This rare memoir is by the author Hereward Carrington. It is primarily valuable as a rare first-person account of Crowley during his New York period.
It was soon after World War I started that I received a
visit from the most remarkable man I have ever known.
His eyes first attracted my attention, for, though he looked
at one while talking, they appeared to remain parallel instead of focusing, as
most eyes do. The result was the
unpleasant impression that he was looking right through you, and perhaps
reading your innermost thoughts. For the
rest he was fairly tall and overly plump, with a low, quiet voice and
distinctly Oxfordian accent.
My visitor brought with him a letter of introduction from
the Hon. Everard Feilding, the Secretary of the British Society for Psychical
Research. It read:
Dear Carrington:
This will introduce
you to Aleister Crowley, poet, sage, mountain climber and general lunatic. I am
sure you will have much in common.
Yrs.,
E. Fielding
Despite the dubious compliment, I found that the prediction
was correct, for I was profoundly impressed by Crowley’s knowledge and
extraordinary versatility. He knew more
about any subject you could mention than anyone you would ordinarily meet. He had travelled all over the world, spoke a
number of languages, and was the first man to ascend the second highest peak in
the world, and possessed a profound knowledge of science, art, music and
international affairs. He had mingled in
the highest social circles, hobnobbed with royalty, and lived for months as a yogin in Ceylon. He had written and published a number of
books, while his essays were for the most part critical, caustic and highly
symbolic. His poetry undoubtedly ranks among the finest ever written. It remains virtually unknown to the general
public owing to the fact that the bulk of it is highly erotic. He was an expert at chess, bridge, various sports,
and was a crack shot. Needless to say,
he had at one time been a big game hunter.
In appearance Crowley varied enormously from time to
time. No two photographs of him – taken
a few years apart – would be recognized as the same individual. In one he would be a handsome, debonait man
-about-town; in another a naked yogin,
seated crossed-legged in the jungles of Ceylon; in yet another he was a Mage,
clad in the robes of his magical regalia.
On more than one occasion he shaved his head completely, and his face
then appeared fat, gross, flabby and terrifying. A few months later he had grown a luxurious
beard. A photograph taken some five
years after this depicted him an a young man, slim and spirituelle – one who might well have posed for the original of
Dorian Gray. These external changes were characteristic of the kaleidoscopic
changes of the inner man.
I came to know Crowley well during his six years’ sojourn in
America, and found that we did indeed have much in common, for he possessed an
inexhaustible fund of knowledge concerning his particular life-interest – the
occult sciences and magic. What I mean
by magic here is real, ceremonial magic, involving invocational
ceremonies. Publicly accused of being
“the wickedest man in the world,” he was hated by many people, feared by
most. He was a strange mixture of
Cagliostro, Rasputin, Cellini and Baudelaire; a personality never to be
forgotten.
In some ways Crowley was undoubtedly the most sinister
character I have ever known. He was
expelled from Cambridge for sacrificing a goat on the campus, in the course of
one of his magical ceremonies. Many
years later he was turned out of England and went to France. Turned out of France, he went to Italy. Expelled from Italy, he went to Sicily, where
he founded his famous Monastery, near Cefalu – of which more anon. Ordered to leave Sicily, he went to
Tunis. The next thing we knew he was
back in London again! Later he rented , with Dr. Alexander Cannon, a castle in
Wales.
One winter, in Paris, Crowley shared an apartment with
Arnold Bennett and Somerset Maugham. The
katter, however, used Crowley as ‘copy’ in his book The Magician, he gave many
actual facts concerning Crowley’s life – such as how he secured his first wife
by doped incense, etc. An amusing
incident comes to mind in connection with this book. It was subsequently made into a movie,
directed by Rex Ingram. I saw it at the
Capitol Theatre, in New York. Two girls were seated behind me, and one of them
remarked to the other, “I don’t like this picture; it’s so impossible.” Well, I happened to know that 90 percent of it
was absolutely true.
An anecdote will perhaps serve to illustrate Crowley’s
extraordinary character. When he was
living in a Scottish chateau, long ago, unearthly screams were heard to issue
from it in the dead of night, as though someone were being murdered. The villagers were terrified, but finally
summoned up enough courage to knock on the door and inquire the cause of the
disturbance. Crowley opened the door
and, in response to their inquiries, exclaimed petulantly, “Go away; I’m
beating my wife!”
Crowley’s dietetic habits were as odd as the man
himself. At times he was extraordinarily
frugal, living only on a scant vegetarian diet and drinking milk and
cream. At other times he indulged in
neat brandy and inordinate quantities of beefsteak. Yet no one ever saw him drunk. On occasion he would insist on ordering his
meal backwards, beginning with the dessert and ending with soup. Somerset Maugham noted this peculiarity in
his book.
