Aleister Crowley in America

by Tobias Churton

  Raynes himself reappears after the war as headmaster of St. George’s, South Africa’s oldest grammar school, in Mowray, Cape Town (1923–1926), a curious leap from army private. In June 1929 he contributed an article, “The Alleged Rosicrucian Origin of Freemasonry,” in the June issue of the S.R.I.A. (Societas Rosicruciana in America) journal Mercury, credited to Maitland A. T. Raynes 32°. The 1927 edition of New International Encyclopedia refers to him as Maitland Ambrose Raynes, Ph.D., foreign editor of The Literary Digest. Arriving in Plymouth, England, from South Africa in January 1935, with Mary Maitland Raynes (with whom he had traveled to Canada and the United States in previous years), he gave her address as Tintagel, Cornwall, and stated his profession as “Bishop of the Orthodox Eastern Church,” giving Plummer’s address on 101st Street, New York, as his address. Visiting America frequently in the 1930s, he gave his profession as bishop and employment as an editor of the National Geographic Magazine in Washington, D.C. Entering the United States in October 1935 the title “Bishop Ambrosius” was added to the manifest; his residence, Cape Province, South Africa. Bertil Persson’s paper “A Brief Biographical Sketch on William Albert Nichols” (Solna, Sweden: St Ephrem’s Institute, 2000, at www.thedegree.org/csism.html, accessed Jan. 27, 2012) states that Archbishop Aftimios Ofiesh, of the Russian Orthodox Church, ministering to the Syrian Christian community in New York City, in “1934, [c]onsecrates Rev. Maitland Raines/Raynes as Chorepiscopus (rural bishop) of the American Orthodox Catholic Church, who adopts the ecclesiastical name Ambrosius.” Persson notes that on May 8, 1934, Archbishop Nichols, assisted by Chorepiscopus Raynes, “ordains priest sub conditione Archbishop George W. Plummer, Primate of the Anglican Universal Church of Christ in the United States of America (Chaldean).” Crowley had dealings with both Raynes and Plummer during his New York period. Before departing for America, Crowley granted Plummer honorary VII° O.T.O. and received honorary priest-hood in the Societas Rosicruciana in America on March 21, 1913.

  *69 Devotedly religious reactionary Edward Harold Begbie (1871–1929) began the war urging American alliance against Germany and enthusiastically supporting enforced conscription; Constable & Co. published his propagandist war verse as Fighting Lines in 1914. By 1917 his thinking had changed sufficiently to write in defense of conscientious objectors. No evidence survives in Ellis Island’s records of his having sailed to New York in 1914 or any other time. His Chronicle article was possibly cooked up as propaganda in London. After the war, Begbie wrote reactionary articles for Crowley’s bugbear, John Bull.

  *70 Wilkinson’s novel The Buffoon would appear in 1916. An early novel, The Puppets Dallying, had been published by Greening & Co. in 1905.

  *71 The previous three paragraphs of Quinn’s letter were about his relations with Crowley.

  *72 William Breeze informs me that he did, though very much later, as “Liber Artemis Iota vel Coitu,” a paper included in Crowley’s epistolary work Magick Without Tears, edited and published in 1954 by Karl J. Germer. We await a new, complete edition, edited by Stephen King.

  *73 Workhouse: a Victorian institution for consigned indigents.

  *74 I am grateful to William Breeze for drawing the Kennerley proofs to my attention.

  *75 Seabury was born Philip David Dresser, psychotherapist and author of self-help books on astrology.

  *76 Crowley’s acquaintance with Hall lasted years. When the French government refused to extend the Beast’s permis de séjour in April 1929, Hall turned up at Crowley’s Parisian flat with Gerald Yorke in a gesture of support.

  *77 The February 1915 New York telephone directory gives her address as “Carnegie Hall” and telephone number, “Circle 584.”

  *78 See pages 462–63.

  †79 Colloquy, meaning discussion or meeting “speaking together”; in religion: to sort out differences of doctrine.

  ‡80 The five Vs of Crowley’s motto as Magister Templi, his Order grade until attaining Magus 9° = 2▫. Vi Veri U [‘v’] niversum Vivus Vici, “By the Power of Truth, I, while Living, have Conquered the Universe.

  *81 Song of Solomon 1:2.

