The participants circled the altar in a deosil (clockwise) direction with an ever-increasing pace in a diminishing circle. Before the invocation could be said, the proceedings were interrupted by the loud ringing of the doorbell on the front door of the building. The unwelcome caller was “the proprietor of an ‘occult’ bookshop” situated near “Mrs. South’s” apartment (Ibid., 123). This was in fact Madeline’s employer, Michael Juste, from the nearby Atlantis bookshop. When Juste learned that Grant was present, he decided not to come in. He knew that Grant had been one of Crowley’s disciples, and disapproved of the Great Beast, his activities, and his associates. Having been disturbed, the practitioners decided to abandon the rite.
Grant said that the abortive ritual was designed to call up a “particularly potent spirit,” which would undoubtedly have been described by Gardner and Mrs. South as “phallic’’ (Ibid., 124). He says that this was important, as the sudden and abrupt ending of the ritual allegedly had unfortunate consequences. “Mrs. South died under mysterious circumstances,” and Gerald Gardner “was not long following suit,” the bookshop owner’s marriage broke up, and he also died shortly afterwards. In fact, Michael Juste died at age sixty-four in 1961, Gardner of a heart attack in 1964 at age eighty, and Madeline in 1982 at age seventy-two, from lung cancer.
According to Rollo Nordic [op cit], Madeline Montalban was quite happy to adopt the persona of a witch when she knew her. However, in the 1960s when I met her, she denounced Gardner as “a fraud and a pervert.” This description was based on a ritual she had attended where Gardner was tied up skyclad and his genitals were tickled with a feather-duster by a female witch. Gardner’s liking of sadomasochistic scenarios has been confirmed by others who knew him. It is claimed that in his old age Gardner was impotent, and this was the only way he could get sexually aroused.
Any discussion of Wicca in Madeline’s presence when I knew her was forbidden and likely to bring on one of her infamous mood swings when she would get in a rage and throw everyone out. She had a real dislike of the “media witches” who appeared in the newspapers, although she seems to have mellowed with age. In the late 1970s, she did meet Maxine Sanders, the Queen of the Witches (2008: 237–239). However, I remember that when Madeline was interviewed in Man, Myth and Magic, and was described as the “Witch of St. Giles,” she went crazy and threatened to sue them for libel.
When we met in 1967, Madeline was aware of my interest in the Craft and I made no effort to hide it from her. She seemed to tolerate it to a point, as she realized that I was mainly interested in the folkloric and historic aspects and traditional forms of witchcraft. In fact, I had considered writing a book on the subject called The Cult of the Witch. She used her skills as a journalist and author to help me with the project. Oddly, Madeline seemed to always have a young man in her social circle interested in traditional witchcraft and folklore. Her lover, Nicholas Heron, took this role in the 1950s and, although my relationship with her was platonic, I had that position for a short while.
Things came to a head in December 1968, when I met a woman named Rosina Bishop, who was visiting Madeline with her friend Deric James, editor of Insight magazine. Rosina was a Wiccan and had been initiated by a man who had received his own initiation from one of Gardner’s later priestesses, Celia Penny (witch name “Francesca”). We became friendly, and in January 1969, Rosina offered to initiate me into Gardnerian Wicca. Madeline was not happy about this turn of events, and for a while we parted company. She never forgave me for what she regarded as an act of treachery, and our relationship was never the same again.
At Beltane, or May Day, 1947, Gerald Gardner met Aleister Crowley. Officially this was their first meeting, although there have always been persistent rumors they knew each other before that date. Francis King said they actually met first in either 1943 or 1944 (1971: 12). In the 1980s, I was in correspondence with Colonel Lawrence, who ran a witchcraft museum in the United States, and he told me that Gardner had known Crowley before the war. He claimed to have in his possession a silver cigarette case that allegedly included a note in Crowley’s writing saying: “Gift to GBG 1936.”