Crowley’s mental and moral life were as erratic as his
diet. At times he lived the saintly life
of a recluse, undergoing stringent spiritual exercises. Then he would suddenly disappear for a week
or two, and be found in the lowest dives of underground Paris. Needless to say, his sex life was as
sophisticated and as variedgated as his general character. His experiences in this direction, all over
the world, were amazing.
Yet it must not be deduced from all this that Crowley was
merely a degenerate roué. The amount of
literary work he did was almost unbelievable.
His writings on magic alone fill many volumes. He published a dozen tremendous tomes called The Equinox, filled with invaluable
material. His dictionary, 777, is classic. Volume after volume of poems flowed from his
pen. He edited the rituals of the Golden
Dawn, staged a series of spiritual dramas in London, The Rites of Eleusis, and wrote innumerable book reviews and
essays. Many of his book reviews are
typical: Pagan and Christian Creeds,
by Edward Carpenter. “This is a good
book which makes me wish I had been born before Christ.” Poems,
by Mrs. Boole. “The title of this book
is a misnomer.” On the other hand, he published
many fine literary essays and reviews which rank with those of Edgar Allan Poe.
I have spoken of Crowley’s poetry. Typical of this man’s attitude is the
following incident. He published a
volume of verse of such spiritual quality that many of his poems were set to
music and sung in a certain church. Then
someone pointed out that all of these poems represented merely veiled
sex-symbolism. Horrified, they were
rejected and his books publicly burned.
Crowley was delighted at this, and the title-page of his next book bore
the legend, “Published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.”
Crowley greeted every acquaintance and began every letter
with the same phrase: “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.” Naturally this brought a storm of criticism
from many quarters, people accusing him of promulgating unlimited license. Crowley’s reply was that his critics couldn’t
even understand the English language: that “do what thou wilt” did not mean “do as thou wilt,” and that the inner significance of his remark was
that, when once you have determined your ideal course of action in life, you should
let nothing and no one stand in the way of its fulfillment. Another favorite dictum of his was, “Every
individual is a star,” meaning that every human being is an individualized
entity, differing in toto from every
other individual in the world today.
When sauntering along the street with him, Crowley might
occasionally stop in the middle of the bustling side-walk, and his lips would
move in silent utterance. He was saying
a prayer to the Sun, or to some god in his magical hierarchy.
That Crowley possessed extraordinary power of some sort I
have no doubt. From both curiosity and
interest I attended invocational ceremonies of his, at which strange things
happened. I remember well one of these –
when William Seabrook was present – which lasted the greater part of the
night. Crowley, Seabrook, Waddell and I
were in the Magic Circle; the young man who was the subject of the experiment
sat cross-legged in a Triangle, drawn on the floor, some little distance away. The room was filled with fumes of incense,
and the chanting of the ceremony – in English and “Angelic” – went on hour
after hour. Under such circumstances one could not be sure that his senses were
not deceiving him.
All the same we all saw (or thought we saw) a strange
phenomenon occur at the same time, and for approximately the same length of
time. It was then about 3 a.m. The God Taurus [!] was being invoked. As I looked, it seemed to me that the young
man in the magic Triangle was being resolved into an amorphous mass – a sort of
brownish-gray mud-pie. I glanced at the
others and saw that they too were observing something extraordinary. The droning of the chant grew louder; then,
after an interval of time hard to calculate, but probably only a few seconds,
the mud-pie again resolved itself into our entranced young man.
Had my senses deceived me, in that smoke-filled room? Undoubtedly they had. Yet when we compared notes afterwards, we
found that we had all seen something unusual at the time – though our
descriptions of it varied.
After a session of this character, strangers who called the
next day often noted a peculiar trembling of the nevous system when they
approached Crowley. I noted this myself
on more than one occasions, and commented upon it to him. “Yes” said Crowley, “that’s very curious;
many people have noted that after a Ceremony.”
During the last months of his stay in the States, Crowley
suddenly branched forth – without any previous impulse or training – as a
painter of oils. The number of canvases
he turned out within a few weeks was prodigious. Most of them were highly erotic, but several
of them were symbolic and beautiful. His
color effects were startling. The
subject-matter was indescribable.
Perhaps this strange urge – and his weird paintings –
resulted from the drugs he was taking in considerable quantities during the
latter part of his stay here. At the
last meal I had with him, I remember, we had only soup, entrée and salad (he
was alternately rolling in money and completely impoverished). He took a capsule from the small box and
swallowed it. “Ah,” he said, “some
heroin and a cup of coffee; a delicious dessert!” I did not indulge in the dessert.
