Aleister Crowley in America

by Tobias Churton

  At 3:20 p.m. on January 10, two days after receiving the $100 from S. K., Crowley and Dutch girl Lea Dewey performed a IX° operation for “sex attraction,” described by the magician as “really quite good, almost up to European standards,” adding wryly, “This lady [Lea Dewey] has not been long in America.” Results seemed to follow immediately. At 4:00 p.m. an uplifted Crowley “went round to see Aimée Gouraud and was spontaneously fondled and kissed as I never saw! Really, a miracle of the first order. S. K., too, practically yielded to me; got quite excited, but being drunk was obsessed by her crazy love affairs.” Clearly S. K. was not Aimée, but she was with Aimée, perhaps at the McAlpin Hotel where Aimée shared rooms with husband Alexandre Miskinoff (almost certainly absent!)—or perhaps at S. K.’s address, or that of a mutual friend (170 West 72nd Street?).

  It’s possible that S. K. was friendly with Aimée’s daughter “Alma Ashe,” from Aimée’s first marriage to Porter Ashe. Alma, also known as Gladys “Alma” Crocker Ashe, or Alma Gouraud (1884–1947), had, on divorcing husband Powers Gouraud (brother of Aimée’s late husband Jackson Gouraud), become her mother’s constant companion. Traveling together through Europe and America like sisters, they were in fact sisters-in-law! S. K’s “crazy love affairs,” as Crowley refers to them, seem not dissimilar to those of Alma and her mother, who followed their fancies, as this magazine report color-fully illustrates from the Wasp, San Francisco, Saturday, March 26, 1910:

  Fig. 14.1. A typical dance party given by Aimée Crocker (standing center, back row)

  WILL THEY SETTLE DOWN HERE?

  The news that Mrs. Amy Crocker Ashe Gillig Gouraud and her daughter, Mrs. Gladys Gouraud, are to come West and probably make their home in San Francisco, has caused a ripple of satisfaction among Mrs. Gouraud’s acquaintances here. The attitude of society toward its members who fail to observe the hidebound conventions has altered considerably of late years. Anyone who can banish boredom is sure of a hearty welcome. When Amy Crocker was a girl she might always be depended on to give society a shock, though her girlish escapades were only due to an exuberance of spirits, perhaps. She will find her first husband, with whom she made a romantic elopement, the happy husband of another, and a very staid, quiet lawyer, who goes in for country and golf life. Her second husband died some months ago, and the third one quite recently. Considerable curiosity is being manifested about the daughter, for Gladys Crocker Gouraud—as Alma Ashe—was recalled as one of the most independent little girls that ever lived. On one occasion, her grandmother, Mrs. E. B. Crocker, gave the child a birthday party. The little girl requested that she might send out all the invitations herself. When she showed her grandmother the list of guests, it did not contain the name of a single girl.

  I think we can see that far from the picture of a low-life Crowley scraping away in the shadows of New York presented by somewhat partisan admirers of W. B. and John Butler Yeats, the real Aleister Crowley, while in need of funds, was in early 1915 excellently placed in high echelons of New York society. Indeed, had he not decided to do his “duty,” as he saw it, for his country and put himself in the appalling position of having to appear as a pro-German to get inside German propaganda, he could have enjoyed an excellent time all around, despite the European war, hobnobbing with the rich and famous, delighting all and sundry, penning witty puffs for Vanity Fair. He knew that New York journalism, publishing, and high society were predominantly pro-Allied. And if he were as venal as his enemies have always suggested, and continue to suggest, he could have sold his occult knowledge for money and, like Evangeline Adams, made a good living in an uptown apartment giving occult advice and mystical training of the kind enjoyed by Theosophists to this day.

  That he did not do so should give us pause. He wrote after the war that he did not want to be a hero, nor set out to become one, nor felt heroic about what he would do. In this he succeeded beyond measure, for everything he did was to be turned against him. Crowley said that he simply saw a wide-open opportunity for which he was uniquely fitted and went for it, rightly giving himself credit that when he realized what an atrocious position he had made for himself, even stupidly made for himself, he at least bit the bullet and kept it up, despite painful, pride-numbing, and excruciating emotional and physical consequences. It is hardly surprising that the only way he found of dealing with the circumstances that enveloped him was to interpret everything as a “dealing of God with his soul” as an adept he had at sundry times vowed to do. Thus, he could ruminate on what he called the “Curse of the Grade of Magus,” whose hallowed destiny he was approaching; that is, that the Word of the Magus would be taken for a lie and all that he did would be twisted by the profane.

  INTO THE DARK LAIR

  As will become apparent, Crowley’s greatest problem with the German Propaganda Kabinett and its overlords, military attaché Franz von Papen, naval attaché Karl Boy-Ed, and ambassador Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff, was to try to convince them that, against all appearances, he really was pro-German. Though he claimed to be “Irish” and a natural enemy of England, he had a clear English accent, wore Savile Row suits, and had written to the Observer that Germany would pay heavily for her crimes against the ruined churches of Belgium and France. Even more damning perhaps, in November 1914 the English Review published his “Appeal to the American Republic,” referring to the “traitor Prussian” and the hope that England and America would unite against common foes of mankind. He had a lot of explaining to do.

  Crowley’s advantage was that he could “play up” to the psychology of his prey, which he understood intuitively, and this uncanny gift was helped by the fact that Viereck, from the point of view of what he required, knew “a good thing” when he saw one. An English writer, with a reputation (any reputation), prepared to admit in print that the German point of view had fairness going for it and was a coup really too attractive to pass on, given the pressure of the times. This was the main drive of the German propaganda: to persuade the American reader, and German American reader particularly, that Americans should, above all, be “fair” to Germany. What better way to do this than to use a “sporting” Englishman willing to see the other chap’s point of view in the interests of keeping a just peace and a fair game?

  Thus, three days after Crowley’s stimulating Sunday afternoon with Aimée Gouraud and S. K., German propaganda weekly the Fatherland appeared in New York news kiosks, price five cents, with Crowley’s “Honesty Is the Best Policy” on page 11.5 On the inside front page readers would first see an advertisement for “The Fair Play Library,” including poems by Dr. Hanns Heinz Ewers; “German Warsongs”—Deutsche Kriegslieder; and “Searchlights on the War” by Dr. Bernhard Dernburg. Editors’ names were given as George Sylvester Viereck and Frederick F. Schrader.

  The Fatherland’s reasonable pieces were contrasted on page 4 with the headline Allied Press Hysterical. Crowley recognized the truth of this. How could he undermine the Germans’ successful approach of appearing reasonable, unhysterical? The answer became obvious to him rather quickly. The upper left of page 14 advertised “A Hand-Colored Picture of EMPEROR WILHELM from CELEBRITY ART CO. BOSTON MASS.” Such a sleazy attempt at a sacred relic may well have inspired Crowley’s bizarre article about the Kaiser as the “New Parsifal,” “Saviour of the World,” a more than Christ-like, messianic figure literally “dwarfing” “obscene” King George V, and assumed to heavenly, mystical proportions and realms, which was published later in the year by Paul Carus of Chicago’s pro-German Open Court magazine, a magazine dedicated to “The Science of Religion and the Religion of Science.”6

  In retrospect, Crowley reckoned that he must have been drunk both when he wrote “The New Parsifal” and when he sent it to Carus (1852–1919), author of The Gospel of Buddha (1894). “I suppose I had become acclimatized to the idea that all serious and eminent people are perfectly brainless. He swallowed it, hook, line, and sinker,” recalled Crowley in his Confessions. Nonetheless, “The New Parsifal” appeared comfort-ably in
the August issue of Open Court between a learned article about King Darius of Persia and the editor’s “English Diplomacy and the Fate of the ‘Huns,’” which opens with the statement that the initial cause of the war was the question of “whether the Slav or the Teuton” would be “the leader in Europe.”

  Fig. 14.2. Paul Carus (1852–1919)

  Crowley might have got a kick from seeing absurd propaganda printed instead of clever stuff, but it is likely that many readers accepted his garbage at face value. However, no one had yet seen anything like “The New Parsifal” in January when Crowley’s first, cautious Fatherland article appeared on the 13th.

  Page 16 of that issue adhered to the sweet reason approach: a “DEBATE” between editor Viereck and English visitor Cecil Chesterton*87 at New York’s Cort Theater on January 17—“Whether the Cause of Germany or of the Allied Powers is Just.”

