Aleister Crowley (11 page)

The attitude of the crowd at Le Chat Blanc toward Crowley is best expressed in Maugham’s preface to his early novel
The Magician
, whose eponymous villain, Oliver Haddo, is based on Crowley. By the time Maugham met him, Crowley’s athletic frame had broadened and his hair was thinning—he was on his way to his by-now-iconic shaven head—and his eyes, Maugham writes, had a way of focusing so that “when he looked at you, he seemed to look behind you.”
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“He was a fake,” Maugham says, “but not entirely a fake.” “He was a liar and unbecomingly boastful, but the odd thing was that he had actually done some of the things he had boasted of.” Maugham goes further than Yeats in allowing Crowley some credit for his poetry,
saying his verse is “not entirely without merit” although it was usually “intolerably verbose.” And Maugham sees through the image of the shocking diabolist that Crowley tried hard to create. Oliver Haddo was a villain, a black magician intent on using an innocent virgin for his evil designs, but he is “more striking in appearance, more sinister and more ruthless than Crowley ever was.” Maugham’s novel was published in 1908 and some years later it was made into a silent film by the director Rex Ingram. Long before the Beatles had ever heard of him, the myth of Crowley was seeping into popular culture. Kelly’s own reminiscences of the scene were on par with Maugham’s: “Crowley was widely unknown in the Montparnasse quarters”—a witticism that would have gone down well at Au Chien Rouge—“he was, for the most part, disliked by the few whom he met.”
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Crowley did meet some Parisian artists. The writer Marcel Schwob was one, as was the sculptor Auguste Rodin, whose famous statue of Balzac was at the time causing controversy. Crowley came to his defense with a sonnet; Schwob translated it into French and Rodin approved. Crowley was much impressed by Rodin and wrote
Rodin in Rime
for him, a study of his statues in verse. Crowley made much of his visit to Rodin’s studio in Meudon, but he was one among many visitors to the old master’s workroom.

—

M
AGICIAN
,
B
UDDHIST
,
poet, mountaineer? Back in Europe Crowley was still unsure which direction to head in. He had a nagging sense that he should return to Abramelin but the business with Mathers put him off, and in any case magic had receded in the light of Buddhism. His essay “Science and Buddhism” (1903), an early effort in “Scientific Illuminism,” which argues that Buddhism and
science start from the same principles, makes this clear. (Here Crowley was taking his tack from other writers; Edward Carpenter—who, unlike Crowley, was open about his homosexuality—had argued much the same points in
From Adam’s Peak to Elephanta
[1892] and for years the Theosophical Society had as its motto “There Is No Religion Higher than Truth.”) His travels and adventure on Chogo Ri made him feel he had accomplished something, but he had no idea where to go from there. Although he felt that the “big people in the artistic world in France” should have welcomed him, he was still an outsider, self-publishing his work, trying to get a foot in the door. His spiritual state was enfeebled, he was getting a swelled head, and, not surprisingly, he found himself “completely disillusioned with regard to the universe.”
²⁵
This malaise, however, did not prevent him from pursuing sinful pleasures, but these, too, had their dangers. One encounter was with the model Nina Oliver, whom he met in Kelly’s studio. Another was with another model with whom he became engaged “out of sheer lack of moral energy,” a motivating force already at work in his aborted engagement to Susan Strong.
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Perhaps it was this that decided him. After one last visit to Mathers’s house—he burgled the place to retrieve robes and other magical accoutrements he had bought for the order—Crowley pulled up stakes again and in June 1903 headed back to Boleskine.

There he did not return to Abramelin but dabbled in other magic. He took Mathers’s translation of the
Goetia
and published it with an introduction, “The Initiated Interpretation of Ceremonial Magic,” giving the author as “A Dead Hand.”
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Mathers received no credit for his work. Crowley whiled away his time with a woman he had picked up in London; evidently she wasn’t entertaining enough, and Crowley tried to relieve his boredom through a practical joke. He wrote to
the local Vigilance Society—neighborhood protectors of morality—complaining that prostitution in the local area was “
most unpleasantly
conspicuous,” signing his missive “Aleister MacGregor,” a sign, perhaps, that he was assuming Mathers’s status. After a thorough investigation, the society replied that they could find no evidence of prostitution whatsoever. To this the Laird of Boleskine exasperatedly answered, “Conspicuous by its absence, you fools!” Even this didn’t liven things up and Crowley was again at loose ends. Even his houseguest, a renegade Plymouth Brethren named Duncombe-Jewell who was obsessed with the Celtic Revival, was not sufficient distraction, and in Edinburgh Crowley arranged for a housekeeper-companion—“redheaded Arabella”—to fill the void (one assumes the woman from London had left). Arabella could not come then, but she would soon.

