Do What Thou Wilt

by Lawrence Sutin

  The “stunt,” which received coverage in major newspapers in Lisbon, Paris, and London, consisted of Crowley’s leaving a suicide note weighted by his monogrammed cigarette case (so as to assure ready personal identification) upon a rock ledge above the Boca do Infierno. According to The Empire News of London, it read: “I cannot live without thee. The other Mouth of Hell will catch me. It will not be as hot as thine. Hisos, Tu Li Yu.” The pseudonymous Oriental signature was a punning play on a standard British expression of farewell. The Empire News regarded the note as inscrutable, though it did identify Crowley as its author and quoted the Portuguese police to the effect that a man identified as Crowley had departed from the country two days later, on September 23. This was indeed the case; Jaeger (identified in the newspapers as the romantic cause of Crowley’s suicide) had sent him a conciliatory telegram upon her return to Berlin, and Crowley hastened to join her, leaving Pessoa to handle reporters. The Empire News, like most papers that carried the story, was skeptical: “Is the mystical letter a fake or a practical joke by someone who has borrowed Crowley’s name for the occasion?” Nonetheless, the story played well in the press for a brief time. Crowley, of course, had hoped that this publicity would enable him to sell a novel based on the suicide stunt to a prominent English publisher. That was not to be.

  Back in Germany, Crowley tried to keep up ties with members of the British literati who were tasting life in Berlin. In October 1930, he dined with his old friend J. W. N. Sullivan, who brought along Aldous Huxley to meet the Beast. “Huxley improves on acquaintance,” was Crowley’s terse note in his diary. One persisting legend has it that the Beast now fostered in Huxley an interest in mescaline that led, over twenty years later, to Huxley’s famous essay, The Doors of Perception (1954). This is most dubious. In Doors, Huxley confirmed that he did not try mescaline until 1953, and made no mention of Crowley as an influence. Crowley did, however, think Huxley worthy of cultivation. He daubed a portrait of the younger man, later confiding, “I thought he had a lot of money and painted him like this to flatter him.”

  But Crowley’s primary interest in the Berlin scene had to do with its untrammeled sexual possibilities. He remained there through early 1932, pursuing numerous affairs with both women and men; frequently, in his diary, he would extol the magical efficacy of his amorous workings in the German capital. It was a remarkable sexual run for Crowley; by the evidence of his subsequent diaries, his time in Berlin represented a final “peak” in his erotomagical explorations.

  Through the autumn of 1930, the Monster, Hanni Jaeger, remained supreme amongst Crowley’s passions. On October 16, Crowley noted that he had suffered through a series of “very bad nightmares” during the night. But he tenderly added: “One strangest thing is that in spite of the catastrophe, & of the daily worry, & imminence of disaster, I give myself wholly to love, & am serenely happy in it. This has never happened before in my life. Before, the least annoyance put me off entirely.”

  Serenity did not long prevail. One source of tension was the presence of Karl and Cora Germer, upon whom Crowley was largely dependent for his financial survival. They, in turn, rankled under his constant demands. The Depression had depleted Cora’s savings, and she resented Crowley’s spendthrift dispersal of funds that Germer had pleaded with her to bestow to the cause of Thelema. Germer was thus forced both to serve his master and to defend the honor of his wife—whom Crowley reviled for her accusations against him.

  All this would have been tangled enough. But further disturbing factors were at work. In November 1930, Crowley wrote: “Anu showed me her drawing of Karl masturbating into a toilet W. C. He forced her to look on—date uncertain—under threat to withdraw support unless she complied. She was afraid that he would murder her unless she sat quiet: so she did. True? I’m not sure: but it sounds very much like him.” Crowley ultimately decided it was true. By December, he was roundly cursing—in the privacy of his diary—his most loyal disciple: “Karl is a filthy asexual maniac. The masturbating swine! He is resolved to destroy Anu spiritually by wrecking her nerves. The Gods upon him—I mean—upon it!”

