of the ‘Preface’ to The World's Tragedy (xix-xx) so I have taken the liberty of normalising it.
Calder-Marshall's account: Magic of My Youth, 168-171.
Jean Overton Fuller's account: Magical Dilemma of Victor Neuburg, 171-3.
Account of Reuss: Howe and Moller, ‘Theodor Reuss: Irregular Freemasonry in Germany’ (1978).
“one of the greatest shocks of my life”: letter to Henri Birven, October 1929, cited Kac.252.
BABALON manibus: Rex de Arte Regia diary, 7 February 1915 (Manibus, i.e. by hand, solitary masturbation; concentrating on the idea of Babalon, the Scarlet Woman; in the hope of manifesting $20,000). Magical Record of the Beast 666, p.18.
“…far-off Jerusalem or Bethlehem…”: Paschal Beverley Randolph, Eulis, cited in Hugh Urban, Magia Sexualis (2006) p.66. Curiously the relevant page of Eulis is excised and replaced with a blank in the British Library copy.
Reuss as “Supreme and Holy King of Germany”: Hag.701.
“Supreme and Holy King of Ireland, Ionia, and all the Britains…”: King, Magical World of Aleister Crowley, p.81.
“There could hardly be a nicer set…”; “swank!”: Cowie to Crowley undated [late 1916] Yorke NS4.
“motherly old fool” and tea-leaf reader: Hag.756.
Crowley accuses Cowie of being anti-German: e.g. undated letters c. May 1913, Yorke NS4.
“severe shock”; “that use to be made of your stuff”: Cowie to Crowley 8 March 1917, Yorke NS4.
Christine Rosalie Byrne: Magical Record of the Beast 666, p.4.
“…an element of atomic weight…”: Hag.702.
inspiration and energy to write De Arte Magica: “…might the ill-health be part of the success…?”: Magical Record of the Beast 666, p.4.
Violet Duval and Leila Waddell: ibid.
Mona Lisa and Piccadilly prostitution: ‘The Herb Dangerous: The Psychology of Hashish’, from Equinox Vol.1 no.1 (1909), reprinted in Roll Away the Stone, ed. Regardie (1968) p.118.
Shift from Strand to Piccadilly: Collin Brooks, Tavern Talk, p.174.
“Save us from every evil demon”, Greek Orthodox liturgy: Symonds (1951) p.387.
Real number noted: Crowley annotations to Drug Fiend, p.31.Yorke Collection.
“Most Holy, Most Illustrious, Most Illuminated…”; “Gnostic Catholic Church…”: Oriflamme ‘Jubilee Edition’, reproduced in Howe and Moller (1978).
“Our Order possesses the KEY…”: Reuss in Howe and Moller op.cit.
“…caught the old cats”: Trevor Blakemore in Symonds (1997) p.203.
“evil bleating”: ‘Weird Rites of Devil Worshippers Revealed by an Eye Witness’: Harry Kemp, New York World 2 August 1914, in Symonds (1997) p.203.
“…the most elementary type…”: Elliott O’Donnell, Rooms of Mystery (1931), p.257.
Crowley, ‘The Green Goddess’, The International, February 1918.
‘La legende de l’Absinthe’, Crowley (as ‘Jeanne la Goulue’) The International, February 1918.
“…in their last Zeppelin raid…”: Crowley, ‘Behind The Front: Impressions of a Tourist in Western Europe’ The Fatherland (New York) Vol.III no.21, 29 December 1915.
“wholly free from all limitations soever…”: Magick, pp.329-30.
“the fiend, Satan-Alostrael”: Magical Record of the Beast 666, pp.251-2.
“…dull ugly school-teacher, ignorant, tired, old and common…”: Magical Diary, March 1922, holograph Yorke OS A4, typed OS H3.
Goat details disputed: the account in Symonds's books (e.g. 1997, pp.298-99) draws on a fictionalised account by Mary Butts in her novel South Lodge. See Kac. pp.373; 386.
“…concubine Dionysus Ganymede”: Cefalu diary, Yorke OS H4.
Rembrandt, The Abduction of Ganymede (1635), Old Masters Gallery, Dresden.
“…Half a woman made with half a god”: 21 April 1920, Magical Record of the Beast 666, p.110.
“a horrible hotel in Russell Square…”: Hag.889.
“nice quiet house”; “Hero's Bride”: to Jane Wolfe, n.d. [c. May 1922; between letters of 7 and 12 May] {OTO}.
“Sex maniac. Moved to British Columbia.”: AC annotation to Probationer's Oath form, December 1912 {OTO}.
“…best tits in Europe”: Daniel Farson, Soho in the Fifties, (1987) p.54.
Betty May's account of visit: Tiger Woman, pp.131-32.
Crowley's account: “fatal folly…”; “…swine of Soho”: Hag.904-5.
“I begged her to introduce me…” and subsequent account: Calder-Marshall, Magic of My Youth, pp.177ff.
“most criminal street in London”: ten-page deposition against Gerald Yorke, p.9. Yorke Collection OS.F1. The hotel was literally on Percy Street, but in context he means it was at the end of Charlotte Street.
“stew in the stinking slum of Charlotte Street…”: 23.vi.32.
“At the Eiffel Tower!”: Yorke annotation ibid.
“I feel his day is rather over”: Lawrence to P.R. Stephensen, 5 September 1929. The Letters of D.H. Lawrence, vol.7 p.469. He also mentions that out of 3000 copies of Crowley's Confessions, only 200 have sold (Letters pp.557-58).
Oddenino's, Yeoman House, etc.: receipts, bills, cheque stubs, etc in Yorke OS E10.
Eton curse: see e.g. Gordon Bowker, George Orwell (Abacus, 2003), p.56.
Lance Sieveking, Eye of the Beholder, p.254.
“rat”: 22.viii.32; “skunk”: 15.ix 32; “utter shit”: 7.iv.38; “heartless cad”: 21.vi.32; “unspeakably treacherous swine”: 28.vii.32. Just a sample.
