Aleister Crowley (29 page)

Someone who took the
Express
’s
sinister revelations seriously was Italy’s new ruler, Benito Mussolini. The mud had reached the European papers and Il Duce
was alarmed. Mussolini was cracking down on secret societies of all sorts, hitting Freemasons and Mafiosi
indiscriminately. He also wanted to gratify the church. An anti-Christian, drug-addicted, sex-obsessed magician was not what Sicily needed just then. On April 23, 1923, the local
commissario
of police served Crowley a deportation order. Cannily, Crowley noticed that only his name was mentioned. Reluctantly, the authorities agreed that his fellow
thelemites
could stay; some did, Ninette for another three years. Crowley, however, had to leave. A week later Crowley and Leah left the Collegium ad Spiritum Sanctum for Palermo, where they caught a ship for Tunis. Many of the locals regretted his going. He had livened up the place and they signed a petition, organized by Jane Wolfe, asking for him to remain. They may have crossed
themselves as they passed the abbey, but after all, he had caused no real harm and had brought many people to the place. For years after Crowley’s departure the abbey remained empty and abandoned. More recently, as noted, it has been featured in tourist brochures, and as of 2006 was up for sale, at the price of £1.2 million.

WANDERING IN THE WASTELAND

Norman Mudd, mathematician, was not the luckiest of men. Ever since backing down from the Dean of Trinity College over his association with Crowley, Mudd had felt a coward. Relocating to South Africa, he became the head of applied mathematics at Grey University College, Bloemfontein; he also contracted gonorrhea and lost the sight in one eye. This did not help his appearance; Mudd was short, unattractive, and snub-nosed. Shame dogged him and in 1920 he returned to England in search of Crowley. Failing to find him, he headed to Detroit—the Blue
Equinox
pointed him there—where he met Frater Achad. He did not meet Mudd’s needs but it was through him that Mudd again came into contact with his master, who promptly asked him for money and suggested he join the faithful in Cefalù. Again Mudd’s nerve failed him; in the spring of 1921 he retreated to South Africa. Followers of gurus often vacillate, however, and after rereading his correspondence with the Beast, Mudd once again contacted Crowley. This time he was sure. He resigned his post, emptied his savings—which he soon gave to Crowley—and
headed for Cefalù. He arrived the day after Crowley received his eviction notice from Mussolini.
¹

Undeterred, Mudd became Crowley’s secretary. While the Beast and his Scarlet Woman hightailed it to Tunis, Mudd remained behind with Ninette. Crowley actually put him in charge; of what is unclear. Mudd wrote a panegyric to Crowley that was published in an Oxford student magazine called
Isis
in November 1923. Crowley’s ideals were “noble” and his honor “stainless.” Yet why England’s “greatest poet” was subject to “baseless” vilification Mudd did not explain. This encomium was as successful at clearing Crowley’s reputation as was another that Mudd had written, under Crowley’s direction, his
Open Letter to Lord Beaverbrook
, published in 1924 in a pamphlet distributed to literary lights. Beaverbrook owned the
Sunday Express
, which had raked Crowley over the coals. Crowley could not openly defend himself, and Mudd became Crowley’s bulldog much as Captain Fuller had been.

Meanwhile Crowley cooled his heels at the Hotel Au Souffle du Zéphir in Tunis, a budget establishment. Here he dictated his
Confessions
, battled his drug addiction, worried about money, and felt a lack of interest in Leah, who again served as his scribe. His diaries from this time are free of sexual opera and he suffered from impotence, either from drugs, his attempt to kick them, or sheer boredom, which afflicted him frequently. Leah was his most faithful follower and he had sworn a holy vow of obedience to her. Nevertheless her “mere presence—not anything she does—disturbs.”
²
It did not disturb him enough to avoid using her as an amanuensis, but it was becoming clear that Leah’s days as the Scarlet Woman were numbered.

Collins had canceled the contract for the
Confessions
, yet Crowley was determined to get his life down on paper. Some urgency
compelled him, or the cocaine to which he was psychologically addicted necessitated some vocal outflow.
Or he may simply have needed some activity to keep him from falling apart. He seems to have entered a period of denial. He had been booted out of Cefalù, yet he considered the abbey a success and dreamed of starting again at a more suitable location. This, of course, was a pipe dream. The only activity going on at the abbey was Ninette’s giving birth to another daughter, this time by Baron la Calce, who sometimes performed opera in lieu of receiving rent. On May 19, the day of baby Isabella’s birth, Crowley confided thoughts of suicide to his diary. Some weeks later he also entered black thoughts of depression at the failure of the abbey. He doubted if he was a great magician, yet he also proclaimed that although he may be a black magician—a damning admission—he was “a bloody great one.”

