Crowley was, at this time, already back in Cefalù. He had no funds for a libel action; he lacked the desire for a pitched court battle; and, ironically, he somewhat relished the publicity afforded by the Sunday Express, as he believed that it would ultimately bring attention to what he viewed as the true meaning of his life and writings. In the long term—that is, posthumously—he has been borne out in this. But in the short term, the impact was devastating in terms of establishing himself as a mainstream author. His failure with Collins ended his last serious hopes in that direction. As for his complementary hope of attracting disciples to Cefalù, Drug Fiend was a disappointment here as well. There were a small number of written inquiries, but none of its readers journeyed to the Abbey.
There was, however, a new disciple upon whom Crowley found himself, in late 1922, placing the greatest hopes.
His birth name was Frederick Charles Loveday. As a young man he took on the name “Raoul,” and it is as Raoul Loveday that he is remembered. His parents were lower middle class, but Loveday managed not only to win a scholarship to Oxford, but also to graduate with a First in History from St. John’s College. Loveday’s range of interests included Egyptology and the occult. He possessed fair hair which he wore rather long for the period. His eyes were deepset and his face lean with prominent cheekbones.
Loveday was twenty-three, and just recently married, when he and Crowley first met in London in the late summer of 1922. His wife, an artist’s model named Betty May, was several years Loveday’s senior and had been twice previously married. May had earned a considerable reputation in bohemian circles by sitting for the sculptor Jacob Epstein (whose “Balzac” Crowley had championed back in 1911) for the creation of his bust “The Savage,” which featured May’s dramatically angular face and flared nostrils. May and Crowley had met briefly back in 1914, but neither left a lasting impression on the other. They would now engage quite literally in a battle of wills for the soul of Raoul Loveday.
At this time, Loveday and May were living together—primarily on May’s earnings as a model—in a tawdry third-floor flat just off Regent Street. Loveday had already delved into Crowley’s published works, and when their mutual acquaintance Betty Bickers offered the younger man an introduction to the famed and notorious Crowley, Loveday accepted with alacrity. According to May—who in 1929 would publish an autobiography of her own, entitled Tiger-Woman, after her nickname within bohemia—Loveday did not return for two days. When Loveday did at last come home, he was “covered with dust and soot, and his breath reeked of ether. I put him to bed, where he lay in a doped sleep until the middle of the following day. When he awoke I found out that he had spent the whole time he had been away with the great mystic, and that he had taken the drug to excite the mystical activities of his soul.”
May was herself no stranger to drugs, acknowledging in Tiger-Woman that, for several years during her twenties, she had been a cocaine addict. She now took a dim view of Loveday’s entrancement both with drugs and with Crowley and sought to make her husband give up both. For Crowley, the stakes were equally high. His efforts at developing disciples had come to a standstill. Now there was Loveday: “This was the man I had needed for the past ten years, a man with every gift that a Magus might need, and already prepared for initiation by practically complete knowledge, not only of the elements but of the essence of Magick.” The time frame of ten years indicates that, in Loveday, Crowley sought a successor to Victor Neuburg. But unlike with Neuburg, there is no evidence that Crowley desired Loveday as a lover. Betty May, for all her accusations against Crowley, alleged nothing of the sort.
In October 1922, Crowley departed for Cefalù. En route, he posted a letter to Loveday urging him to follow with May in tow. May threatened to stay behind—only to have her bluff called by Loveday, who declared himself willing to go on alone. She then reluctantly agreed to accompany him, in the hope of thereby saving the marriage. The two found themselves without funds by the time they reached the Sicilian port city of Palermo. To pay for their train fares to Cefalù, Loveday sold the wedding ring he had given May. Enraged, she ran off and considered throwing herself at the mercy of the British consul for fare money back to London. But after some hours, she rejoined her husband.