“Forced to smoke that beastly stuff…”: d’Arch Smith, Books of the Beast p.108.
John Bull cannibal story, April 1932: account from Cammell p.157.
“’ninetyish romantic bravado” [i.e. 1890s-ish]: Stephensen, Legend p.22, cf “Ninetyish and Edwardian” p.23.
“every phenomenon should be an orgasm of its kind”: ‘Questions Put to E.A.C. by J.W.N. Sullivan’. Yorke NS18.
“…negroes and dwarfs…”: Burra to Anthony Powell, Marseilles 1930, in Jane Stevenson, Edward Burra, p.154.
“Brazen Head…”; “At the sign of the Beast 666” etc: circa 1937 notes, Yorke OS EE2.
“…Grumpy in Snow White”: d’Arch Smith, Books of the Beast, p.109.
“A dwarf kike, who called himself Houghton!…”: 23.x.34.
“These low Jew thieves…”: to Germer n.d. May 1937 [replying to letter of 12 May and before Germer's subsequent letter of 17 May] {OTO}.
“…Send us a Hitler!”: 24.vi.1944.
Michaud in diaries: e.g. 28.xii.41.
“Let's leave”: Jean Overton Fuller, Magical Dilemma, p.232.
Run-in with Buddhist bookshop etc: 22.x.07; 22.xi.07; 2.xii.12 {OTO}. It is not clear how far the dispute is with Rost himself, or whether Crowley hopes Rost will intervene.
“Mike still thieving in Museum Street…”: to Edward Fitzgerald, 27 February 1943. Yorke NS117.
“…Oriental bookshops by the British Museum…”: Calder-Marshall, Magic of My Youth p.94.
Plough pub: e.g. 2.v.34. I am told a member of staff showed an enquirer where Crowley used to sit; this sounds optimistic.
Dinner with Carter: Tom Cullen, Man Who Was Norris, p.143.
Hoped to take Aquila Press over for premises: to Germer, 19 May 1930, Yorke NS13.
Carter amused; infiltration plan; subscription paid for: Tom Cullen, Norris ibid.; letter from Carter to Yorke re subscription Yorke OS D4.
“Israel Regudy”; “Darling Alice”: reproduced in part in e.g. Regardie, Eye in the Triangle, pp.8-9.
“…on the verge of some sort of hysteria…”: Yorke ‘Introduction’, Aleister Crowley, The Golden Dawn and Buddhism, p.xvii.
“…sensed a Being, Presence, or Force…”: Yorke, ‘A Lecture on Aleister Crowley’, Aleister Crowley, The Golden Dawn and Buddhism, p.8.
Carter living at apartment 8: Crowley address book, Yorke OS43.
Mrs Stuart's Domestic Agency: receipts Yorke OSE11.
“insane swine”: 12.ix.31; “unclean masturbating pimp”: 1.ix.31; “utterly unimaginable shit”: 11.xii.30. A sample.
“…most nauseating thing I have ever read…”; slaves and kings: to Germer, 22 June 1930 {OTO}.
“educated person expects a bath to be clean”: to Germer 27 June 1930 {OTO}.
attended a number of times: e.g. 19.ix.37; 13.x.37; 31.x.37; 17.xi.37.
Ngaio Marsh e.g. Anson, Wandering Bishops, p.370 n.17.
arsenic and strychnine order to chemist: e.g. 5 December 1929, Yorke NS13.
“AC is died for me…”: Maria letter to a Mr Foreman, n.d., Yorke OS D4.
“…in Colney Hatch”: 18.vii.31.
earthquake in Managua: in deposition against Yorke, Yorke OS F1.
married to the Beast 666: Yorke interview with David Tibet in Aleister Crowley, The Golden Dawn and Buddhism, p.218.
“…typical bon bourgeois”: Cullen, The Man Who Was Norris, p.142.
London shopping list: Cullen op.cit. 143.
stranger in Oddenino's: 21.i.42.
“Churchill's own Cigar Merchant!!!…”: 30.i.42.
“…facts and suggestions about Mysticism.”: Magick, Appendix 1, p.310.
“Soul of mine, the luminous, the Augoeides”: Zanoni, (Blackwood, 1861), Book II Ch,IV, p.113.
“admirable” 28.ii.38; “magnificent”: 31.iii.38; “A1” 14.iv.38; “excellent”: 16.iii.38.
“…old brandy, caviar and truffles in Hell”: to Gerald Kelly from Boleskine, n.d. [1903] Yorke NS4.
“ …oysters, caviar, foie gras”: 28.ii.32.
“…stuff a chicken with oysters?”: 1.ix.38.
“Caviar, lobster, foie gras…”: 27.vii.37.
“…kings in exile are always beggars”: to Germer 14 Sept 1930 {OTO}.
“anti-Christmas cards”: e.g. recipient list at end of 1941 diary.
“…robber Santi Romani”: 25.xii.37. There was also a restaurant called Santi Romano on Greek Street (literally ‘Roman Saints’) but that seems not to be the object of Crowley's joke.
“hoolie-goolie”; bats squeaking: Cunard ‘Thoughts About Aleister Crowley’ (10 November 1954) to Gerald Yorke. Yorke NS1.
“Soho with a Mayfair accent”; “well-cut coats”: Jackson, Indiscreet Guide to Soho, pp.81; 83.
Shanghai as ‘favourite’ in terms of how often he went there, e.g. at least eight times in 1937 (8.iv; 7.ix; 16.ix; 8.x; 8.xi; 11.xi; 28.xi; 17.xii).
“coarse and bad as ever”: 16.xii.41.
accused them of serving rabbit: 19.i.42.
“…murder, rape, revolution, anything, bad or good, but strong”: to Gerald Kelly, 31 October 1905, Yorke OS D6.
“Last week, a man called Mulk Raj Anand…”: Dylan Thomas to Pamela Hansford Johnson, 6 Aug 1937, Letters, p.296.
