Do What Thou Wilt

by Lawrence Sutin

  “Let me explain…” Ibid., pp. 125–6.

  “The Microcosm…” Ibid., p. 139.

  “High magic…” Richard Cavendish, A History of Magic (London: Sphere Books, 1978), p. 20.

  “because Christians as they read…” Elaine Pagels, The Origin of Satan (New York: Random House, 1995), p. xxiii.

  “The union of…” Mircea Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas, vol. 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. 375.

  “But you [Peter] will…” Quoted in Kurt Rudolph, Gnosis: The Nature & History of Gnosticism (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), p. 297.

  “All of these systems…” Mircea Eliade, “Spirit, Light, and Seed,” in his collection Occultism, Witchcraft, and Cultural Fashions: Essays in Comparative Religions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), p. 112.

  “Magic is worked…” Idries Shah, The Sufis (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1971), pp. 379–80.

  Magick, pp. 275–6.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “He bore on his body…” Aleister Crowley, the Confessions of Aleister Crowley, ed. John Symonds and Kenneth Grant (New York: Hill and Wang, 1970), c. 1. The edition cited here is slightly abridged. A small portion of Crowley’s voluminous memoir has yet to appear in print; those unpublished pages have been consulted by the present author. Volumes one and two of the Confessions were first published by the Mandrake Press in London in 1929. Given the tangled publishing history and multiple editions of the Confessions—as this work shall hereinafter be cited—the reference given will be to chapter rather than page number.

  Ibid., c. 1.

  Ibid., Prelude.

  “I am born for supreme…” Quoted in Lucien Stryk, ed., World of the Buddha (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1978), p. 15.

  “In the 1870s…” E. J. Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1982), p. 164.

  “Fed upon privilege…” Barbara Tuchman, The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War (1890–1914) (New York: Bantam, 1972), p. 33.

  “preparations for a distant future…” Confessions, c. 1.

  “psychic phenomena” and “regrettable incident” Ibid., c. 10.

  “My intellectual activity…” Ibid., c. 7.

  “her powerful natural instincts…” Ibid., c. 1.

  “And I had had her…” Ibid., c. 7.

  “To hear Vladimir being chided…” Ethel Archer, The Hieroglyph (London: Denis Archer, 1932), p. 181. In a February 10, 1961 letter (a copy of which is preserved in the Yorke Collection, Warburg Institute, University of London), Archer confirmed that her protagonist was based on Crowley.

  “I very much wish…” A copy of this December 12, 1912, letter by Emily was kindly provided to me by Geraldine Beskin.

  “In a way, my mother…” Confessions, c. 48.

  “The Elders…” Ibid., c. 2.

  “His father was his hero…” Ibid., c. 3.

  “Indeed, his name does not appear…” See F. Roy Coad, F.C.A., A History of the Brethren Movement: Its Origins, its Worldwide Development and its Significance for the Present Day (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1968); Peter L. Embley, “The Early Development of the Plymouth Brethren,” in Bryan R. Wilson, ed. Patterns of Sectarianism: Organisation and Ideology in Social and Religious Movements (London: Heinemann, 1967); Napoleon Noel, The History of the Brethren (Two Volumes), ed. William F. Knapp (Denver: W.P. Knapp, 1936).

  “swayed thousands…” Confessions, c. 3.

  “The boy seems…” Ibid.

  “there can be no remissions…” Edward Crowley, The Plymouth Brethren (So Called)/ Who They Are—Their Creed—Mode of Worship, &c./ Explained in A Letter to his Friends and Relatives (London: George Morrish, 1865), p. 5. Other tracts by Edward included Why, Sir, It’s Better and Better/ With A Word To/ The Striving One, The Doubting One, The Happy One (London: George Morrish, 1868); and Cease to Do Evil: Learn to Do Well/ A Word To Christians (London: George Morrish, 1861).

  “waxing bolder…” Ibid., p. 11.

  “He said that abstainers…” Confessions, c. 3.

  “In the case of the sinner…” Ibid., c. 4.

  “It is as if…” Ibid., c. 3.

  “The incident made…” Ibid., c. 2.

  “This attitude continued…” Ibid.

  “Accordingly, he aimed…” Ibid., c. 3.

  “It is impossible to suppose…” Ibid., c. 5.

  “The apparent discrepancy…” Ibid.

  “It seems as if I possessed…” Ibid., c. 6.

  “Previous to the death…” Ibid., c. 3.

  “a ruthless, petty tyrant…” Ibid., c. 4.

  “May God bite into…” Crowley, The World’s Tragedy (Phoenix: Falcon Press, 1985), pp. xv–xvi.