They arrived at Cefalù on November 26, 1922. Their knock upon the Abbey door was answered by Crowley, who admitted Loveday after a proper exchange of the Thelemic greeting lines, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law” and “Love is the law, love under will.” But when May offered only “Good evening” in response, Crowley—“absolutely quivering with rage” according to May—demanded that she follow form or be denied entrance. It was the first of many assertions of Thelemic jurisdiction that May would face. In this case, she complied.
The responses of husband and wife to Abbey life were fundamentally opposed. For Loveday, it was an opportunity to pursue the path of wisdom under a living master. For May, it was forced confinement in a remote and eccentric household. Crowley saw Loveday as achieving in mere weeks what would have required long years under the Old Aeon Golden Dawn framework. Loveday’s new magical name of Frater Aud was a Hebrew reference to astral or magical light and, through kabbalistic gematria, to the number eleven ascribed to magic.
By late December, the couple moved into their own separate room in the Umbilicus. There is no evidence that either husband or wife participated in sexual magic during their stay. But they were both made subject to Crowley’s strict magical discipline—though with rather differing results. Both May and Loveday were given razors, to be self-administered upon their arms should they lapse into the use of “I”—a pronoun permitted to Crowley alone amongst the Abbey residents. May would have none of it. “I spoke exactly as I should wherever I was. I believe I threw the razor away. But poor Raoul, who took the whole thing with deadly seriousness, could not prevent himself from constantly saying ‘I,’ and he was so conscientious that he always wounded himself as a punishment, until his body was covered with cuts.”
The enmity between May and Crowley flared all the more as a result of the illness that befell Loveday in January 1923. May conceded that, initially, she mistakenly attributed it to two causes—drug use (Loveday had, at Crowley’s urging, been experimenting with large quantities of hashish) and the toxic effect of the consumption of cat’s blood as part of a ritual sacrifice in which Loveday presided. Crowley did not speak of this ceremony in the Confessions; May’s account, which may be exaggerated, is nonetheless fascinating in its depiction of Crowley’s “hypnotic powers.”
According to May, a cat that frequented the Abbey for food scraps was perceived by Crowley to be an evil spirit. Crowley grabbed the cat, which in turn severely scratched his arm. Crowley then resolved that it would be sacrificed in three days time by Loveday. As he announced this decree, “The Mystic held up his wand and made the sign of the Pentagram. ‘You will not move till the hour of sacrifice,’ he said to the cat. The animal stiffened and became as if petrified.” Beyond question, if this occurred, it was most unusual feline behavior. The next morning, May carried the cat from the Abbey, but it returned on its own.
Alas, Crowley’s powers were insufficient to render the cat immobile during the ceremony itself. Loveday had been supplied by Crowley with a Gurkha kukkri—a weapon with a boomerang-shaped blade. Loveday wielded it awkwardly and his first slash at the cat’s neck failed to end its life. Despite having been quieted by a dab of ether, the wounded cat now escaped from Loveday’s grasp and ran about before being all but decapitated by Loveday’s second slash. A bowl captured a quantity of the flowing blood, which was then consecrated by Crowley. Dipping his finger in the blood, Crowley traced a pentagram on Loveday’s forehead, then scooped some of the blood into a silver cup and gave it to Loveday who, May wrote, “drained it to the dregs.”
All of this made for high drama, but the actual cause of Loveday’s illness—diagnosed by the attending physician, a Dr. Maggio, as enteric fever—was an infection contracted by drinking
from a mountain spring in the countryside outside Cefalù. Loveday and May had gone off on a hiking expedition; the diversion had been suggested by Crowley, who also warned the couple about drinking from the local springs. May heeded him, but Loveday, who had grown very thirsty, could not resist.
By the second week in February, Loveday had weakened to the point that any physical movement was difficult for him. He and May had been writing a series of letters to Loveday’s mother in England, reassuring her—despite the ongoing tabloid attacks—that Crowley and his Abbey were respectable and that they were safe there. But in a letter of February 11—dictated by Loveday from his bed and transcribed by May—a tone of desperation emerged. Loveday confessed that he had been suffering from fever and diarrhea for some ten days and that “it has left me as weak as water.” He also stated his intention to return with May to England as soon as he felt well enough to do so.
