Aleister Crowley (40 page)

But if Crowley was right, and this is the era of the “crowned and conquering child,” I can only hope that he grows up soon.

Many people helped make this book possible. I would like to thank Mark Pilkington, Dr. Petra Lange-Berndt, and the other members of the Congress for Curious People for their invaluable assistance, as well as Jill Kraye and Philip Young of the Warburg Institute, for making their Crowley archive available to me. Phil Baker was of inestimable aid in providing research material, as was Suzanne Treister, and Mike Jay and Paul Sieveking answered some key questions in record time. James Hamilton generously allowed me to importune him with endless ponderings on
thelema
and its relation to rock and roll, and Anja Flode Bjorlo’s insights proved crucial. My good friend Lisa Persky, for whom I wrote “(I’m Always Touched by Your) Presence, Dear,” also provided much-needed support. Once again, I would like to thank the staff of the British Library and the London Library for their tireless efforts. My sons, Maximilian and Joshua, pointed me in several good directions, as did their mother, Ruth Jones. My friends John Browner, Lisa Yarger, and their daughter, Greta, were once again generous in Munich, where part of this book was written. And I would especially like to thank Benton Quinn for introducing me to Crowley’s tarot deck so many years
ago.

INTRODUCTION: THE BEAST ON THE BOWERY

1
. There is debate over what the initials A.
^.
.A.
^.
. “really” stand for and, typically, Crowley did little to clarify the issue; he enjoyed making things mysterious and overcomplicated for his readers. Although
Argentium Astrum
or
Silver Star
is most commonly accepted, some have offered
Atlantean Adepts
. This is what Crowley’s early biographer and friend Charles Richard Cammell said Crowley himself had told him the initials stood for.
Silver Star
, however, is what I always believed the initials stood for and that is how they will be referred to here.

2
. See Gary Valentine,
New York Rocker: My Life in the Blank Generation
(New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2006), 209–12. Gary Valentine was my name during my years in rock and roll.

3
. See the afterword to my book
In Search of P. D. Ouspensky
(Wheaton, IL: Quest Books, 2006), 283–93, for an account of my time in the Gurdjieff “work.”

4
. See Valentine,
New York Rocker
, 232–53. I did in fact have a brief return to music in the late ’90s, playing for a time with Blondie again in the early days of their reunion. See Ibid., 254–67.

5
. Gary Lachman, “The Wickedest Man in the World,” in
Fortean Times
231 (January 2008).

6
. See “The Mark of the Beast” in Antony Clayton, Gary Lachman, Andy Sharp, et al.,
Netherwood: Last Resort of Aleister Crowley
(London: Accumulator Press, 2012), 45–59.

7
. http://www.lashtal.com/portal/news/thelema/1475-1474-old-news.html.

8
.
Aleister Crowley and Western Esotericism,
ed. Henrik Bogdan and Martin P. Starr (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

9
. Louis Wilkinson,
Seven Friends,
Introduction by Oliver Marlow (Oxford: Mandrake Press, 1992), 58.

ONE: THE UNFORGIVABLE SIN

1
.
John Bull
, “A Man We’d Like to Hang,” May 16, 1923.

2
. In fact, he is seen as one already. See Henry Hemming,
In Search of the English Eccentric
(London: John Murray, 2009), 289–90.

3
. Quoted in John Symonds,
The Great Beast
(London: Mayflower, 1973), 111, and Richard Kaczynski,
Perdurabo: The Life of Aleister Crowley
(Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2010), 151.

4
. Symonds,
The Great Beast
, 54.

5
. Wilkinson,
Seven Friends
, 61.

6
. Lawrence Sutin,
Do What Thou Wilt: A Life of Aleister Crowley
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002), 3; Tobias Churton,
Aleister Crowley: The Biography
(London: Watkins, 2011), 10.

7
. Sutin, 11.

