Aleister Crowley in America

by Tobias Churton

  Hall was just as forthright about Crowley. Syndicated, his reasoned article reintroduced the mage to America.

  Aleister Crowley, who recently arrived in New York, is the strangest man I ever met. He is a man about whom men quarrel. Intensely magnetic, he attracts people or repels them with equal violence. His personality seems to breed rumors. Everywhere they follow him.

  One man to whom I spoke of him lauded Crowley as a poet of rare delicacy, the author of “Hail Mary,” a garland of verse in honor of the Mother of God. Another alluded to him as an unsparing critic of American literature. Another knew him as the holder of some world records for mountain-climbing. Still another warned me against him as a thoroughly bad man, a Satanist or devil-worshipper steeped in black magic, the high priest of Beelzebub. An actor knew of him only as a theatrical producer and as the designer of extraordinary stage costumes. A publisher [Mitchell Kennerley?] told me that Crowley was an essayist and philosopher whose books, nearly all privately issued, were master-pieces of modern printing. Among his works is a voluminous treatise on the history and practice of magic, representing immense research and erudition—the authoritative book on the subject. By others he was variously pictured to me as a big game hunter, as a gambler, as an editor, as an explorer. Some said that he was a man of real attainments, others that he was a faker. All agreed that he was extraordinary.

  The first time I saw Crowley he was standing in the lobby of the uptown hotel where he lives. I knew at once that he was the man I wanted, and instead of going to the desk I went right up and spoke to him. He took me to his room and began to talk of an article by Harry Kemp, which the World Magazine published last August, wherein was described a black mass at which Crowley was said to have officiated as priest. He said: “Kemp honestly believes he was present at the things he describes, but he wasn’t. I merely made him dream a scene of black magic, and he thought it was actually happening and that I was participating. He dreamed himself. I don’t practise black magic.”

  “But do you believe in magic?” I asked, “Do you claim to have supernatural powers?” Crowley turned his piercing black eyes upon me, smiled, and in a very sweet, low voice said, “There is nothing supernatural about magic, any more than there is about wireless telegraphy. The earnest student of the occult profits mentally and physically, and develops capacity for intellectual enjoyment not possessed by the ordinary mortal. Magic gets me anything I want—with the limitation, of course, that I must not use my powers to do anything that would break my oath. Each man has an original oath, which depends on the grade of his initiation. But all Magi are bound to poverty, chastity, and obedience.”

  Since our first meeting I have seen a good deal of Crowley, and although I cannot pretend to solve the bewildering riddle of his character, yet I know him as a very refined and courtly man, deeply versed in the history and principles of all religions, a scientific student of occult-ism, a leading Freemason and past master Rosicrucian, and as a poet of inspiration. Whether singing the praises of Our Lady in chaste and mystic verse, or lashing the sins of modern Babylon with furious invective, or deriding degeneracy, or extolling esotericism, his lines are never labored. What blemishes there are, are the blemishes of haste. He told me that he wrote down just what came to him, and printed it without changing a word. His most finished poetry is written in French, and takes the form of sonnets which might have come from the pen of Edmond Harcourt or Paul Verlaine.

  One day as we were sitting together in his room talking of the war he told me that he knew beforehand it would come on, and that as far back as May, 1910, the spirit of Mars, which he had “called up, had prophesied that there would be two wars in five years, in one of which Turkey, and in the other Germany, would be disastrously involved.” Of course I wanted to know all about his magic informant. This is what he told me, as I remember his words.

  “A magician evokes a particular spirit by a special ceremonial rite. He works for a given result and does not, like the spiritualists, wait for some spirit to turn up and become the slave of whatever does turn up. Once within his magic circle, the magician is master. The spirits must obey. What follows, believe or not, as you please.

  “It was in London [May 9, 1910]. Three of us—myself, a British naval officer of high rank [Commander Guy Marston], and a famous violinist [Leila Bathurst]—decided to evoke the spirit of Mars [“Bartzabel”]. By Mars we don’t mean the planet in the sky, at all; we mean the hidden forces that possess the powers we attribute to Mars. Also we performed no sacrifice. In the old days when the Israelites went out to give battle they would sacrifice an animal, but nowadays it is not necessary to shed blood. You use the proper incense, and the beings you want materialize from the smoke.

