The story of their work together survives only through Crowley’s version in the Confessions. Tankerville, a wealthy man in his early fifties, came to Crowley in the spring of 1907 convinced that his mother, in league with others, was out to kill him by magical means. He further felt that his wife and son might also be in danger. For all his nervousness and vices, Tankerville was devoted to his family—a trait Crowley viewed as a sentimental encumbrance from which his student required extraction. Their training began in April 1907; Crowley took Tankerville’s tales of magical peril at face value so as “not to undeceive the patient” but rather conquer the obsession head-on. Surprisingly, Crowley suggested, as a means of defence, the precept to love one’s enemy. According to Crowley, Christianity had misinterpreted this precept by imposing upon it a moral meaning. In truth, it was a paradox illustrating the energies of the mind: By emitting a calm, impersonal love, evil currents directed at one would necessarily recoil and destroy one’s foe.
But Crowley concluded that their magical practice in England was insufficient to bring about a healing transformation. The Earl’s wife remained a persistent distraction, as were the children. It was essential that they make a Great Retirement together. Crowley decided upon Morocco, by way of Paris, Marseilles, and Gibraltar. “I was of course in paradise,” Crowley wrote, “to be once more among Mohammedans, with their manliness, straightforwardness, subtlety and self-respect!” The trip was, plainly, a fulfillment of Crowley’s own desires, with the further hope that Tankerville, once forced into unfamiliar and rigorous conditions, would cast aside his Anglo-Saxon fears and prejudices. This was Crowley’s standard prescription for spiritual transformation; it had served Crowley well, by his own lights. That it was not a suitable course of learning—or treatment—for all who came to him served to perplex him time and again. Tankerville proved immune to the charms of Morocco and soon insisted on a return to England.
There was a further element that contributed to the end of the relationship. Crowley was a great believer in pushing his students to the limit through means including intensive verbal abuse: The more difficult the training, the more a student would gain—if he was worthy; and if he was not, a kindlier manner would not, in any event, have sufficed. But Tankerville grew restive. We know this from Crowley’s Preface to his satiric play, The World’s Tragedy, in which he allowed that: “My readers, too, may be weary. They may say to me, as Lord Tankerville said to me at eleven A.M. on the 7th of July 1907, ‘I’m sick of your teaching—teaching—teaching—as if you were God Almighty and I were a poor bloody shit in the street!’—
“I could not blame them.”
Teaching efforts aside, Crowley proudly viewed 1907 as his “annus mirabilis in poetry.” Prolific he certainly was, with Clouds Without Water and numerous lyrics that would be included in the mixed essay and verse volume Knox Om Pax (1907). But his most exceptional work may be found in two “Holy Books”—in A∴A∴ parlance, Class “A” reading materials that “represent the utterance of an Adept entirely beyond the criticism of even the Visible Head of the Organization,” that is, Crowley himself. Their creation somewhat paralleled that of The Book of the Law, though Crowley always set the latter work unto itself as a primary revelation.
Crowley had been working with Fuller and Jones on the ritual design of the new A∴A∴. And then, without warning, the Holy Books—rhapsodic, jagged, epigrammatic utterances in a poetic prose style closely akin to that of the Book—“begin to be received at will,” as Crowley later expressed it. These were, in his view, neither of his own composition nor instances of automatic writing. “I can only say that I was not wholly conscious at the time of what I was writing, and I felt that I had no right to ‘change’ so much as the style of a letter. They were written with the utmost rapidity without pausing for thought for a single moment, and I have not presumed to revise them. Perhaps ‘plenary inspiration’ is the only adequate phrase, and this has become so discredited that people are loath to admit the possibility of such a thing.” There were a total of thirteen such Holy Books. Of these, eight were transcribed during the last three months of 1907. Crowley regarded as primary the first two received by him: Liber Liberi Vel Lapidis Lazuli (The Book of Lapis Lazuli)—which he put to paper in a three-hour span on the night of October 29—and Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente (The Book of the Heart Girt with a Serpent)—transcribed in four subsequent sessions from October 30 to November 3.
