Aleister Crowley in America

by Tobias Churton

  His behavior scandalized most of the very high-class guests at that most select of all New York’s restaurants. He took the most unpardonable liberties with Mollie Madison, and Lascelles was equally impudent with Dolores, making violent love to her, drinking her health in crazy toasts of doubtful taste, telling stories which would hardly have passed even Mr. Gatt’s editorial staff, and roaring with laughter at nothing at all.

  . . . He [Iff] told everybody what a wonderful man he was, and what a lot of mysteries he had solved, and what mountains he had climbed, and what animals he had shot, and what an important job he was holding down that very minute. Wouldn’t everybody be surprised if they knew just what the British Government had sent him to do in America? . . . And wouldn’t everybody be amazed if they knew just what he knew about a certain subject that he wouldn’t mention—not he! The Silent Tomb was a chatter-box compared to him!9 [my italics]

  It seems to have been on this visit to Philadelphia that Crowley met up with Frank Harris’s friend writer Louis Wilkinson (1888–1966) and his wife, bisexual poet Frances Gregg (1885–1941). The visit may have been artistically motivated.

  It was in Philadelphia’s drab outskirts that Hilda Doolittle (“HD”; 1886–1961) had grown up with fellow poet Ezra Pound (1885–1972). Before Doolittle began a lesbian affair with Frances Gregg, she and Pound shared a commitment to innovation in poetry, later known as “Imagism.” Imagists favored stark verbalization of precise images, rather than meter-serving, classical rhyming disciplines that Crowley had worked so hard to master. Imagist experimentation pioneered modernist poetry; Crowley was not a fan, considering Pound all show, wind, and weak on word. But Pound was only one among a group of Imagists redefining an aesthetic of sound, and Crowley was always interested in new things. He was certainly attracted to the beautiful Frances Gregg, though Gregg was unnerved by Crowley. Bisexuality he considered the ideal, in line with Decadent, occult aesthetics stemming from the 1880s and 1890s French Occult Revival’s veneration of the Androgyne.

  Crowley had known of Pound after the latter’s arrival in London in 1908. There, Pound introduced former fiancée HD and poet Richard Aldington to the Eiffel Tower group in Soho, and to one another; they would marry. Greek models of verbal compression fascinated, including, not surprisingly, Sappho. Pound apparently coined the term “Imagistes” at this time. Interest in Sappho might just explain a ploy Crowley relates to Ananada Coomaraswamy’s “Black Brother” deviousness.

  He happened to be momentarily hard up and conceived the really brilliant idea of concocting a fable that his German girl was a new Sappho. He made her copy out a number of poems from my Collected Works and sent her round to Putnam’s to persuade them to publish the really remarkable work of this romantic young American beauty rose. The girl [Gerda] told his wife [Alice] in bed one night, they having found a bond of common sympathy in their contempt and loathing for “The Worm” as we had familiarly called him. She told me at once, and I have every reason to believe that the letter I wrote to Putnam’s is treasured in the archives of the firm as the last word in savage contempt.10

  Several of Crowley’s poems celebrating lesbian love had appeared in his Collected Works (1905–1907). The detail about Coomaraswamy’s wife and Gerda being in bed Crowley explained as being due to Coomaraswamy’s habitual meanness; that is, that a single bed was cheaper than single rooms and the Eurasian miser saved money when away by putting his girlfriend in bed with his wife! One might safely conclude that not all the experimentation going on in Philadelphia and New York was of an austerely aesthetic nature.

  Poet and lecturer John Cowper Powys (1872–1963) was also involved with Philadelphia, and with Frances Gregg. Cambridge graduate Powys came to America in 1905, joining, in 1911, the University Lecturers Association of New York, founded by Louis Wilkinson and another friend of Crowley’s, Arnold Shaw. Powys met Gregg in 1912, and Gregg became extremely important to him. Already married, the situation was fraught. Powys dealt with it partly by encouraging fellow Englishman Louis Umfreville Wilkinson to marry Frances so that they might remain intimate friends without scandal. This created more problems, as one might expect, and in 1916, Powys fell into acute depression over his confused, intense feelings for his friend’s wife. This was the time Crowley first encountered this intriguing coterie of literary expats and Americans. Powys and Wilkinson sought illumination of the condition from the works of Sigmund Freud, to whom Crowley wrote an undecipherable letter in 1917, the year in which he would correspond regularly and familiarly with Wilkinson, offering him a literary outlet in Viereck’s International magazine. Writer Paul Newman reports an unattested story of his wife Frances encountering Crowley, apparently in the throes of disguising himself in her house. The story may come from a reminiscence given by Frances to Oliver, her son by Louis.

