Fig. 29.2. Roddie Minor Zimm, passport photo
Greenwich Village also afforded opportunities for observing political radicals in their element. Red Emma Goldman and Alex Berkman, both friends of socialist Frank Harris, were active in the village, affording Robert Nathan of British Intelligence an eye on I.W.W. and Bolshevist anarchists and troublemakers.
Anyone wondering about Crowley’s political proclivities should have known he had a generously anarchic and socialistic (not socialist) brain, and an aristocrat’s heart, but above all, a commitment to wisdom, strength, and common sense. How this all might manifest could be seen in January 1918’s International, where in a lead article, “England Speaks,” Crowley confessed:
For some curious reason, perhaps because I like to collect lunatics as George Windsor likes to collect postage stamps, I find myself regarded by superficial thinkers as a radical and revolutionary. I am in truth the most crusted of Tories, bred in the bone, and dyed in the wool. I believe, for example, that if we abandon the Catholic ideal of marriage, one may as well not have marriage at all. So, if we abandon the hierarchical system in religion or politics, one cannot stop short of anarchy, as soon as some occasion of stress forces people to make decisions. The Church of England had more dissenting movements in a century than the Church of Rome in ten. It was a makeshift. So were the Girondins; so was Kerensky. Once leave the unintellectual, illogical, unjust anchorage of Wisdom, and you are tossed madly on the insane waves of Reason.3
This strikes one as evidence of the Latin apologist of Catholic truth Tertullian’s well-known second-century paraphrase, “I believe because it is absurd.” Knowing well the abyss of dialectics, Crowley would surely have agreed, and wondered why Tertullian in his battle with the Gnostics did not embrace the absurd alternative!
November saw Engers’s psychochrome exhibition in Manhattan, reviewed by Crowley as “J. Turner” in December’s International under the title “Art and Clairvoyance.” He opens with a succinct account of what may be seen when astral traveling, seeing no reason why such visions should not be realized plastically. There has been no shortage of visions for the task, only of artists. Enter Leon Engers Kennedy.
In the exhibition held last month by Mr. Engers Kennedy, we have a very definite attempt to portray that which is seen by the spiritual sight, and the result may be described as extremely successful because the artist is a good artist. These pictures can be looked at with pleasure from the purely aesthetic standpoint. There is no ad captandum effort to interest people in the subject of the picture. They stand on their own merits as pictures. But it would be useless to deny that a supreme interest is superadded by the representation of the character or mood of the sitter by the simple means of using the symbolic colors and forms perceived by the spiritual eye as background. We need not go in detail into the nature of the method employed. These pictures must be seen to be appreciated at their full value. But it is certainly possible to predict a great vogue for these portraits. Everyone must naturally wish a representation in permanent form of their inner as well as their outer body.4
It is clear from November’s issue that Crowley had at some point fallen out with Evangeline Adams, for there appeared his scathing essay “How Horoscopes Are Faked,”5 which establishes a sarcastic critique of Miss Adams’s abilities and business methods, without naming her. Obviously Crowley felt she had dealt with him poorly from the business standpoint, but we do not really know what led them to fall out. The fact that he complained in his Confessions she had inadequate scientific comprehension of the real universe should have been obvious from shortly after they met. The fact she made money out of readings using inaccurate factors as a guise for greater precision would also have been clear to him early on, so one must presume that their disagreement came over growing personality conflict, business or personal matters, or a combination of the same. Crowley lost a great deal as a result, for when Miss Adams eventually produced abridged versions of his work, entirely in her own name, in the 1930s, she did well out of it, but Crowley’s pride would have kept him from coming up with a purely business solution. His article was attributed to Cor Scorpionis—the heart of the Scorpion—and we may take it as his last, dismissive sting on the subject.