Much of this Sturm und Drang was self-pity. Crowley thought he was a washout and would disappoint any new students. Drugs were to blame. A cure might work, but it could leave him “a shadow of my former self.” “Why drag out a useless life, dishonoring my reputation, discrediting my methods,” he asked.
³
“Suicide should not be taken as an indication of failure,” he mused, but of the “determination to be done with a worn out tool, or to make way for new ones, or (perhaps) to get a new one oneself.”
⁴
He had, after all, seen bad times before, in his previous incarnations. How well his Ipsissimusship weathered this buffeting the reader can decide, but Crowley came very close to admitting he had made some mistakes. “It is possible, even probable,” he wrote, “that a man may be misled by the enthusiasms of an illumination.” “People . . . may be expected to get themselves into all those kinds of trouble which result from
uncritical enthusiasms about the ‘revelations’ which are made to them.”
⁵
If this is so, they should, he reflected, “unhesitatingly stick to the course that ordinary decency indicates.” Again, the reader must decide if Crowley followed his own advice. Other thoughts also came to him. “If a man fucks a woman,” he reflected, “he admires her aesthetically . . . When a man fucks me I want to know it is for my beauty,” something that had escaped Cecil Russell. Crowley thought of heading to Cairo with Captain Fuller to steal the Stele of Revealing from the museum there—exactly what he would do with it he left uncertain. He wrote to King George V suggesting he initiate a religious crusade; at the same time he wrote to Leon Trotsky advising that he should be made the head of a movement to abolish Christianity. Those familiar with Nietzsche’s last days of semisanity before his final plunge into madness will recall a similar megalomania.

To free himself of his malaise, in late July Crowley decided to take a magical retirement at the Tunisia Palace Hotel, the most expensive place in town. Here he took as a lover a young boy named Mohammed he had found in a souk. He stayed until October. Most likely Crowley paid for this with Mudd’s money. Leah did not accompany him. She remained at the Hotel Au Souffle du Zéphir where on June 20 she was joined by Mudd. Leah left for Cefalù the next day, but when she returned in August, an odd thing happened: Leah and Mudd fell in love. To economize, they shared a room at the cheap hotel and, quite naturally, magick took its course. Mudd proposed marriage, believing that if he and Leah were wed, she could fulfill her role as the Whore of Babalon more fully by sleeping with Crowley. This flawless logic did not please the Beast, who forbid their union. He was no longer interested in Leah but he still needed her help, although he would
be the last to admit it. (He had, as well, confused thoughts about her. Concerned for Leah’s health, he wrote to her sister Alma, asking her to come to take care of Leah and to take Hansi from Cefalù, where he remained with Ninette, Howard, and Isabella. Yet when Alma had arranged the trip, Crowley ordered Ninette to bar her from the abbey and any access to Hansi.) Crowley did not want Leah, but he could not let her go. He convinced Mudd that he was not really in love with Leah and sent him off on a magical retirement of his own; he would have some of Crowley’s
Confessions
to study. Meanwhile, with Leah and Mohammed, Crowley set off on another magical retirement, this time in the desert. (He had some difficulty paying his bill at the Tunisia Palace, but seems to have surmounted it.) On the sands near Nefta, a pilgrimage site, Crowley and Mohammed smoked hashish and performed opera, as did Mohammed and Leah. But this retirement was a disaster; after a few days the three fell ill and returned to Tunis. While recovering Crowley wrote a pamphlet criticizing Mussolini and worked on a commentary about
The Book of the Law
.

Crowley was glad to see 1923 end; it had not been a good year. On December 29, he determined that the magical currents in Tunis had waned and it was necessary to relocate. He wrote to the owner of the Hôtel de Blois in Paris, his favorite pied-à-terre, assuring him that
The Diary of a Drug Fiend
had been a success and that he would soon pay him the two thousand francs he owed from his last visit; Crowley often comes across like Dickens’s Mr. Micawber, perpetually awaiting something to “turn up.” His assurances must have worked; commandeering what money there was, Crowley fled from Tunis heading for Marseilles, leaving Leah and Mudd holding a very empty bag. His Scarlet Woman and chief defender were abandoned, penniless, and not a little confused.