It certainly appears odd that Gardner should have been back in England for ten years and involved in the London occult scene without meeting Crowley before. Especially as Gardner and Madeline Montalban were friends and magical working partners, and she knew Crowley and was a member of his Order. Cecil Williamson claimed that Gardner and Crowley met each other after he came back from the Far East and Gardner was “running around like Wee Willie Winkie trying to dredge up anyone or anybody who had got anything to do with magic.” Williamson said that the two fell out, and in 1947, Gardner asked him to drive him down to Netherwood to make it up with him. Crowley apparently was not forgiving in nature and was just polite. When Gardner went outside, Crowley told Williamson: “You want to watch him.” He also described Gardner as a “wily old humbug,” and somebody that could not be trusted (Winter 1992). In return Gardner belittled Crowley’s work and according to Doreen Valiente regarded the so-called Great Beast as “a bit of a joke” (letter to John Score September 18, 1970, in MOW archive).
Gardner and Crowley’s relationship was certainly ambiguous. In the Bracelin biography, Gardner is quoted as saying that Crowley “wasted money like water,” and as a result he tried to get money out of people. Gardner also said that he had no proof that the Great Beast had any magical powers except for his hypnotic gaze, and he used it to get things out of people. Gardner added that Crowley shared another mark of the charlatan and that was “the all-pervading, almost overpowering, personal charm which brought him so many dupes” (1960: 156).
The official version of how Crowley and Gardner met in 1947 is that they were introduced by Arnold Crowther (1909–1974), later the High Priest of the Sheffield Coven. He was a ventriloquist, stage magician, and puppeteer who had known Gardner since before the war. They had met in 1939 at a lecture on folklore given by Christina Hole (Heselton 2003: 180). Crowther had only recently contacted Crowley after a woman had approached him at the end of one of his performances in April 1947. She said she knew a real magician with a similar name to his and gave him Crowley’s address at Netherwoods. Crowther wrote to the Great Beast and when he was invited to tea, took Gardner along (Ibid., 182). This event was also recorded by Crowley in his diary.
The most controversial aspect of this meeting between Crowley and Gardner is the Great Beast’s claim that as a young man he had been involved in witchcraft. Bracelin states: “At Oxford [sic], Crowley said, he had been on the edge of witchcraft.” In fact this was either Gardner’s memory failing him or a typing error, because Crowley was a student at Cambridge University, not Oxford. He told Gardner he had not “followed the way of the witches [because he] refused to be bossed around by any damned woman” (1960: 158). Although Crowley was a bisexual sadomasochist, he also had a misogynistic attitude, so this comment has a ring of truth about it. Gerald Yorke, Crowley’s friend and one of his executors, commented that this remark was “in character’’ (Heselton 2003: 191).
Cambridge was supposed to have been a center for occult activities and, according to the Catholic demonologist Montague Summers, Francis Barrett, author of The Magus, founded a magical group in the city. He said: “I have been told that Francis Barrett actually founded a small sodality of students of these dark and deep mysteries and that under his tuition … some advanced upon the path of transcendental wisdom. One at least was a Cambridge man, of what status—whether an undergraduate or a fellow of the college—I do not know, but there is every reason to believe that he initiated others and until quite recent years—it perhaps even persists today—the Barrett tradition was maintained at Cambridge, but very privately, and his teaching has been handed on to promising subjects” (Summers 1946).
The Lugh material compiled by Bill Liddell says that a coterie of academics at Cambridge University formed a pseudo-coven in the first decade of the nin
eteenth century. This group was allegedly operative by 1810, and based upon Barrett’s The Magus and the pagan rites of the classical Mysteries of ancient Greece and Rome. It is claimed George Pickingill was shown a copy of the so-called Cambridge Rituals during a lodge meeting of the Order of Woodsmen, and adopted them for his version of witchcraft. Liddell also said that there were two magical fraternities associated with the university. One had Rosicrucian-Masonic rituals based on the classical Mysteries and the other practiced sex rites and devil worship of the type associated with the eighteenth-century Hellfire Clubs. Both are supposed to be still active today (Liddell 1994: 107). One is reminded of the possibly apocryphal story that, while he was a student at Cambridge, Crowley fell out with one of his tutors. He made a wax image of the man and pricked it in the leg with a pin. Shortly afterwards the teacher suffered a nasty fall and broke his leg (Wheatley 1981).