“Romanticism led to the unconscious…”: Anand, Conversations in Bloomsbury, pp.41; 145.
“…sting like serpents…”: Hag.232.
“at the first mouthful…”: Burnett-Rae, A Memoir of 666 (London, Victim Press, 1971), reproduced in Robertson, Crowley Scrapbook, pp.23-27; quotation p.27.
Wilkinson best friend: Crowley, “greatest” friend, in Louis Marlow [pseud. Wilkinson], Seven Friends, p.52.
“astounding”; “moving”; “excessiveness”: Seven Friends, p.46.
Black Magic Restaurant plans: Yorke OS EE2.
Clay Street as location for Exotic Restaurant: 20.i.36.
Further restaurant plans: manuscript offered for sale by Adrian Harrington Rare Books, Tunbridge Wells, 2007, together with Konx Om Pax.
“Zambar of Lobster”: 10.vi.36.
Madras curry powder etc: shopping lists, Yorke NS 117.
Bertha Busch stabbing: 6.xii.31.
Will of 22 December: cited Sutin pp.362-63.
Eliphas Levi story: ‘Necromancy’ in Levi, Doctrine of Transcendental Magic, pp.151-56.
Lord Haw-Haw and Black Mass: e.g. Cammell p.143; Marlow p.42; Symonds (1997) p.531 n.1.
“…Vile Bodies to the Cavendish hotel”: 28.vi.32
“…man wot owes me money!”: Jeremy Lewis, Cyril Connolly p.233 n.1.
“…classic of subjective idealism” (re Berkeley's Three Dialogues): Magick, Appendix 1, p.309; other mentions in Magick, pp.24; 258; 331.
“ransack Charing X Road”: to Grady McMurtry, 29 November 1943 {OTO}.
moved to Queen's House Hotel: 26.ix.32 (and again in May 1933).
Grosvenor Hospital For Women: 3.i.33.
window in Praed Street: 7.i.33.
“…not the smallest ground…”: Daily Telegraph 11 May 1933; slight variant Symonds (1997) p.495.
“Here lies a Pearl of a woman…”: 18.viii.33.
“Your interest in Magick…”: flyer, private collection, London.
Desolation over death of daughter: Hamnett, Laughing Torso, p.175; “flag in space”: p.69.
“…baby was said to have disappeared mysteriously”: Hamnett op.cit. p.163.
top hat in court: Symonds (1997) p.505.
“…consternation of Constable & Co.”: 13.iv.34.
“…His Satanic Majesty…”: Mannin, Confessions and Impressions, p.195.
“South Sea stick” at auction: 6.iii.39.
Kerman details from obituary by Stephen Aris, The Independent, 20 August 1998.
“…so bloody lonely!”: 21.xii.33.
“run on the assumption…”: 20.ix.33.
“…money question is the very devil…”: Brooksmith to W.T. Smith, 12 August 1934. Yorke NS 15.
syndicated reportage: e.g. ‘Explorer Granted Bail’, Sunderland Echo, 22 June 1934.
“Member of Parliament Z”: Wheatley in e.g. The Devil and All His Works, pp.273; 276.
“Ipsissimus”: The Devil Rides Out (Hutchinson, 1934), pp.72, 84.
“Published for Subscribers Only 1929” etc.: Sold at Blackwells Oxford, Catalogue A1136 A Catalogue of Books from the Library of Dennis Wheatley (1979) item 433. Private collection, Hampshire.
Title page reproduced in The Devil and All His Works, p.275.
“…really a little Ely Culbertson…”: note on Claridge's hotel notepaper, May 1934, sold at Sotheby's with Wheatley's copy of Crowley's Mortadello, 7 December 2007, lot 146; formerly Blackwells item 534.
Donegall and Punch's Club: 22.x.32.
“Rumpus at Tombstone”; “Farewell speech”: 29.x.34.
“Hotel chucks me out!!”: 9.xi.34.
“Dear Dennis Wheatley…”: note on Hotel Washington notepaper, 1 November 1934; private collection.
“…eminent mental specialist…”: Wheatley, The Devil Rides Out (1934), p.33.
“…two other ladies doing it…”: 5.vii.32.
four deformed men: Symonds (1997) p.182.
“understood for the first time…”: Mudd to Charles Stansfeld Jones, cited Kac.175.
“…hate to live in Chelsea….”: Greene to Vivien Greene 20 March 1945, in Graham Greene: A Life In Letters ed. Richard Greene (Little, Brown 2007), p.133.
“…religious maniac”: to Germer, 16 September 1929 {OTO}.
“…amorphous mollusc quality…”: and limerick: Diary 666, March 1924, Yorke OS A11.
“…commonly called Norman Mudd”: Kac.416.
“…well-known to prosperous Hebrews…” The Book of Lies, Ch.74, ‘Carey Street’.
“author and psychiatrist”: syndicated e.g. ‘Aleister Crowley's Affairs’, Evening Telegraph, Dundee, 14 February 1935.
noblest prose in the English language: deposition re bankruptcy, Yorke YC NS 117.
“…selling me cigars?” (re Philip Morris): 6.i.42.
“…creditors are unable to ascertain”: syndicated e.g. ‘Edward Alexander Crowley’, Daily Herald, 6 February 1935.
“…corner of Primrose Hill…”: to Andre Pigné, 6 March 1936, Yorke NS117.
“…old and rather dilapidated house”; “wandering about Piccadilly wearing the same suit…”: Bernard Bromage, ‘Aleister Crowley’, Light Vol. LXXXIX no.3440 (Autumn 1959) pp.149-61, all Bromage quotation from this source.
“…resistance to analysis in André…”: 27.iv.36.
“…prolonged wild visions…”: 5.xii.33.
Burnett-Rae, A Memoir of 666, reproduced in Robertson, Crowley Scrapbook, pp.23-27: “highly evolved”: p.23; “…nuisance…strange foods and drinks”: p.23; “as if unconscious”: p.24; “middle-aged widow”: p.24.
Cockren: AC has a number of meetings and treatments between 18.i.33 and 2.v.33, when he accuses Cockren – Cochran in the transcript – of bruising his colon (by abdominal massage).
‘Amrita Elixir’ scheme: Yorke NS3, and self-testimonials e.g. 27.ii.33, and ‘Memoranda for 1936’ in 1936 Royal Court Diary.
Grant and Arnsohn: e.g. 9.ix.36.
“…‘Good morrow, fair sir”: 4.ix.36.
“amazing treachery”: 20.xii.36.
Further Richardson details from Weiser Antiquarian cataloguing of Richardson's copy of Stephensen, The Legend of Aleister Crowley, item 57449 (2020).
“biting girl…”: in notebook of 1916-17, Yorke OS31.
Elsie Morris:14.vi.36. There was also an attempt to persuade her to abort with two boxes of “female pills”, and an associate of Crowley's named Rutherford frightened her with details of St. Philip's hospital for women – mainly for prostitutes with venereal disease – at Sheffield Street, a backstreet in WC2 near Kingsway (6.vii.36).
scene at Eiffel Tower (“Pearl went nearly insane”): 24.ii.37.
Typescript flyer, private collection.
“…white Yogi in the West”: Daily Mirror, March 9 1936, p.11.
“Turker”: e.g. a spell from 15.iv.37 to 18.iv.37.
“…living in a Turkish bath…”: to Germer, 26 February 1937 {OTO}.
“Except once…”: Louis Marlow [Wilkinson], Seven Friends, p.51.
Number 10 with Evans: 29.iv.37.
‘London medium snaps his own levitation’, Life, 4 July 1938.
40 Cambridge Terrace: e.g. letter to Germer 11 September 1933 {OTO}.
“…next few days…”: to Germer 22 May 1937 {OTO}.
Fortune-telling and fish paste: Anthony Powell, The Acceptance World (Heinemann, 1955), pp.5; 6-7. James Laver also notes an association between seedy Bayswater and fortune telling: “a whole variety of rather depressed fortune tellers who eked out a living in the less fashionable parts of Bayswater.” Museum Piece, p.220.
“Through those broad streets…”: Betjeman cited in The London Encyclopaedia, ‘Paddington’, p.590.
“…stench is ghastly”: to Germer 22 May 1937 {OTO}.
“fluid margin in which sank or swam…”: William Plomer, At Home: Memoirs (Cape, 1958), p.220.
“ambiguous or transitional districts”: Burroughs, Junky (Penguin, 1977), p.111.
“Met Camille Comer…”: 18.ix.37.
“…sacred character of the Office”: ‘Of the Second Party to This Art […]’, De Arte Magica, p.10.
Pat Harvey: 25.xi.38; 1.xii.38; 4.xii.38.
“…perhaps flagellation”: 18.ix.37.
Marianne: meets her 29.i.33; “fuckstress” 13.ii.33; and after a number of works she returns to the continent in March, going to Paris before Budapest. It is not clear who she was: Crowley refers to a Marie of Bulgaria (possibly a jokey name, based on the once-famous “Marie of Romania”) and this may be the same person. There is also a hint that he has met her before (“after all these years”), perhaps in Europe, and that she might be aristocratic (or some very minor royal, perhaps seen in Berlin; the kind of person Gerald Hamilton cultivated). Nevertheless it is hard to imagine a bona fide royal in Room 2 of Augusta Faillie's Boarding House.
Miss Cooper: 29.vi.33. The unidentified word seems to be ‘kala’ in Greek, which is hard to make direct sense of (generally an adjective or adverb meaning ‘good’ or ‘well’) and the context suggests a physical feature. It may be a bilingual word-play alluding to the word kala in another language. Kala means time in Sanskrit (and has had some currency with modern Western occultists, via the British occult writer Kenneth Grant, to mean sexual fluids) but this is hard to make sense of as ‘pretty’. It also means black in Urdu, a language Crowley had encountered, but if Miss Cooper herself was black, judging by other references, Crowley would have simply said so. He elsewhere uses black or dark as an anal allusion: e.g., in an early diary, March 24 1900 {OTO}, he uses the Welsh twll du (black hole) seemingly not to refer to the geographical feature in Snowdonia but to sodomy. And in the Thirties he refers to a male visitor as “one of the [kala] legion” (27.v.36), perhaps judging his sexuality. In context, Miss Cooper of Howland Street seems to have had the most attractive anus Crowley had ever seen. Lying awake in February of the same year, Crowley had a dream-like fancy of going around “the Grill” – probably Café Royal or Berkeley – and judging “the best anus, the wittiest word, etc. I give present to one I choose.” [11.ii.33]. It remains a mystery. No mystery about Miss Cooper's lodging though – above what was then a confectioner's, between Howland Mews East and the Carpenter's Arms pub on the corner of Whitfield Street, it is long gone in the redevelopment of Howland Street, as is that of Lillian Williams at number 41.
Paula Fyffe [Figffe in transcription]: 5.viii.41.
Susie King: 2.vii.33. AC goes to Colombo's a couple of times with a Susie, and writes an obscene rhyme for a Susan.
Violet at Jamaica International Hotel: 18.xi.37.
Violet Davidson “stupid”: 28.iii.38.
rang from police custody: 12.v.38.
“voltage”: Clifford Bax, Inland Far (Heinemann, 1925) p.42.
“seriously on the Path”: 18.ii.38.
“…This is the Great Work.”: undated letter to Harris circa 1941, formerly in the collection of Clive Harper, catalogued by Weiser Antiquarian 2020 item #65121.
Thelemite candidate for Bethnal Green: 20.v.43.
‘Housemaid’: Driberg, Ruling Passions, p.86.
“…dangerous lunatic, the most treacherous and deceitful person…”: to Germer, 19 July 1945 {OTO}.