  Another time she [Gregg] entered a dark room in her house and came across a bald man sitting at a table alone. Becoming aware of her, this eerie stranger picked up a dark mat of hair from the table, placed it on his head and transformed into Crowley. He then hauled up a case, in which Frances identified a whole nest of wigs, and silently left.11

  Crowley remained friends with Wilkinson to the end of his days. The reason may perhaps be found in Oliver’s appreciation of the father. Oliver Wilkinson remembered him as one who “fought against evil conventions and laws. He was ruthless in some of his personal relationships, but ruthless, too, in fighting damnable prejudices.” Like Crowley, Wilkinson had long been the family’s black sheep; unlike Crowley, he eventually won them round by distinction in writing and lecturing.

  As spring turned to early summer, Crowley made frequent trips to Washington with a pregnant Alice (her husband was living with Gerda). One of these trips gave rise to the resurgence of the Irish revolutionary, in the letters page of the Washington Post (May 12, 1916): Crowley’s alter ego’s response to the Dublin Easter Rising.

  IRELAND AS PEACE ARBITER

  Irish Poet Would Have Forgiveness Not Revenge, Free Erin’s Motto

  Editor Post: On the third of July last at sunrise at the foot of the statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, I proclaimed publicly the independence of Ireland. I begat the Irish Republic on the great Mother Time. In due course the first born has come to light; and its martyr blood cries to Heaven from the ruins of Dublin.

  The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the republic. Smitten to earth, we rise again, ninefold more strong.

  But must blood still call for blood? Hate still breed hate? “Forgive them. Father, for they know not what they do.” Ireland was of old, the island of the saints; for many a long year she has been the island of the martyrs. For me the watchword of our free republic shall not be revenge, but forgiveness. I would make Ireland the arbiter of universal peace. Let us but be free to follow our great destiny, and all men—and our oppressors first—shall be our brothers. In this hour when the mildest man might well be lashed to fury I hold out the swordless hand of fellowship. England! There are stainless and noble passages even in your history. If we, as we gaze upon the bodies of our murdered brothers, remember them cannot you do likewise?

  Let us be free; let us have peace! Tomorrow I may cite that other word of Christ: “Lo! I bring no peace, but a sword.” God save the Irish republic! I am, sir, your obedient servant.

  ALEISTER CROWLEY

  “Somewhere in America”

  He was back in Washington on May 25, where at 8:30 p.m., sex magick was devoted to a safe pregnancy for Alice. “A very good Operation, considering the over-excitement of having her come to me alone and definitely on the day agreed.”12

  Three days later, the Washington Post recorded Crowley had been at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on the twenty-sixth, where he had played—and lost—a series of chess matches with U.S. chess wizard Norman Tweed Whitaker, a tough call for a Cambridge chess Half Blue. It is striking to imagine Crowley making his way about the capital with the lovely Alice Ethel in May 1916. The May 26 Alexandria Gazette head-line
reported Washington’s stiff message sent to the British and French governments insisting they had no right to interfere with first-class mail from America on the high seas; the language, said the Gazette, was similar to that used when condemning the German submarine campaign, a subject much on Crowley’s mind. Meanwhile, the Lincoln Memorial, which had been shipped almost complete, quite amazingly by barges along the Potomac, had finally been craned onto its empty site, still awaiting final construction. A Washington without Lincoln? Unthinkable.

  THE ELIXIR OF LIFE

  Many years after the events, Crowley would tell the story of the extraordinary effects of his having produced and imbibed the “elixir of life.” Readers of newspaper stories published in the 1930s doubtless imagined the fabled elixir vitae had been prepared in the romantic confines of a medieval alchemist’s laboratory. In fact, the elixir that gave Crowley something akin to superhuman vigor was cooked up in a series of IX° operations with Gerda von Kothek, Alice Ethel Coomaraswamy, and “Mother of Heaven” Leila Waddell in June 1916.