—

C
ROWLEY’S OSTE
NSIBLE
PLAN
was to collaborate with Frank Harris on buying a Parisian newspaper, the
Evening Telegram
, another pipe dream intended to bring in cash. In Nice, Harris lent Crowley five hundred francs for the train to Paris; Harris was also broke and looking for work, and had to borrow it himself. The plan was a nonstarter from the beginning and when Harris asked Crowley for the money back, unsurprisingly Crowley explained that he couldn’t pay but also informed Harris that he, Crowley, had been handpicked by the gods to initiate the new post-Christian era for mankind. If Harris would only join in this campaign, all of their problems would be solved. Immediately this meant supporting Crowley in his proposed trip to London, where a lawsuit against the
Sunday Express
would attract those few who were ready to “assume Kingship and rule the disorganized and bewildered mob.”
⁶
Crowley assured Harris his plan would succeed because his speeches in court would be prophetic. Harris, who really needed his five hundred francs, was not convinced.

To maintain himself in Paris, Crowley pawned his magical jewels, bell, and sword, as well as a fur coat and a cigarette case. He believed in the Secret Chiefs and his mission, but for a moment doubted himself. On January 13, 1924, he confessed that he had no strength left and no interest in anything. It was an effort to get out of bed and a challenge to dress. He wanted to die, to be taken into the bosom of the saints, far beyond these earthly tribulations. Had he ever done anything of value? Was he merely a wastrel, a coward, a trifler—in other words, was he as those who criticized him believed? “Guilty” came the stark reply.
⁷
He had by now given up the idea of curing himself of his drug addiction, and it is possible that Crowley’s
much-discussed visit to Gurdjieff’s Prieuré in Fontainebleau in early February 1924 was in order to see if Gurdjieff would take him on as a patient. Gurdjieff had at different times earned money curing addicts and alcoholics through hypnosis; Crowley could have visited the Prieuré with this in mind.
⁸
Different accounts, by C. S. Nott, Gurdjieff’s student, and James Webb, his biographer, tell different stories, but the only record by Crowley of his visit states that he went there in order to see if he could take on any pupils with whom Gurdjieff had “failed,” a curious notion.
⁹
Crowley didn’t meet Gurdjieff—at least he doesn’t mention meeting him—either because he was not at the Prieuré or because Gurdjieff did not wish to see Crowley. Crowley did meet Frank Pinder, whom he considered a “hell of a fine fellow.” Pinder convinced Crowley that Gurdjieff was a “tip-top man” and a “very advanced adept,” although Crowley took argument with his ideas about sex.
¹⁰
Gurdjieff believed that a normal sexual life was necessary for “work on oneself,” but that the sexual irregularities that Crowley pursued were detrimental to it.
¹¹

—

B
Y
THIS
TIME
Leah had escaped from Tunis and returned to Cefalù. She managed this by pawning Crowley’s magical ring, which raised eighty-four francs. But Mudd remained until Crowley, receiving money from Leon Engers Kennedy, surprisingly sent him some to come to Paris. Mudd soon did, leaving a wake of unpaid bills. What he told Crowley of Cefalù was not good. Everyone was facing eviction because of unpaid rent; the Baron had had his fill of opera and wanted to sell the place. Crowley needed to move his belongings, especially his library, and the faithful Mudd arranged for this to be shipped to England. This was a mistake: it was on this occasion that,
as mentioned earlier, Crowley’s books were seized by customs and destroyed. Crowley then sent Mudd to London on a fund-raising mission. Jane Wolfe was already there, working at a nursing home; of all the crew at Cefalù, she seems the most together. Mudd was not successful; he wound up having to enter a homeless shelter to get a bed for the night.
¹²
During this trip Mudd appealed to people such as Bertrand Russell, Bernard Shaw, and the philosopher Miguel de Unamuno with his
Open Letter to Lord Beaverbrook
; he also appealed to the anarchist Emma Goldman. She doubted Crowley was as persecuted as Mudd alleged, as she had recently seen him at a Parisian café, surrounded by friends.
¹³
The friends may have been George Cecil Jones, J.W.N. Sullivan, and the Argentine artist Alexander Xul Zolar, who had sought out Crowley for magical instruction. The three brought cash, food, and companionship. While his followers fended for themselves as best they could, Crowley always managed to land on his feet.