  But Jaeger had her own unusual ways. The day after his curse against Germer, Crowley wrote of her: “Anu has been playing a very foolish sexual game all the week. This A.M. she insisted on my using her as a W.C. in spite of the repeated warnings I have given her as to the appalling results of such behaviour. She will soon be taught by punishment.” Later, in recording a sexual opus between them, Crowley added plaintively: “She is always awakening my deepest & tenderest feelings, only to trample on them with the coarsest brutality.” After another sexual working (the result of the Monster seducing the Beast after breakfast), Crowley offered this portrait of Jaeger’s state of being:

  She is violently excited all day—sexually & otherwise. Severe melancholic & erotic outbursts. There is absolutely no reason for any nervous upset of any kind; but she changes from mood to mood in the most sudden way. This attack is more prolonged & severe than any I have observed so far. And it is more than usually causeless. She ended by wanting to go out; when I objected, pretended to ring up the police—a too familiar trick. She then calmed down, & at last woke up into an infantile state. I undressed her, & put her to bed in my pajamas. In short, every possible phase—She has now called me in, to listen to hallucinations, real or no; e.g. “I don’t want you to go away behind the tree”.

  As Crowley explained in a subsequent entry, Anu’s melancholies could take on a survival function in terms of her fierce day-to-day interactions with the Beast: “She explains her psychological fears as deliberate psych. protection. E.g.: she pretends to herself that I am going to cut her throat, so she thinks she is getting off easy if I call her a bitch!”

  The relationship began to decline in January 1931, when Jaeger left Crowley for a time; in typical fashion, he promptly accused her of having stolen his personal copy of The Book of Lies. They reconciled later in the month, but it was an unhappy time, as they both suffered from severe ailments that left them bedridden and diarrhetic. Their affair went on into the summer, and they tried to have a child together; Jaeger was briefly pregnant, but seems to have miscarried. But the primacy of place that the Monster had enjoyed was no more. According to Crowley, she may have taken to selling drugs to support herself, or to working in a cabaret, or to “walking the streets.” The fact that he took no trouble to ascertain the truth of these rumors was evidence of his diminishing interest.

  During this spring and summer, Crowley took on a number of lovers, female and male. Some of the names survive whole—Louise Aschaetzsch, Renate Gottsched and, most prominently, Hanni Richter. In other cases, only a first name or a nickname remains—Gertrude, Sonia, Pola, “Fanny” (a man). It was a time of rampant fulfillment. As he wrote to Gerald Yorke in June: “The idea of my coming to England unless someone will give me £1,000,000 per day to do it—in which case I will come for 10 days with a flock of Eagles—is the idea of someone who has never been in Berlin. Pue Pagan Thelema! Nunc dimittis!!”

  The events of Wednesday, May 6, 1931, as described by Crowley in prose and verse (a poem to Jaeger), are representative of the intricate sexual and emotional dramas in which the Beast delighted during this period:

  A marvellous day. Made Hanni Richter cry—by being ordinarily decent to her.

  Made Hanni Jaeger cry—by proving to her that she loved me. She had to admit it. We want our baby.[ … ]

  Made Louise Aschaetzsch cry by sincere sadistic work (for Hanni Jaeger’s sake).

  It doesn’t matter, my Hanni

  That you are a whore & a thief

  You’ve got a miraculous cunnie

  Not a mere chunk of beef.

  And if I can’t fix it to fuck you

  I’d rather not fuck at all

  But have Fanny puncture my podex

  After the ball.

  The “sadistic work” was likely a beating of Aeschaetzsch; he certainly beat her on other occasions. As he declared proudly in another Ma
y entry: “Louise to dinner. She cried some more. That was a snapper on the snoot I snitched her on Saturday!”

  Crowley was, by his own standards, equally successful in dealing with the long-distance turmoil created by de Miramar, to whom he was still legally married, much to his displeasure. De Miramar was in terrible straits, financially and psychologically. In one brusque letter to her, in September 1930, Crowley declared: “I gave you a great chance in life, and you threw it away. Tant pis!” Crowley urged her to seek a divorce, providing adequate grounds by boasting of his infidelities with Jaeger. But he also warned his wife: “It will be no good asking for alimony because we are all in the soup together with the Rt. Honorable Lord Beaverbrook and the British Empire. Best of all to you!”