“constant thieving”: to Germer, 25 September 1945 {OTO}.
Ruthvah: see Symonds's, e.g. 1997 pp.445-6. Symonds’ ratios may be a misunderstanding from Crowley's 1[full stop] ambergris, 2[full stop] musk, 3 [full stop] civet. These are very possibly not proportions, but an emphatic sequence simply naming three ingredients. The detail of eyebrows is in Iain Coster ‘The Worst Man in London’, The Inky Way Annual II c.1948.
“power over men”: 27.vi.37; “money”: 23.i.38; “health and strength”: 31.vii.38; “health especially for Pearl”: 5.viii.38.
“…poor zebu…”: 17.x.37. Crowley had a particular distaste for Eurasians, people of mixed European and Indian descent, which Phyllis clearly fell foul of. “I am not a snob or a puritan,” he writes in the Confessions, “but Eurasians do get on my nerves. I do not believe that their universally admitted baseness is due to a mixture of blood or the presumable peculiarity of their parents; but that they are forced into vileness by the attitude of both their white and coloured neighbours.” [Hag 468-9] Crowley and race is a large and nuanced subject outside the present book, but the abrasiveness of his expressed opinions goes well beyond the ambient attitudes of his time. John Symonds, unpopular with Thelemites for his critical attitude to Crowley, was one of the very few people to ‘call’ him on this. When he challenged Crowley on his comments about Jews (at least one of Symonds's wives was Jewish, and his mother) Crowley made jokes about it, but when it came to Crowley calling Symonds's friend Tambimuttu (Ceylonese-born poet and founder of Poetry London magazine) a “drunken nigger”, he dug in harder and said “THEY ARE – education only makes it worse.” In context he seems to have meant the Ceylonese were as hopeless intellectually as sub-Saharan Africans were sometimes thought to be. Crowley to Symonds, 9 October 1946, Yorke NS 117.
“Phyllis has disappeared!”: 31.x.37.
Symonds asserts: Symonds (1997) p.527.
“The girl who stood before me, smiling with big red lips…”: Cammell p.181.
Beryl Drayton, Hyde Park: 9.ix.39.
“the name of a jewel that has magical attributes”: Cammell p.181.
“Fuck negress…”: Magical Record of Ankh-f-n-Khonsu (1927-29 diary) 22 August 1927 {OTO}, re I Ching LXI.
“An Englishman, a Jew, an Indian…”: Tom Driberg, ‘A Mixed Bag of Early Birds’, Daily Express, 23 December 1937.
slept on chair in clothes: 24.ix.37.
Joan Gibbons: 4.iii.1938; 5.iii.38.
“…Gibbons alias Brooks”: 30.iv.38.
“not worthwhile competing”: 19.iv.38.
“pure Thelemite”; “…stranger start to convert me”: to Germer, 22 April 1938 {OTO}.
“…first truly sympathetic woman…”: 2.v.38.
“health – power &c”: 2.v.38; “health and energy”: 12.v.38; “health and au.”: 25.v.38; “money for new lodgings” (i.e. seemingly together): 16.v.38; “…superb artist”: 12.v.38.
“both completely entranced”: 29.v.38.
“think she was doing au.” (while he was doing “power – health”): 14.v.38.
“Letter from Miss Stanton…”: 14.v.38.
“Rude letter from Mattie…”: 15.viii.38.
“…came astrally to caress me…”: 31.vi.38.
“…whiskey and The Author of Trixie…”: 31.vii.38.
“Nurse M. Pickett. Basement…”: 2.ix.39.
Abramelin dabbler: alleged by Crowley, Magick Without Tears Ch.XX ‘Talismans’.
“…Moreland agreed…”: Anthony Powell, Casanova's Chinese Restaurant, p.106.
Works for “A1 War”: e.g. 13/15/20.ix.39.
Maise “Superb opus”: e.g. 1.ix.38.
Mary Wilcox as “possible Maisie”: 23.iii.40.
“…getting really keen…”: 16.vii.37.
“…the hand that used to pet children and animals”: picture reproduced in alostfilm.com [blog] as from Flaming Sex, but possibly from a French true crime magazine such as Detective 26 February 1931.
Allegedly living with a boxer: letter to Yorke 17 June 1935, Yorke NS115, cf Symonds (1997) p.494.
Works for Memodial invention: 29.x.39; 2.xi.39; and with Alice 30.x.39.
“Two or three really bad nightmares…”: 25.ix.38.
“Kempinski A.1 wild duck”: 12.ii.39.
“Peggy hopelessly drunk…”: 13.ii.39.
“…admirable dinner…”: 19.ii.39.
“heroic and unselfish”: 14.xi.38.
Charing Cross Hospital: 16.xi.38.
“…curiously peaceful…”: 19.xi.38.
“…paradise for Peggy”: 30.xi.38.
Norah Knott, “complex”: 28.xi.38.
Blackley “Wunderschon!”: 16.xi.38.
Marie-Louise Draghici: first contact 16.xi.38.
to “get” Maria-Louise : 2.ix.38.
Peggy falls down steps: 23.x.38.
Maisie: 19.viii.38; Jessie Moran: 15.viii.38; Rose Wilson: 20.viii.38; Angela Considine: 21-22.viii.38.
“…love in Hampstead”: 19.vi.37.
(I am indebted to William Breeze for details of Selvin Campbell)
“A1” Broadhurst Gardens: 22.vi.37.
Sally Pace: 25.iii.1938; 7.iv.38.
“Sally is a darlin’ little bitch”: in the back of 1938 Royal Court diary. Yorke Collection. Close variant in 1938 Appointments book sold by Weiser Antiquarian 2007 item #62528.
Stella at Manor Place: 6 .iv.38.
I Ching: Stella “idiot” [Hexagram 2] and Sally “hot stuff” [Hexagram 51]: 3.iv.38.
Emmy Butler: 7.ix.38; 12.ix.38; 1.x.38.
