Aleister Crowley (43 page)

9
. http://www.sacred-texts.com/oto/lib4.htm.

10
. Ibid.

11
. Crowley,
The Confessions
, 175.

12
. Jean Gebser,
The Ever-Present Origin
(Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1984), 49. See also Lachman,
A Secret History of Consciousness
, 241–245 and 202.

13
. Crowley,
The Confessions
, 175.

14
. Ibid., 174.

15
. James Moore,
Gurdjieff and Mansfield
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980), 18.

16
. Spence,
Secret Agent 666,
40.

17
. Reuss was a frequent visitor to Monte Verità, “the Mountain of Truth,” an early “counterculture” commune established in Ascona, Switzerland, in 1900. Another frequent visitor to Monte Verità was the radical Freudian Otto Gross. Gross, like Crowley, was a drug enthusiast and advocate of “free love.” As far as I know,
Crowley did not make it to Monte Verità, which is surprising, as it was in many ways his kind of place; in
The Secret Rituals of the O.T.O.
, Francis King quotes an encyclical Reuss gave in Ascona in 1917 on the O.T.O. (King [London: C. W. Daniel Company, 1973], 9). Although Gross was not an occultist, his interest in sex and drugs would have endeared him to Crowley and one wonders if he and Reuss ever met. For more on Monte Verità and Gross see Martin Green,
Mountain of Truth: The Counterculture Begins, Ascona 1900–1920
(Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 1986); also Lachman,
Politics and the Occult
, 136–40. For a brief view of Gross and his relations with C. G. Jung, see Lachman,
Jung
, 72–75.

18
. See Lachman,
Politics and the Occult
, 40–45.

19
. See Lachman,
Madame Blavatsky: The Mother of Modern Spirituality
, 221, and
Rudolf Steiner
(New York: Tarcher/Penguin, 2007), 169–70.

20
. Ibid., 116–19.

21
. Although Randolph did preach sex magick, unlike Crowley he was averse to masturbation and homosexuality. See Joscelyn Godwin,
The Theosophical Enlightenment
(Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994), 361.

22
. The meeting between Reuss and Crowley took place in 1912, but the publishing date of
The Book of Lies
is 1913. Crowley may have his dates wrong, or, as Francis King argues, the book may really have been published in 1912 and given an incorrect publishing date on purpose. It is, after all,
The Book of Lies
.

23
. Reuss was on the lookout for esoteric heavy hitters to give the O.T.O. some credibility. In 1906 Rudolf Steiner met Reuss in Lugano, Switzerland, and soon after set up his own O.T.O. lodge. Steiner was also a visitor to Monte Verità and may have known Reuss from there. His connection to the O.T.O. was short-lived. See Lachman,
Rudolf Steiner
, 154–55.

24
. Lachman,
Madame Blavatsky
, 314.

25
. www.casebook.org/dissertations/collected-donston.8.html.

26
. Fuller,
The Magical Dilemma
, 46. Crowley’s obsession with and inveterate overestimation of sex can be seen in his brief work “Of Eroto-Comatose Lucidity,” in which the magician is “sexually exhausted by every known means” and then sexually aroused “by every known means” repeatedly, until he (mostly; Crowley never, as far as I know, concerns himself with women’s sexuality) reaches a point in between sleeping and waking, the hypnagogic state. He can then commune with spirits. The ritual fails if the magician falls asleep but if successful can be celebrated by a final act of sex, or even “the most favorable death,” during orgasm. The only problem with this is that there are really very few “known means” of sexual arousal or exhaustion and in any case any intelligent person would soon grow bored with the process. Only an obsessive like Crowley would think sex could be continued indefinitely. And the required state can be achieved much more easily by simply drifting back into sleep after awakening and disciplining oneself to maintain the interphase between the two states. Rudolf Steiner suggested this was an excellent time to speak with the dead. See
Earthly Death and
Cosmic Life
(London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1964), 54–72; http://hermetic.com/crowley/libers/lib451.html.

27
. Some of these can be found in Francis King’s
The Secret Rituals of the O.T.O.
(London: C. W. Daniel Company, 1973).

28
. Crowley,
Magick in Theory and Practice
, 347.

29
. King,
Megatherion
, 85.

30
. Valentine,
New York Rocker
, 234.

31
. http://www.100thmonkeypress.com/biblio/acrowley/articles/1914_12_20_fort_wayne_journal_gazette.pdf.

32
. In 2012 when my friends and I performed a live improvised soundtrack to Rex Ingram’s film
The Magician,
we took the name of Crowley’s troupe for our billing; http://radionicworkshop.co.uk/music/ for May 22, 2012.

33
. Crowley,
The Confessions
, 712.

34
. Aleister Crowley,
The Magical Record of the Beast 666: The Diaries of Aleister Crowley
, ed. John Symonds (London: Duckworth, 1972), 137.

35
. For more on Hermes-Thoth, see my
The Quest for Hermes Trismegistus
(Edinburgh: Floris Books, 2011), 74–97.

