Do What Thou Wilt

by Lawrence Sutin

  As scholar Keith Richmond has observed, “Stephensen and Crowley were no fools when it came to financial matters, and it must have occurred to them that any publicity arising from the incident would be helpful in selling Crowley’s books.” Stephensen had 1,000 copies of the lecture text printed up posthaste as a sixteen-page pamphlet titled The Banned Lecture. Gilles de Rais. Thanks to prominent coverage of the controversy by the Oxford newspapers, and the deployment of Calder-Marshall and other students wearing sandwich-signs to hawk the pamphlet in the streets, sales were brisk—and Crowley attracted far more attention than he would have had the lecture been held without opposition.

  As for the text of The Banned Lecture, it is rather disappointing—in essence, a polemic against Christianity that repeats arguments made more artfully in the works of his youth. Clearly, Crowley perceived certain parallels between the blackened public reputations of Gilles and himself. But Crowley downplayed the likelihood that Gilles had committed murder on the grand scale: “The one thing of which I feel certain is that 800 children is a lot. I don’t know over how many years these practices were supposed to have spread. As I think you must all feel sure by now, I know nothing whatever of my subject.” Crowley was admirably forthright here. The French cultural theorist Georges Bataille, who cannot be accused of Catholic bias, reviewed both secular and ecclesiastical trial records and concluded that Gilles was indeed a mass murderer of children. But in Magick—which would at last be published in this same year, 1930—Crowley again courted comparison with Gilles, this time by an esoteric joke fashioned so as to entice credulous readers to believe that Crowley himself was a murderer of children.

  The passage in question occurs in Chapter 12, “Of the Bloody Sacrifice and Matters Cognate,” which analyzes the significance of human and animal blood—and other bodily fluids and substances (the “Matters Cognate”)—in magical ritual. Drawing a direct parallel to teachings of Catholicism, Judaism, Hinduism, and other world religions, he argued that blood and other bodily substances were traditionally—and rightly—viewed as primal, divine sources of energy. With respect to magical ritual, Crowley concluded: “For the highest spiritual working one must accordingly choose that victim which contains the greatest and purest force. A male child of perfect innocence and high intelligence is the most satisfactory and suitable victim.” Then, in an accompanying footnote, Crowley added, “It appears from the Magical Records of Frater Perdurabo that He made this particular sacrifice on an average about 150 times per year between 1912 E.V. and 1928 E.V.”

  At the outset of this chapter, Crowley had pointedly observed that his concluding remarks on sacrifice alluded to a mystery that might be misunderstood. But a goodly percentage of readers could have been counted on to take his remarks literally, as proved to be the case. Hymenaeus Beta has observed that “There is no passage in Crowley’s writings with as many warnings against misinterpretation, yet no passage has been used against Crowley as frequently, in life or posthumously.[ … ] it is sexual sacrifice, the ‘sacrifice of oneself spiritually,’ that is the thinly veiled subject of the chapter.” This veil was also a venting of rage against Christendom. Why else exceed, by one’s own estimates, the murder total of Gilles himself?

  The British occult writer Violet Firth—better known as Dion Fortune—who gained a broad readership during this period, openly acknowledged her indebtedness to Crowley’s writings, most notably in her “Foreword” to The Mystical Qabalah (1935). In a contemporaneous essay “The Occult Field Today,” Fortune stressed both the value and the danger of Crowley’s Magick: “[O]nly the advanced student could use it with profit. It is very uneven in its literary quality; contains much grossness and ribaldry, like all Crowley’s writings, and much of it is deliberately obscure and allusive.”

  Fortune’s criticisms illustrate the difficulties Crowley faced in winning over the “respectable” wing of British and American occultism, for whom Fortune spoke then and now. They contain just points: Magick is undoubtedly a text for advanced students, and much of it is “deliberately obscure and allusive.” But the “deliberately” deserves emphasis, for Crowley also made it clear to the reader that his subject matter required a subtle presentation. As for the “literary quality” of the book, it is anything but uneven; Magick is a modernist masterwork. The “grossness and ribaldry” Fortune refers to would include the matter of male sacrifices discussed above. Fortune, like Crowley, mirrored the prudishness of the time—Fortune by her tact (sexual magic is the subject of several of her fictional and nonfictional works, but no sexual act is ever explicitly described) and Crowley by his outlandish defiance.

