Masks of the Illuminati (22 page)

Q: Give a succinct and representative example of the controversial verse of Mr. Crowley.

A: From
Konx Om Pax
, 1907:

Sir John next tried the newspapers. In the
Times
for 1909—the year Sir John himself had graduated from Cambridge and the mad Picasso had shocked the Paris art world with his first incomprehensible “Cubist” painting—Crowley had been involved in a lawsuit with MacGregor Mathers. The
Times
reporter was not sympathetic to either Crowley or Mathers, but Sir John was able to gather that the ostensible purpose of the trial—Mathers’ attempt to prevent Crowley from publishing, in a magazine called
The Equinox
, certain rituals of the original Golden Dawn—was only an excuse to air the real conflict between them, which hinged on the fact that each claimed to be the real head of the Invisible College of the Rosicrucians. Well, that was hardly news to Sir John; Jones had told him that Crowley, Mathers and others were operating fake Rosicrucian lodges in competition with the real Golden Dawn. The judge, Sir John learned with amusement, refused to allow the trial to degenerate into a debate about such claims, which by their very nature could not be settled in
an ordinary law court, and had merely ruled that Mathers had no authority to prevent Crowley from publishing documents of unknown age and authorship which both litigants admitted, and even stipulated, were written by superhuman intelligences unwilling to take corporeal form to testify on their own behalf.

Sir John was also amused to find that Mathers, under cross-examination, was forced to confess that he had, on occasion, alleged himself to be the reincarnation of King Charles I. He also found a clue to further information about Crowley in a casual remark, during the testimony, indicating that Crowley regarded himself as the worlds greatest living mountain climber.

A visit to the Alpine Club quickly brought vehement denials of that claim. “Aleister Crowley,” said the Club’s secretary, a Mr. Mortimer, “is the world’s greatest living braggart. None of his climbs is accepted as authenticated by us.” But further questioning soon produced the usual ambiguity that seemed to cling to Crowley like fog to the London streets: it was obvious that the feud between Crowley and the Alpine Club went all the way back to the 1890s and that both sides had accused the other of lying so often that an outside observer could not form an impartial judgment. Mortimer did let slip one remark that suggested Crowley’s mountaineering exploits might not be entirely contemptible, admitting that Oscar Eckenstein, Germany’s greatest climber, had often called Crowley England’s best contender—“but,” Mortimer added hastily, “Eckenstein is a German Jew and has a grudge against us, so naturally he’d support Crowley’s lies.”

Sir John moved on to seek further clues to his enigmatic antagonist from various people who were reputed to know London high life extensively.

“Crowley is certainly a rascal, and an amusing one,” said Max Beerbohm. “Whether he also is a true scoundrel
I cannot say, but he does devote a great deal of his energy to convincing the world that he’s a scoundrel.”

“Um, yes,” Sir John said doubtfully, “but just how do you distinguish a rascal from a true scoundrel?”

“A rascal,” said Beerbohm precisely, “doesn’t care a brass farthing for contemporary morals, but still possesses his own kind of honor. A scoundrel has neither morals nor honor.”

“Oh,” Sir John said, still dubiously. “Could you give me an example of Crowley’s, uh, rascality?”

Beerbohm chuckled. The heavy memories of Horeb, Sinai and the forty years showed as the daylight fell level across his face. “There are a thousand examples,” he said, the stiffness from spats to collar relaxing into grace. “My own favorite involves the statue of Oscar Wilde in Paris, by that very talented young man Jacob Epstein. The French, you know, put the statue up to show they were more broadminded about, uh, Wilde’s sexual proclivities than we are and would recognize a great artist whatever his, uh, peculiarities.” He chuckled again. “They weren’t quite broadminded enough for Epstein’s statue, which was a nude, you see. That was a bit
thick
, in connection with Wilde’s, um, reputation, but they couldn’t, ah, insult Epstein by rejecting the statue after commissioning it. So they hired some hack to attach a fig leaf at the ah-uh-um sensitive point, if I make myself clear. Well, sir, do you know what Crowley did? He crept into the park after dark, with a hammer and chisel, and removed the fig leaf. Then, to add scandal to outrage, he walked into Claridge’s here in London, that same night, wearing the fig leaf over the front of his own trousers!” Beerbohm laughed. “That is what I would call rascality, although I doubt it is scoundrelism.”