  Coming to Crowley’s own submission (no pun intended), the Fatherland editor inserted at its head an interesting byline. It corrects the perception Crowley advanced in the Confessions of a straight-off, disinformative reductio ad absurdum counter-propaganda campaign of ludicrously broad, unreasonable articles, to be taken by Americans as so extreme as to damn any cause advocated. This is how Viereck actually introduced Aleister Crowley:

  The Allies have been jubilant over the frankness of Maximilian Harden. It is at least matched by the frankness of Mr. Aleister Crowley, the pro-British poet [note]. In fact, this is so well realized in England that the present article is circulated secretly in manuscript and every precaution is taken to prevent its views from becoming known to the “common people.” Let us add that the editors of “The Fatherland” do not agree with the author’s final conclusion and that the article is published solely as a significant expression of British opinion. In next week’s issue Mr. Crowley will conclude his brilliant exposure of British hypocrisy.

  Crowley’s article seems a fairly honest piece on British hypocrisy—and especially hysteria—in British propaganda, encapsulating what he had criticized with Austin Harrison and Raymond Radclyffe in London where both popular and serious press ranted “à la fishwife,” inflating Germans into formidable monsters, inciting attacks on all things seemingly German, instead of concentrating on sober, determined measures necessary to ensure victory. Crowley’s article was rational, consistent with his established views as regards the pitfalls of national arrogance, and appearing sensible, conformed to German strategy. Presenting himself as the “original Sinn Feiner” to an editor who claimed great sympathy with Irish independence, Crowley showed himself useful; he was let in, just. With few cards, he played them with care, one step at a time.

  The second installment of “Honesty is the Best Policy” appeared on January 20, with the editor’s spin on page 5. “The following paper concludes Mr. Crowley’s analysis of British sham and folly.” Crowley’s conclusion did not please the editors. While finding the article useful propaganda, they distanced themselves from it. It apparently gave too much away, making the Kaiser resemble not so much a man under pressure as a man who reacted to pressure, even a man overcome by it. This was not the “New Parsifal.”

  Before Austria has moved a man or a gun, Russia mobilizes. And what was the position of the German Emperor? His bankers had told him that Germany could no longer endure the weight of her armour; the incident of Zabern*88 had shown the Junkers that they could still not control the Social Democrats, but that another year or two would see the end of their power. He must strike now or never.

  He looked about him. The weakness of the British Government and its supposed preoccupant with the Ulster folly and the suffragettes encouraged him to hope.

  He saw France, mere rottenness, its bandages torn off by the pistol-shot of Madame Cailleaux.†89 All things conspired; he would make one final effort for peace by threatening Russia.

  And then he suddenly knew it was no good. Nothing was any good; nothing would ever be good again. Sir Edward Grey [British Foreign Secretary] spoke for peace, spoke of neutrality, in the House of Commons at a moment when thousands of British troops were already in Belgian waters, and the fleet, concentrated and ready for action, already held the North Sea.

  . . . Even a worm will turn; even a Quaker will fight if he is cornered.

  Wilhelm struck.

  Just after midnight, the day before the Fatherland appeared, an uncomfortably hot Crowley, with window open, dressed only in a silk dressing gown, recorded Opus XXVI. Weather moist “but warm as June,” the temple had been pitch dark. The Object: “Money.” The Lord was invoked by the “adoration” from Crowley’s sacred play The Ship, published in Equinox X in 1913.

  Thou, who art I, beyond all I am,

  Who hast no nature and no name,

  Who art, when all but thou are gone,

  Thou, centre and secret of the Sun,

  Thou, hidden spring of all things known

  And unknown, Thou aloof, alone,

  Thou, the true fire within the reed

  Brooding and breeding, source and seed

  Of life, love, liberty, and light,

  Thou beyond speech and beyond sight,

  Thee I invoke, my faint fresh fire

  Kindling as mine intents aspire.

  Thee I invoke, abiding one,

  Thee, centre and secret of the Sun,

  And that most holy mystery

  Of which the vehicle am I!

  Appear, most awful and most mild,

  As it is lawful, to thy child!

  The “child” in this case was Crowley’s will fixed in the volatile, born of his autoerotic passion, with a “portion” of the ensuing Elixir offered to the talisman of Hermes. Results there were. After February 2, Crowley recorded an incoming flow of funds. “This time $1.25; 24 Jan $8; 25 Jan $62.50 [from C. S. Jones and the O.T.O. Vancouver Lodge]; 2 Feb $25 for climbing article”—Crowley’s first commission from Vanity Fair.