Thanks to William Breeze’s indefatigable efforts, that sting is not the last word any more, for the complete study has been reconstituted, edited, and published under Crowley’s and Adams’s names, as it should have been a century ago.*156
According to Crowley’s account—what a shame nobody interviewed Roddie Minor, who lived to be ninety-four!—Roddie had a masculine type of mental toughness but was given to irrational bursts of white-hot feminine temper. Who would not have been, who possessed a strong mind of her own, in Crowley’s daily presence? But he didn’t call her the “Camel” for nothing. She was broad of back and up to rugged living. He says he treated her as an equal, but she seemed increasingly wary of his dominating her, something he says he had no desire whatever to do. A camel in the desert of course is the difference between life and death, so Crowley must have felt that he was still struggling.
As indeed he was; on November 24 he dropped in at John Quinn’s office. Finding Quinn unavailable, Crowley entrusted Quinn’s secretary with his “Affidavit” concerning his “political attitude” since 1914. Clearly, Crowley felt his ongoing case for acceptance as an agent, rather than condemnation as a loose cannon, would be greatly assisted if one of the best lawyers in the land took up his case, presumably with the Justice Department and the British consulate, with whom Quinn had good relations.
Having read the affidavit, Quinn wrote at once to Crowley’s West 9th Street address.
Dear Mr Crowley,
Referring to your call at my office this morning at 10:30 when you were informed that I was out, and to the note that you left, and to the statement in your note that you wanted my advice on the “enclosed document,” which is on four typewritten pages and is entitled “Affidavit Memorandum of my Political Attitudes since August 1914,” I have read the memorandum carefully.
I regret that I have not the time to advise you in the matter. The subject of your relations to the war and the motives that have actuated you has apparently, to judge from the form of the affidavit, been the subject of letters from you to Captain Gaunt, and of conversations with Mr. Kahn, and of a talk with Mr. Willert of Washington and of advice by Mr. Paul Bartlett. I have been so overwhelmed with outside personal matters that I have had, in sheer self-defense, to decline to take on any more outside personal matters for the duration of the war and for three months beyond the duration of the war. I already have pending enough irrelevant outside personal matters to occupy all my spare time for the Winter.
I have taken on a considerable number of these irrelevant matters because each one seemed a small thing and it seemed foolish to refuse, and sometime it takes almost as much energy to refuse or to explain a refusal as it does to do the thing. But nearly all of these little things that looked innocent and short and simple at first, drag on and on. Between those who want to get into the army and those who want to get commissions and those who want to get positions, I could open a separate department in my law office. I am doing all I can as a citizen of this country. I cannot intervene in your case, being the subject of your relations to his Britannic Majesty and his laws and representatives. The contract is too large, the ocean is too wide, the problem too intricate, and, as I have said, I have not the spare time. If I could only shut out irrelevancies and immaterialities, I would have more time to do things that I am vitally interested in. Many people who bring irrelevancies to me seem to go on the theory of an old judge down in Maryland who, when a piece of evidence was objected to as “immaterial” used to always let it in with a remark that if it “was immaterial it wouldn’t hurt.” But, seriously speaking, I have no time to advise on the matter.
You will understand, I am sure.
Yours very truly,
John Quinn (Enclosure)6
If Quinn�
��s letter was a blow to Crowley, he never mentioned it, but got on with trying to consolidate his future with The International. Not content to see an opportunity pass, Crowley made movements to get personal control of the magazine, realizing Viereck was considering detaching himself from it. Such seems to have been the import of a letter Crowley wrote to Viereck on December 1, 1917, when it appears that Crowley had found purchasers, or possible partners.
My dear Viereck,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.
My alkaline friends say:
(1) Their money must not go into “enemy pockets.” (This means that you should transfer your interest to a third party, and cease apparently all connections with the paper, before negotiations become formal. If any of the other holders are conspicuously pro-German, they also would have to disappear, ostensibly.). . .