The beautiful Florence Farr, London’s most famous actress, was as paradoxical as most of the reviewers of Crow-ley’s poetry. “Aleister,” she said, “was, when I knew him
ten years ago, the handsomest, wittiest, most brilliant young man in London. He was also the most unmitigated cad and blackguard I have ever encountered. From what I hear now and then about his life, these contradictions in him are growing more violent all the time. I am quite sure he will end either on the gallows or being canonized as a saint.”

Victor Neuberg, the young poet who had allegedly been turned into a camel by Crowley, refused to meet with Sir John at all, sending merely a card saying in tiny script: “No man living understands, or can understand, Aleister Crowley, but those who value their sanity will not get involved with him.”

Richard Aldington, the editor, commented: “Rodin considers Crowley our greatest living poet, but I fear that is due entirely to the fact that Crowley wrote a volume of verse glorifying Rodin’s sculpture. Personally, I can’t stand Crowley’s verse. It’s Victorian, and rhetorical, and windy. Totally without the modern note.”

Gerald Kelly, the most fashionable painter in England, looking like exactly what he was—a man who would soon be elected to the Royal Academy—said, “I can’t talk about Aleister Crowley, Sir John. You evidently haven’t heard that he’s my former brother-in-law. All I will say is that when my sister divorced him I was not unhappy.”

Bertránd Russell, the mathematician, stated precisely, “I have never met a layman who understands modern mathematics as well as Aleister Crowley, but aside from that his head is a swamp of mushy mysticism. I hear he plays excellent chess, so you might learn more at the London Chess Club.”

The London Chess Club turned out to be full of admirers of Crowley, all of whom regretted that he hadn’t devoted more time to the game. “He could be a Grandmaster,” one member said sadly, “if he didn’t waste himself on nonsense like mountain-climbing and poetry and
was not constantly running off to the East to ruin his mind with Hindu superstitions.”

“Aleister,” said another chess buff, “is the only man I have ever seen, short of Grandmaster status, who can really play blindfold chess against several opponents and win most of the games. In fact”—here he lowered his voice—“one of his sports is almost preternatural. He actually has, on more than one occasion, retired to a bedroom with his mistress of the moment and called out his moves to a player sitting at a board in the next room,
and won
. He says he does it to show us what real concentration means.”

Sir John blushed furiously. “What a contemptible way to treat a woman,” he said stiffly.

“Well,” said the informant with a leer, “from what I heard about it, the sounds from the bedroom indicated that the lady was having a most gratifying experience; or several gratifications, in fact.”

Sir John went off pondering that specialists can look right into the Devil’s face and not recognize it. What seemed a mixture of vulgar stunt and intellectual gymnastics to the chess player was obviously far worse, to anyone aware of the sexual aspects of black magick: it was part of Crowley’s continuous training for the ordeals of the ritual of Pan, in which prolonged sensuality is used to intoxicate the senses and open the door to the astral entities.

Sir John next went browsing in bookstores and after a frustrating search finally came upon one of Crowley’s books—a prose work entitled
Book Four
, which claimed to explain all the mysteries of yoga and magick in simple words that the man in the street could understand. Sir John purchased this at once and took it home for study.

When Sir John returned to Babcock Manor after collecting all this contradictory but disturbing intelligence about the Enemy, he found that a small package had arrived from the Golden Dawn post office box in London.
That was strange, since Jones was still in Paris; but then Sir John did not know for a fact that Jones was in charge of these mailings. Perhaps some other officer of the Order sent out appropriate lessons to students at pre-arranged dates. Sir John opened the package, with a wistful hope that it might contain the secret of the Rose Cross ritual—something for which Jones had told him he might soon qualify.

To his chagrin, the pamphlet was entitled:

Sir John retired to the library to read this with considerable curiosity. It said: