Aleister Crowley in America

by Tobias Churton

  Crowley states that while waiting for the books his “political opportunity came along.” Well, the books had arrived by December 16, for on that date Crowley’s diary clearly indicates that Quinn “promised me $500 on a collection of books.” That was the “small proportion of the consignment”—very disappointing for Crowley, no doubt. Nonetheless, the figure was gratefully received and banked the next day. The nature of Crowley’s disappointment is revealed when we examine previously unpublished records of these transactions as they appeared to Quinn in the next chapter.

  So, by Crowley’s own account, he was already “getting into his stride in countermining Münsterberg” by December 16. This dating makes sense of his material reaching the Fatherland by early January 1915. It may have been Harris who passed the “teaser” article to Viereck or one of Viereck’s assistant editors, Rethy or Harvey.

  When Crowley approaches the period from another angle in chapter 81 of his Confessions we get the sense his first few months were a protracted misery. We also see what he meant by the phrase “political opportunity” above.

  I had arrived with a not inconsiderable reputation, both as a man of letters and as a Magician. I had numerous connections with prominent people in both camps and was furnished with excellent introductions. I was positively stupefied to discover, by the most baffling experiences, that by none of these means could I make my way into public life. I lectured with apparent success; yet literally nothing came of it. I was welcomed by editors and publishers, written up and entertained with surprising enthusiasm; yet I failed to sell a single poem, story, essay, or even article (except in the special case of political writing in one paper of no credit) and no one would hear of publishing a book. Occasionally, a man [Quinn? Someone else?] promised great things; but the arrangements always fell through suddenly and unreasonably. I had a host of friends in the city, yet days and weeks would pass without my seeing a soul except in the most casual way.5 [my italics]

  An article about the nature of propaganda was Crowley’s “political writing” for the “paper of no credit”; the first part of “Honesty is the Best Policy” was published in the Fatherland on January 13. It is now clear Crowley was already on the German propaganda trail by mid-December 1914, and this opens the possibility that Spence’s theory that Crowley’s coming to New York involved espionage from the start could arguably be, at least in part, correct. On the other hand, it is still possible that Crowley was simply kicking his heels in November and early December waiting for the book consignment and, bored and frustrated, looked into Harris’s connection with Viereck, and having long since crossed swords with Münsterberg (in association with Naval Intelligence officer, Lt. Everard Feilding), and being aware of the “respectable” professor’s part in German propaganda—patently obvious to anyone reading the Review of Reviews, the Fatherland, and other outlets—had a moment of inspiration of how he could yet serve his country (if he wasn’t already). As before, both readings lead us to the same place, but it is surely significant that Crowley puts mist around the circumstances of his association with Viereck and company, attributing the contact to pure chance followed by a fateful moment of personal daring. He may also, of course, have been protecting Harris, if Harris was, as seems likely, the first link to Viereck. It should also be borne in mind that Crowley’s first Fatherland contribution—and there would be a very long gap until the next one—was definitely presented as the work of a “pro-British poet,” and he had therefore a long way to go to prove to the pro-Germans that he shared their political prejudices. And this point, as we shall see, then makes considerable sense of Crowley’s dramatic performance as a pro-German “Irish Republican” on July 3, 1915, done at great personal risk, to show German propagandists that he was not really pro-British and had definitively cut the painter. If you find this complicated, that’s because it is. Crowley perennially took an idiosyncratically oblique approach to real-world situations. In the spiritual realm he was direct. Crowley had a curious, and revealing, analytical logic and humor of his own, as evinced in this little phrase from a wartime notebook.