  *82 See page 158.

  *83 Sir Edward Carson (1854–1935), leader of the Irish Unionist Alliance, and Ulster Unionist Party from 1910 to 1920, widely held to be the effective “founder” of Northern Ireland.

  *84 Hebrew vav pronounced here as a medium-long O begun with a slight W. It indicates a knock (sound) to commence the rite.

  †85 “Far away, O far away be the profane.”

  *86 Two words of supposed angelic language, from The Book of the Law, suggesting indignant, explosive contempt on that which is banished.

  *87 Younger brother of the more famous G. K. Chesterton, Cecil Chesterton (1879–1918), an associate of Hilaire Belloc, converted to Catholicism and promoted “Distributism,” editing and publishing The New Witness, a weekly, from 1912 to 1916. He also wrote for A. R. Orage’s part-socialist magazine The New Age. In 1916, Chesterton would join the Highland Light Infantry as an ordinary soldier. He died of nephritits at a hospital in France on December 6, 1918, having been wounded three times and refusing to leave his post, though sick, until the armistice.

  *88 On October 28, 1913, political unrest in Zabern, Alsace-Lorraine, made twenty-year-old Second Lieutenant Günter Freiherr von Forstner tell soldiers of two battalions of Prussian Infantry Regiment 99, “If you are attacked, then make use of your weapon; if you stab such a Wackes in the process, then you’ll get ten marks from me.” The derogatory term Wackes for locals had been forbidden to military use. Arbitrary illegal acts followed, stimulating debate in the German Reichstag about militaristic structures in German society. The events were destabilizing, and the Kaiser lost prestige.

  †89 On March 16, 1914, Henriette Caillaux (1874–1943), second wife of the former French prime minister Joseph Caillaux, shot Figaro newspaper editor Gaston Calmette.

  *90 According to Crowley’s extant list of phone numbers for 1917, Carrington’s address was 504, West 111th Street; telephone, Morningside 4753 (YC, OS5, “Phone Numbers.”).

  *91 The February 1915 New York telephone directory gives Mrs. L. A. Grumbacher’s address as 1327 Wilkins Av. (in the Bronx, near Claremont Village) and her telephone number as Tremont 3947.

  †92 Ancient & Accepted, or “Scottish,” Rite of Freemasonry.

  *93 Thought-free consciousness, the goal of all yoga; the difference between subject and object vanishes in ecstasy.

  *94 Albert Sydney Burleson (1863–1937, postmaster general 1913–1921; appointed by Woodrow Wilson, Burleson alienated the press generally through censorship and interference with the post for reasons of “security”).

  *95 After the war, Dorothy’s mother made a successful claim before the Mixed Claims Commission, which was set up to allow victims of the Lusitania, and their dependents, to make claims against Germany for compensation for their losses in the sinking. The commission awarded Mrs. Hettie D. Ditman $7,500 for the loss of her daughter and $1,267 for loss of personal property of her daughter.

  *96 “Arthur Loring Bruce” was the pseudonym of Vanity Fair editor, Frank Crowninshield; Crowley was being introduced to New York by the city’s chief tastemaker.

  *97 Called by Crowley “The Snake” or “The Serpent,” Helen was born Henrietta Remsen Meserole Manney on March 28, 1875, in Brooklyn, New York. Marrying John Westley Conroy—who performed as John Westley—in Manhattan on October 31, 1900, Helen retained the surname after their divorce. A founder of the Washington Square Players, she became their principal actor. Helen was also founding director with the Provincetown Players and a member of the Board of Managers of the Theatre Guild (information courtesy of William Breeze).

  *98 George Augustus Moore (1852–1933), Irish novelist, poet, art critic, dramatist. Moore had a poor opinion of W. B. Yeats’s character.

  *99 Euphemia Lamb, born Nina Forrest (ca. 1889–1957); artist’s model for Jacob Epstein and Augustus John. She hung out in the London bohemian scene around the Café Roya
l, and in Paris, and had many lovers. In 1908 these included Crowley, who thought very highly of her, and poet Victor Neuburg on whom Mrs. Lamb and Crowley played a trick to initiate him into adult relationships. Euphemia pretended she was in love with Neuburg, whom Crowley then persuaded to go to a brothel, thus making him unfaithful. Crowley and Lamb thought it hilarious. It is interesting that Crowley’s sadism with regard to Helen Westley perhaps made him think of Euphemia Lamb, as being like her.

