THE SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER

San Francisco, California, U.S.A.

1 April 1923

(page 128)

Newest Activities of the Head

of the “Devil Worshippers.”

Aleister Crowley, High Priest of the Wicked

“Do Anything You Want To” New Religion,

Starts a Colony in Italy to Spread the Evil

Teachings Which Were Exposed and Stamped

Out in America.

Aleister Crowley in Mystic Costume With Hands at the

Side of His Head Making the Secret Sign of the Horns—

Among the Devil Worshippers the Thumbs in This Position

Represent the Horns of the Devil.

Readers of this page will remember the disturbing revelations made in Detroit some months ago when the courts unexpectedly stripped bare the ambitious plans of a little coterie of men of evil reputation who were trying to establish a new religion based upon this astonishing doctrine.

“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.”

The wicked results of preaching any such doctrine are not hard to see. It is not surprising that those who joined this new religion soon found themselves in difficulties of one kind or another.

Wives who went through the secret ceremonials of the order were soon thrown out by their husbands, and husbands who joined the cult did not escape long from the divorce courts.

In the Ritual of the New Mystic Order the “Priest” Ascends

the Steps of the Altar Toward the “Priestess” Who is Required

to Strip Herself of Her Robe and Deliver Herself of a Sensuous

Appeal Which Led the Authorities to Suppress the Book.

In the course of the court testimony, it was developed that a sinister figure who called himself Aleister Crowley was the evil genius who was behind this effort to establish this “Do anything you want to do” new religion. This man Crowley was reputed to be the head of a sect of “Devil Worshippers.”

“I am Baphomet XI., of the ‘O.T.O.,’ ” he told those that he took into his confidence. “In me you see the Supreme and Holy King of Ireland, Iona, and all the Britains that are in the sanctuary of the Gnosis”—whatever that meant.

“The names of women members are never divulged,” said Crowley, significantly.

There soon came tales of the secret meetings at “secret fortresses,” where the members clothed only in a single covering sat about on the floor while they received their “lessons” in the cult whose motto was “Do what thou wilt!”

And at these meetings was always recited the “Hymn to Pan,” which appears on the opening pages of Crowley’s book “The Equinox.” It begins:

“Thrill with lissome lust of the light,

O man! My man!

Come careening out of the night

To me, to me,

Come with Apollo in bridal dress”—

The rest is unprintable.

But when the authorities tried to put their hands on Crowley, the head “devil worshipper,” he had disappeared. Search was made for him all over the United States and in England, but he could not be located. But the moving spirit of this abominable new religion has now turned up, and the London Express, discovering his new book just put on the market in England called “The Diary of a Drug Fiend,” says that “at the baser and more bestial horrors of the book, it is impossible to even hint.”

The Express then announces that it has traced Crowley to Sicily, where the “devil worshipper” has been conducting a mock religion in an “Abbey,” [Abbey of Thelema] and asserts that there is now on exhibition in London a portrait of Crowley, by the artist, Jacob Kramer, which is called “The Beast.”

The Express says that Crowley’s orgies are carried on as mystic religious rites in an old farmhouse near the village of Cefalu in Sicily. Crowley calls the place the “Abbey of Theleme,” a title coined by the mediaeval French writer Rabelais for another famous rendezvous, whose motto was “Do Here Whatever You Please.”

The Express quotes a woman who had recently returned to London from the “Abbey” as follows.

“The main room of the house is windowless, with a flagstone floor. On the floor is painted a great orange circle lines with pale yellow. Inside the circle are interlaced black triangles. The room is lighted by candles.

“A tripod, upheld by three little fauns, burns incense. In a cupboard are little cakes, all made of goats’ blood, honey and grain, some raw and some baked. The raw ones, gone bad, fill the room with their stench.

Photograph of Crowley in One of his Ceremonials.

“In this room are carried on unspeakable orgies, impossible of description. Suffice it to say that they are horrible beyond the misgivings of decent people.