  The first opus took place on June 4 with Gerda. Crowley was very tired and doubtless already thinking of a summer retirement when he made the Object of their exertions “Juventutem.” The use of this word for the rite has its own interest.

  There is today an international Catholic youth organization, established in April 2004, called “Juventutem” for young people enthusiastic about the Tridentine Mass. Its obligations compare interestingly with Crowley’s activities. Members should adore “Our Lord” at a church once a week. The Latin juventutem means “youth,” and its use in Catholic liturgy is inspired by Psalm 42:4 where the psalmist goes with joy to the altar of God. The opening prayers of the traditional mass recited by priest and altar server express the idea, Introibo ad altare Dei. Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam. (“I will go in to the altar of God; to God, the joy of my youth.”) So Catholic understanding interprets juventutem as spiritual youth derived from the grace of Jesus Christ. In O.T.O. understanding, this grace is manifest in the IX°. There is nothing here that would upset Sethian Gnostics of late antiquity, but would surely perturb the Vatican!

  Crowley went to the “altar” to adore God with Gerda on June 4 at 10:25 p.m. in New York City. The Elixir was “extremely well-formed, strong, sweet, aromatic.” It was the first of six recorded doses.

  Perhaps Crowley’s recent visit to Philadelphia stimulated Louis Wilkinson’s friend Frank Harris to write a note to Crowley from 3 Washington Square on June 8. Harris expressed admiration for Crowley’s poetry collection, The Winged Beetle (1910), which he had asked Crowley to send him, presumably connected with a writing job in the offing: “You’ve just phoned me—I’m in every morning and evening at nine. Not well today but ever cordially yours. FRANK HARRIS.”13

  Two days later, Leila Waddell joined Crowley for Juventutem, as did Alice Ethel Coomaraswamy for the same Object on June 12, 16, and 18 when the Elixir was “very good and strong.”14 The final operation for “Youth” was performed admirably with Gerda on June 20. Three days later Crowley was some 217 miles northeast of New York at a cottage belonging to Evangeline Adams right by the shores of Newfound Lake, Bristol, New Hampshire. Very soon, the Magus found that something very odd began to happen to him.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Aleister Crowley’s Psychedelic Summer

  Bristol in the year 1916 was a small town in Grafton County, New Hampshire, one of four lakeshore towns close to Newfound Lake, known locally as Lake Pasquaney. It had been a holiday destination since the mid-nineteenth century. Crowley described the area briefly in his Simon Iff adventure The Pasquaney Puzzle.

  Lake Pasquaney lies among the mountains of New Hampshire. It is about seventeen miles in circumference. Bristol, the nearest railway station, a town of twelve hundred inhabitants, is some three miles from the lower end. The lake contains several islands, and its shores are dotted with summer villas, mostly of the log-hut type, though here and there is a more pretentious structure, or a cluster of boarding-houses. Bristol is about three hours from Boston, so the lake is a favorite summer resort, even for week-enders. Automobile parties pass frequently, but keep mostly on the road on the east shore, that on the west being very rough. The scenery is said by Europeans who know both to compare with Scotland or Switzerland without too serious disadvantage.1

  Crowley described his summer residence as the “Adams Cottage” because it belonged to Evangeline Adams, with whom he was still engaged writing the astrology book (he may have taken a room in the Carnegie Studios, New York, where Evangeline herself lived, after he returned from California). Websites devoted to Crowley and New Hampshire have repeated the story that the cottage in which Crowley experienced remarkable phenomena in summer 1916 was at Hebron, to the north of the lake, as Miss Adams possessed a residence there. However, Crowley’s correspondence was return-addressed “North Bristol,” and his description of events does not satisfactorily match the Hebron property’s position.