Unbeknownst to her husband, May added a note to the back of Loveday’s letter which conveyed—for the first time, after two months of reassurance—an urgent warning to his mother. Her son was too weak to be moved, and Crowley had become a manipulative tyrant:
He is laying down all sorts of rules, rules that could not possibly be kept. I have never worked so hard in my life as I have here. I am very ill, myself, but I am looking after Raoul as best I can. He wants a good warm bed and nourishment which we cannot get here. If Raoul gets better Crowley thinks of parting us and what can we do. We have got no money and are dependent upon him for our food.
On this very day, May explained, Crowley had ordered her out of the Abbey, but she had refused to leave Loveday in his hands.
As to the events of this day—February 11, 1923—differing versions survive in writings by May, Hirsig, and Crowley. The initial cause of the uproar was May’s insistence on reading—while on the Abbey premises, and hence in violation of the Abbey rules, to which both May and Loveday had sworn adherence in writing upon their arrival—English newspapers sent by Loveday’s mother on a fortnightly basis at Loveday’s request. On February 11, Loveday was too weak to read them. May retired to her own room to do so. Here is her account of what ensued:
I had not been reading long when the Mystic strode in, his face twitching with rage. He ordered me to go. There was a terrific scene. I should have said before that there were several loaded revolvers which used to lie about the abbey. They were very necessary, for we never knew whether brigands might not attack it. The Mystic used to shoot any dogs that came anywhere near the abbey with his revolver. He was an extremely good shot. It so happened that I had found one of these revolvers lying about the day before, and it suddenly occurred to me that it would be a wise precaution to hide it under my pillow. I now seized it and fired it wildly at the Mystic. It went wide of the mark. He laughed heartily. Then I rushed at him, but could not get a grip on his shaved head. He picked me up in his arms and flung me bodily outside, through the front door.
Crowley, in the Confessions, described the fight in a sangfroid tone and made no mention of a pistol. May did fling a glass at his head, he allowed, but at no time did his own emotions rise to rage. “I tried to soothe her and abate her violence. Poor Raoul, weak as he was, got up and held her and begged her to be quiet. At last she calmed down, but the room was a wreck.” Loveday was moved to Crowley’s room. And then, according to Crowley, May made her departure into Cefalù—not by his order, but by her resolve. “Both Raoul and Alostrael begged her to be sensible, but off she went to the hotel where she was at once consoled by a series of admirers.”
The sneering implication here is sexual, but the more real concern for Crowley was the sympathy May might win from the authorities, both Sicilian and British. Wolfe was sent down to the hotel early the next morning—February 12—to visit with May and learn her intentions. May informed her that she planned to send an urgent telegraph to Loveday’s father and to speak with both the Commissario of Cefalù and the British Consul in Palermo. Wolfe promptly returned to the Abbey, where she transcribed a letter dictated by Loveday which pleaded with May to return. May did so, whereupon she was given an affidavit drawn up by Hirsig and told to sign it as a condition of her reentry. That affidavit concurs with Crowley’s version in essential details. No mention is made of a gun.
The next morning Loveday’s condition worsened. The following day, February 14, Dr. Maggio was summoned from town and made the diagnosis of acute enteritis. As to this turn of events, Crowley felt intense grief but no real surprise. On February 13 he had recorded in his diary: “I feel a current of Magical force—heavy, black and silent—threatening the Abbey.” According to May, Crowley had, during this period, cast the horoscope of Loveday and concluded that there had fallen, upon the latter, “A very gloomy depression. It looks as though you might die on the sixteenth of February at four o’clock.” Crowley never himself claimed to have performed this act of prescience. Loveday—in Crowley’s view the most brilliant disciple to have come to Cefalù—died on February 16 at approximately 4 P.M.
Neither Crowley nor May were present at the moment of his passing. In the Confessions, Crowley offered what must have been his wish for Loveday’s final moments: “Raoul developed paralysis of the heart and died at once without fear or pain. It was as if a man, tired of staying indoors, had gone out for a walk.”