As to the former work, the precious stone lapis lazuli, an ornament of victory and attainment, is blue violet with specks of gold; these specks, by Crowley’s kabbalistic interpretation, represent “that dust which is all that remains of the Exempt Adept after he has crossed the Abyss, is gradually surrounded by sphere after sphere of shining splendour, so that he becomes a fitting ornament for the bosom of the Great Mother.” The dust becomes a pearl, and the joining with the Great Mother is the attainment of the sphere Binah (Understanding)—the first sphere of the Supernal Triad of the kabbalistic Tree of Life. Lapis Lazuli sets forth Crowley’s new magical name as a Master of the Temple; V.V.V.V.V., for Vi Veri Vniversum Vivus Vici—“By the force of Truth I have conquered the Universe while living.”
The Book of the Heart Girt with a Serpent is a still more striking achievement. The kabbalistic number assigned to this book by Crowley, sixty-five, signifies both Adonai (one of the Hebrew names of God) and also Augoeides, Crowley’s Holy Guardian Angel. The five chapters which make up Heart explore the five spiritual elements of Western esotericism—earth, air, water, fire, and spirit. The opening lines blend Western symbolism (the heart as center of the human soul) and Eastern symbolism (the serpent as the rising Kundalini energy and the flowers as the highest chakra of enlightenment, the thousand-petalled lotus Sahasrara):
I am the Heart; and the Snake is entwined
About the invisible core of the mind.
Rise, O my snake! It is now the hour
Of the hooded and holy ineffable flower.
Rise, O my snake, into brilliance of bloom
On the corpse of Osiris afloat in the tomb!
The Holy Books reflect the best of Crowley the poet, though he would not have categorized them as “literature.” He himself regarded, as his finest verse of this period, the satiric drama The World’s Tragedy, composed in February 1908 with a Preface added later in the summer. The World’s Tragedy is an impassioned assault upon Christianity as a death knell of the human spirit. The incarnation comes in for especial ridicule, as when the Holy Ghost—cast as a lusting fiend—impregnates an outraged yet impassioned Miriam (Mary), who is thus awakened to her true nature as a Scarlet Woman: “I am the Empress of the City of Sin,/ Wrapped in its purple robe/ Stained with mine own maid’s blood.” In the final act, there is prophesied—by Alexander, the pagan king of Babylonia—the coming of a new prophet and saviour who (as Crowley specifies in his Preface) is Crowley himself.
It is this autobiographical Preface, and not the play itself, which forms the most remarkable portion of The World’s Tragedy. Crowley later noted (without offering a reason therefor) that two pages of the Preface had been mutilated in all copies of the book except those given to close friends. Those two pages contained his first frank declaration of the homosexual aspect of his bisexuality. That Crowley himself had a hand in the mutilation cannot be confirmed, but it seems most likely, especially given his statement in the Preface that he had, for a time, considered publishing the book under a pseudonym. Given that mutilation, and the book’s issuance in a private edition of 100 copies in 1910, his declaration can hardly be regarded as a public event. Nonetheless, it was an act of some courage in the climate of Edwardian England; one need only consider, by way of contrast, the lifelong cautious discretions of the Bloomsbury circle. The deleted pages of his Preface devoted to this subject were boldly subtitled “Sodomy” and argued that “in truth there seems no better way to avoid the contamination of woman and the morose pleasures of solitary vice. (Not that women themselves are unclean. It is the worsh
ip of them as ideals that rots the soul.)” Crowley had stressed earlier in this Preface that he was in love with his own wife. But his defiance was such that he vowed to “fight openly for that which no living Englishman dare defend, even in secret—sodomy!” In fact, Crowley did not fight openly for this cause; as previously discussed, even the Confessions are circumspect on this subject.
This Preface is also noteworthy for Crowley’s careful distinction between his hatred for the slave morality of the Christian establishment as opposed to the teachings of Jesus (whom he held to be a “legendary” composite rather than a strictly historical figure). Indeed, Crowley strained here toward a moderation that seldom showed itself in his attacks: “I do not wish to argue that the doctrines of Jesus, they and they alone, have degraded the world to its present position. I take it that Christianity is not only the cause but the symptom of slavery.” At this point, Crowley was not consciously arguing for The Book of the Law; he had, in fact, lost track of the whereabouts of the manuscript. But he nonetheless proclaimed himself a prophet in dire need of followers to overthrow the Christian yoke:
One thing I must ask; let this book be assiduously circulated among the young. Let me seduce the boys of England, and the oldsters may totter unconverted to their graves. Then these boys, becoming men, may bring about the new heaven and the new earth. You are not a Crowleian till you can say “Yes, thank God, I am an atheist.” For the ‘transvaluation of all values’ must yet again take place, when those are all dead and damned who have forced us into the painful position we now occupy.[ … ]
Young men! there is the enemy. I am no coward, I hope; and believe that I may make a fairly good general—at least no traitor. But without an army I am useless; a Napoleon at St. Helena.