  “As we were going to evoke the spirit of Mars I used a blood-red robe and wore the crown of the Uraeus serpent and armed myself with the sword and the spear. My two assistant Magi were clad in white and gold.

  “Around the altar we had traced a large circle, ample in size to contain the three of us. And then, following the ancient rites, we consecrated the spear, and then the sword, and then the altar, and lastly the magic circle itself. So long as we remain inside that circle no harm could come to us. Once we were secure we conjured the Dog of Evil, just as the minister exorcises the spirits of evil before laying the foundation stone of a church, and having done that we bound ourselves by a great oath to the purposes of the ceremony. That is one of the most important things.

  “And as the clouds of incense rose from the altar we lifted up our voices and praised the God of Battle. We invoked the Egyptian God Horus and called upon Elohim Gebor to aid us. And then as I felt the power within me grow I commanded the blind spirit Bartzabel to come forth.

  “The dark clouds of incense slowly took form and, standing without the circle, a sexless oxlike form appeared, with dull, deceitful head and hideous human features suffused with blood. It stood panting, its heart beating violently, and in a deep, hoarse voice it answered my questions. Is said that in less than five years there would be two wars, and prophesied that the greatest of the two would end by the crushing of Germany.”

  Crowley told me all this in as matter of fact a manner as if he had been describing an experiment by Edison or Marconi, and as he spoke he puffed slowly at a briarwood pipe with a very short bowl and a very long amber mouthpiece.

  He is a well-knit, athletic man, on the verge of forty, standing 5 feet 11 in his boots and weighing 158 pounds. It is possible to describe him exactly so far, but no further.

  One can imagine Crowley’s delight with the article: no hysteria, no sob story.*76 His instinct was to offer thanks for the good things. This he did as Opus XIII, performed that Sunday afternoon at 2:35 p.m. with low-class mulatto prostitute, twenty-two-year-old Grace Harris. The composite Object was “To become One with the Lord.” Crowley added, “Things had cleared up for me this morning. World article, date with Quinn [for December 16] &c. So this was my weekly Thanksgiving Service; and therefore by this object I meant (1) to worship the Holy One by identity, (2) to make others worship me.” By the “Lord” here, Crowley was referring to Hermes as “lord” of the Grade to which he aspired, Magus 9° = 2▫, and also as the caduceus, the staff entwined by twin serpents, surmounted by winged globe: wand of New York’s god; as Hermetic quicksilver semen in the sense of the “carrier of the Word” or “Logos,” the communicated essence of God; also as the rod or wand of the divine messenger—the Hermetic phallus.

  Late antique philosophy understood the divine essence, or mind, as being sown in the world as a seed: the logos spermatikos (“spermatic word”). For Crowley the silvery Hermetic seed was visible sign of the Impersonal Self, or Augoeides, or “Holy Guardian Angel” that should be raised to its source sacramentally to “revivify the whole.” We can get a sense of where he was coming from when we observe the “Result” of that afternoon’s opus. “I got a good identity-magical, not up to Samadhi [obliteration of distinction of subject and object] though—and saw myself as Ph[
allos] walking.”

  When Crowley shaved his head he would often leave a phallic tuft above his forehead: sun, Horus, cock, fertility, life, love, and liberty! That was the New Aeon. Crowley would have been mightily chuffed by the discovery of the DNA model as a double helix, like the twin serpents of Hermes’s rod. He would immediately have identified it with the Hermetic caduceus, and with the two “thieves” (Hermes as trickster) on either side of Christ at the “place of the skull.” He had been surprised to perceive an identity of Hermes with Christ during the Paris Working in January and February.

  The rite completed in “orgiastic” spirit, Crowley seems to have got out onto the streets, for he reports, in light of his vision of himself as a walking phallus, that at 4:50 p.m. one Dorothy von Palmerburg “fell straight down for me,” however we might interpret that.