  “In a state of health…” Quoted in Steven Marcus, The Other Victorians: A Study of Sexuality and Pornography in Mid-Nineteenth-Century England (New York: Basic Books, 1966), p. 13.

  “[A] boy named Glascott…” Crowley, The World’s Tragedy, pp. xvi–xvii.

  “Victorian prep schools…” J. R. de S. Honey, Tom Brown’s Universe: The Development of the Victorian Public School (London: Millington Books, 1977), pp. 201–3.

  “I had been told…” Confessions, c. 6.

  “The battle between…” Ibid., c. 5.

  “Here was certainly…” Ibid., c. 6.

  “Strangely enough…” Ibid., c. 8.

  “I did not allow him…” Ibid., c. 6.

  “Though Douglas called…” Ibid., c. 7.

  “it was too late…” Ibid.

  “By the time I reached…” Ibid., c. 8.

  “The problem of life…” Ibid.

  “Chalk is probably…” and “One does not climb…” and “It was my first experience…” Ibid., c. 10.

  “a fine climber…” Tom Longstaff, This My Voyage (London: John Murray, 1950), p. 24. Long after he met Crowley, Longstaff served from 1947 to 1949 as president of the English Alpine Club.

  “I had no intention…” Confessions, c. 19.

  “I spent the whole…” Ibid., c. 12.

  “It seemed to me absurd…” Ibid.

  “the weekly records disclose…” these records are contained in Volume “Rec.8.6.” of the collection of the Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge.

  “I hardly entered…” Confessions, c. 16.

  “the greatest opportunities…” Ibid., c. 13.

  “There was no fear…” Ibid., c. 14.

  “I was awakened…” Ibid.

  “Then came the great…” “The Temple of Solomon the King” in Equinox I(2) (London: 1909), reprinted (York Beach, ME: Weiser, 1992), pp. 233–4.

  “In invocation…” Magick, p. 147.

  “special attention…” Ibid.

  “The forces of good…” Confessions, c. 14.

  “It was a windy night…” Prefatory note to “Aceldama, A Place to Bury Strangers In. A Philosophical Poem,” in Crowley, The Collected Works of Aleister Crowley, vol. 1 (Foyers, Scotland: Society for the Propagation of Religious Truth, 1905), p. 1.

  “The incarnation was…” Confessions, c. 17.

  “androgyne troublant…” Quoted in Robert Hewison, Footlights! A Hundred Years of Cambridge Comedy (London: Methuen, 1983), p. 16.

  “in a manner which…” Ibid.

  “Pollitt was rather plain…” Confessions, c. 17.

  “To the re-seeing…” See letter, Crowley to Gerald Kelly, n.d. [c. 1903], O.T.O. Archives.

  “The relation between us…” Confessions, c. 17.

  “The stupidity of…” Ibid., c. 12.

  “They had no true…” Ibid., c. 17.

  Crowley, “The Sage,” unpublished (and apparently unfinished) short story by Crowley, the first eighteen pages of which were preserved by Gerald Yorke, O.T.O. Archives.

  “The intense refinement…” Confessions, c. 17.

  “My scheme…” Crowley, letter to Gerald Yorke, quoted in Timothy d’Arch Smith, The Books of the Beast: Essays on Aleister Crowley, Montague Summers, Francis
Barrett and Others (London: Aquarian Press, 1987), p. 28. The title essay is a stylish and invaluable study of Crowley’s aims and methods as book designer and publisher.

  “Of man’s delight…” Crowley, White Stains, second edition, ed. John Symonds (London: Duckworth, 1973), p. 67.

  “I felt in my subconscious…” Confessions, c. 17.

  “I told him frankly…” Ibid.

  “I was taught…” Ibid., c. 11.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “I liked him…” Quoted in David Dean, T. S. Blakeney and D. F. O. Dangar, “Oscar Eckenstein, 1859–1921,” in Alpine Journal (Vol. 65, 1960), p. 66.

  “Eckenstein recognized…” Confessions, c. 18.

  “O.E. often spoke…” Alpine Journal (Vol. 65, 1960), p. 73.

  “Sir Richard Burton…” Confessions, c. 19.

  “the greatest pace…” Crowley, The Equinox of the Gods (London: O.T.O., 1936), comprising part IV of Book Four or Magick, p. 394. Citations to The Equinox of the Gods will hereafter be given by page number in Magick.

  “the greatest number…” Ibid.

  “Eckenstein, provided he…” Crowley, letter to Harry Doughty (1924), quoted in John Symonds, The Beast 666 (London: The Pindar Press, 1997), p. 40.