36
. Phallus worship was, of course, nothing new. In the Hindu religion the lingham, or phallus, is a sacred object, as is the yoni (vagina), and early statues of the Greek god Hermes generally depict him with an erection. In 1786 Richard Payne Knight published
A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus and Its Connection with the Mystic Theology of the Ancients
, a seminal text that epitomizes the eighteenth-century fascination, among some scholars, with the generative powers. Not surprisingly, Knight’s work finds a place in the A.
^.
.A.
^.
. curriculum.

37
. William Breeze, Introduction to
The Drug and Other Stories
(Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions, 2010), xi.

38
. The notion that semen is the most precious substance in the male body is a basic tenet of yoga. Gurdjieff believed so, too, and the female sexual fluids are likewise believed to contain
kalas
, or secret energies that are released in intercourse. See Arthur Koestler,
The Lotus and the Robot
(New York: Harper Colophon, 1960), 93; Penelope Shuttle and Peter Redgrove,
The Wise Wound: Myths, Realities, and Meanings of Menstruation
(New York: Grove Press, 1988), 194; and G. I. Gurdjieff,
Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson,
First Book (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1978), 275–76.

39
. In
Portable Darkness: An Aleister Crowley Reader
,
ed. Scott Michalsen (New York: Harmony Books, 1989), 164.

40
. Ibid., 145.

41
. Ibid., 161, 147.

42
. Ibid., 147. This was a pet idea of Crowley’s for which there seems no evidence.

43
. Ibid., 155.

44
. Ibid., 161–62.

45
. Ibid., 162.

46
. Crowley,
The Magical Record
, 3.

47
. There is some debate that
per vas nefandum
refers to sex during menstruation, but although
The Book of the Law
tells us that “the best blood is of the moon, monthly,” Crowley’s preference for sodomy is clear. But Crowley did have a thing for menstrual blood; the quotation I use is from a recipe for what Crowley called “cakes of light,” and, as mentioned in the introduction, when I participated in a Gnostic Mass many years ago I was required to ingest a communion wafer speckled with the “best blood.”

48
. Sutin,
Do What Thou Wilt
, 241.

SEVEN: NEW YORK’S A LONELY TOWN WHEN YOU’RE THE ONLY
THELEMITE
AROUND

1
. Crowley,
The Magical Record
, 5.

2
. Babalon is another name for the Scarlet Woman. Crowley spelled it in this way so that it would meet his Kabbalistic requirements.

3
. Crowley,
The Magical Record,
6.

4
. Ibid., 7–15. Crowley’s sex diary often gives the impression that he suffered from an addiction. He speaks of “looking for a soul-mate, a destined bride, an affinity, a counterpartal ego, etc., and should have considered the conditions satisfied by any orifice into which I might plunge my penis at a cost not exceeding $2.50.” (Ibid., 11–12).

5
. Ibid., 11, 15.

6
. On March 4, 1915, for example, Crowley performed an opus aimed at having “All my New York debts paid within a week,” and used a peculiar mantra, “Amnydpwaw,” made up of the first letter of each word, for this purpose. He most likely learned this technique from Austin Osman Spare, who developed it. Typically, Crowley does not credit Spare. Ibid., 19.

7
. Ibid., 5.

8
. Ibid., 26.

9
. http://www.cornelius93.com/grady-warriortroubadour.html.

10
. Sutin,
Do What Thou Wilt
, 148.

11
. Crowley,
The Confessions
, 798.

12
. Crowley,
The Magical Record,
137.

13
. Crowley,
The Confessions
, 800.

14
. Oliver Marlow Wilkinson in
Dark Dimensions: A Celebration of the Occult,
ed. Colin Wilson (New York: Everett House, 1977), 111–12.

15
. Jones would later tutor the novelist Malcolm Lowry in magick. See Gary Lachman,
A Dark Muse
(New York: Thundersmouth Press, 2005), 253–61.

16
. Crowley,
The Confessions
, 771.

17
. Ibid., 805.

18
. King,
Megatherion
, 117–18. See also Symonds,
The Great Beast
, 236–39.

19
. Crowley,
The Confessions
, 747. It is possible O’Brien never existed and the story about the bus is invented. Crowley could have seen a copy of
The Fatherland
, saw that Viereck was its editor, and called at his office looking for work.

20
. Symonds,
The Great Beast
, 232.

21
. Crowley,
The Confessions
, 751.

22
. Ibid., 752.

23
. Ibid., 750.

24
. Charles Richard Cammell,
Aleister Crowley
(London: New English Library, 1969), 76.

25
. Crowley,
The Confessions,
753.

26
. Symonds,
The Great Beast
, 257–58.

27
. In 1998 I attended the exhibition of Crowley’s paintings held at London’s October Gallery; it was the first public exhibition of his work since 1931; http://www.octobergallery.co.uk/exhibitions/1998cro/index.shtml. As with much else in Crowley’s career, his painting has received renewed attention, especially in the academic world. An interesting and stimulating study of his work can be found in Marco Pasi’s article “Aleister Crowley, Painting, and the Works from the Palermo Collection” in
Abraxas International Journal of Esoteric Studies
Issue 3 (Spring 2013), 65–81.

28
. Crowley,
The Magical Record,
106.

29
. Crowley,
The Confessions,
773–74.