Aleister Crowley in America

by Tobias Churton

  Back in his apartment after the Arts Club meeting, Crowley performed a solitary act of sex magick, imagining Jeanne as Babalon. But just as Crowley realized like a bolt from the blue that she was the One, Jeanne herself left town, not for the last time leaving Crowley bereft, emotionally vulnerable, listing.

  Old habits die hard, though in Crowley’s case they never died. On June 13 in a cooler spell at the end of a hot afternoon Crowley performed an operation with Laura Brown, a “Scorpio mulatto wench, about 30, very vile, horrible, and fascinating.”14 He would paint her portrait.15 An operation dedicated to “Energy,” the result astounded him: “a burst of energy that I had not had the like of since I landed in New York. Poetry, dress-designing, magazine-conceiving, regular work, &c., all in a bunch.”16 This eruption may well have birthed his still unpublished book of poems, The Golden Rose, devoted wholly to Jeanne Robert Foster. This woman, he would write, “possessed a unique atmosphere. I can only describe it as ‘sweetness long drawn out.’ This translated itself in terms of rhythm.”17 He believed God willed them as one, before creation was begun.

  KNIGHT-ERRANT

  I came beneath the holy hill

  Whence jets the spring of Life-in-Youth;

  Upon its summit flowers still

  The golden rose of Love-in-Truth.

  My lips, that desert suns devoured,

  Were moist and merry at the draught;

  And in that dew of sunlight showered

  I stood and shook myself, and laughed.

  Lightly I leapt upon the slope

  To gain the golden rose above;

  Outpacing faith, outsoaring hope,

  I had no rival left but love . . .

  Mine arms are stretched to North and South,

  A scarlet cross, a soldier sun;

  The rose is music on my mouth,

  Holiness to Hilarion!

  I mark the bounds of space and time;

  I suck salvation from the sod;

  I point the way for man to climb

  Up to his consummation, God.

  Crowley sought “Magic Force” through an operation with Laura Brown after midnight on June 27, followed up in late afternoon by Opus LXX with Leila Ida Bathurst Nerissa Waddell for “Success in Art.” Commenting on the operation in Rex de Arte Regia in October, he reflected, “The whole summer has been an orgy of creation: The Golden Rose, The Savior &c.” A geyser of creative writing had been immediately uncorked, though mostly “of a political character.” The next day he placed “about five articles” in various publications. Three days later, page 12 of the Fatherland featured the following ad for the International.

  The articles by Aleister Crowley, recently published in the International and the Fatherland have created universal discussion and comment. These remarkable revelations of modern England have gone around the world. Everybody is asking for more. In the July number of the International we shall publish Crowley’s astounding study of a dead king: “The Blunders of Edward the Seventh.” The article will grip you. You will be carried away by the tale of an old man whose prejudices have blossomed out into the greatest war in history.

  The Fatherland’s cover story that day—“The Lusitania Was a Battleship”—attempted to persuade American civilians that they would be safer if the U.S. government categorically forbade arms shipments and insisted on absolute neutrality. German intellectuals loved absolutes. Unlike Balzac, they did not search for the absolute; they believed they had it. Such was Hegel’s painful legacy.

  In Jeanne’s testing absence, Crowley’s frustrations began to boil over. Confessions reveals only some of his anxieties. “I did not feel that I was advancing in the confidence of the Germans. I got no secrets worth reporting to London, and I was not at all sure whether the cut of my clothes had not outweighed the eloquence of my conversation.”18 Crowley resorted to Doris Gomez again on June 30: an operation for “Moral Force.” Results were, he believed, very good. “I have been completely awakened to a proper sense of duty, and have worked hard and consistently.”19 Perhaps moral force had something to do with the next, rather complex performance his difficulties and duties seemed, to his anxious mind, to force upon him.

  THE STATUE OF LIBERTY STUNT

  To convince his German colleagues that he was all out, or all in for the anti-British cause, he cooked up “something more public.” He wrote, as he put it, a “long parody” on the Declaration of Independence and applied it to Ireland.