  “a rough diamond…” Alpine Journal (Vol. 65, 1960), p. 74.

  “Eckenstein, though a…” Ibid.

  “ultimately to revolutionize…” Ibid., p. 64.

  The scholar R. A. Gilbert has argued, by way of documentary evidence, that November 18, 1898, was the date Crowley signed his Golden Dawn application, rather than the date of his Neophyte initiation. But as Crowley held to the latter view all his life, the date the man himself believed to be accurate shall be retained here.

  “I had no idea…” Confessions, c. 20.

  “If I had not made…” Quoted in George Mills Harper, Yeats’s Golden Dawn (Wellingborough, UK: Aquarian Press, 1987), p. 2.

  “that has perhaps…” William Butler Yeats, Memoirs, ed. Denis Donoghue (London: Macmillan, 1972), pp. 27–8.

  “I allowed my mind…” Ibid., p. 28.

  “He was in delirium…” Ibid., p. 75.

  “You will readily…” “The Temple of Solomon the King” in Equinox I(2) (London: 1909), p. 239.

  “I believe that his mind…” Yeats, The Autobiography of William Butler Yeats (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1958), p. 124.

  “It was through him…” Ibid.

  “the eighteenth century…” Ibid., pp. 224–5.

  “One that boxed…” Ibid., p. 124.

  “Mathers had much…” Ibid., pp. 126–7, 227.

  “But unless the Chiefs…” Quoted in Ellic Howe, The Magicians of the Golden Dawn: A Documentary History of a Magical Order (York Beach: Weiser, 1984), p. 131.

  “I said, ‘How…” Yeats, Memoirs, p. 106.

  “A true vision…” “The Temple of Solomon the King” in Equinox I(2) (London: 1909), p. 300.

  “sexual peculiarities”; “impending homosexual scandal” The former is alleged in R. A. Gilbert, Golden Dawn: Twilight of the Magicians (Wellingborough: Aquarian Press, 1983), p. 41. The latter speculation may be found in Howe, p. 206.

  “fed from time to time…” Confessions, c. 21.

  “I reverence more…” Bennett, letter to Frederick Leigh Gardner, n.d. [c. 1897], O.T.O. Archives.

  “His cycle of life…” Confessions, c. 21.

  “went on to experiment…” The friend, Paul Brunton, who became an influential writer on yoga, is quoted in Joscelyn Godwin, The Theosophical Enlightenment (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), p. 369.

  “To my amazement…” Confessions, c. 20.

  “Iehi Aour never had…” Ibid., c. 21.

  “Allan Bennett was…” Ibid.

  “One day, a party…” Ibid.

  “Like Huckleberry Finn’s…” Crowley (under the pseudonym “Oliver Haddo”), “The Herb Dangerous, Part II, The Psychology of Hashish” in Equinox I(2) (London: 1909), p. 36.

  “Yeats and Crowley…” Kathleen Raine, Yeats the Initiate: Essays on Certain Themes in the Work of W. B. Yeats (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1986), p. 218.

  “I had never thought…” Confessions, c. 19.

  “What hurt him…” Ibid.

  “At the Fork of the Roads” Equinox I(1) (London: 1909), p. 101.

  “a characteristic move…” Ethel Archer, The Hieroglyph (previously cited), p. 181. The quotes here come from Archer’s roman à clef treatment of Crowley and his mother.

  “Susan Strong” I am indebted to Scott Hanson, an impeccable librarian, for tracking down the identity of Susan Strong based on the veiled clues offered by Crowley in the Confessions.

  “She begged me…” Confessions, c. 21.

  “He seems nearly…” Quoted in Howe, Magicians of the Golden Dawn, p. 219.

  “This is concerned…” Ibid., p. 206.

  “sex intemperance” Ibid., p. 223.

  “a person of unspeakable life” Quoted in Harper, Yeats’s Golden Dawn p. 29.

  “[W]e did not think…” Ibid., p. 182, n. 19.

  “aspirant on the threshold…” Quoted in Israel Regardie, What You Should Know About the Golden Dawn (Phoenix: Falcon Press, 1985), p. 77.

  “a man without principles” Howe, Magicians of the Golden Dawn, p. 227.

  “Ponder the matter…” Abraham the Jew (pseudonym), The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin the Mage, S. L. MacGregor-Mathers, trans. and ed. (New York: Causeway Books, 1974), p. 54.

  “Buried with that LIGHT…” This quotation, along with an abridgement of the Adeptus Minor ritual, is contained in “The Temple of Solomon the King” in Equinox I(3) (London: 1910).

