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Aleister Crowley: The Ultimate Outsider
by
I first heard of Crowley from a Berlin painter and astrologer who as an expert in horoscopes claims to have a good eye for unusual people. He brought me a newspaper cutting from the Berliner Tageblatt about Crowley the globe-trotter, mountaineer, adventurer and poet. The printed photograph showed a massive, distinctively boney head with an urbane, sophisticated and peaceful expression, concentrated simple. It is unbelievable that this man should have made tremendous walks as a Tibetan monk, whilst easy to think that he could have squandered thousands in luxury hotels in Egypt. He had experienced hunger, misery and all sorts of humiliations—on the other hand, he was expelled from southern countries because of his orgies which had enraged the rural people.
His books were revelations "comprehensible only for adepts of the highest degree," and . . . he had created paintings strangely resembling those of Nix and Nolde, although he had never seen any work by these artists. The reproductions exhibited a weird mixture of fantastic art and realism, representations of deserts and high mountains, grotesque faces, masks, and symbolic figures, all this on purpose exhibiting a brutally rough and gaudily coloured style similar to that of the Dusseldorf sculptor and allegorical painter Adalbert Trillhaase. Whilst it is impossible to review work of this kind from the point of view of artistic technique, we should rather appreciate the same as an astounding documentation of the individual cosmos of a world-traveler—particularly that of an Englishman—which is more remarkable than many of the best productions of the experienced artist.
Letting go of all the fictitious legends, Crowley's life can be outlined as follows:
Crowley is 56 years of age. He was raised in England, studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, and was designated for a diplomatic career. As a young man he had, in addition to his ambition to become an invincible chess champion, a passion for climbing inaccessible mountains. In 1894 he made climbing tours through the Alps. In 1900 he attained record altitudes in Mexico which have yet to be surpassed. In 1901 he traveled in the South Pacific, Japan, China, Ceylon and India.
In the following year he was one of the mountain guides of a Himalayan expedition to Chogo Ri, the second highest mountain on earth. He spent the following years hunting big game (elephants, lions, tigers) in Ceylon. In 1905 he led a Himalayan expedition to Kanchenjunga. Then came the period of his great walk, mostly dressed up as a monk and under enormous deprivations from Rangoon through China, to Shanghai. Later he went on a pilgrimage through North Africa, traversing the Sahara Desert and traveling through Spain. Between these travels were months of literary work in Scotland and London. In 1913 he lived in Mexico, in New York during the War, and, since 1919, mostly in Sicily, Tunis, Algeria and Paris.
He has published an imposing range of books in hardcover, which include novels and plays: Aceldama (1898); The Star and the Garter (1903); Alice, An Adultery (1903); The Sword of Song (1903); Orpheus (1905); Clouds without Water (1909); The Winged Beetle (1910); The World's Tragedy (1910); Sir Palamedes (1914); Tannhäuser (1902); Mortadello (1912); Household Gods (1914); Berashith (1903); Konx Om Pax (1907); 777 (1909); The Equinox, [Vol. I], Nos. 1-10 (1909-1913); The Scented Garden of Abdullah (1910); The Book of Lies (1913); The Equinox Vol. III [No. 1] (1919); Magick; Moonchild; The Confessions (2 volumes published) (1929).
These dates and accounts concerning Crowley's life originate from a friend of his who later verified their factual accuracy.
A notice must have been published in some paper one day that Crowley planned to have an exhibit of his paintings in Berlin. In any case, I was warned from any conceivable quarter about the secret powers of the "black magician." Phone calls, anonymous and otherwise, in view of the great danger counseled most strongly to strictly avoid any contact with Crowley. Someone called on and beseeched me to oppose the threatening "enchantment." Persons close to me were asked to exert their influence to save me.
It turned out that Crowley had fanatical enemies, who considered him the archetype of evil, capable of every scandalous deed. There was a whole compendium available, dealing with his outrages, orgies, and heresies. Amongst other things he was supposed to have killed and devoured his porters during a Himalayan expedition!
The admirers express their opinions in no less exaggerated terms: "An Initiate of the mysteries of Tibetan and Buddhist monasteries, Holder of the highest degrees of a world-spanning Lodge, a Perfected One, to whom nothing is strange, a poet of unimaginable importance," etc. After all those alarmed to-ings and fro-ings, Crowley appeared . . . a strong man, giving almost the impression of a visionary with demons hovering about him. If this is what devil worshipers look like, then many of our self-satisfied bourgeois princes of industry and business, religious and secular pay homage to the same service.
These gentlemen, however, are not on any close terms with artistic accomplishment, and thus I immediately apologized to Crowley after noticing his immediate appreciation of Dix, Nolde, Beckmann, Otto Mueller, Schmidt-Rottluf and Scholz. This was his first encounter with the works of these painters, and his intuitive judgement was absolutely sound and at the same time of an unassumingness which indifferent viewers of artworks never show. In all subsequent conversations he turned out to be restrained, completely free of pretence, and without any over-sensitivity in the face of critical objections to his pictures. In contrast to persons of similar reputation (such as Rudolph Steiner, who even outwardly acted in the mannered fashion of an actor; or the world-famous Miss Besant, with her leonine head and parish priest emotionalism; or he official "Savior of the World," Krishnamurti, who was condemned from childhood on to bear a noble-kitsch composure) Crowley appeared to be of an almost middle-class placidity. However, I never discussed with him anything beyond the issues of art, and I did neither verify not take notice of the legends of both friend and foe.
The Porza, in accordance with its program of mutual international understanding, has shown interest in Crowley's unquestionably not insignificant personality, and there can be no doubt that the arranged exhibition is stimulating and more impressive than a lot of the English artwork we might otherwise have shown. The paintings are by the intensity of their desire and the primitiveness of their execution more closely related to German artists than to the rehash of customary French recipes commonly knocked together on the other side of the Channel today.
That a fellow came along from the country with the strongest conventionality—from Cambridge, even—who, at 56 shines forth completely undejected as a painter, after having spent his whole life contemplating mountains, oceans, and deserts as a fanatic amateur (in the literal and greatest sense of the word) is, no doubt, particularly surprising.
The critical evaluation of his pictures is not my business. An enormously vivid and eager outsider, a real man of elementary, instinctive power is behind them.
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