Aleister Crowley (45 page)

18
. Lachman,
Turn Off Your Mind
, 84.

19
. For a moving account of Leah and Mudd’s fate see Symonds,
The Great Beast
, 372–401, and Booth,
A Magick Life
, 399–421, from which this brief account is gratefully drawn.

20
. Pansophia has a prestigious pedigree, going back to the Rosicrucians. See Lachman,
Politics and the Occult
, 12–16.

21
. Symonds,
The Great Beast
, 397.

22
. For more on
Performance,
see Lachman,
Turn Off Your Mind
, 309–18.

23
. Colin Wilson,
Aleister Crowley
, 140.

24
. Phil Baker,
The Devil Is a Gentleman: The Life and Times of Dennis Wheatley
(Sawtry, Cambs: Dedalus Books, 2009), 296.

25
. Crowley was rather vain about his photographs, often taking several of the same pose, making sure he got it “just right.” Among the Gerald Yorke collection at the Warburg Institute in London, there is one photograph of Crowley in his Arab sheik persona, among many others, in which, as a friend remarked, he looked “rather normal.” On the back of it Crowley wrote that it was the worst photograph of himself he had ever seen.

26
. Regardie,
The Eye in the Triangle
, 3.

27
. Ibid., 6.

28
. Above his bed in his
Chambre des Cauchemars
at Cefalù, Crowley hung a sign that read “Alys Cusack is _ot at home!” He would add an “h” or “n” depending on his mood. Alys was Crowley’s homosexual nom de guerre.

29
. Crowley,
Magick in Theory and Practice
, 95.

30
. Ibid., 253.

31
. Symonds,
The Great Beast
, 451.

32
. As Paul Newman has pointed out, this makes it highly unlikely that Henry Miller ever met Crowley in Paris, an encounter that has been repeated more than once. In a letter of October 1935 to his friend Emil Schnellock, Miller claims that he met Crowley, who not only explained Jung’s ideas about the anima and animus to him but also loaned him money. This alone should make Miller’s claim suspect; Miller himself was as notorious a debtor as Crowley. Anaïs Nin offers some corroboration in her book
Incest
; under the heading “November 2nd, 1934,” she states that Miller had “fallen under the spell” of Crowley, who was a painter “gone mad in Zürich.” But Miller only arrived in Paris in 1930, after Crowley was expelled. Paul Newman,
The Tregerthen Horror
(Abraxas Editions, 2005), 54.

33
.
Detective,
May 1929, Gerald Yorke collection, Warburg Institute School of Advanced Studies, University of London.

34
. Booth,
A Magick Life
, 433.

35
. For more on Pessoa and the occult, see Lachman,
A Dark Muse
, 229–36.

36
. Sutin,
Do What Thou Wilt
, 358.

37
. Ibid.

38
. Holmes does this in “The Adventure of the Final Problem,” before he and Professor Moriarty plunge into the Reichenbach Falls.

39
. Christopher Isherwood,
Diaries
, ed. Katherine Bucknell,
Vol 1. 1939–1960
(New York: HarperCollins, 1997), 550.

TEN: THE SUNSET OF CROWLEYANITY

1
. Symonds,
The Great Beast
, 434.

2
. Crowley also claimed that he owned £150,000 of property in California. This was based on a claim that H. Spencer Lewis, Imperator of the Ancient Mystical Order of Rosae Crucis—or AMORC, as it is generally known—received its charter from the O.T.O. As Outer Head of the Order, Crowley naturally believed that the extensive property owned by AMORC in San Jose really belonged to him. He wrote to Lewis explaining this, but Lewis’s reply has not survived.

3
. He died, age sixty-five, in 2002. Like his father, he was fond of adopting names; he was known at different times as Randall Gair Doherty, Aleister Ataturk, Aleister MacAlpine, and Charles Edward d’Arquires. According to Paul Newman, Ataturk lived for a time with Karl Germer in the United States, then returned to Britain under a cloud—he was deported. He tried his hand at writing, but wasn’t successful, and used his family connections to “gain ascendancy in the mystical ranks.” Like his father, he had big plans that never came to fruition. He lacked
staying power and was content to make an impression by dressing up; he also was evicted on more than one occasion for not paying rent. Photographs of him with a shaved head make him look like the Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky (Newman,
The Tregerthen Horror
, 204–5).

4
. Newman,
The Tregerthen Horror
,
65.

5
. Ibid.

6
. For more on Pat Doherty’s children, see Newman,
The Tregerthen Horror
, 118.

7
. Oliver Marlow Wilkinson, in
Dark Dimensions: A Celebration of the Occult
, ed. Colin Wilson (New York: Everett House, 1977), 111.

8
. Newman,
The Tregerthen Horror
, 80.

9
. Ibid., 68–69.

10
. Alan Burnett-Rae, “A Memoir of 666,” in Sandy Robertson,
The Aleister Crowley Scrapbook
(York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, 1994), 23.

11
. Ibid.

12
. Peter Haining, ed.,
The Necromancers
(London: Coronet, 1972), 29.

13
. Baker,
The Devil Is a Gentleman
, 296, 320.

14
. Newman,
The Tregerthen Horror
, 69.

15
. http://hermetic.com/crowley/little-essays-towards-truth/trance.html.

16
. Symonds,
The Great Beast
, 41–42.