  There existed in 1915 of course no republic of Ireland ’cept in the dreams of rebels and sympathetic activists. But Crowley would declare it. At 2:16 a.m. on July 2 he performed operation number 73 (the qabalistic number of hokmah = wisdom) with Doris for “Power over men”; that is, rhetorical power through political statement. He described the result as “one of the most remarkable yet done.”20 He slept at 3:00 a.m., got up again at 6:00 a.m. and worked “as inspired and vigorous as possible,” not stopping until, at 4:43 a.m. of the next day (July 3), he had proclaimed the Irish Republic. “Never in history (I imagine) has a political movement of the first importance been conceived, prepared, and executed at such short notice.” He was probably right, and never in his life would he succeed in such a short amount of time of storing up so much grief for himself personally.

  We shall leave the details until the rest of the world saw them; that is, on July 13 in the New York Times. Had there been any intention to report the stunt closer to the day of its occurrence, any such expectation would be wiped away by a dramatic turn of events that proved, if proof were needed, that Crowley’s life, while full of extraordinary coincidences, was nonetheless plagued by equally extraordinary bad timing—and yet, what unfolded was central to highlighting the significance of Crowley’s apparently free-lance propaganda activities, for anyone prepared to see it.

  “Britain seeking $300m loan at 5% interest.” Printed on page 4 of the Sun on July 2, this story was the context for what occurred the next day. The Sun reported secret negotiations were progressing between Britain and the J. P. Morgan Bank. Investors reckoned a figure of $100 million would get a better result. Paying for the war was straining Britain’s resources. First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill’s attempt to break the Western Front deadlock by opening a new front at the Dardanelles in Turkey (Germany’s ally) had been botched. According to the Sun, Prime Minister Asquith admitted to more than 7,000 killed, more than 35,000 wounded, and more than 6,000 missing.

  Saturday, July 3, the news that ex-president of Mexico Porfirio Díaz was dead might have made headlines in prewar days, but something more shocking had happened. On the very day of Crowley’s Irish Independence stunt, the Evening World announced front-page: JP MORGAN SHOT BY CRANK, WIFE GRAPPLES WITH ASSASSIN—TEACHER OF GERMAN INVADES HOME AT GLEN COVE AND WOUNDS BANKER.

  The paper described Morgan as “agent of the British government in the purchase of war supplies.” The assassin was named as Cornell languages instructor Frank Holt, “of German descent.” Another column linked the Morgan assassination attempt to conspiracy. A bomb exploded in Washington, linked to a letter from Washington to Holt signed “R. Pearce.” The papers struggled to get the facts, and where they couldn’t, speculated. Page 2 declared: TO MAKE MORGAN STOP WAR SUPPLIES HIS AIM, SAYS HOLT. German ambassador von Bernstorff was reported to be in seclusion, MENACED, ran the headline, by more than one hundred threatening letters.

  The July 3 Tribune reported the terror in Washington: BOMB EXPLOSION WRECKS PUBLIC ROOM IN CAPITOL. In an adjacent column, GERMANS MOVE ON WARSAW, While [HEINZ] HADENBERG, SELF-CONFESSED GERMAN SECRET SERVICE MAN, TELLS HOW HE DELIBERATELY SACRIFICED GIRL TO ASCERTAIN IF THERE WERE GUNS ABOARD THE LUSITANIA.

  And this was the day Crowley chose for his stunt!

  More details of the Morgan assassination attempt on Long Island emerged the next day in the Tribune (July 4!): JP MORGAN SHOT BY PRO-GERMAN FANATIC WHO SET SENATE BOMB; CONDITION GOOD.

  Page 3 gave the official German reaction. All concerned were on the New
York Propaganda Kabinett. GERMANS MOVED TO HORROR BY MORGAN ATTACK. ANTI-GERMAN PLOT FEARED BY VIERECK. “Captain Karl Boy-Ed, German Naval Attaché, and aide of Count von Bernstorff, the German Ambassador, who has been in seclusion for several days, also refused to comment on the attack. He said: ‘Every fair minded man condemns an attempt at deliberate murder. It is a crime. But why should Germany’s representative be called upon to discuss it?’” Captain von Eberer dismissed fears: “As a matter of fact, there is no German conspiracy. Why should Germans conspire against a friendly nation? . . . Victor Ridder, manager of the ‘New Yorker Staats-Zeitung’ decried the story that the attack upon Mr. Morgan’s life was part of a German conspiracy to prevent the negotiation of a proposed $100m war loan by his firm as a malicious fabrication, designed to discredit the German cause among Americans.” “George Sylvester Viereck, editor of the Fatherland regarded the attempt to connect the attempted assassination of Mr. Morgan with a German conspiracy, as a deliberate plot to create a nationwide anti-German feeling in this country. He made this statement: ‘Violence is out of place in a democracy. For that reason I deeply regret the attack upon Mr. Morgan. We must reform systems not individuals; not the bullet, but the ballot. Not the bomb, but the vote is the weapon of enlightenment. . . . I feel that the insinuation by responsible newspapers of so monstrous an accusation is more despicable than the crimes which they attempt to saddle upon the Germans.’”