8
. http://www.facebook.com/thelema.page/posts/10151439162831359. I can’t help but mention that I recognized the resonances between the Nike slogan and a philosophy reminiscent of Crowley’s early on. See Gary Lachman,
Turn Off Your Mind
(New York: Disinformation Books, 2003),
357–58.

9
. Mrs. Grundy is a character in Thomas Morton’s play
Speed the Plough
(1789) and in English and European literature represents an extremely conventional and priggish person.

10
. Aleister Crowley,
Magick in Theory and Practice
(New York: Dover Publications, 1976), xi.

11
. Wilkinson,
Seven Friends
, 59.

12
. Crowley,
The Confessions
, 35.

13
. Richard Spence,
Secret Agent 666: Aleister Crowley, British Intelligence and the Occult
(Los Angeles: Feral House, 2008), 15.

14
. Sutin,
Do What Thou Wilt
, 22.

15
. Crowley,
The Confessions
, 40.

16
. Ibid., 36.

17
. Ibid., 98.

18
. Quoted in Symonds,
The Great Beast
, 239.

19
. Crowley,
The Confessions
, 53. Crowley wrote the early part of his
Confessions
in the third person, an affectation designed to emphasize the fact that he did not become himself until the death of his father.

20
. Ibid.

21
. See my
Jung the Mystic
(New York: Tarcher/Penguin, 2010), 144–45.

22
. Crowley,
The Confessions
, 44–45.

23
. See my
The Dedalus Book of Literary Suicides: Dead Letters
(Sawtry, Cambs: Dedalus, 2008), 162–67.

24
. Ibid., 47.

25
. The Italian Count Cesare Mattei (1809–96) developed a theory involving the therapeutic properties of electricity. Though widely popular, it was denounced by the medical authorities of the time.

26. Sir James Paget (1814–99) was a distinguished surgeon and is considered one of the founders of modern medical pathology.

27
. Crowley,
The Confessions
, 53.

28
. Ibid., 67.

29
. Ibid.

30
. Ibid., 66.

31
. Ibid., 81.

32
. Ibid., 67.

33
. Ibid.

34
. Ibid., 75.

35
. Ibid.

36
. Ibid., 387–88.

37
. Colin Wilson,
Aleister Crowley: The Nature of the Beast
(Wellingborough, Northamptonshire: Aquarian Press, 1987), 31.

38
. Symonds,
The Great Beast
, 26.

39
. Eckenstein is remembered today as the inventor of the Eckenstein crampon, talonlike grips attached to boots that allow easy movement on ice and frozen surfaces.

40
. Crowley,
The Confessions,
105.

41
. Ibid., 106.

42
. Quoted in Churton,
Aleister Crowley
, 271.

43
. Crowley,
The Confessions
, 78.

44
. Ibid., 82.

45
. Ibid., 86.

46
. Ibid., 87.

47
. Ibid., 108.

48
. Aleister Crowley,
The Magical Diaries of Aleister Crowley
Tunisia 1923,
ed. Stephen Skinner (York Beach, ME: Weiser, 1996), 122.

49
. Crowley,
The Confessions
, 403.

50
. Ibid., 104–5.

51
. Ibid.

52
. Ibid., 460.

53
. Ibid., 142.

54
. Ibid.

55
. Ibid., 143.

56
. Ibid., 113.

57
. Ibid., 123–24.

58
. William Breeze, Introduction to Aleister Crowley,
White Stains
(Stockholm: Edda, 2011), xiv.

59
. Crowley,
The Confessions
, 142–44.

60
. Paul Newman,
Aleister Crowley and the Cult of Pan
(London: Greenwich Exchange, 2004), 63.

61
. Aleister Crowley,
Aceldama
(1898), complete text at http://hermetic.com/crowley/collected-works/i/aceldama.html.

62
. Newman,
Aleister Crowley and the Cult of Pan
, 75.

63
. Crowley,
The Confessions
, 343–44.