In Edinburgh he had also met Gerald Kelly, who had accepted his invitation to stay at Boleskine. No sooner had Kelly settled in than he received a letter from his mother asking him to see her about an urgent matter. Crowley was thankful for the distraction and he and Kelly rushed to Strathpeffer to discover that Kelly’s sister Rose had gotten herself in a terrible jam. She had accepted proposals of marriage from two men, neither of whom she loved and both of whom were on their way to retrieve their bride-to-be. She was also having an affair with a married man. Rose was a widow and a woman of some experience; she had lied about being pregnant and bought clothes with the money her family had given her for an abortion. Now her parents were determined to make an honest woman of her. They demanded she marry one of her suitors—which one didn’t matter, only that she choose. Crowley had met Rose before but was not impressed. Now, however, her plight piqued his fancy. Such family
squabbles always brought out the knight in him—we remember his experience in Eastbourne—and Aleister MacGregor, clad in Highland gear and tartan, proposed a simple, obvious solution. She should marry him.

Crowley explained that his offer was pure chivalry and that no romance was involved. Once married, they could separate and lead their own lives, but she would be free from familial pressure. Rose, who was almost as erratic as Crowley, was touched and agreed. They tried to get married that afternoon but were told at the local church that they would have to publish banns and wait three weeks. Clearly that wouldn’t do. They then discovered that according to Scottish law, they merely had to declare their intentions to any lawyer. The next morning they slipped out of the house before breakfast and headed for the nearest town, where, at eight, they were declared man and wife by a drowsy attorney. To seal the union, Crowley drew a dagger from his stocking—shades of Mathers—and kissed it. He wouldn’t think of kissing the bride. By then Kelly had caught wind of the plan and as the knot was tied, he burst into the room and tried to punch Crowley.

Immediately after, Crowley returned to Boleskine and Rose to Strathpeffer. Rose’s family was up in arms and consulting lawyers. Crowley sent Duncombe-Jewell to Strathpeffer to clarify things: Rose was his wife and there was nothing anyone could do about it. He had kicked up quite a storm in the sleepy Scottish Highlands, yes indeed, which is exactly what Crowley wanted; to think that he had scandalized the county was delightful. He and Rose were required to register their marriage with the county sheriff, and so the two went to Dingwall, the county seat. To keep up appearances, he and Rose decided to enjoy a mock-honeymoon. They took a train to the end of
the line, where Rose booked a double room at the hotel, rather than two singles, which Crowley felt was unsporting. Crowley admits that he couldn’t face the clerk and let her do the work; he contemplated the sea and thought of suicide. Uncharacteristically, he reflected on what had happened and had second thoughts. The idea may have occurred to him that this business was simply a nuisance for someone intent on his Holy Guardian Angel, but there it was; the impossibilist had struck again. At dinner they drank a lot of champagne. While Rose went to their room Crowley troubled a guest with conversation. There was no escape, but first a poem. “Rose on the breast of the world of spring / I press my breast against thy bloom . . .” It came to Crowley in a flash that his chivalrous act had allowed Rose to transfer her wayward love to him. This, of course, touched him deeply.

The next day the two returned to Boleskine, where Crowley acquiesced and was “prepared to propitiate physiology” and consummate their sudden marriage, although the problem of Arabella had to be dealt with. He had no feeling for her, just as he had “absolute indifference to Rose,” but she was on her way and he sent Duncombe-Jewell to head her off. By now he realized that he was married to “one of the most beautiful and fascinating women in the world” and would make the best of it. He was of course in love with her, too. Never mind that she had little education and less intellect, their honeymoon was an “uninterrupted beatitude” and “sexual debauch,” except for when Rose took some trifling liberty and, like the natives of some heathen land, had to be apprised of her husband’s moral superiority. A week or so into their bliss, he had the sad duty of having to administer a spanking to his new wife.
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Like all “moral inferiors,” she had to be shown who was boss.
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Rose “exercised on every man
she met a fascination which I have never seen anywhere else,” but he knew when to wallop her.
³⁰

