Aleister Crowley (24 page)

In his reflections Crowley tied himself into logical knots trying to explain how, if nothing matters and good is the same as bad, he could see himself as an “ameliorist,” that is, someone who wants to make things better, as he clearly did by wanting to help people find and do their “true will.”
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But if, as he concluded, “I accept things as they are,” and “all the solutions turn out to be no solution,” it is difficult to see how he or anyone else could make anything better, or worse for that matter.

Crowley was not the only one to grasp the underlying unity of things. While under the influence of nitrous oxide—or possibly hashish—P. D. Ouspensky looked at an ashtray. Suddenly his consciousness was flooded with everything to do with the ashtray; it aroused a “whirlwind of thoughts and images” and contained an “infinite number of facts,” and Ouspensky came to the sobering conclusion that “a man can go mad from one ash tray.”
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But Crowley is one of the few to build an ethical philosophy out of the enfeebling of the will such a vision can bring. During his nitrous oxide experiments, William James found himself awash in an “immense emotional sense of reconciliation” in which “the center and periphery of things seem to come together.” “Unbroken continuity is of the essence of being,” James saw, and we are “literally in the midst of an infinite . . .”
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Yet
James ultimately found that this vision of unity produced a “pessimistic fatalism.” It revealed “depth within depth of impotence and indifference,” with “reason and silliness united, not in a higher synthesis,
but in the fact that whatever way you choose it is all one
[my italics].” James came away with the insight that “indifferentism is the true outcome of every view of the world which makes infinity and continuity to be its essence.” Yet James, unlike Crowley, did not take this vision of cosmic futility as carte blanche
to do what he wilt. He withdrew from it for precisely the same reason that it attracted Crowley: it made him ineffective in the world—it disabled his ability to
make decisions
, in other words, to act.

Years later, Aldous Huxley came to a similar conclusion when he experimented with mescaline. Huxley realized that if everyone took mescaline—a drug, like anhalonium, derived from peyote—there would be no war, but there would be no civilization either, because no one would bother to make it. Looking at a sink full of dirty dishes, Huxley thought they were too beautiful to bother about. Under mescaline, Huxley recognized that “the will suffers a profound change for the worse” and that “the mescaline taker sees no reason for doing anything in particular.”
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Huxley saw the danger in this, but Crowley made a philosophy out of it.

Yet in the same summer that he saw his Star Sponge, Crowley also suffered a crisis. He confessed that he was “inhibited from everything” and was tempted to “crucify a toad, or copulate with a duck, sheep or goat, or set a house on fire or murder someone with the idea . . . that some supreme violation of all the laws of my being would break down my Karma or dissolve the spell that seems to bind me . . .”
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It was, in fact, at this point that he crucified the frog. This passage suggests that Crowley suffered from a
lack
of will, a lack of
any
purpose
, and having a philosophy that preached that nothing matters could not have helped. He suffered another crisis a year later and actually tried to jettison the yoke of being a Magus. But it was too late to change his spots. He returned to magick,
thelema
, and all the rest because it seemed “there was certainly nothing else for me to do.”
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—

I
N
O
CTOBER
1917
Crowley headed to New Orleans. He may have wanted to renew contact with a Professor Keasby, an art historian at the University of Texas, who had shown interest in his work and had visited Crowley at Lake Pasquaney. The idea of opening an O.T.O. chapter in Austin was even floated but nothing came of it. The O.T.O. itself, at least in England, was dying a slow death. After relieving Vittoria Cremers of her duties, Crowley had appointed George Macnie Cowie as treasurer. Crowley says that Cowie had first sent him money to keep him going, but stopped when he learned of his pro-German journalism and then began to rob him blind.
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If so, Crowley had only himself to blame. Cowie said Crowley’s demands for money were exorbitant and were depleting the O.T.O.’s coffers and that he was doing nothing for the organization in New York. Predictably, the two fell out; Crowley claims Cowie got possession of his belongings at Boleskine and sold them for a song. But by then the O.T.O. in London existed only on paper.