  While Crowley had been working up his first Fatherland articles, John Quinn had written to William Butler Yeats on January 13, informing him of Crowley’s presence in New York. The letter would precipitate consider-able upset on Yeats’s part, which Quinn had to do much to assuage before the end of April 1915.

  My dear Yeats:

  . . . Aleister Crowley is here. He seems desperately hard up. One hears all sorts of stories about him but aside from a strong appetite for strong drink I’ve seen nothing wrong about him. His brand of the occult doesn’t interest me in the least.7

  A look at appendix 2, listing the full scale of John Quinn’s acquisitions of Crowley’s work, might make one question whether Quinn did find any interest in Crowley’s literary and magical writings, and why he was so keen to calm Yeats’s concerns about having anything to do with him. As we shall see, Quinn three times uses the same stock expressions to William Butler Yeats to distance himself—or to appear to have distanced himself—from Crowley.

  GETTING IN WITH THE GERMANS

  While we may suspect Crowley’s account of meeting a certain “O’Brien” on top of a “stage,” or bus, heading up 5th Avenue, “I think early in 1915,” who got off at 37th Street having left a card and an invitation to his office, other elements of Crowley’s Fatherland story may be assessed as based in fact.

  Turning up at the Fatherland’s office on Broadway—“O’Brien” was never to be seen again—Crowley says that he met Joseph Bernard Rethy (1894– 1941), Jewish author of The Song of the Scarlet Host, and Other Poems.8 Scathing of Rethy’s being a “shining light” of New York’s Poetry Society, considered by Crowley a distinction any fool who could tie a dozen words together might claim, Rethy introduced the mage to Viereck.9 Viereck would boast of being grandson of Germany’s first emperor by actress Adele Viereck.

  Crowley then met Viereck’s friend Alexander Harvey (1868–1949), Belgian-born writer of The Forbidden Floor, a ghost story in The Toe—and Other Tales (1913). Harvey professed admiration for Crowley’s work. Crowley could not reciprocate until he’d read Harvey’s Shelley
’s Elopement and William Dean Howells: A Study of the Achievement of a Literary Artist. Harvey, in his turn, introduced Crowley to Edwin Markham (1852–1940). Despite Markham’s fellowship of the Poetry Society of America, Crowley praised his The Man with the Hoe, and other poems (1898) as “assuredly first-rate of its kind.” It dealt with the hardships of labor, and proving popular, led to Markham’s lecturing to labor groups in New York. Markham’s 1902 publication Lincoln and Other Poems was read at the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial. Crowley’s first encounter with Viereck and his team could have occurred practically any day between early November 1914 and mid-January 1915.

  Crowley could not have proceeded with the vacant opportunity to subvert German propaganda and spy on its perpetrators had he not been very clear in his own mind about his fundamental loyalty to England. His loyalty had two aspects.

  The first, he asserted on numerous occasions, was a simple, boyish enthusiasm to join in with “Rule Britannia!” of the “my country, right or wrong” instinctive or emotional kind of collective patriotism. The second aspect he tried to define in his Confessions.

  I hasten to explain that by loyalty I mean neither admiration, approval, or anything amiable of any kind. I reserve the right to speak as severely as Milton, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, and Swinburne. All this does not touch the point. I am English, and that in a very special sense, as being the prophet and poet appointed by the gods to serve her. We do not accuse Isaiah of being unpatriotic because he thunders against Israel. Isaiah’s motive is mine. . . . I feel myself to be an integral element of this England; what I do I do for her sake. I may have to scrub her face with yellow soap, open an abscess, or extirpate a cancer. Working as I do in a world of spiritual causes altogether beyond the comprehension of common people I am liable to be misunderstood.10

  Crowley perhaps never realized fully just how off-the-planet this might sound to sober realists indifferent to “spiritual causes.” But then, his country of birth’s perceived inability to recognize his genius had inured him to the idea that he would not be understood. As an artist he had reason for some bitterness, but chose not to nurse it. Having concluded that Harvard professor of physics and psychology, Hugo Münsterberg (1863–1916), was the real mastermind behind the German propaganda campaign, he put his head down and got on with the difficult job of undermining it.