  It would appear that an evening party had been laid on for him to celebrate his moment of newspaper fame, for he records being in the swing at 9:00 p.m. that night (December 13). Had he a spare moment between Dorothy and the party, he might just have caught page 2 of Sunday’s New York Tribune, headlined GERMAN SPIES COST SCHWAB MILLIONS. Highly relevant to his preoccupations, the story described the kind of thing one suspects had ostensibly brought him to New York in the first place.

  According to the Tribune, Germans in New York and Washington in and out of the diplomatic service were checking over a story said to involve Charles M. Schwab, president of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, and the German Secret Service. Schwab had recently returned from a mysterious flying visit to England with a certified check for $6 million. He “little dreamed” that German Secret Service efficiency would lose him the largest individual order that had ever been obtained for his concern and that he would have to return to the British government the 10 percent deposit of $6 million that had clinched the order. Mr. Schwab was said to have crossed the Atlantic on the Olympic under an assumed name. A special train had apparently carried retired steel king Schwab from Lough Swilly in Ireland to London. But before the Mauretania had reached Sandy Hook, the State Department had full knowledge of the transaction. On arrival, Secretary of State Bryan invited Schwab to Washington to tell him that execution of the contract violated the neutrality proclamation of Woodrow Wilson. “That Germany has a large staff of active agents in neutral countries, who openly carry on a lively propaganda in her behalf, is well known,” declared the Tribune, adding that the most important work was undertaken by secret agents. “The efforts of American bankers a few weeks ago to negotiate a loan to the Allies was promptly communicated to the German government, which immediately instructed its diplomatic representatives here to protest to President Wilson.” This all sounds like background to Crowley’s “addled egg” and undoubtedly demonstrates the background work of the Propaganda Kabinett, whose aim it was to show Americans the “sound logic” of strict neutrality and, failing that, to bully them into it.

  Crowley was in good spirits that Sunday night: a welcome relief. According to his sex magick diary, around 9:00 p.m. he “had a great time doing good magic and getting the people interested.” Aimée Gouraud was, in particular, “very cordial indeed.” Crowley also had his eye on “another victim, red hair and Aires I think.” He wondered if she might be the manifest result of Opus X for the Scarlet Woman. “Perhaps X at last!” Thirteen months later he would have to observe, “All this latter part failed.”9

  It is just possible that this was the night described in the Confessions when Crowley dined with John O’Hara Cosgrave (1864–1947), who wanted Crowley to meet astrologer Evangeline Adams.

  I dined at Cosegrave’s [sic] house one night. He had asked Evangeline Adams to meet me as being a famous astrologer. The meeting led to a lengthy association. She wanted me to write a book on astrology for her.10

  Sunday editor of the New York World from 1912 to 1927, Cosgrave was firmly pro-Allied, which sympathy led Spence to speculate on whether his kindness to Crowley was prompted by consideration for Crowley as an Allied intelligence asset.11 According to Spence, New York World foreign affairs editor Frank Cobb was also pro-Allied, indeed a close personal friend of future number two SIS man in the United States, Norman Thwaites. Cosgrave edited Everybody’s Magazine, which took articles from H. G. Wells and G. K. Chesterton, denizens of London’s secret Propaganda Bureau.

  If the December 13 gathering did include Cosgrave and Adams, it would not only match the World Magazine’s Sunday puff on Crowley but also tie in with the New York World’s page 3 illustrated splash the following day featuring . . . Evangeline Adams! Dominated by a large photograph of the controversial astrologer, Miss Adams received the Marguerite Mooers Marshall Women’s Section treatment: ASTROLOGY MORE CERTAIN IN ITS DIAGNOSIS THAN MEDICINE OR LAW, SAYS MISS ADAMS. The subheading refers to Evangeline’s aforementioned trial for fortune-telling: “Woman Declared by Court to Be No Fortune Teller Asserts that Stars Indicate What a Mortal’s Fate May Be, and Then It’s Up to the Knowledge Seeker to Fend Off Disaster or Invite Happiness—Plans an Astrological Research Society.”