When the writer Francis King met the novelist Louis Umfreville Wilkinson in 1953, the latter confirmed that Crowley had been “offered initiation into the witch cult” as a young man. Crowley told Wilkinson he had refused because he “didn’t want to be bossed around by a woman.” King was skeptical, but Wilkinson assured him that, while Crowley did indulge in leg-pulling jokes, he believed that on this occasion he was telling the truth. Francis King said that after meeting Wilkinson he was told by two other independent sources who knew Crowley that he had made the same claim to them (King 1970: 140–141).
Kenneth Grant told me that there was also a possible link between Crowley and an old coven known to Austin Osman Spare. This group was run in Essex by a witch sister of Spare’s own teacher and witch mother, Mrs. Paterson. Grant believed that Allan Bennett might have made contact with this coven, which was “one of the very few manifestations of the genuine witch cult to survive into the twentieth century.” Grant added that it was “therefore likely that Crowley also knew about the Essex coven and may even … have been initiated into it” (letter dated December 17, 1975).
In a letter dated February 8, 1950, Gardner wrote about Crowley’s admission that he had been involved in the witch cult that is lodged in the Museum of Witchcraft archive in Boscastle. He says, “By the way, Aleister Crowley was in the cult, but left in disgust. He could not stand a High Priestess having a superior position or having to kneel to her, and while he approved of the Great Rite [ritual sexual intercourse between the High Priest and Priestess], he was shocked at nudity. Queer man, he approved of being nude in a dirty way, but highly disapproved of it in a clean and healthy way. Also he disapproved of the use of the scurge [scourge] to release power … But he didn’t saimply [simply] pinch lots of witches rituals and incorporate it [sic] in his works. He claimed that the remote rituals for them [sic] but I doubt this.”
In this letter, Gardner says that, despite Crowley thinking witchcraft was “too tame” (Illes 2005: 723), the Great Beast took some of the witchcraft rituals he had learned and used them himself. In his book Witchcraft Today, Gardner speculated that Crowley might have invented the rites of the witch cult. He concluded that he may have “borrowed things from the cult writings, or more likely someone may have borrowed expressions from him” (Gardner 1954: 47). Some critics have said that this was Gardner being his usual tricksy self and trying to disguise the fact that when he wrote the rituals of Wicca in the 1940s he borrowed heavily from Crowley.
There is an alternative explanation provided by Bill Liddell in his early articles in The Wiccan. He claimed that in 1899 or 1900 Crowley had “a fleeting acquaintance with the Craft” when he was inducted into one of Pickingill’s Nine Covens in Norfolk. His introduction came from Allan Bennett (1872–1973), his magical mentor and tutor in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and allegedly also George Pickingill’s star pupil. Crowley was initiated into the Isis-Urania Temple of the GD in London in 1898 and was responsible for the rifts that split the Order a few years later. Liddell said that weird stories circulated in occult circles about Allan Bennett’s supernatural powers and his “blasting rod,” which had not come from his membership of the Theosophical Society or the GD. (The Wiccan #40 and #41, 1974). In 1900, Bennett gave up the magical path and went to Ceylon to become a Buddhist monk. He became an accredited Buddhist teacher, adopted the name Ananda Metteya, and set up a study group on Buddhism when he returned to England.
In 1899, Crowley rented an apartment in Chancery Lane, London, and furnished it as a magical temple. There he and Bennett evoked spirits using material gleaned from medieval grimoires. Doreen Valiente said that in a copy of Crowley’s magazine, The Equinox, there is a rite by Allan Bennett called “The Ritual for the Evocation Into Visible Appearance of the Great Spirit Taphhartharah.” This was a spirit associated with the planet Mercury, and the aim of the magical operation was to conjure it into physical manifestation. It could then be questioned and “the secrets of the magical art and occult wisdom” obtained.
Valiente said that this ritual contains features that are not included in the standard GD rites and are more similar to those in witchcraft. For instance, a small cauldron was placed in the center of a circle over a burning lamp fueled by methylated spirits. The cauldron contained what the article evocatively described as “hell broth” and Bennett took charge of it in his role as “assistant magus of the Art.” The purpose of the potion in the cauldron was to provide the material substance that allowed a spirit to manifest, presumably in the steam or smoke arising from it (Valiente 1978: 18).