(3) They are keen on “Humanity First” [the title of Crowley’s article in The International 11, no. 11:332, advocating humanitarian considerations above all pugnacious nationalism], but there is something in their minds about Elsass-Lothringen [Alsace-Lorraine; taken from France in 1871]. I cannot guess what it is. It does not seem to be a matter of sentiment. They will say no more about it until the deal is put through, but my editorship would apparently depend on my following their line in the matter. They assure me, however, that they would not insist on an anti-French policy.
(4) They want a sort of high class monthly with weighty articles and essays. They like the fiction and poetry as it is, but do not want sex reform and birth control or anything of that sort, nor do they want socialism or attacks on business. They don’t mind anti-prohibition stuff and high-class occult stuff.
. . . They also require some sort of declaration of loyalty from me personally. This would not be a vigilante’ declaration, but on Humanity First lines, with a rider that I would say nothing which might interfere with the military situation. They are quite broad-minded about this, and would object to my advocating revolution in Germany just as much as revolution here. . . .
(6) They want the International character of the paper strongly held. This would include German authors, except those who have gone too far politically. They would equally bar Allied authors who screamed.
Therefore, may I go 50-50 with you on anything I can get over $3000.00?
Love is the law, love under will. Yours ever,
Aleister Crowley
PS There are several flaws in the paper this month. . . . I have the “noble and eloquent article,” which is on [Lord] Lansdowne [“An Englishman Speaks”], and the editorial which is on Austin Harrison as a Sinn Feiner, ready written.
PPS I have two other groups to approach on the finance question. I hope to see one next week. The others may be a little hard to reach.
AC7
Sadly, the deal, whoever it may have been with, did not come off. The one that did, in 1918, was a woeful affair, as we shall see.
On December 16, the Beast and the Camel performed one of a series of, mostly successful, operations for “gold.” It was “very suksham”—Sanskrit for “subtle,” a word characteristic of their relations in the sexual field. Writing up results on January 7, 1918, Crowley wondered whether a “new International deal” and a new series of “Simon Iff in America” stories would bring in the cash.8 Thoroughly concentrated over the festive period with Simon Iff, Camel and Beast let rip on Christmas Day for “Io, Pan Pan!” the divine presence of the All that storms into life, ripping and rending and shocking and shaking.
The New York Tribune’s Christmas Day headlines were considerably more sobering. KAISER DEFIANT ON EVE OF NEW OFFER OF PEACE—EMPEROR TELLS TROOPS GOD IS THE AVOWED ALLY OF GERMAN CAUSE. And now the Russian Revolution juggernaut was grinding into operation. FIND HIDDEN ARMS ON BOLSHEVIK SHIP IN AMERICAN PORT—OFFICIALS BELIEVE MUNITIONS WERE INTENDED FOR I.W.W. The first threat of global revolution exports hit America’s shores as it was feared the trial of I.W.W. members in Chicago would be disrupted by Bolshevik cash.
It would have been the talk of Greenwich Village Christmas parties.
THIRTY
It’s All in the Egg
When Crowley was not partying in Greenwich Village or listening in on the bohemian and radical scene while lunching at places like the “Sixty” at 60 Washington Square South,*157 a glance at the contents page of January’s International gives a fair idea of what else Crowley was about as 1918 got into gear through the snows and blizzards that swept through New York’s pitiless streets.
ENGLAND SPEAKS Aleister Crowley 2
THE SCRUTINIES OF SIMON IFF. (No. 5):
NOT GOOD ENOUGH Edward Kelly [Crowley] 3
DAWN [Crowley] 9
A POETRY SOCIETY IN MADAGASCAR [Crowley] 9
THE HEART OF HOLY RUSSIA Aleister Crowley 10
LOVE LIES BLEEDING [Crowley] 14
THE MORALS OF EUROPE George Sylvester Viereck 15
THE CONVERSION OF AUSTIN HARRISON—EDITORIAL [Crowley] 17
THE BATH Clytie Hazel Kearney 18
THE GOD OF IBREEZ Mark Wells [Crowley] 19
FINALISM George Raffalovich 24
THE MESSAGE OF THE MASTER THERION [Crowley] 26
THE LAW OF LIBERTY [Crowley] 27
GEOMANCY (BY ONE WHO USES IT DAILY) [Crowley] 29
TROTH Heinrich Heine*158 29
A GLIMPSE INTO THE THEATRES [Crowley] 30
MUSIC OF THE MONTH 31
THE GATE OF KNOWLEDGE [Crowley] 32
A WORN ROSE Lola Ridge 32
Viereck got his dollar’s worth from the Beast of burden. And the Beast felt freed from care, writing to Louis Wilkinson in ebullient mood on January 22.