Marie imprisoned; “tres mauvais”: to Yorke 25 May 1931, Yorke NS117.
“a lady & intelligent”; health”; “very first class”: 9.xii.38.
“…insulted her all day”: 7.ii.39 (Peggy insults Cathrine; cf “Peggy and Cathrine fought for me all day” 4.ii.39): “…spate of venomous abuse”: 31.vii.36 (Pearl insults Pat).
stabbed Crowley in face: recounted in letter to Germer 19 December 1938 {OTO}.
“…smile and pawky speech…”: 31.iii.42.
shoplifting: recounted to Crowley at their meeting 10.iv.42. The magistrate noted that she was an intelligent, hard-working woman come down in the world, and gave her a year's probation.
Royal Ordnance at Swynnerton: recounted to Crowley 9.v.42.
Women's Royal Naval Service: letter from Cathrine (“Wren C Falconer”) in WRNS noted 30.vi.43.
“Bayswater Road, Hyde Park, Pimlico…”: Helen Self, Prostitution, Women and Misuse of the Law, p.101.
“…meaningful glance”: J. Laite, Common Prostitutes and Ordinary Citizens 1885-1960, p.84.
“Shikar in park”: e.g. 23.iii.40.
“Hyde Park grasshopper”: 10.vii.37.
“Emmy”: 7, 8, 12.ix.1938; 1.x.38.
“To park, late. N.G.”: 10.i.38.
“Stupidity of the park…”: 22.xi.38.
“Determined on shikar…”: 24.ii.40.
“…duke in a musical comedy”: Richardson, ‘Luncheon with Beast 666’ in Fits and Starts, p.113.
Hamilton and ether: e.g. Cullen, Norris, p.199.
“nothingness with twinkles”; “(visualized) mind”; “…splendour into bliss”: ‘Diary of a Magus’ [Liber 63], August 23 1916 {OTO}.
“…Ethel to the cinema”: 24.ii.24, Yorke OS H4.
“Aldebaran”: to Mudd from Tunisia October 1924, cited Symonds (1997) p.354.
“…beloved Umfreville”: 21.vi.42.
Ruthven Todd, Fitzrovia and the Road to the York Minster, Section I ‘Fitzrovia’, unpaginated.
Risotto Cheshire Cheese: 16.v.39.
Crowley and Dylan Thomas: Constantine Fitzgibbon, The Life of Dylan Thomas, p.174.
“on the borderland…”: Richardson, ‘Luncheon with Beast 666’, p.113.
Ten o’ clock rule; threatening suicide: 12.iv.39.
Dr O’Hara, Luminal: 27.iii.39.
Peggy arrested: Westminster and Pimlico News 4 July 1941.
Antelope on Eaton Terrace: e.g. 23.iii.39.
Cojones Mexicanos 26.vii.39; Risotto Cheshire Cheese: 16.v.39; Turbot d’Urberville: 15. v.39; Turbot Porterfield: 21.iv.39; Sambar of Turbot and Mushroom: 4.vii.39; Goldfish Toast, Flying Fish: 28.v.39; Capretto St George: 23.iv.39; Fisherman's Daughter: 20.v.39; Escalopes de Veau Desespoir: 26.v.39; Pimentos Katarina a la St.Bartoleme: 24.vii.39; Biftek Crapaudine: 4.vi.39.
“a Scots lady so indeterminate…”: Richardson, ‘Luncheon with Beast 666’, p.114.
“…real circle, i.e. the Aura of the Magus”: Magick, p.222.
hallucinatory figures on waking: e.g. 15.iv.39.
“…like a devil roasting in hell…”: Richardson op.cit. p.114.
Dolores del Castro: 11.viii.34.
“…principal trouble was…”: ‘Frontiers of Belief: Madeline Montalban’ in Man Myth and Magic no.23, 1970.
walked to see Chiswick House: 27.xii.39.
“…talented amateur…”; “pointless daubs”: to Germer 24 July 142 {OTO}.
“…did not create anything”: to Germer 30 September 1942 {OTO}.
“Black Currant Pudding Brothers”; “really great original meal”: 18.vii.39.
“…guarding the Holy Grail in Richmond”: to Yorke 25 Jan 1940 from Petersham Road, Yorke OS D5.
“…lunch in sunlit room…”: 18.ii.38.
“…big windows, high above Thames”: to Germer 9 August 1939 {OTO}.
Nuncheon menu: formerly in the collection of David Tibet, sold by Weiser Antiquarian, item #64333.
“rather a mean trick”: Driberg story, Ruling Passions pp.85-86.
“…long talks with Hitler a very tall man…”: 2.vi.39.
Viereck and “philosophical basis”: cited Sutin p.250.
Slippery Joe and “93 as base for Nazi New Order”: 5.v.36.
Alleged influence through Küntzel: e.g. Symonds (1997) 518.
“astonishing” similarities: to Jane Wolfe, 12 February 1941 re Rauschning {OTO}.
“…cartoons lampooning Mein Kampf…”: 29.viii.43.
Hitler Speaks by Rauschning is now thought to be of dubious authenticity, although this is irrelevant to Crowley's responses: “true”, re Austria rotten with Jews p.92; “yes”, re protecting strong against weak p.141; “all very sound” and “excellent”, re political economy and inspiration 180, 181; “For ‘German people’ read ‘Thelemites’” p.48; “After all these centuries of whining…Yes!”, p.141.
“knock Hitler for a six”: to Martha Küntzel, cited Kac.505.
“Nordic Aryan nonsense”: to Germer 5 December 1939 {OTO}.
“demoniac foaming-at-the-mouth…”: to Germer 11 July 1933 {OTO}.
“rights of the individual”: to Germer 5 December 1939 {OTO}.
Hohenzollern monarchy: to Germer, undated, received 24 September 1939 {OTO}.