  Despite this overt defiance, Crowley had two reasons to take the matter of divorce seriously. The first was his family trust income—administered by trustees George Cecil Jones and Yorke—to which, Crowley feared, de Miramar might have a claim. The second was that the powerful Colonel Carter of Scotland Yard had written what Crowley described as a “mysterious and sinister” letter in October 1930, with this advice: “I suggest to you that you had better cease knocking round the Continent and come back to your wife at once or you will be getting yourself into serious trouble perhaps.” “The impudence of the lunatic,” Crowley scrawled across the bottom of the letter.

  But Carter was playing a bluff here; in a letter to Yorke in March 1931, the inspector—in describing how de Miramar sought the help of Scotland Yard (her quoted language reflects her imperfect English)—declared himself both powerless and indifferent:

  As regards Mrs. A.C. she wrote a letter to Scotland House omitting to put my name on it, dated 28th February as follows:—“Nobody is responsible of my suicide only Aleister Crowley—please don’t inquire I will not noise in the newspaper. Marie Crowley”

  It is difficult to know whether this woman means it seriously or not. It is not a matter for the police; suicide only becomes an offence if you attempt it and do not succeed!! If you do see the lady and she has not done away with herself, you might pat her on the back and tell her that when life looks gloomiest it very often turns round the corner and looks bright again. Also, it is not the slightest good her getting in touch with me, I cannot do anything for her and, indeed, I do not feel that I have any moral obligation to do so. I expect she has got rather a Latin temperament.

  De Miramar’s condition only declined. In June 1931, she was incarcerated in a public workhouse due to her financial indigence. The following month, she was admitted to the Colney Hatch Mental Hospital in New Southgate, with Crowley providing a written past history of his wife for use in treatment. On August 1, the Medical Superintendent wrote back to Crowley and offered this diagnosis: “Unfortunately her earlier phantasy formation has resulted in definite delusions, and she now believes she is the daughter of the King and Queen and of pure English blood: also that she married the Prince of Wales twelve years ago, though he is ignorant of the blood relationship. At present her conduct is satisfactory but she is resentful that her claims are not acknowledged and is likely to become difficult.”

  Difficult she must have become, for de Miramar remained in Colney Hatch until her death over three decades later. Indeed, she outlived Crowley, who never obtained a divorce (as he feared that a formal action might result in her winning some right to support) and never remarried. But at least one of de Miramar’s “delusions” was dispelled in Colney Hatch, thanks to a visit from Yorke. In addition to the Prince of Wales, de Miramar had claimed the Great Beast, Aleister Crowley, as her husband. Yorke confirmed this—to the astonishment of her treating physicians.

  Upon first hearing of de Miramar’s commitment, the Beast had written in his diary, “It is very English to regard insanity as a joke.” He also noted that the commitment of his first wife, Rose, had somehow prompted the passionate entry of Leila Waddell into his life. Would the same good fortune now recur? It did. On August 3, 1931, Crowley met Bertha Busch, whose nickname was “Billie,” and who would eclipse all other loves in Berlin.

  Busch was thirty-six, previously divorced, gaunt (as Crowley preferred), in poor physical health and prone (according to Crowley) to violent melancholic outbursts and excessive drinking. In an August 12 entry, Crowley showed uncharacteristic concern for what might befall a woman who entered his life: “I love Billie passionately & truly—& I must avoid her. She might return my love; & if Germer succeeds in dragging me down altogether [through lack of adequate financial support], what tragedy!”

  He did not avoid her, of course. They became ardent magical lovers. Of one September opus, Crowley exclaimed: “Most wonderful fuck I’ve had in years. Nearly tore her bottom off.” The opus the very next day was even better: “The best fuck within recorded memory of living man.” On September 30, Crowley consecrated Busch as the new Scarlet Woman. By now, they were living together in a flat at Karlsruhestrassez 2 in Berlin. Germer had paid—through funds provided by a most reluctant Cora—the Beast’s prior Berlin debts and the first month’s rent on the new flat. It was, given the standards of instability in which Crowley lived, a blissful honeymoon stretch.