Dear Louis,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law!
I am in an extraordinary good humour these days. The situation strikes me as exquisitely funny.
Fraternally yours,
A.C.2
He even enjoyed the rare opportunity of putting a good printed word in for people he knew whose talents he admired. In “A Glimpse into the Theatres,” he commended ex-lover Helen Westley in no uncertain terms to his readers.†159
I have always liked the Washington Square Players, if only because Helen Westley is the greatest passionate and tragic actress on the American stage. However, they cast her for parts which would be better filled by a far worse actress. They do not give her a fair show. She ought to be playing Lady Macbeth and Tosca. The qualities of the plays in the first deal this year are not particularly high. Blind Alleys contains an excellent idea, but it is too small for the length of the play; and it is further a mistake to hinge the catastrophe of a play on psychics. In this as in the Thirteenth Chair the whole atmosphere is psychic. It is like the unwitting introduction of zero into an algebraic equation. You cannot satisfactorily introduce a hippopotamus as the deus ex machina of an Alaskan drama; it does not belong there.4
His Golden Rose poem “Dawn” is addressed, without rancor, to Hilarion, his lost woman of scarlet.
Sleep, with a last long kiss,
Smiles tenderly and vanishes.
Mine eyelids open to the gold,
Hilarion’s hair in ripples rolled.
(O gilded morning clouds of Greece!)
Like the sun’s self amid the fleece,
Her face glows. All the dreams of youth,
Lighted by love and thrilled by truth,
Flicker upon the calm wide brow,
Now playmates of the eyelids, now
Dancing coquettes the mouth that move
Into all overtures to love.
The Atlantic twinkles in the sun—
Awake, awake, Hilarion!
A friendly, positive article by Crowley on Austin Harrison and the Irish Question on page 17 stands as “I told you so” historical truth to this very day. One can see why MI1c was loath to employ him; he was everything Englishmen are supposed to be, and everything English officialdom fears. Crowley had an independent mind; in this sense he was quite right to call himsel
f “Irish,” as it suited him.
Had Crowley not been more devoted to Magick and his role as Magus of the “Word of the Aeon,” which he firmly believed the masters were pressing on him, he could have come to enjoy a career in America as star commentator and author, though he would have been hard pressed to keep his head above water during the Prohibition era he warned was on God’s own country’s doorstep.
But Magick was his business, and his experimentation in the field progressed in unique, mind-boggling fashion. During the first fortnight of 1918, Crowley performed sex-magick operations with Roddie, a colored man called Walter, and “Anna,” who might have been Roddie’s friend Anna Katherine Miller or someone else; the record is unclear. Sometimes, Crowley had magical sex with Walter; sometimes Roddie did. Then on Monday, January 14, Roddie had an experience that changed the character of the operations altogether.
Sharing an opium pipe, Crowley was explaining to her very late in the evening how women had brought messages to him from the astral plane and how these messages needed to be tested rigorously, as deception was commonplace, and how this testing was done. The point was that people have potential access to knowledge that ordinary consciousness cannot grasp, by logical reasoning or antecedent experience, but there is a realm beyond the limits of space and time through which, by power of imagination—a link to the “Pleroma” or fullness of God—the mind can enter to receive knowledge or, if careless, self-misleading errors.
Aleister Crowley in America Page 55