  *100 The number 418 is the Qabalistic gematria of “Abrahadabra,” according to Crowley, the Magical Formula of the Aeon. Crowley couches his “revolution” in a rhetorical framework of Thelemic ethics.

  *101 Edith Cavell was a British nurse who helped wounded soldiers on both sides of the conflict but was cruelly executed by the Germans on October 15, 1915, for helping British soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium: an act provoking worldwide outrage. Crowley’s using of the code name dates from after that time.

  †102 E. Phillips Oppenheim (1866–1946), writer of thriller novels.

  *103 In January 1916, Feilding left the N.I.D. to work for the Eastern Mediterranean Special Intelligence Bureau, EMSIB.

  †104 The Fashoda Incident of 1898 culminated territorial disputes in Africa between Great Britain and France.

  *105 Chryselephantine refers to a work of art made of gold and ivory.

  *106 Odette Colcock, born circa 1884 in French Belgium. According to William Breeze, in the 1916 Manhattan directory she appears as Odette Colcock, widow of Roland, living at 2405 Broadway. In the Manhattan Census 1910, she appears as Hermin Colcock, with her husband and a child from a previous marriage at that address.

  *107 The fourteen-acre site is now devoted to offices, residences, and a hotel.

  *108 Interestingly, Crowley’s Scarlet Woman of 1917 to 1918, Georgia-born Roddie Minor (1884–1979; see chapters 28–29), later married anarchist Robert Lee Warwick, an important I.W.W. organizer in this period. (Information courtesy of William Breeze.)

  *109 It is now demolished.

  *110 William Breeze has noted how interesting it is here that Quinn knows something of Crowley’s time in Mexico in 1900 to 1901.

  *111 Benjamin Henry Jesse Francis Shepard (1848–1927), pen name “Francis Grierson,” was an English-born composer and pianist whose family migrated to Illinois. He claimed that some of his music was directly channeled through to him from the spirits of famous composers now dead. We do not know if the evening Quinn promised took place.

  *112 Florence di Martinprey, née Drouillard, born in the United States circa 1880; arrived in New York from Bordeaux in September 1916, leaving her husband in Paris. Thanks to William Breeze for this information.

  *113 By his own account, Crowley had “form” where the verb “to slay,” accompanied by a curious dagger was concerned. In 1912, Crowley felt he was losing control of disciple Victor B. Neuburg due to Neuburg’s love for beautiful actress and dancer Jeanne Heyse (stage name, Ione de Forest). A chronic depressive, Jeanne committed suicide over a divorce. Neuburg never got over it, later blaming Crowley for sending him off from a ritual in such a state of mind that when Jeanne asked for help, he rejected her. This story has been cooked to imply the actress’s suicide was Crowley’s doing, another myth for sure, but one Crowley helped to stoke. So upset was Crowley at Neuburg’s obsession with Jeanne, and at Neuburg’s subsequent rejection of him, he used the myth to warn of what could happen to those who interfered with initiates’ progress, almost claiming credit for tipping Jeanne over the edge in chapter 21 of Magick. “The MASTER THERION once found it necessary to slay a Circe who was bewitching brethren. He merely walked to the door of her room, and drew an Astral T (traditore [“traitor” in Italian,] and the symbol of Saturn) with an astral [imaginary] dagger. Within 48 hours she shot herself.”

  *114 Lord Grey at the British Foreign Office regarded Crowley as an Irish rebel from reports concerning the July 1915 Liberty incident sent by ambassador Cecil Spring-Rice July 20, 1915.

  *115 The chief leaders of the Easter Rising were hanged by British military authorities in Dublin after the revolt was quelled. Such harsh, doctrinaire, and politically unwise judgment played very poorly in the States, where John Butler Yeats wrote to Lily Yeats on May 17, 1916: “These executions are having a considerable effect here. The strongest element in this country is a humanitarian sentiment outside the ‘cowardly’ South where they lynch negroes.”

  *116 Thomas William Hazen Rolleston (1857–1920), cofounder of Irish Literary Society and author of Celtic Myths and Legends (1911). Described by W. B. Yeats as an “intimate enemy” in his Memoirs, Rolleston lived in Hampstead, London.