  In October and November 1931, the Galerie Neumann-Nierendorf (also known as the “Porza”) in Berlin put on an exhibition of seventy-three of Crowley’s paintings—landscapes, dreamscapes, and portraits, some of which dated from the postwar years in New York and Cefalù, while others had been completed in Berlin. There was a catalog with a flattering text and a photograph of Crowley in an Indian-style turban on the cover. Portrait subjects included, in addition to Huxley, Leah Hirsig, Norman Mudd, J. W. N. Sullivan, de Miramar, and H. P. Blavatsky. But Crowley made no record of any painting having sold. As in the case of his limited-edition books (languishing in storage in London), Crowley would not live to see these paintings fetch their current high prices from collectors.

  But the exhibition did heighten the Beast’s reputation amongst his fellow British exiles. His flat became a frequent site of dinners and parties that included Christopher Isherwood and Stephen Spender. Isherwood later told of seeing Crowley—in the Cosy Corner, a Berlin bar—imperiously rake his fingernails against the chest of a tough-looking boy in an open shirt. The boy had to be paid a sizable sum (by whom is unclear) to refrain from pummeling Crowley on the spot. Isherwood used Crowley as the model for his title character in “A Visit to Anselm Oakes,” a story published in Isherwood’s Exhumations. Some three decades later, in his journal, Isherwood reflected upon his acquaintance with the Beast: “The truly awful thing about Crowley is that one suspects he didn’t really believe in anything. Even his wickedness. Perhaps the only thing that wasn’t fake was his addiction to heroin and cocaine.”

  More sympathetic to the Beast among the British exiles was Gerald Hamilton, a writer and raconteur with, at this time, Communist leanings. Hamilton was the model for “Mr. Norris” in Isherwood’s novel (set in the Berlin of this period) Mr. Norris Changes Trains. It was a mark of Crowley’s multifarious nature that he felt friendship for Hamilton (but no passion, though both men were carrying on homosexual affairs during this period) while, at the same time, garnering £50 from Colonel Carter of Scotland Yard for reporting on Hamilton’s leftist activities. Hamilton, who displayed a similar ambivalence toward Crowley, later wrote: “What is piquant in this matter is that on one of my journeys to London, Gerald Yorke asked me to take some English money back to Berlin and to give it to Crowley. This I did. The amount entrusted to me was the very £50 in cash that my host had earned by writing a report upon my very harmless activities.” Turnabout is fair play. Hamilton later confided that he had, in turn, received sums from British Intelligence for reporting on Crowley.

  Hamilton, who ultimately moved into Crowley’s flat in January–February 1932, both out of friendship and of their mutual need to save rent by sharing, was witness to a good many strange events there. According to a fellow British writer, Maurice Richardson, Hamilton was present at a party at Crowley’s flat du
ring which Busch “was showering the Magus with plates, knives and forks, one of which would have put Hamilton’s lights out had it not been for some dexterous interposition by Stephen Spender.” In December 1931, there was a dire scene in which Hamilton found the Beast suffering from a stab wound inflicted by Busch. And then there is Crowley’s February 1932 account of what ensued after he and Busch inhaled some nitrous oxide: “Bill—whew! the best show yet. Started to fuck—she got sadistic—then savage—poor Hamilton!—(I had got her quiet when he came in & woke her) doctor—morphia—hell till 6:30 [A.M.]”

  The Beast was often beastly, but now and then patience and kindness showed themselves. Take, for example, the knife wound observed by Hamilton. Here is Crowley’s account:

  Then began a most furious fuck. Marie [a Berlin friend, not Crowley’s wife] came in & found us on sofa! Bill went to kitchen, I to study. Suddenly Bill walked in on me & stabbed me with the carving-knife. She then became violent. I had to hold her down. So I bled till Marie got a doctor, about 2 hrs. later.

  What Crowley does not mention is the severity of his wound, which was just below the shoulder blade. The Beast was sufficiently weakened to contemplate—cheerfully—his own mortality in a Christmas Eve letter to Yorke: “The wound was not dangerous, though I lost quarts of blood; but it just missed being fatal which is different. I am preparing to get on to the next inc.[arnation] simply because unless we get cash in significant quantity by say Jan 7 at latest I shall have nowhere to sleep, and the exposure would doubtless kill me at once…”