  Fig. 22.1. The “Adams Cottage” (front) by Newfound Lake, New Hampshire, as it is today. Here Crowley spent a “psychedelic summer” of 1916. Correctly identified by Colin Campbell. (photo courtesy of Colin Campbell)

  Fig. 22.2. The “Adams Cottage,” (back), Bristol, New Hampshire, as it is today. (photo courtesy, Colin Campbell)

  In 2016 local history researcher Colin Campbell discovered property records showing Adams acquired a cottage in North Bristol/Alexandria, south of Hebron, in 1913 through the will of either her brother, or possibly uncle, Charles Francis. Colin found the cottage’s location through a legal transfer from Charles (d. 1915) to Evangeline, thence to Josephine Haviland, and afterward to the O’Connor family. Citing tax payment records, he then identified and matched the O’Connor lots by description of the property described in the deeds. The lot tracing back to 1915 is Bristol, N.H. Tax Map 108, Lot 014, and the location and topography matches Crowley’s description perfectly. The cottage is still there,*117 sitting right on 113 West Shore Road, fifteen yards left of the corner with Don Gerry Road, Bristol, with the obvious later addition of a second story. Especially convincing is a small “bump” section of the house, noted by Crowley in a ground plan of the cottage Crowley sent to an expert on atmospheric electrical phenomena. The kitchen area is as Crowley described it.2 Now the location can be placed clearly in mind, one can very easily imagine Crowley’s activities in and about the cottage that summer. And what a summer it was!

  Crowley had barely alighted from the train at Bristol’s homely wooden railroad station by the Pemigewasset River on June 21—the summer solstice—when he took hold of a curious telegram from Vancouver. It was Charles Stansfeld Jones (1886–1950) informing his superior in the Order in veiled terms that he had taken the “Oath of the Abyss” and emerged a Master of the Temple, a dweller of the city of the pyramids, with the motto Unus in Omnia, Omnia in Unum (One in All, All in One). Crowley was too much “in a fit” at the time to decipher the telegram’s meaning or its import. Since their last meeting on June 18, he had been disturbed by relations with Alice Ethel Coomaraswamy.

  Fig. 22.3. Charles Stansfeld Jones (Frater Achad’s) 1909 Probationer certificate, giving him the motto “Unus in Omnibus Omnia in uno” (One in everything, all in one), LATER adapted for his 1916 Master of the Temple motto

  Crowley described Ethel’s double-mindedness in Confessions. When common sense suggested that she best attend to her two children, her mind would be occupied with art; when she might best surrender to artistic work, her “trolls” would occupy her thoughts, leaving art abandoned. A typical mother, in other words! This all fits Crowley’s basic Decadent stance that spiritual attainment is incompatible with bourgeois morality.

  At their last meeting—intended as a temporary farewell—she told him how her pregnancy’s visibility had prompted her husband to persuade her to avoid public gaze by undergoing confinement in England. According to Crowley, “He [Ananda Coomaraswamy] had now cunningly pretended to give way about the divorce, admitting my r
ight to my child and its mother. His real motive was very different. She was a particularly bad sailor. During a previous pregnancy, she had been obliged to break the journey to save her life. She was in fact on the brink of death when they carried her ashore and she lay for weeks so ill that a breath of wind might have blown her away. It was, at least, not a bad bet that the Atlantic voyage would end in the same or even more fortunate way.”3 Crowley’s dark suspicion about “Black Brother” Coomaraswamy’s motives was afterward inflated to deliberate murder in the Simon Iff story Not Good Enough, where the callous killer is named uncompromisingly as “Ananda Haramzada Swamy,” haramzada being Hindustani for “bastard.”

  According to his Confessions, Crowley refused to pressurize Alice Ethel further in one direction or another, simply saying, “Here’s my address. You’re welcome whenever you like to come, and I love you and I will serve you with every ounce of my strength.” On June 23, Alice turned up at the lakeside cottage. Crowley dedicated a 9:00 p.m. opus to the Object, “A new girl this summer,” presumably because despite love’s “rapture” being temporarily renewed in mutual artistic pleasure, the lady had nonetheless decided maternal duties must take precedence, when she felt ready. She had come because she hated being without him, but she left with their unborn child after more magical sex with the Object “a perfect girl for the summer.”

  Perhaps Alice had secretly hoped Crowley would beg her, even insist, on her staying. That was not Crowley’s way; she must find her own “true will.” Had he not implored enough over Jeanne, and had it not got him only deeper into the confusion of love’s miserable shadow? The decision was Alice’s to make; she made it and left, lovingly, longingly, reluctantly, but necessarily, on June 26. She would regret it.