  Lower down on the page, FANATIC’S BULLETS HURT CAUSE OF GERMANY, SAY EDITORIALS; WASHINGTON OFFICIALS SHOCKED AT SHOOTING. The paper carried photographs of the bombed Senate reception room. One can only imagine Crowley wincing somewhat at the contrast of the visible destruction with his declaration of Irish independence. What might that involve? Nevertheless, through the haze we can now see clearly why Crowley was determined to undermine Viereck and his colleagues’ carefully articulated stance that Germans were decent and respected democracy.

  On July 6, the Evening World reported Holt was the same man as a Professor Münter of Harvard who killed his wife and had been on the run since 1906—an account denied elsewhere by Holt’s wife, who indicated that she did not know him before 1908. On the same day (July 6) Berlin recalled secret agent Rintelen von Kleist. Spence suspects the recall points to the German agent’s coordinating hardball attempts to bully the U.S. government into compliance with Germany’s neutrality demands. Von Kleist, on this hypothesis, controlled the “Frank Holt” who, with pistol in hand and bombs in pockets, pumped two bullets into J. P. Morgan on Long Island’s north shore while Morgan breakfasted with British ambassador Cecil Spring-Rice. Spring-Rice was himself a constant target of Fatherland articles.

  Spence suspects that Münter’s being friend and colleague to Hugo Münsterberg explains Rintelen’s order to quit the United States.21 Such would also explain Crowley’s insistence that Münsterberg was a considerably more dangerous figure than British Naval Intelligence deemed him. Crowley needed intelligence assistance. He felt his position was desperate; Viereck wasn’t stupid, and the shit was coming down thick and fast.

  On August 4 a local coroner would pass a verdict that the imprisoned Münter had died from injuries incurred after leaving a letter to his family then somehow walking through an unlocked jail door to jump several stories to his death. Rintelen von Kleist had left New York the previous day, only to be seized at Portsmouth Harbor, England, on the well-apprised orders of N.I.D. head Admiral Hall.

  The day after Morgan’s shooting hit the headlines, a lovestruck Jeanne Robert Foster wrote to John Butler Yeats, asking subtly about a new sonnet she’d written, inspired by Crowley writing sonnets for her. She hoped the elder Yeats would volunteer his views on the poet and mage. Yeats asked Jeanne to sit for a portrait; that would give him time to work on her mind. Jeanne said she wasn’t feeling well enough. She asked Yeats directly what he thought of Aleister Crowley, from whom she hoped to acquire secrets of magic. Yeats weighed his words and loaded his phrases, having discussed Crowley with son Willie.

  I have met Crowley and enjoyed his conversation very much, principally I think because of my profound distrust of the talker. I think he is a man to beware of. No one seems to think well of him. He has an ambiguous history—queer happenings, which probably rumour has further distorted. Learn magic by all means, but be careful of the magician. They that sup with the devil must have a long spoon.22

  Damning. Was he suggesting that she might better learn from a different magician, his son? John Butler Yeats advised Jeanne firmly not to write to Crowley, or put anything down about him in writing, lest, presumably, Crowley use letters for blackmail with her husband or other parties. Jeanne seems to have kept to this in the main, though the Confessions refers to a telegram Crowley allegedly received in mid-July to explain why she hadn’t been able to inform him that she’d left the city. Lack of communication explains some of Crowley’s extreme frustration, not hearing from her or receiving what lovers normally expect, regular encouragement on paper if not in the flesh. Jeanne phoned him when she thought necessary. He said she drove him half crazy, keeping him on “pins and needles.”23 One can see how all this could conspire to make him think her false.

