THE QUORUM:

A MAGAZINE OF FRIENDSHIP

(A Facsimile)

LONDON, ENGLAND

1920/2001

(pages 12-13)

INTRODUCTION.

By Timothy d’Arch Smith.

The Quorum represents the first endeavour at floating a homosexual magazine since a publication calling itself The Chameleon. . . .

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Ties of a different kind from personal acquaintance also bound together nearly all the disparate figures making up The Quorum contingent. On 12 August 1923 had been founded at the Cecil Hotel in the Strand (given decent marks by the magician, Aleister Crowley, as a comfortable billet) the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology. . . .

[ . . . ]

After the manner of occult societies, there was an inner order of the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology, the Order of Chaeronea. This too may have been founded by George Ives. Certainly Ives, like MacGregor Mathers of the Golden Dawn (where Crowley learned his magic) was its tutelary genius. Ives and Crowley had met in fact at least once as the seating plan reveals for the Ritz hotel luncheon of 1 December 1908 marking the publication of the collected works of Oscar Wilde, a table made up of other shady-ish characters (Christopher Sclater Millard included) set well away from the body of the restaurant behind the top table where Robert Ross—guest of honour—would have been able to keep watch on standards of behaviour. Crowley may well have spoken of the comforts of the Cecil Hotel as well as of the importance of a visible manifestation—for recruitment purposes—of the Sanctum Regnum, alternatively (Ives expressing typical forebodings of loose talk) recommending the practice within his own order (only just off the ground) that a member knows only his superior by whom he is introduced and the inferior he introduces. It was on these latter lines that the Order of Chaeronea was conducted. Like Crowley too (intriguing to reflect if it were the Beast’s suggestion) Chaeronea had its own dating system. A letter from Ives to Gardner discloses Gardner to have been privy to the secret. Probably Green was a member, Nicholson also.

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