  *117 A remaining “Pasquaney Puzzle” is that the road frontage of Bristol, N.H., Tax Map 108, Lot 014 matches the deed description from Charles to Evangeline, but is completely undeveloped (no houses), while the adjacent lot 108–15 is where the house sits. Today, the same family owns both lots. The house is so very close in description to Crowley’s that one might suspect it has been either moved or there is an error over precise lot designation.

  *118 In spring 1900, Crowley’s enemies in the Golden Dawn had put his lady friend Mrs. Lilian Horniblow up to reporting to the police that Crowley had taken money from her. In fact, Mrs. Horniblow (who had been enjoying an affair—now cooling—with Crowley, while married to an army officer) had supplied either cash or a ruby ring in lieu as a favor so that Allan Bennett might go to Ceylon to save his failing health, and to maintain the affair. (see my Aleister Crowley: The Biography, 77). With Crowley no longer complaisant, she demanded the gift returned, a reaction Crowley’s enemies took advantage of. When asked by police if she wished to press charges, Mrs. Horniblow declined. Crowley had accepted nothing for himself.

  *119 The day of Mercury!

  *120 Reference is to Sylvanus P. Thompson (1851–1916)—he had just died—British professor of physics, expert in magnetics and electricity, member of the Royal Society.

  †121 Prof. John Norman Collie (1859–1942), British scientist, mountaineer, explorer; Fellow of the Royal Society.

  *122 “Every man for himself.”

  *123 Magical Diary, May 31, 1920.

  *124 A former lover of Crowley’s, Anna Wright died circa 1916. She appears in the “letter,” which was Crowley’s Liber 106, “On Death,” published under the latter title in the International in 1918.

  *125 For members of the A∴A∴, Crowley obtained a “word,” usually through a sex-magic ritual. He then located an “oracle” by bibliomany, accomplished by putting his magical ring randomly in a passage of one of the Thelema “Holy Books.” An I Ching hexagram provided the “omen.” Crowley maintained the practice religiously until his death.

  *126 There has been much confusion about the painter Leon Engers. I am enormously grateful for pioneering research undertaken for this project by Frank van Lamoen of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, in clearing up many lacunae. His detailed chronology, the most up-to-date account of artist Leon Engers anywhere in the world, is attached as appendix 1. Simeon Leon Engers was born in Antwerp, Belgium, February 22, 1891, the son of Paula Schwabacher and Mozes Engers (first married Odessa, May 8, 1890). Moving to the Netherlands in May 1892, Paula and Mozes apparently married again March 16, 1893, in Amsterdam, giving Leon his Dutch nationality. Crowley accepted a story that a millionaire had “adopted” Engers. When Crowley first knew the young man of twenty-one, it was as “Kennedy” (or “Leon Engers Kennedy”). Where, or why, “Kennedy” is a mystery, or self-mystification on Engers’s part. It is not clear whether Crowley knew Engers was Jewish, or even whether Engers wished him to know his true background.

  *127 Previously sited at Boompjes 70 (1904), 69 (1903), and 14–16 (1891; Jewish Quarter).

  *128 One wonders whether the British consulate referred to was that in New Orleans. As far as is known, Crowley, strapped for cash for the first half of January, only had a return ticket to New York from New Orleans. Mountaineer and diplomat Guy Bullock (1887–1956;
elected to the Alpine Club 1919) was posted to the British consulate, New Orleans, in 1913 to deal with refugees from the Mexican Revolution, but moved from Marseilles to Lima in 1917; Crowley may have known him (see here, ch. 9). Most of Crowley’s references in Confessions to dealings with British Intelligence in New York as far as specific encounters are concerned, are of uncertain date, mixing events separated by time into single narratives in different chapters. He was extremely reluctant to give hard facts about intelligence matters in his general defense called “The Last Straw,” intended as a defense against calumnies printed in Horatio Bottomley’s paper John Bull in January 1920; Crowley still hoped to be useful to the British government and had no intention of “squealing.” The abiding problem for British intelligence where Crowley was concerned was that he habitually put his ball in their court, but by 1918, as we shall see, his contribution was recognized in select circles.