In his articles in The Wiccan, Bill Liddell went on to claim that his people owned a photograph that shows George Pickingill with some of his pupils. Allegedly Allan Bennett can be easily recognized and, Liddell said, a young man beside him “is remarkably like a young Crowley.” When asked in 1977 if there was any possibility of getting hold of a copy of this extraordinary photograph to be published with his articles in The Cauldron, Liddell told me it was not available. When Leonora James (aka Prudence Jones) asked the same question in 1983, he replied: “It is highly unlikely that the photograph … will ever be exhibited for view. Its custodian was an old lady who died a few years ago. Several interested parties have purloined this photograph.”
According to Liddell, his great-grandmother was present on three occasions when Bennett and Crowley sought an audience with Pickingill. A possible confirmation of this relationship between Crowley and Old George came in my correspondence with Colonel Lawrence, mentioned before. He said his family had originally emigrated to the States from Scotland, and his great-great-grandmother, Lydia Lawrence, had founded the Unicorn Coven in Galveston around 1900. The coven’s rituals were inspired by a vacation Lydia had in Italy. They were neo-classical in nature, and the coven worshipped Diana, the Roman goddess of the moon and hunting.
On her way back to the States, Lydia visited some of her relatives living in England, and while she was there said she met Aleister Crowley. This meeting was supposed to have taken place in Canewdon where she was studying with George Pickingill, and Crowley was visiting his Craft mentor at the same time. She allegedly brought back to America a blackthorn walking stick that had belonged to the Essex witch master and which was given to her as a parting gift. It was displayed in Colonel Lawrence’s museum, but when it closed down some years ago and its collection was sold off, an American Wiccan couple managed to buy this famous example of a blasting rod.
Crowley apparently did not last long in the Craft—he was expelled from the Norfolk Coven because he would not convene regularly and also because he was a sexual pervert. Liddell claims that his masochistic tendencies meant that he enjoyed being punished (scourged?) by the coven’s High Priestess. As a result she denounced him as a “dirty minded, evilly disposed, vicious little monster,” and he was forced to leave. Liddell said that in fact Crowley was not really interested in the Craft per se, as he was too occupied with “awakening magical powers” (1994: 21–22). His attraction to the Craft and the reason for joining it was Pickingill and Bennett, and their occult ab
ilities.
When Crowley and Gardner met in 1947 and discussed witchcraft, it is claimed, the two men realized they had been brethren in the same Craft tradition. Liddell said that while Crowley had difficulty in recollecting the rites of the Norfolk Coven, his magical papers did contain material from the Pickingill Craft. He therefore volunteered to use a technique of magical recall to obtain the original rituals he had been taught. Francis King claimed that Gardner had paid Crowley “a large fee” to write the rituals of Wicca. There were originally four of these for the celebration of the vernal equinox on March 21, or May Eve (April 30), and three initiation rituals, presumably one for each degree (1971: 12).
This claim by King seems to have been due to a confusion with the fee Gardner paid to the Great Beast for some OTO material, including the charter to start a lodge and the various teaching papers. Cecil Williamson said that Crowley told Gardner he could join the Order providing he paid the going rate for each installment (Winter 1992). When Doreen Valiente met Gerald Yorke, he told her: “Well, Gerald Gardner paid Old Crowley about £300 or so for that [the OTO charter]” (letter to Dr. Allen Greenfield August 28, 1986, MOW archive).
The OTO charter sold to Gardner was displayed in the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic at Castletown on the Isle of Man. Crowley signed it with his magical name “Baphomet,” and described himself as the OTO “Sovereign Grand Master,” with jurisdiction over “all English-speaking countries.” The charter authorized his ‘“beloved son Scire [Dr. G. B. Gardner]” as a “Prince of Jerusalem” in the Order to constitute a “camp” (or lodge) of the OTO in “the degree Minerva.” This gave Gardner the authority to initiate people. The charter was written on the back of a piece of parchment that was a land deed for the county of Surrey in 1875, coincidentally the year Crowley was born. It had been written out by Gardner, but was signed by Crowley using his magical name.
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