Scotland was no place for such a jewel, so they headed to Paris. Here they came upon Moina Mathers, crossing the Pont Alexandre III. Crowley claimed she had become a prostitute and that Mathers had forced her to pose naked at a Montmartre tourist trap, but this is merely Crowley at his nastiest. He informed his brother-in-law that any correspondence must be addressed to “Lord Boleskine,” “Aleister Crowley” downgraded now to only a nom de plume. At Marseilles they boarded a ship to Cairo, where Crowley persuaded a guard to allow them to spend a night in the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid. Here Rose helped him invoke the god Thoth. Crowley’s magic was working: as he read the invocation from the
Goetia
, an astral light filled the chamber and Crowley found that they no longer needed their candles. Next stop was Ceylon again (Crowley’s travels are nothing if not dizzying) where, in between composing a series of love poems—
Rosa Mundi
—he once again blasted away at whatever he could with a rifle (chapters of the
Confessions
are filled with his relish for big-game hunting). He wanted to make a waistcoat out of bat fur and startled a flock of bats with his first shot. One wounded bat got tangled in Rose’s hair and caused her a fright. That night Rose woke Crowley with her squeals. He found her, stark naked, clinging to the overhead bed frame. It was difficult to pull her down and when he tried, she bit him, mimicking in her sleep the last moments of the bat that had landed on her. Crowley diagnosed her state—“the finest case of obsession that I ever had the good fortune to observe”—as congruent with her condition. Around this time they discovered that Rose was pregnant.
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It was January 1904, and the reality of Rose’s pregnancy turned
the newlyweds toward Europe. They had originally planned to visit Bennett, who had moved to Rangoon, but the fates decreed otherwise; destiny was about to intervene in the life of Aleister Crowley. En route they stopped at Cairo, where Crowley went through another metamorphosis. He was now the Persian Prince Chioa Khan (Hebrew for “Great Beast”). Unlike his previous identities—which he claims he adopted for “definite and legitimate reasons”—this new one was sheer swagger and borne of a desire to have “two gorgeous runners clear the way for my carriage through the streets of Cairo.”
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As with Lord Boleskine, all correspondence had to be addressed accordingly. When Rose’s mother added an exclamation point to “Princess Chioa Khan,” her letter was sent back.

The Secret Chiefs had been quiet of late. Mathers was now a dead connection. They needed a new contact in the mundane world. Crowley needed them in order to establish his own magical order; this had been his aim for some time. But how to do it? Crowley’s magic was warming up. He claims that a sheik who taught him Arabic, recognizing that he was an initiate, introduced him to the Arabic Kabbalah, and taught him certain conjuring tricks, such as eating a live scorpion and licking a red-hot blade. But such parlor games were balanced by playing golf and shooting quail. Crowley emphasizes these banal pastimes to show that the next development in his life, the actual meaning of it, arrived out of the blue.

On March 16, Crowley and Ouarda the Seer—as he was now calling his wife, “Ouarda” being Arabic for Rose—took a flat near Cairo’s famous Boulak Museum. In order to entertain Rose, Crowley tried to invoke the sylphs—air elementals—by repeating the ritual that had worked so well in the King’s Chamber. Ouarda wasn’t amused and kept repeating, “They are waiting for you,” much to
Crowley’s annoyance. The next day Crowley tried again but again all Rose would say is “It is all about the child” and “all Osiris,” Osiris being the Egyptian resurrection god. Rose then informed Crowley that he had somehow offended the Egyptian god Horus, the son of Isis and Osiris. Crowley was bemused. Rose knew nothing about Egyptian mythology. But she went on to tell him how to invoke Horus, and although Crowley thought her directions were nonsense, she insisted and Crowley complied. When he questioned her about her sudden knowledge, her answers impressed him. Then, in the Boulak Museum—which they hadn’t yet visited—Ouarda picked out a stele, a commemorative slab, depicting the particular god with whom she seemed to be in communication. Although Rose had no idea how Horus was depicted, and was too far away from the stele to see it properly, the stele was indeed of Horus, but in his relatively rare form as Ra-Hoor-Khuit, a title meaning “Ra of the horizon.” Crowley was impressed that the catalog number for the stele was 666—his own chosen number. On March 20, Crowley was astonished that the “absurd” ritual Rose had compelled him to perform, in full robes in front of an open window, was a success. Rose “channeled” the god and told Crowley that “the Equinox of the Gods” had come. A new epoch in mankind’s history had arrived and Crowley was its chosen voice. It would be through him that the “word of the aeon” would be expressed. He was, in short, the Messiah, whose task it was to forge a link between mankind and the solar-spiritual force that was making its presence known. The Secret Chiefs, it seems, were making contact.