  Fortune’s essay did include this qualified endorsement: “But while I entirely dissociate myself from Crowley’s methods, I would not wish to minimize his contribution to occult literature, which is of the highest value. From his books the advanced student, who knows how to read between the lines and refine the gold from the dross, can learn an immense amount, and if our interest is limited to an author’s writings, we need not concern ourselves with his personal character or private life.”

  Fortune is correct in her judgment of Crowley’s “contribution to occult literature.” Magick is a watershed in the history of that literature—the first work to strip the subject of its gothic trappings and bring it fully into the modern world. Its arguments are ruthlessly practical—assuming, of course, that the reader will allow that there is such a thing as the “Great Work” that is attainable by human consciousness. There is, indeed, a religious belief at the heart of the book: a conviction that the life of fulfillment of the inmost spirit—the Will—is the highest form of life. Scoff at this and you scoff not only at Magick but at religion itself. Grant it as a nondenominational goal and Magick may have something to teach you. After all, the definition of “Magick” offered in the Introduction is catholic enough: “MAGICK is the Science and Art of Causing Change to occur in conformity with Will.”

  Consider this brief sampling of metaphysical maxims from various chapters of Magick; the boldfacing (as with the definition above) is by Crowley himself:

  All discussions upon philosophy are necessarily sterile, since truth is beyond language. They are, however, useful if carried far enough—if carried to the point when it becomes apparent that all arguments are arguments in a circle. But discussions of the details of purely imaginary qualities are frivolous and may be deadly. For the great danger of this magical theory is that the student may mistake the alphabet for the things which the words represent.

  [T]here is no doubt that an assemblage of persons who really are in harmony can much more easily produce an effect than a magician working by himself. The psychology of “Revival meetings” will—alas! be familiar to almost everyone, and though such meetings are the foulest and most degraded rituals of black magic, the laws of Magick are not thereby suspended. The laws of Magick are the laws of Nature.

  The student must guard himself constantly against supposing that this art [of divination, by tarot, the I Ching or other like means] affords any absolute means of discovering “truth,” or indeed, of using that word as if it meant more than the relation of two ideas each of which is itself as subject to “change without notice” as a musical programme.

  The issuance of Magick in the summer of 1930 had little public impact. But there was one remarkable response. Victor Neuburg, Crowley’s magical disciple and great love of the prewar years, glowingly reviewed the book for The Sunday Referee in October 1930: “The writer’s accomplishment is patent; he is a master, at any rate, of prose; his power of expression is as near perfect as that of any author I have read.” This judgment by Neuburg, who bore a lasting unease toward his former master, may be seen both as an instance of intellectual courage and as a gesture of tacit reconciliation—at a distance. As to the latter, Neuburg succeeded; the Beast, in his diary, noted his pleasure at the review.

  But few joined with Neuburg in offering praise. Meanwhile, the Mandrake Press, Ltd.—the anticipated vehicle for Crowley’
s work in England—sank into bankruptcy in November 1930. Later in the decade, the American comic strip “Mandrake the Magician” derived its name from the deceased press and its association with Crowley, though the Beast never knew of this.

  As to Magick, Crowley was prepared to take the long view. As to his marriage, he was not. New upheavals of love were in the offing.

  CHAPTER TEN

  A Staged Suicide, an Unavenged Libel, and the Equinox of the Gods (1930–36)

  Crowley and his Scarlet Woman were having a difficult time with marriage. As so little is known of de Miramar prior to her encounter with the Beast, the formative factors behind her alcoholism and her mental anguishes must remain a mystery. It is reasonable to assume that life with Crowley—life on the terms Crowley lived it—only exacerbated her condition.

  The complaints he now raised against her will sound familiar. They resemble those he raised against his first wife, Rose Kelly, and other Scarlet Women who succeeded her, notably Dorothy Olsen. The demands upon the woman who held this office were extreme, and yet Crowley never seemed to observe the obvious parallelism in their fates. Adoring them at the height of their reigns, he moved on with a cutting disdain when those reigns came to an end. The oaths and consecrations of these Scarlet Women set no termination dates. These Crowley imposed when he saw fit—that is, whenever there arose a sufficiently powerful passion for another woman. This contingency now occurred.

  In April 1930, Crowley and de Miramar paid a visit to Berlin, trying to raise interest in an exhibition there of his paintings. Two months later, John Bull (which caught wind of Crowley’s ambitions) ran a scalding piece opposing any such exhibition in England. But the atmosphere in Germany, in the latter years of the Weimar Republic, was far more permissive; openly gay and bisexual nightclubs were accepted as a matter of course by the authorities. Some of the best and brightest of the young British literati, such as Christopher Isherwood and Stephen Spender, found Berlin an ideal locale for expatriate living.

  The Berliner Tageblatt interviewed the Beast for a brief feature that appeared in early May. The tone of the piece was quizzical and bemused: “In England Crowley, the gentleman bohemian, is a much contested personality. One group considers him as a revolutionary philosopher, another as a foolish artist; that this mountaineer, chessplayer, poet-philosopher and painter is one of the most peculiar personalities is denied by nobody.” There was skepticism enough in this account, but it nonetheless delighted Crowley, who was used to far worse. His hopes for a Berlin showing mounted.

  Crowley had not devoted much time to his painting since the early 1920s. But his canvases did match remarkably well with the German Expressionist aesthetic of the time, in mood, coloration, and impassioned distortion, if not in technical skill. The Beast and Scarlet Woman paid a call, on April 24, on a German painter named Steiner—part of an effort to gain a footing in Berlin artistic circles. In Steiner’s studio, Crowley, age fifty-four, met a nineteen-year-old artist named Hanni Larissa Jaeger. Physically, he found her gauntly beautiful. Emotionally, he was swept off his feet at once. “I am quite in love with this Hanni,” he wrote in his diary that night. Crowley’s passion for Jaeger signaled the end of his marriage. But he and Jaeger did not become lovers that spring, and Crowley and de Miramar returned to England in May.

  The summer did not pass smoothly. In June, the two moved into a flat at 89 Park Mansions, Knightsbridge, where they remained through the end of July. According to Crowley, de Miramar was frequently drunk, carried out violent scenes, and flirted lasciviously with male visitors. He further complained that she made no effort to learn English—a failing that had not perturbed him prior to this time. It was a vile period for Crowley on all fronts; he was short both of money and of influence and felt his entrapment keenly. On June 1 he penned this sharply satiric self-portrait in verse:

  Bury me in a quicklime grave!

  Three parts a fool, & one part a knave.

  A Superman—bar two wee ‘buts’

  I had no brains, & I had no guts.

  My soul is a lump of stinking shit,

  And I don’t like it a little bit!

  Small wonder that Crowley resolved to return to Germany. He set a departure date of August 1, with de Miramar to be left behind. Whether the Beast openly threatened divorce prior to leaving is unknown; but shortly after his arrival in Germany, he directed his London solicitors to plot a legal strategy to that end. De Miramar, still in love with her husband, was miserable when the time for their separation arrived. Crowley’s terse entry for July 31: “Marie drunk & vomiting all day. The Farewell Cocktail Party. Decided to leave.”

  Crowley never saw de Miramar again. Once in Germany, he withdrew all financial support for her. Yorke stepped in to offer assistance in finding her a lodging in Hampstead. But the burden placed upon Yorke rankled, and he suffered misgivings as to Crowley’s character, even as he continued to respect the brilliance of the Beast’s magical teachings. By late 1930, as Crowley had, in Yorke’s view, left “his wife penniless and without support in London, I kept back what little money I had of his and doled it out to her. At the same time I refused to have further dealings with him, i.e. refused to act again as his agent. The Mandrake Press went bankrupt.”

