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THE SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER San Francisco, California, U.S.A. 15 April 1923 (page 102)
Secrets Behind the Scenes Among the Devil Worshippers.
A Young English Bride Who Fled from the Sicilian “Abbey” of the Vicious New “Do Whatever You Want” Religion, Reveals the Wicked Rituals Carried On by Its “High Priest” and His Worshippers.
Aleister Crowley, in a Devil-Worshipping Ceremony. He is Holding One of His “Wands of Power” With Which He Carries on His Mummeries, and Is Smiling What He No Doubt Considers a Devilish Smile.
Readers of this magazine will recall an article a few weeks ago dealing with the newest activities of Aleister Crowley, “high priest” of the wicked “Do anything you want to” religion, and his misguided followers at Cefalu, a little town in Sicily.
This is the same Crowley who some months ago started a “Temple” of “O.T.O.,” as the new religion is named, at Detroit. Soon the police took a hand in the matter and stopped the rites which had already broken up a number of homes, provided many cases for the divorce courts and caused at least half a dozen suicides. Crowley, who is an Englishman and a graduate of Oxford University, could not be found.
At last the powerful London newspaper, the “Sunday Express,” turned Crowley up at Cefalu. Since then the “Express” has obtained from a young English woman [Betty May] who recently escaped from his “abbey” the first story of what, she asserts, actually goes on behind the scenes in this devil worshippers’ temple.
The young Englishwoman was a bride when she went to the Cefalu temple with her husband [Raoul Loveday]. He was a lad of twenty-two, an Oxford graduate and a brilliant writer. When Crowley was in London last Winter, says the “Express,” he offered the boy a secretarial position with him at Cefalu.
Neither of the couple had any idea of the character of the “abbey,” nor of the real character of Crowley, according to the “Express.” Although the “Express” prints a picture of its informant, her name is withheld to spare the feelings of her own and her unfortunate husband’s family. The girl entered the place a bride and left it a few weeks later a widow, and the printable parts of what she claims to have seen and to have undergone in Crowley’s “abbey” is told by her in the “Express” as follows:
Secret Ceremonies in the Devil-Worshippers’ “Abbey.”
We reached Cefalu—a tiny town of one narrow street and a few house straggling up the hillside. Lovely indeed, but desolate.
It was a long, dreary climb up a muddy, mountainous path; and our first glimpse of the “abbey” did nothing to dispel my forebodings. It loomed up suddenly before us, the white house gleaming eerily in the faint moonlight, one mysterious flickering light shining from a small window.
Our reception was startling enough. We knocked at the door. It was opened by a woman, whom we were to know later as Jane [Jane Wolfe].
“Beast!” she cried out, “here are Mr. and Mrs.———“
I was, of course, amazed; but we learned afterwards that “Beast” is Crowley’s own name for himself. He likes it; and certainly no other name could be more appropriate. Crowley appeared. He raised one hand above his head and said:
“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.”
To which half a dozen other voices replied:
“Love is the law, love under the law.”
We were awakened at half-past seven the next morning, followed by the banging of a tom-tom, followed by a woman’s voice crying, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.” And the voices of all the others came from their various quarters, responding, “Love is the law, love under the law.”
This, we found, was the daily morning ritual.
We were left pretty much to ourselves this first day, “to get acclimatized.” Indeed, as a general rule, Crowley is not seen by any one before tea-time. He remains in his own room—“Cauchemar,” or “Nightmare,” as it is called—drugging himself. His room is full of drugs of all sorts; there is a great bottle of raw hashish, and bottles of cocaine, heroin, morphia and ether. He distils his own opium, a lot of which is smoked in the “abbey.” Anybody can have whatever “dope” they like by asking for it.
Lunch was at twelve o’clock, and before the meal all the household came out of doors, facing the sun, and raising their arms, gave adoration, uttering the words, “Hail unto thee, from the abodes of morning.”
At four o’clock my husband and I were summoned to the Cauchemar. Crowley received us, lying on his bed, his totally bald head covered with a black wig. He gave us instructions. He addressed me as “Sister Sibylline.”
The tom-tom went for tea. This is the time when Crowley gets up and joins his disciples. The fare was salad and coarse, unpleasant bread. Crowley ignored me at this meal, and as I watched the gathering, I turned against them all. Crowley rose.
“Pentagram will meet at 7:30 to-night,” he said.
“What is Pentagram?” I asked.
“You will see,” was the reply.
Once a day no one is allowed to keep “outside the magic circle.” At 7:30 we all trooped into the Temple, where a circle is marked on the floor. A great charcoal fire burns in the centre. The Beast’s chair stands on the north side of the circle, with a brazier in front of him and six colored receptacles for his swords and magic wands.
I refused to sit in the circle and was allowed to remain outside. Incense was burnt before Crowley, who was robed in scarlet and wearing magnificent rings. The women in the “abbey” all wear trousers and shirts. A woman called Leah [Leah Hirsig] is known as the Scarlet Woman; she was clad in a red robe edged with gold. All the trappings are of indescribable richness.
Prayers were offered and Crowley, pointing to each one in the circle with his magic sword, uttered mystic words.