“Many women come to Cefalu, all with money, for whatever else Crowley may demand of them, money is his primary need.

It takes money to supply him with the drugs he uses incessantly, the hasheesh, cocaine, heroin, opium, morphine, every drug known from the Orient to the Occident.

“Three women he keeps there permanently for his orgies. All of them he brought from America two or three years ago. One is a French-American governess [Ninette Shumway], one an ex-schoolmistress [Leah Hirsig] and one a cinema actress [Jane Wolfe] from Los Angeles.

“The French-American governess has two children—of which he is the father—who live in the midst of this debauchery. The children of the schoolmistress by him are dead. Crowley himself, a clever talker, with no little personal magnetism, spends his time smoking opium in a room which is really a gallery of obscene pictures gathered from all over the world.

“He bases his ‘religion’ on a few texts gleaned from Pythagoras, which he quotes persuasively when trying to attack a new victim. But the real facts of his system are much simpler than that. They go down to the lowest depths that human depravity can reach.”

Since this informant’s return it would seem, however, that the “Abbey” has been abandoned—temporarily, at least.

When Crowley appeared in Cefalu he called himself Alastor de Kerval. There was a woman with him and two little boys. Later on another woman joined him. This woman’s name he altered in the same dignified and aristocratic manner that he had his own. She became the Countess Lea Harcourt. These names were registered at the Blanca di Sicilia with a deposit of a few thousand francs in bonds, and all checks drawn were to be signed by the two thus—Alastor de Kerval, Knight Guardian of the Sacred Lance, and Lea Harcourt, Virgin, Priestess of the San Graal, or Holy Grail. By the Sacred Lance was meant the spear that pierced the Saviour’s side while he was on the Cross, and the Holy Grail was the legendary cup that passed from hand to hand at the Last Supper and which caught the blood from His side when the spear pierced it.

The purpose of the two was to extend “O.T.O.” in every country, with the “Abbey” as its sacred headquarters.

Soon many “converts” began to appear at the “Abbey,” foolish, weak, superstitious, unbalanced men and women lured by Crowley’s sinister brilliancy and the ecstacies his debased occultism promised them. All of these, of course, possessed money in various degrees.

The rituals and observances they were taught are embodied in the “Book of the Law,” or Liber Legis, which Crowley considers his masterpiece and which is the ritual of the “O.T.O.” He claims that it was dictated to him by the Devil, and certainly no one would deny the Satanism of it. Its principal tenet is the famous “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.” This infamous but remarkable book was written by Crowley at Cairo, Egypt, after the following fashion, according to Crowley. His wife [Rose Kelly] told him to go into a room for three consecutive days and write down from dictation every word he heard for the space of an hour. Thus the Book of the Law is divided into three chapters, taken down from dictation respectively on the 8th, 9th and 10th of April, 1904. Crowley claims that the Devil himself appeared to him, calling himself by the Syriac name of Aiwass, and claiming to be a messenger of Hoor-pa-kraat, the Egyptian God of Silence and Secrecy.

The first chapter contains sixty-six verses and is supposed to be the revelation of the Goddess Nuith, the Lady of the Starry Heaven, who is also matter in whom we all live and move and have our being. She says: “Come forth, O children of the stars, and take your fill of love!” and “Be ye goodly therefore: dress ye all in fine apparel, eat rich foods and drink sweet wines, and wines that foam! Also take your fill and will of love as ye will, when, where and with whom ye will! But always unto me.”

Crowley, so it is reported, stocked up the Abbey with a choice selection of wines and spirits and drugs. Under the guise of scientific experiments it did not take long to bring victims to the stage where they use opium, ether or other “dope” daily. And once the moral stamina is undermined it is not hard to guess to what extremes the “Do what thou wilt” command is sure to lead.

The “convert” of the “Abbey” was forced to sign his or her name to what was called the “Affiliate’s Oath.” In this the “Knight” and “Virgin Priestess” become respectively the “Beast” and “Scarlet Woman.” The neophyte swore to support the authority of these two and to practice and promote the doctrines as declared in the “Book of the Law.”