The hope of seducing “boys,” conjoined with the defense of sodomy, would, of course, have particularly appalled right-minded readers—then and now (though it should be made clear that Crowley was referring to college students willing to be seduced, as opposed to child abuse or pedophilia). The military campaign metaphor showed the influence of Fuller. And it was with Fuller’s assistance that Crowley now undertook to enlist young men to his cause by paying visits, in 1908 and 1909, to Oxford and, more frequently, to his old haunts at Cambridge.
There were few students at either institution who paid serious heed to Crowley. But he did leave a lasting mark on a small group of young admirers who believed in his role as teacher of a new esotericism, one both spiritually exalted and in accord with science. Victor Neuburg was one of these; he gave himself fully to Crowley, embracing the teachings of the Master and falling in love with the man.
The two men first met in the spring of 1908. Neuburg was twenty-five, seven years Crowley’s junior. He had been raised in an upper middle-class Jewish family in London. After having proven himself unfit for commerce, Neuburg entered Trinity College, Cambridge—Crowley’s alma mater—as a relatively old undergraduate in 1906. By this time, Neuburg had published poems in freethinking periodicals including The Agnostic Journal, to which Fuller had also contributed. It was through that journal that Fuller and Neuburg became acquainted in 1906; Fuller later recommended the young poet to Crowley as a suitable prospect for the A∴A∴. When Crowley, some two years later, paid an unannounced visit to Neuburg in his Trinity rooms, the impact of the meeting upon both men was profound. Neuburg had thick curly brown hair, intense blue eyes, languid features, and a head that seemed altogether too large for his body, which was wracked by curvature of the spine. Crowley declared that “from the first moment I saw him [ … ] I read an altogether extraordinary capacity for Magick.” Neuburg had already rejected the Judeo-Christian concept of a personal God, but clung to the idea of an immanent Spirit. His first volume of poetry, The Green Garland (published in 1908), reflected these metaphysical concerns even prior to his meeting with Crowley. But Crowley the teacher seemed to offer a path to far more meaningful insights, by offering to guide the younger man through magical ordeals of the Beast’s own design.
Neuburg’s entrance into Crowley’s life coincided with the further distancing of relations between Crowley and Rose, whose drinking continued to distress him. In January 1908, Crowley had moved out of their London home at 21 Warwick Road and took lodgings at 50 rue Vavin in Paris. The hotel and its tolerant owners—an amiable Parisian bourgeois family who understood and enjoyed Crowley’s ways—suited the Beast, who would use the address as a pied-à-terre for years to come. Crowley remained in Paris through April 1908, when he returned to England and found no change in Rose’s condition. In a letter from this period, Crowley detailed the behavior that had driven him from his wife: “Life with Rose is intolerable while she locks me out of the house, insults her own guests at my table, uses foul language to servants, reels up Bond St. [in London] charging into passers-by, goes from crisis to crisis of hysteria, tells people wild & impossible lies about me etc etc etc ad nauseam.” To Fuller, in another letter, Crowley confided: “I don’t think we should shut our eyes to the fact that I am now a batchelor [sic] to all intents and purposes; and what’s better one in the glorious and unassailable position of not being able to marry if I want to! There’s a stance!”
Crowley now employed a London physician, W. Murray Leslie, to treat his wife. In June 1908, Leslie at last prevailed upon Rose—who had rejected similar pleas by Crowley—to hire responsible live-in caretakers to watch over Lola Zaza and herself. Crowley returned to Paris in July, free to relish a bohemian life devoted to magic, literature, and pleasure. He also supervised Fuller in the writing of The Temple of Solomon the King. But Crowley’s energies could not be fully occupied by writing alone. Neuburg came to join him once the Cambridge spring term ended, and Crowley now turned his primary attention to this young man.