In the end, relations between Crowley and Professor Keasby soured. Earlier that summer, Viereck had made Crowley editor of
The International
, and Crowley quickly filled its pages with his work, either under his own name or a variety of pseudonyms; he was often the magazine’s only contributor. Crowley claimed he accepted the position because it would allow him to keep an eye on the
publication’s German backers and report his findings to the U.S. authorities, but this is doubtful. In April 1917 the United States entered the war on the side of the Allies; Crowley’s “plan” seemed to have worked, although because of it
The Fatherland
became redundant and his own meal ticket was threatened. Viereck saw no sense in continuing, and when Professor Keasby offered to buy
The International
, Viereck agreed—without telling Crowley. Keasby assured Viereck that Crowley would remain as editor, but no sooner was he the owner than Crowley was without a job. It was a pyrrhic victory; Crowley notes with satisfaction that soon after his removal
The International
folded.

In New Orleans Crowley enjoyed the people, the architecture, the French Quarter, and the bordellos, which, he believed, compared favorably to those in Cairo. He lived near the Old Absinthe House and wrote an article about “the green goddess.”
⁴⁴
Other articles on other drugs emerged from his pen—cocaine, ethyl oxide—and they make up some of his best writing.
⁴⁵
But the most important additions to Crowley’s oeuvre to come out of the Big Easy were his Simon Iff stories and his first novel,
The Butterfly Net
, later published as
Moonchild
. Crowley’s fixation on producing a magical child, either in the flesh or in print, may have been premonitory. In May 1917 his mother died; as mentioned in chapter One, he dreamt of her death two nights earlier. Crowley had done everything he could to live up to his mother’s christening him the Beast 666, but now when his last tie to his family was cut, he felt a “helpless, lonely feeling” and experienced a sense of being truly adrift.

By this time, Crowley was back in New York, living with the artist Leon Engers Kennedy, sharing a run-down space on Fifth Avenue; it was while living with Kennedy that he decided to take up painting.
(Ironically, Kennedy is known today solely because of his portrait of Crowley, which hangs in London’s National Portrait Gallery, while Crowley enjoys a growing posthumous profile as a painter.) He had hit a kind of doldrums; even his sex life had reached a dull patch. He notes in the
Magical Record
that his long absence from sex magick was due to being occupied with creative work. It was around this time that Crowley went on strike, thinking that if the Secret Chiefs really intended him to be their emissary, they should be more forthcoming with aid and instructions. For a time he continued his operations with prostitutes, aiming at “magical energy,” “Glory to God!” “health,” “promulgation of the Law,” as well as practical objectives, such as “success to Simon Iff stories.”
⁴⁶
This last aim, at any rate, was unfulfilled; the stories did not catch on. On occasion he enjoyed an XI
⁰
opus; one with a Howard
per os
had, he noted, no object; he was “taken by surprise” by it.
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There was Anita, Anna Grey, a Lionel Q (the details of both this opus and that with Howard Crowley kept secret, even from his record), May, Maddy. The list grew, but by August 1917 Crowley had met Anna Miller, a Pennsylvania Dutch girl presumably in rebellion against her upbringing, whom he christened “the Dog.” They lived together on Central Park West.

With Anna, Crowley operated
per vas nefandum
until she showed signs of alcoholism, an occupational hazard when working with him, and he showed her the door. After the Dog arrived the Camel. Roddie Minor was a friend of Anna’s, and she, Anna, and Crowley sometimes performed
à trois
. She was a “big, muscular, sensual type,” Crowley’s preferred kind of woman, and she seems to have enjoyed—or at least submitted to—Crowley’s penchant for sodomy;
p.v.n.
punctuates most of the opera he recorded with her. They were often assisted by a Walter Grey and a Russian woman named Marie
Lavroff, who Crowley wished to snare, but who did not last long, escaping after an opus
per manum
—masturbating Crowley. (One opus with Marie and Roddie was aimed at overcoming Marie’s “sin complex” and Roddie’s growing jealously; this apparently didn’t work: Marie fled and Crowley had to perform an opus aimed at better relations with Roddie.
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) He called Roddie the Camel because she had, he said, taken him across the desert, this empty period of his life. Roddie was a find: she was a pharmacist and worked in a pharmaceutical laboratory; this meant she had a steady income and access to drugs. She enjoyed smoking opium and taking other drugs and was also interested in occultism. It was through this means that, as with Rose and Sister Virakam, he once again touched base with a discarnate intelligence.