  “embalmed in the ancient…” Crowley set forth this request in a will executed by him on December 2, 1931. I would like to thank Keith Richmond for graciously providing me with a copy of this will, as well as copies of other relevant documents.

  “I again reiterate…” Quoted in Howe, p. 210.

  “bona fide posted letters” Ibid., p. 215.

  the power of changing…” Ibid., p. 204.

  “His face was fixed…” Crowley Abra-Melin diary, O.T.O. Archives.

  “as in the case…” “The Temple of Solomon the King” in Equinox I(3) (London: 1910).

  Ibid., p. 267.

  “Trades Protection Association” See Howe, Magicians of the Golden Dawn, p. 226.

  “Even the fact…” Quoted in Harper, Yeats’s Golden Dawn, p. 31.

  “He described the doings…” Arthur Machen, Things Near and Far (London: Martin Secker, 1923), p. 148.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Indoors and out…” Confessions, c. 23.

  “I see all nature…” “The Ghost of God” is contained in The Temple of the Holy Ghost, Crowley, Collected Works (previously cited), vol. 1, p. 178.

  “One afternoon, in Mexico…” Confessions, c. 23.

  “Mine was, by weakness…” Crowley, Tannhäuser, in Collected Works, vol. 1, p. 256.

  “a descendant of…” Confessions, c. 23.

  “I reached a point…” Ibid.

  “the real secret…” Ibid.

  “cut thyself sharply…” Liber Jugorum, included in Magick, pp. 658–60. Hymenaeus Beta notes that the cuts need not leave scars and that some modern-day Thelemites use rubber bands instead.

  “My results were…” Confessions, c. 23.

  “Now, the year being…” Crowley, Diary, January–May 1901, typescript, O.T.O. Archives.

  “the greatest pace uphill…” Crowley, Magick, p. 394.

  “On the boat…” Crowley, letter to Gerald Kelly, n.d. [1901], O.T.O. Archives.

  “I had intoxicated…” Confessions, c. 26.

  “So the last kiss…” Alice: An Adultery in Crowley, Collected Works, vol. 2, pp. 84–5.

  “the poets of Mr. Crowley’s school…” G. K. Chesterton, book review, London Daily News, June 18, 1901.

  “I had got to learn…” Confessions, c. 27.

  “T
he Inmost knew…” Ibid., c. 26.

  “Their aristocracy…” Ibid.

  “not only contrite…” and “I exist not…” “The Temple of Solomon the King” in Equinox I(4) (London: 1910), p. 123.

  Ibid., p. 150.

  “According to tantra…” Ajit Mookerjee and Madhu Khanna, The Tantric Way: Art, Science, Ritual (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1977), p. 29. An analogous approach to spiritual sexuality, as practiced by certain Gnostic sects, is discussed in the “Introduction” of this biography.

  “One of my principal…” Confessions, c. 28.

  “let the student decide…” Crowley, Magick, p. 23.

  “[O]ne’s real country…” Crowley [pseud. Mahatma Guru Sri Paramahansa Sivaji], Eight Lectures on Yoga (London: O.T.O. 1939), rev. 2nd edition, ed. Hymenaeus Beta (New York: 93 Publishing, 1992), pp. 45–6. All citations to this work are to this latter edition. As Hymenaeus Beta observed therein, the “abortion” referred to in the quoted passage was Gerald Yorke (1902–83), a student and friend of Crowley in the 1920s and after who figures in the latter chapters of this biography.

  “Dharana is…” Magick, p. 30.

  “After some eight hours…” The Writings of Truth, Crowley diary, typescript, O.T.O. Archives. Crowley polished and slightly revised the original diary entries for publication in The Temple of Solomon the King in Equinox I(4) (London: 1910), pp. 166–7.

  “But why revile…” “Ascension Day,” The Sword of Song, in Crowley, Collected Works, vol. 2, p. 147.

  “An enormous head…” Confessions, c. 31.

  “It was a woman…” Ibid., c. 32.

  “and so making…” Crowley, 1902 Diary, typescript, O.T.O. Archives.

  “a magnificent gymnasium…” Berashith—An Essay in Ontology, in Crowley, Collected Works, vol. 2., p. 242.

  “waylaying one great man…” Alpine Journal, (Vol. 65, 1960), pp. 68, 73.

  “Had I failed…” Confessions, c. 34.

  “England is losing…” Ibid.

  “The result was…” Ibid.

  “having red hot…” Ibid., c. 39.

  “the expedition had…” Ibid., c. 40.

  “Many climbers died…” Galen Rowell, In the Throne Room of the Mountain Gods (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1986), p. 90. Rowell provides an excellent historical overview on the various K2 expeditions.