Delegates of the “O.T.O.” were selected from the converts and assigned the mission of carrying the teachings to every country.

One large room in the villa was remodeled and decorated as a temple. A circle of elaborate design was painted on the floor, an altar set up in the east and various other properties installed to enable the worshippers to perform their rites and ceremonies of devil worship. The members of the Abbey were forced to attend two ceremonies each day.

At last the reports of the doings at the “Abbey” became so sinister that the Italian authorities were constrained to investigate. But when they arrived there they found things very quiet, indeed. Crowley gad fled to Paris, taking the “Scarlet Woman” with him.

The Australian representative, Frater Dionysus IX° O.T.O., had returned to Sydney carrying with him a complete set of official documents and the new rituals of the order. Weeks previous to this the American delegate had departed and the English visitors returned home, but before the departure of the latter they had been admitted to the “Minerva” of the “O.T.O.” and put through the ceremony of initiation.

They had been present at the bloody sacrifice, where a young virgin he-goat is slaughtered upon an altar which consists of an unclothed woman. In this particular instance it had been necessary to administer hashish to the woman before she would undertake to go through her part of the ceremony. The blood was collected in a consecrated dish and mixed with meal, honey, thick leavings of red wine and sacred oils and baken. This was in accordance with verses 23 of Chapter 3 of the Book of the Law, and succeeding verses which tell how these so-called “Cakes of Light” shall be made.

The previous batch of cakes had been made with blood voluntarily offered by one of the female members. At other times they had used the blood of a black rooster. The rooster had been blasphemously baptized and christened before its throat was cut.

The Italian police officers found only two women and three children at the Abbey. So they had to satisfy themselves with demanding the registration of a baby which was done shortly afterwards by the mother at Taormins.

The Italian authorities could not be expected to make any but a superficial investigation, the complaint lodged with them was simply the mistreatment of the children. So having satisfied themselves that the children were now in good hands they left.

“If they had examined the books on the shelves,” says one who is familiar with Crowley, “or entered the ‘Holy of Holies’ they might have decided that the welfare of the children was still in danger. This ‘Holy of Holies’ is a chamber whose walls are completely covered with paintings of men, women, animals, and all sorts of monsters illustrating every degree and fashion of worship. It is impossible to any more than suggest the nature of the scenes coarsely depicted on these walls.

“Among the books to be found in the Abbey library are the original manuscripts of the personal diaries of the ‘Beast.’ From these one might glean many strange and unbelievable things; for example, that Crowley actually believed that he was on earth before under many incantations.

“He brought out in 1913 or thereabouts a story of a former “incarnation” of his in Egypt. Six months before Crowley was born Eliphaz Levi, a notorious character of France, died. So Crowley claims to be a reincarnation of Levi. Before that he states that he was born in 1750 as Cagliostro. Previous to that he was Sir Edward Kelly, famous as an astrologer and magician and alchemist in Queen Elizabeth’s time.

“Pope Alexander VI. is another historical figure Crowley claims as one of his former incarnations.”

According to the Express, although Crowley has used such high-sounding aliases as Count von Zonaref and Earl of Middlesex, he is reported to be the son of a Kentish brewer. He first came under the notice of the police in 1900, the Express says, when he stole $1,000 from a widow, who refused, however to prosecute him.

“In 1910,” asserts the Express expose, “Crowley was holding meetings in Caxton Hall to witness the performance of the ‘Rites of Eleusis;’ he cultivated an immoral society for the worship of the God Pan, and he organized every kind of evil rite, including the cult of ‘The Beetle’ and the Black Mass.”

The devil worshipper is said to take his title of the “the Beast” from the passage in Revelations that describes the advent of “the beast with seven heads and ten horns.” The peculiar symbolism of “the Scarlet Woman” is drawn from the same source.