  When Darwin buggered the monkey, God came unstuck.6

  THIRTEEN

  The Magick of a New York Christmas: World War I Style

  The Universe is not an object; it is an arrangement of forces or laws (classically: “gods”), which when expressed through space and time may appear limitless. But none of these concepts are objects either. That is to say, we do not know if the cosmos is finite or infinite, only that, as I suspect, if you were to travel to an anticipated “limit,” extension of the observer beyond that limit would manifest in more universe, because the perceiver is creative of the universe of our knowing, material perception being conformable to law, and because “limit” is a condition of space, and were there no space, there could be no limit. Velocity requires the possibility of infinite extension, but extension is a category of mind, not an object. The laws of the universe are absolutely rigid, their possible manifestation infinitely fluid.

  On November 7, 1914, Crowley engaged in his first act of sex magick in the United States at the St. Regis Hotel, New York City.

  Some observations: First, while Crowley’s specialist diary Rex de Arte Regia gives details of sex-magick experiments, rites, and “operations,” the details are mostly for scientific purposes so that objective observations and demonstrations could be compared and reflected upon rationally. Crowley was learning about the “secret of the O.T.O.” (IX°), imparted to him in principle in 1912 by the O.T.O.’s “Outer Head” Theodor Reuss, suspected by Crowley, in August 1914, of having left London with the Prussian secret service. In fact, we know only a certain amount about what else Crowley was doing in the period but for his account in his Confessions, which, while brilliantly expressed, is selective, self-serving, and above all, literary in character, written after the war under appalling constraints. Nevertheless, investigation confirms much of what Crowley related in his autobiography as matters of fact. But he was also covering aspects of his life in that work, mainly for legal or obligatory purposes. Taken by themselves, as they too often have been, the sex magick diaries give a highly distorted picture both of Crowley’s life in general, and of the character of the sexual rites themselves.

  In Rex de Arte Regia, Crowley records the date and number of the “opus,” or work, in temporal sequences; the name and immediate background of the “assistant” (if there was one); the conditions (place, weather, state of mind of participants); the primary sexual method; sometimes the astrological setting at the time of the opus (and sometimes, if he knew it, the astrological conditions at the assistant’s own birth); the willed “Object” of the work (its purpose); the state of the “Elixir,” or sacrament (usually combined semen and vaginal fluids = “bread” and “wine”); and any results, recorded over a period, though Crowley would quickly conclude that results ought to manifest within a fortnight lest “chance” play too obvious a role.

  The raw character of data occasionally gives an impression of cold, calculated encounters with indifferent partners. The repetitive, formal nature of the sequences emphasizes this characteristic. This sex magick may appear very “unsexy.” That is because the documents are intended for Crowley’s analysis, not expressions of his incurable romanticism. These were pioneering experiments in magical practice and scientific para-psycho-physiology.

  Could sexual rites cause changes in nature in conformity with will (and natural law)? This was the question addressed, and though a highly problematic one, it was not a question Crowley would shirk. It also helped if he enjoyed himself; that is, threw himself into the enthusiasm of the moment, rather than thinking about it. Besides, magick, he had always insisted in the past, should only be practiced when ordinary methods were proving impossible, weak, or ineffective. All willed objectives may par-take of the character of magic, but strictly magical rites call on obscure dimensions of the human being that rationality alone cannot currently access: this being the chief methodological proble
m for materialist science.

  Crowley was attractive to many women, and men, and he was by training and nature courteous, considerate, somewhat shy, and romantic, if the partner was responsive. He could be caustic and very sarcastic otherwise, but one only has to read his letters to women to realize the baselessness of the myth of Crowley’s being some kind of brute and the women “dupes,” though he was often by normal standards, irresponsible. “If a fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise” (Blake).

  It is also vital to grasp that Crowley’s conception of sex and the organs of sexual life were anything but the clinical objects familiar to doctors and gynecologists, not that Crowley eschewed the scientific dimension. Semen for him was “the most powerful, the most radiant thing that existeth in the whole universe,”1 the “lord, the giver of life” if you like. Following traditional alchemical symbols, he called it the “lion,” kingly, golden; the female secretions constituted the “eagle,” noble skyward bird that seizes upon the lion. Participants in magical rites were kings and queens, generating a magical birth. The penis was the sun’s vice-regent on Earth and the womb the Holy Grail. He refers to the vagina as the “cucurbit,” simply taking over the alchemical term for the vessel in which liquid is boiled so that vapor may rise and be distilled into magical elixir. He believed sexual magick was a secret of alchemy, expressed in chemical, abstract, as well as mystico-religious and esoteric terms due to centuries of authoritarian religion’s sex-negative doctrines. It made sense to Crowley’s understanding of human evolution and religious history that the sexual essence of alchemy had been, to his mind, deliberately obscured.