The wizard Amalantrah arrived sometime in January 1918, by which time Crowley was living on West Ninth Street in Greenwich Village. Crowley was writing
Liber Aleph
, a long letter to his magical son Charles Stansfeld Jones about all things
thelemic
(it would not be published until after his death).
Liber Aleph
is considered by many to be an excellent introduction to Crowley’s philosophy, but it is not one of his best works. Roddie—or Sister Achitha—was smoking opium and had a vision of herself as a candelabra of thirteen candles; part of this became a crown that floated in the air until a halo appeared to drop into the crown. She then saw herself as thirteen naked women, all being caressed simultaneously.
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Crowley was intrigued and told her of similar experiences had by his other Scarlet Women. He suggested she question the images; his technique resembles how Jung approached “active imagination,” and a Jungian interpretation of Crowley’s experiences with Aiwass, Ab-ul-Diz, and Amalantrah would, I think, prove interesting (Crowley had, in fact, been
studying Jung’s
The Psychology of the Unconscious
(1912) for some time, but Jung did not discover active imagination until his break with Freud the following year.) Crowley guided Roddie through the astral landscape. She saw a farmhouse and heard gurgling water. This disappeared and she saw a yoni and then a camel and a king and then a wizard. The king and the wizard entered a cave and Roddie told them her name was Eve. In the end the wizard sat near Roddie and told her that “it’s all in the egg.”

Crowley was impressed. Ab-ul-Diz had spoken of an egg; perhaps Amalantrah was continuing the dialogue he had through Sister Virakam? But although he, too, joined the Camel on the astral—getting there by smoking opium—he was less interested in the fantastic imagery than in answers to two troubling questions: the correct Kabbalistic spelling and meaning of Baphomet, Crowley’s O.T.O. name, and how to transpose “Therion” into Hebrew while retaining the numerical value of 666. The first answer came directly from Amalantrah. Baphomet should be spelled
Bafometh
and it meant “Father Mithras.” Crowley was astounded: his mastery of gematria confirmed Amalantrah’s answer. (As with Rose and Mary, Crowley tells us Roddie was ignorant of these matters.) The second came out of the blue. One morning Crowley received a letter at
The International
; it was addressed to Viereck, but he passed it on to him. Earlier he had asked Amalantrah if one could spell Therion in Hebrew and arrive at the value 666. Amalantrah said yes, but Crowley couldn’t see how. In the letter Crowley read that its author, Shmuel bar Aiwaz bie Yackou de Sherabad (Samuel A. Jacob) had solved the riddle, and reached the exact spelling Crowley required. And not only had the letter been written at the exact time Crowley had asked this question, the author’s name was Aiwaz, which, he later told Crowley, can be written
in Hebrew so that it adds up to 93. This may not convince us that Aiwass,
thelema
, and all the rest were true, as Crowley believed, but it shows that like Jung, Crowley was someone around whom snychronicities happened.
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But they did not always happen. Much of Amalantrah’s discourse was frustrating, repetitive, and magically void. Crowley’s relations with the Camel were turning that way, too. Whenever he wanted a new Scarlet Woman, Crowley invariably detected that the magical force in his current one was weakening. Even while with Roddie, Crowley had performed with other women and with men; at one point he refers to three women assistants as “three scorpions.”
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On one occasion Roddie took anhalonium and got sick; Crowley chalked that up to her being too corrupt for the magick. On another she had the “Vision of the Demon Crowley,” Crowley’s euphemism for their arguing.
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Apparently Roddie’s orbit was going askew. It was time for another magical retirement, and Crowley performed an VIII
⁰
opus to make sure it would be a good one.
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