17
. The authenticity of Rauschning’s book has been questioned, but this is irrelevant in this context. Whether Hitler really said what Rauschning reports him as saying or not, Crowley believed he did.

18
. Sutin,
Do What Thou Wilt
, 378.

19
. Baker,
The Devil Is a Gentleman
, 299–300.

20
. Newman,
The Tregerthen Horror
, 82.

21
. Leslie Frewin,
Parnassus Near Piccadilly: The Café Royal Centenary Book
(London: Leslie Frewin, 1965), 32.

22
. Paul Newman’s
The Tregerthen Horror
, which I am indebted to here, is a gripping investigation into Crowley’s activities in Cornwall, and his link, if any, to the strange death of Katherine Foster at a “haunted cottage” near Zennor Carn in 1938.

23
. Whatever Crowley’s real involvement with British Intelligence, it is undeniable that he knew people who were involved. For example, Crowley introduced Pat Doherty to James McAlpine, who worked for the Secret Intelligence Service. Before the outbreak of World War II, Pat and Ataturk traveled to Greece, where she met McAlpine again; he was stationed in the Balkans. They were later married in Palestine. McAlpine was killed and Pat moved to Cairo, where she found work as a cipher clerk for the Special Operations Executive before returning to England after the war.

24
. Richard McNeff, “Crowley and the Spooks,” in
Fortean Times
231 (January 2008).

25
. Phil Baker, author of a definitive biography of Wheatley, doubts that Knight met Crowley. Knight claimed that he and Wheatley were initiated by Crowley and that they attended his “occult ceremonies.” But Crowley wasn’t performing
ceremonies at this point, and as Baker says, “he wasn’t likely to initiate anyone into much more than the mysteries of a good lunch, and then only if they were paying.” Wheatley himself was not impressed with Crowley; at least he makes no mention of their lunch in his diaries, although, as Baker points out, he did exaggerate his acquaintance with Crowley, puffing up his credibility as an occultist. But then Wheatley, like Crowley—and Maxwell Knight—liked to tell a good tale. Crowley doesn’t mention the lunch, either—he was occupied with the
Laughing Torso
trial at the time—although Wheatley was later to get a lot of mileage in his “black magic” books out of everything he “learned” from the Great Beast. Baker,
The Devil Is a Gentleman
, 353.

26
. Gary Lachman, “Britain’s High Priestess,” in
Fortean Times
287 (May 2012).

27
. http://www.100thmonkeypress.com/biblio/acrowley/books/england_stand_fast_1939/england_stand_fast_int_2.pdf.

28
. http://www.historyextra.com/qa/v-victory.

29
. One candidate proposed for the “bloke” at the BBC is Lance Sieveking, whose book
The Psychology of Flying
(1922)
Crowley enjoyed and quoted from in
The Diary of a Drug Fiend
. Sieveking later became an important BBC radio and television producer. Sieveking met Crowley in Cassis—possibly during his time there with Gerald Yorke. They talked about Crowley’s
Magick
and Sieveking thought Crowley’s ears reminded him of an elephant’s (Lance Sieveking,
The Eye of the Beholder
[London: Hulton Press, 1957], 247–51). Paul Sieveking, Lance’s son and one of the founders of the
Fortean Times
, told me that his father was certainly not the bloke, and that he had no contact with Crowley after meeting him by accident on the Riviera in 1928.

30
. An interesting account of the influences of Steiner’s ideas on Harris’s paintings can be found at http://www.parareligion.ch/dplanet/stephen/claas/olive_e.html.

31
. Aleister Crowley,
The Book of Thoth
(York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, 1984), 22.

32
. Ibid., 24.

33
. See Robert M. Place,
The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination
(New York: Tarcher/Penguin, 2005).

34
. Crowley,
The Book of Thoth
, 63.

35
. Charles Richard Cammell,
Aleister Crowley
(London: New English Library, 1969), 80.

36
. Ibid.

37
. Ibid., 96.

38
. Ibid., 104.

39
. Ibid., 106.

40
. Newman,
The Tregerthen Horror
, 82.

41
. Cammell,
Aleister Crowley
, 105.

42
. “A Gentleman of Hastings,” in Antony Clayton, Gary Lachman, Andy Sharp, et al,
Netherwood: The Last Resort of Aleister Crowley
(London: Accumulator Press, 2012), 173.

43
. http://hermetic.com/crowley/libers/lib77.html.

44
. In the 1960s, the filmmaker Kenneth Anger formed an eleven-piece rock ensemble he called The Magick Powerhouse of Oz, to provide the music to his Crowleyan film
Lucifer Rising
. Eleven, we know, is a significant number for Crowley, symbolizing homosexual magick. See my essay “Kenneth Anger: The Crowned and Conquering Child” in the BFI box set of Anger’s
Magick Lantern Cycle
(2009).

45
. http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/hymn-to-lucifer/.

46
. Brook, of course, went on to direct several important films, one of which was a version of Gurdjieff’s
Meetings with Remarkable Men
(1979).

47
. Wilson,
Aleister Crowley
, 150–51.

48
. Oliver Marlow Wilkinson in
Dark Dimensions
, 102.

49
. Symonds,
The Great Beast
, 450. For a fascinating history of Netherwood, see
Netherwood: The Last Resort of Aleister Crowley
, mentioned above, which I draw on for this section.