When Crowley arrived in Sicily, he founded near Cefalu his
famous (or rather infamous) Monastery.
Thither went a number of curious and exotic characters. While it was supposedly an Occult
Headquarters, drink, drugs and sex were rampant. One visitor – an actress from London – died
there, and this incident precipitated a tremendous uproar. Crowley was compelled to close his
establishment, and it was then that he was forced to move to Tunis.
Yet, paradoxically enough, there is evidence that many
benefited enormously from their visit to this weird Monastery. They underwent a prolonged and rigid course
of yoga training, renunciation and self-discipline. Of course there was nothing to do there, in
the ordinary sense of the word; no theatres, no shops, no people – nothing but
wild, mountainous, uninhabited country.
After a few days there, neophytes would often go to Crowley and ask him
what there was to do. “Do what thou
wilt”, he replied. After thinking this
over a few moments, they sometimes intimated that they did not know what they
willed – or wanted. To which Crowley
would brutally reply, “Find out!” They
had to be content with this. And many of them did indeed discover their own
inner resources and “magical will” in consequence. The monastery would either make or break
them. Those who were broken, or fell by
the wayside, were not worth saving in any event, according to Crowleyan
philosophy.
Crowley himself became a drug addict which in Cefalu; but,
such was the man’s remarkable power, he cured himself of the habit, used
himself as “copy,” and published a book entitled The Diary of a Drug Fiend, dealing with his own psychological
experiences under various drugs, and his final emancipation from them. To a scientific man, it is a document of
extraordinary interest and importance.
Crowley’s main mistress, during the last two years of his
stay in America, and throughout the Monastery period, was a curious girl named
Leah – whom, curiously enough, I introduced to him. She was a tall, slim, flat-chested young
woman , and an extreme nymphomaniac. As
Crowley once remarked, their relations had grown into a sort of “contest”
between them. (Seabrook described her in
his book on “Witchcraft.”) She had one
illegitimate child, a boy, who may yet be living. I knew nothing of this, as it occurred in
Switzerland, some months after their departure from our shore. The first notification I had was in the form
of a postcard, on the back of which was a perfectly nude photograph of Leah,
seated in the Buddha position, underneath which she had written: “He is 10
years old and looks like you. Whether
this is a case of Black Magic, sympathy, astral projection or plain
unfaithfulness is for Hereward the Great to decide.”
While fully realizing the sinister and dangerous character
of the man, I was nevertheless profoundly interested in him as a personality,
and in the store of knowledge which he undoubtedly possessed. While steadfastly refusing to take the
Magical Oath, which bound his students to unquestioning obedience, and while
never falling under his spell – being in fact alternately amazed and amused at
his incredible career – I was nevertheless profoundly impressed by him, and I
believe that Crowley genuinely liked me in turn, as much as he could like
anybody. Realizing that he could not get
me under his thumb, he respected my genuine and deep interest in his
extraordinary powers and knowledge. In
fact, I never ceased to marvel at the man’s versatility and many-sided
genius. Nowhere could you ever meet
another like him. Of all the characters
I have known, he was the most bizarre and the most unforgettable.
How much of all that was said and written about Crowley was
truth, and how much was fiction? I often
asked myself that question? Almost every
crime in the calendar has been attributed to him, and, as I have said, he was
publicly denounced as “the wickedest man that ever lived.” Opposed to this there was his scientific knowledge,
his industry, his profundity of “occult” knowledge (like Cagliostro), his
exotic artistic and universal genius (like Cellini), his extraordinary
influence over people (like Rasputin), and his mystical beautiful poetry (like
Baudelaire’s). That is why I have
characterized him as a compound of these four men.
My own estimate of his is that it would be impossible for
any one human being to have crowded into one life all the activities which had
been attributed to him. Hatred and fear
combined to manufacture many charges and create many myths. Discounting all this, however, he undoubtedly
remains a fabulous character - one which indelibly impressed itself upon the
memory of everyone who encountered him.
I saw Crowley off on the boat when he finally sailed for
England in 1920 [1919]. He had not made
a “hit” in this country as he had in Europe, and I expressed my regret for
this, pointing out to him, however, that this was largely his own fault. His final words – his parting shot as he
walked up the gangplank – were, “Well, what can you expect of a country that
accepts Ella Wheeler Wilcox as its greatest poet!”
Crowley died in Hastings, England, December 1, 1947, at the
age of 72.