  Crowley despised what he called “filth”; that is, careless sex acts of merely physical stimulation offering only “a relief redolent of defecation,” as he put it. Sex was a natural constituent of our being and was best transformed into its higher, spiritual potential. First, obviously, was the creation of a fabulous new human wonder being, but in addition, Man had the ability and right to express his “true will” (godly nature) through his or her fundamental nature as a sexual, creative, magical being. The more art, finesse, and passionate life one could bring to the love rite, the better. Enthusiasm was, he discovered, a primary necessity. Magick was to be joyous: the spirit set free.

  Crowley’s basic attitude to sex is revealed in simple terms in a nice letter he wrote to friend Blanche Conn in 1923. Blanche had just dispatched 3,333 francs to Tunis to assist Crowley’s desperate straits after his having been expelled from Italy by Mussolini.

  The whole point is that the sex instinct is the creative instinct and you can’t get out of the responsibility of utilizing that instinct because of the dictates of your fathers and the sins of your sister women. As long as the sex problem bothers you, so long will you continue to be only a little bit of your true self—and less and less as you go on in years.

  . . . I wish I had time to write a treatise on the difference between repression and control.2

  I wish he had too.*72

  How did sex magick work? Crowley aimed to discover by experiment both if and, if possible, how it worked, or worked best. While it could not achieve things that were by nature contrary to law—to do so would be to cast the entire cosmos into anarchy, which is not its nature—the idea of the galvanized will operating on fluid factors, shaping existing tendencies and innate possibilities at a deeper (subatomic?) level than obvious cause and effect, this the theory of sexual magick could accommodate.

  Crowley observed energies and patterns in the workings of nature that facilitated, say, the flow of money transactions, or the sense of attractiveness and magnetism, or even ebullience of health. Such possibilities could be encouraged or invoked through god-forms, the theory asserted, by acts of pure will, so long as that will was “true” or of its essential character. Willpower had real power in this field: a staple of magical theory; Christ did the “will” (Greek: hē thelēma) of “he” who sent him, commanding demons as enemies accused him of drawing power from them.

  By Christmas 1914, Crowley realized that he faced a technical problem: how “to fix the volatile” (an alchemical procedure). He could concentrate wholly on the operation’s Object, or purpose, or the words of the Object, but exactly how to hold together the evoked forces and project or “birth” them onto what Éliphas Lévi called the “Astral light” or “Universal agent,” or fluid plane of magic causation, this was an abiding problem; it seemed to require an elusive knack. There were also, of course, all the usual problems and pitfalls, risks and riders appropriate to any form of magic or willed action. “Love is the law, love under will.”

  Crowley’s American sex-magick career began on November 7, 1914, with Opus IV, a rite of masturbation with his left hand while imagining the image of “Babalon.” Derived from the Gnostic Aeon, or “goddess” Barbelo, who reflects the unknowable Father image while conveying spermatic fruitfulness (pneuma = “spirit”), Babalon is the god-form corresponding to Crowley’s “Scarlet Woman” (cf the Hindu Shakti-imbued “Red Goddess” Lalita Tripurasundari), divine partner of the “Beast” (solar Man) on Earth. On this occasion the Beast’s willed Object was “success.”