  Three days after Jeanne wrote to John Butler Yeats, she returned to Crowley (and to New York) and gave herself to him. There is something distinctly unpleasant about seeing Jeanne’s details in Crowley’s sex magick diary, right after Opus LXXV with Doris Gomez, whose Object had been “sammasati” (or “right remembrance”) to appreciate properly his “spiritual position in relation to the cosmos.” It meant meditating through the logic of events by which the meditator had arrived at the present; it might involve tracing previous “incarnations.” He was perhaps trying to under-stand what line had brought him to Jeanne.

  In the July 8 record for Opus LXXVI, Jeanne is described as a “respectable married woman, artistic &c.” Crowley pondered her “very fine horoscope, her sun exactly on my moon and her moon progressed at time of our meeting to exact place of my sun.” The Object was a male child, which perhaps they had discussed; we don’t know. In fact, Jeanne was unable to have children and was not disposed to tell him, if indeed she was herself absolutely certain of the fact. “The Operation was admirable in all respects; but its issue being uncertain, the early concentration was not very good, and there was much anxiety to bring so important an affair to a satisfactory conclusion. Again, at the end the orgasm was rather over-whelming; and I was bashful [a very rare word in Crowley’s vocabulary] about obtaining the Elixir in the usual manner. However, the small quantity secured was well combined and of first rate quality.” It is doubtful at this stage how much Jeanne knew about IX° magick; she told Crowley that she found the physical side of love disgusted her. Crowley would have put that down to past ignorance, of herself, or in those with whom she had made love. Crowley was used to bringing women satisfaction.

  The night of July 10 was warm, “the air full of moisture.” At 10:29 p.m., Aleister and Jeanne made love again. Crowley deviated from his usual style of “write-up.” “This in fact is real passion, though yet very young. So, too, the elixir lay almost undisturbed in the cucurbit.” He obviously did not wish to upset her with the nitty-gritty details of sex magick. Jeanne gave him her birth date—March 10—but subtracted a good five years. Crowley thought she was thirty, ten years his junior; she was thirty-five, though it was quite common for ladies to present themselves in this way. But Crowley was very intuitive.

  Just after half past midnight on the twelfth, Crowley performed sexual magick (Object: “money”) with one Helen Sullivan, a “small slim keen girl; amateur with no objection to profit if possible, Sun in Pisces, probably Aquarius rising, a cashier at Rothenburg’s.” Rothenberg & Co. was a popular gift shop, specializing in toys on West 14th Street. Crowley needed cash as for some reason “all the springs had run dry” during the past three weeks. Was not Evangeline Adams subbing him for the astrology work? Undertaken “on the spur of the moment at the conclusion of a rather Panic day,” the oper
ation was, for all that, “pretty good.” He added curiously, “There is some question, however, as to whether the whole affair is not a deceit of the devil.”

  According to the Confessions, it was not many days after “Hilarion” and Crowley reconsecrated themselves “to Love’s service” that she went off again without warning. He said his reaction was that of any man determined to resist domination by an amour. On July 13 he decided to heed the come-on signals emanating from cynical actress Helen Westley. This way, he told himself, he would prove he was not under the influence of Jeanne Robert Foster; he was still a free man. Without abandoning the ideal, he would extract curious revenge on Jeanne’s toying with his feelings by hurting Helen with brutal rudeness and sadistically biting her, by his own depraved account.24

  July 13 LXXIX Helen Westley née Mamé [not her maiden name]. Divorced actress. Aet [aged] 40. Slim dark probably Scorpio [?] rising. A most expert person technically, extremely passionate, and intriguing like Euphemia Lamb.*99 Object. A child by Hilarion.25

  A psychologist of great experience and imagination might be able to make something of what Crowley in his Confessions asserted happened immediately after his twelve-hour debauch with Helen Westley. After the “orgy,” a sleep of exhaustion, or petit mort, followed by an awakening at dawn where he felt “inscrutably purged of iniquity,” knowing himself “innocent in a sense more sublime than any imagination can conceive.” He entered, he recalled, a trance he insisted was “one of the greatest experiences of my life.”26 He said he awoke into a vision of “Pure Love,” symbolized as a diamondlike cube of white light: complete perfection, with nothing else but itself, not even radiant for there was no space. He says his “gross mind vanished.” When he thought of Hilarion he felt no emotion or attachment. There was no clinging, no desire, no fear. For him this was supreme emancipation. He took the transition, stimulated by stress of anxiety plus extreme sex, as a spiritual experience, as a coming through of an ordeal. He had conquered, at least so he thought, the possessiveness and anxiety of the obsessed lover.