Suggested swastika to Ludendorff: annotation in Hitler Speaks, p.212. There is also a strikingly early use of the swastika in a pro-German rather than Eastern context on the cover of The International, the propaganda paper Crowley was involved with, Vol.XI no.8, August 1917.
“…directly under one of my own chiefs!”: to Germer 4 March 1942 {OTO}.
Kenneth Anger: cited Mick Brown, Performance, p.56.
Summers and Black Mass: see d’Arch Smith, Books of the Beast, pp.56-57. Described as earliest: Gareth Medway, Lure of the Sinister, p.382.
“…most amusing evening…”: 5.vii.29.
Valchera's: with Cammell 10.vi.40. As for Summers, this is something I've long ‘known’, but with no reference: it may be something I was told by the late and much-missed Roger Dobson of The Lost Club Journal, who led Montague Summers walks around Richmond.
Sold to other people: e.g. chess crony Sutherland 27.vii.41 and (“last piece”) Bayley 22.ix.41.
“…honour, friendship or virtue…”: Cammell to Yorke, undated, cited Symonds (1997) p.587.
Harold Batty Shaw: Appendix to Notebook 9, April 3 to May 16 1924, Yorke OS H4.
Laudanum 1907: ‘Experiment with Laudanum’, 28-29 September 1907, Yorke OS22.
Heroin noted in Jermyn Street diary, 21 March 1907 {OTO}.
astrological “idiosyncrasy” for heroin, Paris diary/notebook March 25 to April 3 1924, Yorke OS A12.
“…thirteen masturbations…”: Diary 666 rue Vavin March 20-25, 1924, Yorke OS A11. “Menstruation orgie”: this might look like a possible mistranscription of ‘Restoration orgie’, i.e. the orgiastic later 17thC in Britain, the era of Charles II's Restoration and Lord Rochester, which would make more conventional sense, but the holograph is definitely menstruation.
“…itch marvellously lewdly…”: Diary 666 as above; same night.
“…dread the failure of supply”: to Mudd from rue Vavin 18 March 1924, Yorke NS5.
Teeth breaking e.g. 28.xii.41; 23.vii.43; 17.v.44; 17.vi.44; 23.vi.44; woken by “terrific” and “extreme” diarrhoea in sleep e.g. 21.viii.40; 5.vi.41; 15.x. 41; vomiting e.g. sick in cinema at No Orchids For Miss Blandish 13.x.42, and notes it happening recently during Macbeth and a gangster film.
Walk-on parts, e.g. Crawshaw with at least 37 diary entries.
“…most kind, let me go”: 1.x.40.
“aristocratic communism”: 3.iv.41.
“worst snag in England…”: 20.iv.41.
French Pub crowded, on to Fitzroy: 14.vii.41.
Caton: first contact 21.viii.41. “…flagellation”: 26.viii.41; “seedy fraud”: 13.vi.42.
Mason's Arms, England Stand Fast: 1.viii.41.
“…Chreesmas pooding?”: ‘Christmas in Maddox Street’ at end of 1941 diary.
date at Yorkshire Grey: 18.x.39.
Spellerisms: “…must collect a few of these Spellerisms” memo at end of 1942 diary, with a collection.
“…a word of the last five minutes”: memo note to September 1942.
“Saw coloured girl I wanted…”: 15.viii.40.
Birch: e.g. Sutin p.391 cf Symonds's inuendoes (e.g. 1997, pp.541; 546): Sutin follows Symonds in calling her Upham. Crowley buys “birch for Alice” in Torquay – 28.iv.41 – in anticipation of her visit next day.
“…compassionate grounds”: 5.viii.41; “…human kindness sake” 1.viii.40.
“…offered a banquet…”: 2.xii.41.
“…novelette-length dream”: 29.vii.41.
“…about an hermaphrodite”: 27.vii.41.
“…young strong tall woman…”: 13.ix.41.
“This type of dream begins…”: 23.ii.42.
“Began morphia…”: ‘Notes from the Diary of the Candidate Nemo 8=3 during his Initiation to the Grade of Magus’ 1 February 1915 Yorke OS C3.
“Dreamt last night…”: 9.viii.41.
“…terrific Tamasha”: 10.viii.41.
“…long fantastic Tamasha…”: 10.viii.41.
“…dream of Himalayan heights…”: 1.vii.40.
“Sex-and-naval-war dreams”: 11.ii.42.
“…the most magnificent tamasha…”: 4.i.46.
“Strangest dreams some very gorgeous”: 1.ii.43.
“…like a crazed bluebottle”: 31.iii.42.
“…dropped in and brightened things up”: 28.ii.42.
armband: Symonds, Conversations with Gerald, p.78.
“similar radiance”: Symonds op.cit. p.112.
Gevrey Chambertin and Driberg: Symonds op.cit. p.144.
“Alice and Ham as usual”: 2.v.42.
“…looking forward to our solitary encounter…”: Cullen, The Man Who Was Norris, p.200
I have borrowed the terms “High-Imperial, Occult-Exotic” from John Bramble's Modernism and the Occult [p.10] where he discusses Modernism's indebtedness to the imperial occult and what Patrick Brantlinger has defined as Imperial Gothic.
(Dover Street also went a long way back with Crowley as the site of the photographer he used for pictures of himself in yoga postures, reproduced in The Equinox, along with Leila Waddell, and a widely reproduced ‘happy family’ portrait of himself, Rose, and baby. It was the Dover Street Studio at number 38, now Erco; the early 20thC ‘artistic’ style of the 38 numeral on the frontage may be contemporary. Like Lowe's chemist, the Studios placed advertising in The Equinox.)
“…interests the ageing Alys”: 1.v.42.
chambermaid complained: 6.v.42.
Collin Brooks dinners e.g. 26.v.42, Maison Basque; 8.vii.42 Bolivar.
“…don't need a revolver often…”: Brooks, More Tavern Talk, p.9.
“Latin Quarter around Portland Place”: Brooks op.cit. p.98.