  A week later Crowley recorded immediate, but disappointing, results. “Things in New York have moved slowly and badly so far.” The week gap was due to “lack of leisure and opportunity.” He had had his first meeting with John Quinn, however. “Many Magi might rejoice seeing that I sold £500 or so of books on November 12. [$700 does not equal £500; there’s a calculation error; Crowley was expecting more than had been agreed.] And that today, 14 November, all my difficulties on other lines seem to have cleared away. But this Magus [magician, not grade] wants definite, complete success all round. Call no man happy until he is dead—or at least has left New York!” Crowley seems to refer here to his financial “business.” This rather supports Crowley’s own story that he picked up on the propaganda idea independently, while waiting for his manuscript and/or book consignment to arrive.

  Crowley had suffered from a cold following Opus IV and experienced a “feeling” or “intuition” that his method was not “altogether right.” He made a divination on the question by opening Book VII of his inspired Holy Books of Thelema, and letting his seal ring fall at random, on chapter 4, verse 49. “I have caught Thee, O my soft thrush; I am like a hawk of mother-of-emerald; I catch Thee by instinct, though my eyes fail from thy glory.” From this he concluded that the method was probably all right.

  On December 22 he would again reflect on results regarding “success”: “I think on the whole I may say I have had success though its results are not manifest altogether. But I have had love, money, pupils, clients, fame, and my prospects look very bright all round. Yes, I shall call this success.”

  Round one to sex magick.

  Among positive outcomes, Crowley did not specifically mention meeting Quinn’s friend Belle da Costa Greene at the J. P. Morgan Library, but it was probably fairly near this time that Crowley confided to her an audacious, dastardly idea to motivate Americans into war with Germany. Confessions editors Symonds and Grant removed the original passage, possibly because it might have been used to imply the Germans’ sinking of civilian ship Lusitania in May 1915 with tremendous loss of life was linked to a British intelligence plot. Indeed, perhaps the most significant hypothetical argument for British intelligence denying Crowley’s intelligence role at all may have been linked to that very possibility: that it was Admiral Hall’s policy at N.I.D. to let or encourage Germany into acts visible to Americans as hostile to themselves and their principles. Certainly, after it happened, Crowley encouraged Fatherland staff to assert brazenly that it was Germany’s right and duty to sink the ship, knowing this would affect Americans’ perception of the “justice” of Germany’s vaunted “cause,” inculcating the idea that defense against violence required that Germany be stopped.

  A frustrated Crowley’s imaginative suggestion to Belle was that he pose as a wealthy philanthropist, offering to take indig
ents to form an ideal colony. Once at sea, the “colonists” would board an Allied ship. A captured German sub would then torpedo the empty vessel in shallow U.S. waters. Subsequent outrage would force government to retaliate. It says something about the scope of his thoughts in combatting American apathy and confusion as regards the war.

  On November 14, Crowley gave an hour, starting at 10:30 p.m., to an opus with one Elsie Edwards, described thus: “Obese Irish prostitute of maternal Taurus type” who received three dollars for her services. The Object was “thanksgiving” for the glory of the phallus “and the Establishment of the Holy Kingdom in this country.” “The unattractiveness of the assistant made the operation difficult,” commented Crowley. “But it was necessary to begin somehow and so far New York has shown me none of its sex side. May the Lord grant me favour in this also.” Reading over the record fourteen months later, he noted, on January 26, 1916, “The Lord granted it: blessed be He.” Crowley criticized his performance thus: “I find myself apt to concentrate on the articulation of the words that formulate the Will rather than on the substance of the Will itself. This is surely (a priori) wrong.”

  Two days later, on November 16, Crowley felt the itch for a male lover. A possibility had appeared on the horizon, but Crowley wanted someone who resembled sometime homosexual partner Cambridge entertainer Herbert Charles Jerome Pollitt, and Opus VI’s Object was to attract “him.” Crowley concentrated again on Babalon as the “love” of the most beloved and on her as the “body” of the most beloved, and the result astounded Crowley, though on January 28, 1916, he concluded that the man was “not worthy of the name.” Whoever he was, he left the mage disappointed and frustrated.