64
. “It will be a marvellous thing—the true personality of man—when we see it. It will grow naturally and simply, flowerlike, or as a tree grows. It will not be at discord. It will never argue or dispute. It will not prove things. It will know everything. And yet it will not busy itself about knowledge. It will have wisdom. Its value will not be measured by material things. It will have nothing. And yet it will have everything, and whatever one takes from it, it will still have, so rich will it be. It will not be always meddling with others, or asking them to be like itself. It will love them because they will be different. And yet while it will not meddle with others, it will help all, as a beautiful thing helps us, by being what it is. The personality of man will be very wonderful. It will be as wonderful as the personality of a child.” Full text at http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/wilde-oscar/soul-man/.

65
. Crowley,
The Confessions
, 124.

66
. Ibid., 126.

67
. Ibid.

68
. Ibid., 127.

69
. For more on Karl von Eckartshausen and
The Cloud Upon the Sanctuary
, see my
Dedalus,
2010, 34–37.

TWO: TWILIGHT OF THE GOLDEN DAWN

1
. Wilkinson,
Seven Friends
, 53.

2
. See Gary Lachman,
Madame Blavatsky: The Mother of Modern Spirituality
(New York: Tarcher/Penguin, 2012), 245–48.

3
. http://hermetic.com/crowley/collected-works/i/jephthah.html.

4
. Symonds,
The Great Beast
, 30.

5
. See Gary Lachman,
Politics and the Occult
(Wheaton, Il: Quest, 2008), 53–59.

6
. Ibid.

7
. Churton,
Aleister Crowley,
xv–xvi.

8
. Wilson,
Aleister Crowley
;
Wilkinson,
Seven Friends
, 53.

9
. Wilkinson,
Seven Friends
, 59.

10
. Crowley,
The Confessions
,
176.

11
. Another, less romantic account of the Golden Dawn’s origin has the cipher originating with Kenneth Mackenzie, a colleague of Westcott and Mathers in an earlier occult group, the Society of Eight, whose specialty was alchemy. MacKenzie had met Eliphas Levi in Paris in the French occultist’s last days. After Mackenzie’s death his widow passed on his Masonic papers to Westcott, and the cipher papers were among them. The cipher papers themselves may have come to Mackenzie from Levi; we recall that material on the tarot was included in them, and during his visit Mackenzie discussed the tarot with Levi. Where Levi may
have got them from is unclear. See R. A. Gilbert’s
The Golden Dawn: Twilight of the Magicians
(Wellingborough, Northamptonshire: Aquarian, 1983).

12
. Although Blavatsky’s Masters were Hindus, there is a good argument that the notion of “Secret Chiefs” has its source in the “unknown superiors” of the Strict Observance Freemasonry of Karl Gottlieb von Hund, which began in France in the 1740s. “Strict Observance” got its name because the rite required a vow of absolute obedience to the mysterious “unknown superiors” who were its leaders. Hund claimed that in 1743 he was initiated into the rite by a masked man known only as “the Knight of the Red Feather.” Madame Blavatsky’s great-grandfather—whose occult library started her on her esoteric career—belonged to a Russian Strict Observance lodge, and his loyalty to his “unknown superiors” may have inspired Blavatsky’s own obedience to her Hidden Masters. Another possible source for the Secret Chiefs is the mysterious Rabbi Samuel Jacob Chayyim Falk, an enigmatic character at the hub of esoteric life in London in the eighteenth century, and who counted Swedenborg and Cagliostro as his students. In 1889, in the notices page of a literary magazine, Westcott himself suggested that “the Order of mystics which gave Eliphas Levi [the great nineteenth-century French occultist] his occult knowledge, and of which Johann Falk was at one time the Lecturer on the Kabbalah in London, is still at work in England” and he names it “the Hermetic students of the G.D.” (For much of the Golden Dawn’s early history, the meaning of the initials G. D., like that of the A.
^.
.A.
^.
., remained secret.) It is possible, though doubtful, that Falk himself was the “hidden superior” that initiated Karl Gottlieb von Hund in Paris. (See Joscelyn Godwin,
The Theosophical Enlightenment
[Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1994], 223.)