  Ms. Marshall continues, breathlessly, “That is the theory of Miss Evangeline S. Adams, astrologist . . . says her patrons have included the late J. Pierpont Morgan and F. A. Heinze . . . I talked with Miss Adams today in her richly furnished curio-crammed apartment on the tenth floor of the Carnegie Studios*77 . . . Miss Adams herself is a businesslike person, with a square, frankly middle-aged face and figure.” Ms. Marshall asked Miss Adams about whether astrology could have predicted the war. Miss Adams replied proudly, “Three years ago I saw that suffering and strife threatened. As I read the planets, it will be the last war, to be followed by a real brotherhood of man, in bringing about which the U.S. will triumph as a spiritual nation. There seems to be a chance that the war may end next spring or summer, owing to the intervention of this country, and with the Allies victorious.” “That’s fortunate I [Marguerite Mooers Marshall] observed, if the stars want the brotherhood of man instead of the step-fatherhood of the Kaiser.”

  The meeting of Crowley with Evangeline Adams would entail significant consequences. First of these would be the production of Crowley’s masterpiece on astrology, The General Principles of Astrology Liber DXXXVI. Up to that point it was Crowley’s biggest ever work of mature prose. Its progress was, however, checkered. What started as book doctoring on what Miss Adams and Seabury had already lifted from other sources, became a full-scale treatise that Crowley was still working on in the summer of 1916. That work came to an end at the summer’s terminus when Crowley decided to cease pursuing his “service” career with Adams or Stuart X or other occasional articles, and devote himself to being prophet of Thelema, his religio-magical system of spiritual attainment, for which work he fully believed he had been chosen by generally unseen governors of planetary destiny.

  Miss Adams would wait until after Crowley’s departure to eke out of Crowley’s work two strong-selling books on astrology published under her own name with no acknowledgment whatsoever of Crowley’s far more than substantial role. The book as Crowley intended was not in fact published until 2002, when William Breeze completed the massive task of reassembling a prodigious work that even Crowley reckoned long lost to fate.

  Another outcome of Crowley and Adams’s encounter was a renewed interest in astrology as part of his modus operandi. Only in the summer, Crowley had written to C. S. Jones in Canada that there existed not one decent book on the subject and that the subject was fraught with bunk. Once he got back into the subject, however, Crowley soon found that, pursued with sensitivity, it held great possibilities. According to the Confessions, Crowley took to enlivening gatherings in New York with remarkable exhibitions of the astrologer’s ability to judge people’s astrological data simply from looking at them.

  At this time, it was my invariable practice to judge from the personal appearance of every stranger I met the sign rising at his birth. Having made up my mind, I would ask him to tell me either the hour or the day of his birth. I could then c
alculate the missing day as thus: Suppose I judge my man to have Libra in the ascendant and he tells me his birthday is October 1st. When the sun is in 5° or 6° Libra, I can tell him he was born at sunrise, within a limit of error of about two hours. Alternatively, should he say, “I was born at midnight,” I can give his birthday to within a fortnight or so of Christmas. I tabulated my results over a considerable period and found that I was right in a little over two cases in three. Where I was wrong, I found that either the sign I had chosen for his ascendant was that occupied by his sun, which in some people determines the personal appearance more effectively than the ascendant, or else, in erecting his horoscope I found the rising sign occupied by planets whose nature modified the sign so that it could be mistaken for the one I had picked out.12

  It seems to have been at one such demonstration, and around this time, that Crowley came to know and appreciate Cosgrave’s good friend Frank Crowninshield (1872–1947; strange perhaps that Crowninshield, Cosgrave, and Crowley would all die in the same year). The elegant, Paris-born poet and aesthete Crowninshield had recently accepted friend Condé Nast’s invitation to assume control of Vanity Fair, which Crowninshield undertook to transform into the preeminent literary journal of America. Crowley was perhaps recalling a first or early encounter with Crowninshield in the following passage from his Confessions.

  The psychological reactions to these demonstrations [of astrological nous] were most interesting. Some people were quite unaffected by the most brilliant successes. Some were scared half out of their wits, such as they had. Others again fell prostrate in awed admiration and jumped from the facts to the fancy that I must be a Mahatma able to juggle with the stars in their courses if the wind took me. Only a small percentage showed intelligent interest. I made a great impression on Frank Crowninshield, editor of Vanity Fair. I was in form that night and told everyone exactly right. He realized it could not be guessing. The chances against me ran into billions.13