May remained peacefully at the Abbey for three more days, when money for her return fare arrived from the British consulate—this in response to a subdued letter (drafted by Hirsig and signed by May) sent on February 12. There had, in short, been a détente achieved between May and Crowley—bitter adversaries for over two months—during the final week of Loveday’s life.
As for Crowley, he fell seriously ill immediately after the conclusion of the funeral and was bedridden, with bouts of high fever, for several weeks. Hirsig and Wolfe served as his nurses; but toward the end of February Wolfe was sent to London to raise funds for the Abbey. For the first time in roughly two years, the original residents of the Abbey were alone.
But not for long. May, upon returning to London, was interviewed by the Sunday Express—the same tabloid that led the attack on Drug Fiend. A front-page article ran on February 25, 1923 with the tiered headline:
NEW SINISTER RELATIONS OF ALEISTER CROWLEY.
VARSITY LAD’S DEATH.
Enticed To “Abbey”.
Dreadful Ordeal of a Young Wife.
Crowley’s Plans.
The article itself was an admixture of bare fact and troweled-on innuendo. While Loveday’s death is correctly ascribed to enteritis, he is also referred to as one of Crowley’s “latest victims”—along with May herself. The melodramatic plotline was pursued throughout the piece. For example: “Once they were in Sicily, however, they found they had been trapped in an inferno, a maelstrom of filth and obscenity. Crowley’s purpose was to corrupt them both to his own ends.”
The Sunday Express followed up—on March 4—with a further account of the horrors of the Beast and his Abbey: “This man Crowley is one of the most sinister figures of modern times. He is a drug fiend, an author of vile books, the spreader of obscene practices.” John Bull, which had nipped at Crowley’s heels since the Rites of Eleusis in 1910, now took over as the lead attacker. In a series of six pieces published in April and May 1923, Crowley was headlined as “The King of Depravity,” “The Wickedest Man in the World,” and “A Cannibal at Large.” The latter title was not intended metaphorically; John Bull averred that Crowley had, during a Himalayan expedition, killed and eaten two of his native porters. The legend of Crowley had reached its exfoliating apex.
* * *
In the Confessions, Crowley insisted that he was above it all—as indeed, in certain of his moods, he was. When he learned that his friend William Seabrook was doing a similar series of lurid features on Crowley in America, tailored to the tastes of the Hearst Sunday tabloid chain—with headlines such as “SECRETS BEHIND THE SCENES AMONG THE DEVIL-WORSHIPPERS”—Crowley concluded that Seabrook “was as fair as his
circumstances permitted” and that the result would be “to familiarize the American public with my name and interest them in my career sufficiently to induce the few intelligent individuals who have read it to inquire independently into the facts of my case.” The lurid publicity did attract intelligent interest amongst a few. But it also served to fascinate a large number of fools drawn to imitate the worst of the gothic legend. These fools are with us to this day. There was, however, a more immediate result of the 1923 attacks which Crowley never acknowledged. In his native England, for the remainder of his life, his reputation had at last been damaged beyond repair.
Back in Cefalù, Crowley was preparing for the arrival of a disciple named Norman Mudd—the same Mudd who had been a compatriot of Victor Neuburg in the Cambridge student–club efforts on Crowley’s behalf back in 1910. Mudd arrived at the Abbey on April 22, 1923. His timing could not have been less fortunate. An order of expulsion was read to Crowley, in the Office of the Commissario in Cefalù, on the morning of April 23.
At first, by Crowley’s account, the police insisted that all Abbey members were to leave. But Crowley prevailed on his point that the order, as issued, applied to himself alone. Crowley then asked for a week to prepare for his departure; this was granted. Mudd and Shumway would stay behind to care for the Abbey; Hirsig would accompany Crowley in his exile. With the departure of the Beast and the Scarlet Woman, however, the energies that fueled the Abbey were gone. There would be various residents over the next two years, with Shumway the most consistent presence. But the vital existence of the Abbey was at an end.
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