“…the younger generation…”; ‘Lady Astor’: Brooks, Tavern Talk p.65. There were wheels within wheels, because Burgess had covertly pro-Soviet reasons of his own for wanting to cultivate Brooks as a media figure and may have been using Crowley as a pretext for this.
“…brekker in bedroom”: 7.v.42.
“If I want country…”; Byron's bath: to Germer, 11 May 1942.
Ward's Irish House: e.g. 9.v.42; 16.vi.42.
“…lovely glass and china”: 29.x.42.
“…just WILL NOT DO”: 16.vi.42.
“Hoggess”: 29.v.42; “She-Hogg”: 30.vi.42.
“sly treacherous vixen”: 21.vii.42.
“amazing treachery”; “Frieda's sneaking treachery”: 31.vii.42.
“really a brothel”: Lamburn, Joan, ‘Letters to Alyse Gregory 1941-1943’, The Powys Journal, XXVI (2016) pp. 156-57; “repulsive”p.170.
“Mental state v. bad…”: 25.vi.42.
Importance of Being Earnest and theatre outing as “magical ceremony”: 21.x.42.
Brook calls by appointment: 6.45pm, 28.vii.42.
From “magical advisor” to “demystified himself”: Peter Brook, Threads of Time, p.9.
“more than once I have seen him…”: Louis Marlow [Wilkinson], Seven Friends, p.54.
“Magical Voice”: Regardie, The Eye in the Triangle, p.388.
“…rather high for a man”: Bankes, Why Not?, p.202.
“… effeminate, rather squeaky”: Regardie op. cit. p.388.
Calder-Marshall, The Magic of My Youth, p.118.
“celebrated near-Cockney accent”: Powell, Messengers of Day, p.82.
Delighted with 9331: e.g. to Germer, undated, received 26 October 1942; to Jane Wolfe, n.d. October 1942 {OTO}.
“…sweetness and light”: 24.i.39.
slipped and hit head: 21.x.43.
threepenny piece: 6.i.44. The word he uses is “tickey”, of mainly South African usage, but the sense of it being a small coin seems confirmed by a reference (15.iv.41) to counting all his money and also having a “numismatic hoard of tickeys”, in the sense that one might put small change in a jar.
dreams of Davies tailor: 14.i.41.
Alexander VI at auction: 2.xii.43.
“Satanfather” to the Renaissance: Crowley in draft of ‘William Blake, by a Mental Traveller’, pp.22-23, Yorke OS C1.
Sold by Glendinning's, and Crowley traced the buyer as Baldwin, 3 Robert Street, Adelphi TEM[ple] 1611: 2.xii.43.
“…in the workhouse infirmary”: 6.iii.42, sold by Weiser Antiquarian item #60765.
Fermaprint: this might look like a mistranscription for Permaprint but the business really was Ferma-.
Maisky: 6.i.43; Francis: 30.xii.42.
Thelema as “golden mean”: in ‘Memo’ section of 1943 diary.
“nauseated” by Eliot: 13.iv.42.
“England's literary martyr”: to Grady McMurtry, postmark 3 August 1945 {OTO}; (Crowley was drafting ‘The Strategic Implications of a “Clear Crowley's Name” Campaign’ – McMurtry was at the time a lieutenant in the US Army).
“Wombat of Wagga-Wagga”: 8.viii.43.
“…something of pathos…”: Marlow, Seven Friends, p.53.
“poor old Aleister Crowley”: Aberconway, A Wiser Woman?, p.45.
“Her lovely eyes were large…”: Seven Friends, p.55.
“impressed though I was by the exaltation…”: ibid.
“…Willey, Porterfield and boys: ‘Thicket of thorns crowd’”: 25.vii.37.
“complete (bar Tub) desolation”: 11.iii.44.
“no news, no tobacco, no friends…”: 9.v.43.
“free of the sexual impulse”: 25.i.43.
“…homosexuality and pacifism etc.”: 15.xii.31.
This Gun for Hire: (Graham Greene) 4.x.43; Carnet du Bal: 22.xii.43; Brighton Rock: 13.iv.43; Derriere la Façade: 2.ii.43 (“A1”); The Man Who Came to Dinner: 30.vii.43 film (and stage play three times); Striptease Lady: 1.viii.43; Margin for Error: 6.viii.43; Arsenic and Old Lace: 6.v.43; Five Graves to Cairo: 9.vii.43; A Night to Remember: (1942) 4.v.43, seen at least six time at venues including the New Vic, King's Cross Cinema with Alice, and the Elephant and Castle with Cath, though to sixth viewing 11.vi.43; They've Got Me Covered, with Bob Hope, from 8.vii.43 to 7.iv.44 (“8th or 9th time”; “it gets better”).
Prunier's and glorious evening: 29.ii.44.
“Great Joke” etc.: Calder-Marshall reviewing Magick, Times Literary Supplement 27 July 1973 p.871.
“5,000 year plan”: 27.viii.44.
“Discovered why I like Americans…”: 10.ix.44.
“coupe je ne sais quoi”: 25.iv.42.
“This desolating war!”: 24.x.42.
West End in wartime: to Germer, undated, received October 1942.
“entertainment value of these raids…”: 17.iii.44.
Bomb at foot of Duke Street (“Where you and Cora stayed – I was there too”): to Germer 19 March 1944 {OTO}.
“…valley of the shadow of death…”: Miss Manning (“Cave Woman”) to Symonds, in Symonds (1997) p.573.
“100 morons killed…”: 7.xi.43.
“I am perplexed” to Lady Harris: Symonds (1997) p.585.
“sometimes I hate myself” to a Mr Rowe, ibid.
“I often wish I could divine…”: 24.x.43: the transcript has ‘causal’, but it is just possible the circumstance was ‘casual’.
“Man can embody truth…”: Yeats, ‘Magic’, in Essays and Introductions
New Delhi Durbar Indian: an invite survives (Yorke OS EE2).
Hamilton leaves early: Cullen, The Man Who Was Norris, p.201.