Neuburg was almost assuredly a virgin when he arrived in Paris. Crowley promptly resolved to address this sheltered ignorance. Crowley’s own erotic attentions were now being occupied by a new love, Euphemia Lamb, the wife of the artist Henry Lamb. She was, by all accounts, remarkable not only for her beauty—with her pale oval face, classical features, and honey brown hair, she sat as a frequent model for Augustus John and other painters—but also for her intelligence and fearless wit. It was with Euphemia’s assistance that Crowley devised a means to shock Neuburg into consciousness of the sexual ways of the world.
The plan was for Crowley to encourage Neuburg, who was also attracted to Euphemia, to woo and then—as was proper—propose to her. Euphemia acted the innocent, smitten damsel to the hilt. Feigning ignorance of their chaste engagement, Crowley convinced Neuburg that he had to experience sexual initiation by visiting a prostitute—a woman named Marcelle, whom Crowley had himself frequented. Once this was accomplished, Crowley “discovered” the engagement and, with pretended horror, convinced Neuburg to reveal the truth of his infidelity to the wronged Euphemia. Neuburg, with great self-loathing, did so; Euphemia refused to forgive him. After three days of intense remorse, Neuburg was led to Crowley’s hotel room, where Euphemia sat “unadorned, smoking a cigarette on my bed. The boy was absolutely stunned. Even with the evidence in front of his eyes, he was loth [sic] to admit the truth. His ideal woman was shattered thoroughly and forever.” In this early teaching, Crowley declared himself—by displaying the nude Euphemia on his own bed—Neuburg’s sexual master.
After roughly a month together in Paris, with Neuburg pursuing a course of vigils and fasts, Crowley adjudged that changed—and more rigorous—conditions were necessary. As with the Earl of Tankerville, Crowley proposed a walk through Spain and Morocco. For the bookish Neuburg, the experience was a physical and psychological terra incognita. They departed from Paris on July 31 and reached Morocco in September. Crowley was enraptured: “My spiritual self is at home in China, but my heart and my hand are pledged to the Arab.”
During this walking trip, Crowley took the opportunity—in good military fashion (again reflecting the influence of Fuller)—to formulate five basic principles that could guide him in becoming
a world teacher. In occult terms, it was essential to avoid the naïveté of “mixing the planes”—that is, of insisting that the heights of mystical insight enabled one to overlook the practicalities of daily life. First, social status was crucial, particularly given the foul reputation of magic: “I decided first of all, that the most important point was never to forget that I was a gentleman and keep my honour the more spotless [in] that I was assuming a position whose professors were rarely well born [ … ]” After this came four further standards of conduct: Not to receive money for the teaching of magic; not to commit himself to “any statement that I could not prove in the same sense as a chemist can prove the law of combining weights”; to uphold the dignity of magic through the application of science and philosophy and noble literary style; and finally, as “a point of honesty not to pretend to be better than I was. I would avoid concealing my faults and foibles. I would have no one accept me on false pretences.” This latter point was particularly vital as Crowley was “anxious to prove that spiritual progress did not depend on religious or moral codes, but was like any other science. Magick would yield its secrets to the infidel and the libertine, just as one does not have to be a churchwarden in order to discover a new kind of orchid.”
In his account of this summer walking trip in the Confessions, Crowley never alluded to his personal relations with Neuburg. It is in the latter’s poetry that evidence is to be found of their passion. Neuburg’s second volume of poems, The Triumph of Pan (1910), was published under the aegis of Crowley’s Equinox. This volume, which remains Neuburg’s major work, alludes to Crowley under the pseudonym “Olivia Vane”—a reflection both of Crowley’s passive ‘female’ role in their lovemaking, and of Neuburg’s caution on the subject of his own bisexuality. In one poem, Crowley is addressed as “Sweet Wizard, in whose footsteps I have trod/Unto the shrine of the most obscene god”—the latter a reference to Pan, the horned god whose all-encompassing life force (which included all forms of sexual union) was regarded as obscene by society at large. A later poem includes a deliberate gender fluctuation to express the bisexual psychological roles played by the two men in their magical practice and lovemaking:
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