  Meanwhile, ensconced in Berlin, Crowley wasted no time in consummating, in early August 1930, a sexual opus with Hanni Jaeger, who reciprocated his passion in full measure. Their lovemaking took place on cushions embroidered by de Miramar. Crowley wrote of it: “I must have been too terribly in love. I didn’t know at that time what fucking was with Her!” During this first month of their relationship, Crowley nicknamed Jaeger “the Monster”—perhaps in tribute to the ferocity of her lovemaking. Another nickname for her was “Anu,” a play upon “anus” and thus a veiled reference to the sexual style Crowley preferred.

  Many of their sexual rituals were conducted with the aim of “health” or “energy.” As for health, both of them suffered from bouts of illness during their time together. But the energy—sexual and otherwise—they aroused in each other was intense. The Beast, in their early months together, could be quite tender. After one opus—which he deemed a success—Crowley wrote:

  Hanni Larissa Jaeger—child of Earth![ … ] She is the Pure Woman in difficult circumstances; must never accept her own limitations. Hence she does the only right thing in seeking the Magical Path.[ … ] My poor sweet baby had another melancholy fit. Brandy makes her worse. Toward 1 A.M. she came to herself, & explained quite a lot. I am nearly insane with loving her, & feeling my powerlessness to help her as I want to.

  As was often the case when Crowley was in the throes of new love, his desire to travel intensified. He departed with Jaeger for Portugal in late August, having been invited there by a poet who had written to Crowley after reading the two volumes of the Confessions issued by the Mandrake Press. This was Fernando Pessoa, who, since his death at age forty-seven in 1935, has emerged as an acclaimed figure in the Modernist movement; the Novel laureate Octavio Paz was among Pessoa’s prominent admirers. Of course, none of this future glory was known to Crowley—or to Pessoa—at the time. But the Beast did see the possibilities in cultivating Pessoa, who was translating Crowley’s “Hymn to Pan” into Portuguese (the translation was ultimately published in November 1931). There were obvious affinities between the two men. Pessoa, like Crowley, employed pseudonymous names (“heteronyms,” Pessoa termed them) for various of his works; the deliberate fragmentation of identity and the relentless exploration of mind were key themes in the writings of both. “I am a nomadic wanderer through my consciousness,” Pessoa once wrote, in words that could have been Crowley’s. Nothing came of their plans to promote Crowley with Portuguese publishers. But the trip was far from wasted, for a memorable publicity stunt was fashioned—and put over artfully—by the two men.

  The basic idea—a feigned suicide—was conceived by Crowley. Pessoa would serve as accomplice, contacting the press after the staging was complete. This was not the first time tha
t Crowley had considered the potential publicity that would ensue from his demise. In March 1929, while in Paris, he had asked Francis Dickie, a British journalist, to serve as press agent for just such a stunt, with the intention of promoting—and raising prices—for Crowley’s previous works, of which Crowley still possessed a substantial inventory. Dickie had flatly declined the proposal. Pessoa was far more enthusiastic.

  The events leading to the feigned suicide arose soon after the arrival of Crowley and Jaeger in Lisbon on September 2. They decided upon a tour of the picturesque locales of Portugal. Amongst these was the coastal town of Cascais; nearby was the Boca do Infierno (Mouth of Hell), a funnel-shaped cliff face battered by the wind and waves of the Atlantic. They found a hotel room nearby and conducted several sexual opera; but Jaeger was unsettled by one of these, on September 13, and fell into what Crowley described as “a very long fit of hysterical sobbing.” Three days later, on September 16, Jaeger again wept after the completion of the opus. A violent quarrel ensued, and they were asked by the hotel manager to depart the next day. Jaeger fled to Lisbon. The Beast tracked her down there, and they engaged in sexual magic with the object of reconsecrating their love. But the rapprochement did not hold; Jaeger departed for Germany, leaving Crowley to recommence touring Portugal on his own. The Beast returned to the Boca do Infierno where, on September 21, as he recorded in his diary: “I decide to do a suicide stunt to annoy Hanni. Arrange details with Pessoa.”