The days went on. In the mornings I worked; and gradually I saw things that in the fatigue and excitement of arrival I had not notices. Vile pictures, some hanging on the walls and others engraved on them, horrified me. Tea became an impossible meal for me, the conversation was too sickeningly bestial. Time after time, I used to leave the table; generally I was fetched back. It was a dreadful ordeal; silence for lunch, filth for tea.
My husband was “initiated,” but he would never tell me anything about the ceremony. All I know is that he wore gorgeous robes, that the ceremony lasted eight hours.
Now I come to the sickening episode of the cat. By this time Crowley never spoke to me; all my orders came from Leah. At tea one afternoon Crowley was irritable and uneasy. Suddenly he rose and said:
“There is an evil spirit in this room.”
A cat was sitting by his seat—a lovely tortoise shell animal. Crowley went to pick it up; the cat scratched him viciously on the arm and wriggled from his hands.
“Within three days,” ordained the Beast, “that cat must be sacrificed.”
The third day arrived. I wanted to get the cat away, but my husband told me not to interfere. But I took the animal a long way away from the house, and put it down, saying, childishly, perhaps—“Stay there, pussy, if you value your life.” But it followed me back.
Crowley had told my husband that he must kill the cat, and to write out an invocation. Imagine the effect of such instructions on a highly sensitive man like my husband. He went ashen pale and trembling as he heard the words, but the Beast’s influence over him was such that he could not refuse. He caught the cat, and put it in a bag. The animal cried pitifully.
The hour arrived. I refused, as always, to sit in the magic circle, but insisted on being present. I took a seat close to the door so that I could escape if I wanted to.
The altar was dressed for the occasion with “Cakes of Light.” It is impossible to describe of what these are made. I do not believe any normal mind could ever imagine the ingredients. Above the altar hung a bell, formed of an almost flat metal disc, the striker being a human bone. A bowl to catch the cat’s blood stood as the side.
At the Sacrifice of the Cat, the Young English Woman Says, Crowley, the “High Priest” of the Devil Worshippers, Sat on a Throne in Gorgeous Robes Inside a “Magic Circle.” There Was an Altar With a Big Gong and a Beater Made of a Human Bone. As She Watched, Sickened, She Saw Her Trembling Husband at Crowley’s Command Raise Up the Cat and Slash Its Neck With the “Sacred Sword of Sacrifice.”
My husband, trembling from head to foot, stood by the altar, armed with a kukri—the sharp, carved sword that the Ghurkha finds so effective. He had to lift the cat in one hand, and kill it with the other. The cat struggled violently. Crowley dabbed its nose with ether till it became quiet enough to hold. The reading of the long invocation concluded.
“Now,” said the Beast. My husband struck at the wretched cat, but his blow lacked force. He only half killed the poor animal and dropped it. The cat, pouring blood from its throat, dashed away into Jane’s room, leaving a red trail behind it.
Crowley ordered me to fetch it back. I refused so he went himself. My husband was forced to pick it up again, and, finally, with another hard blow, severed the cat’s head from its body. The body fell to the floor with a thud that I can still hear.
Other incidents and practices indulged in at the “abbey” it is improper to describe.
With every day my horror and repulsion grew; my sense of foreboding, too, increased, but we could not get away. We had no money.
In the meantime my husband’s health failed. He was always cold—so cold that he would get into bed with his clothes on. At first Crowley refused to let a doctor come to see him, but eventually one did come. But my husband did not improve.
While my husband was lying ill, Crowley decided that his head must be shaved. The Beast himself acted as barber, and shaved my poor husband’s head of every hair, also inflicting a horrible cut on his head. His arms, too, were full of cuts, for every time one uses the word “I” in the “abbey” one has to inflict a cut on one’s own arm.
If my husband’s body could be exhumed it would offer a piteous spectacle.
One night Leah brought me a message from Crowley ordering me to go to him.
I refused, saying that I was nursing my husband. Crowley himself came to me.
“Pack up your boxes and go,” he commanded.
My husband, from his bed of sickness, begged Crowley not to insist.
The Beast seized me by my wrists, dragged me to the door and threw me out.
Then began the most fearful night of my life. I was frightened almost to death. Out in the hills, in a strange country and penniless. Below in the little town the people were holding a carnival dance. Their laughter came up to me through the still night air as I stood helpless and shivering on the bleak hillside. I made up my mind that I must go to town, and I reached Cefalu as the townsfolk were going home from their dance.
Then a man who sometimes came up to the “abbey” saw me, and asked me what I was doing there at that time of night. I told him what had happened. He secured me a room at the hotel.
The next morning I wrote to the British Consul at Palermo, telling him the whole truth that he had led to my desperate position. Hardly was the letter written than Jane arrived with a note from my husband. It had not been difficult to find me. By breakfast time all Cefalu knew that I had been found wandering in the street in the small hours.
My husband’s note said that he was very ill, and that the doctor was coming up. This news was enough for me. I rushed back to the “abbey.” I saw my husband. He looked dreadfully bad.
“What is it, darling?” I asked.
“Ask Crowley to let you come back,” he said. I looked at his pale, word face and didn’t wait to ask. I stayed.
Meanwhile the doctor had gone, promising to send up the medicine. But the medicine did not come until it was too late. I was desperate and hardly knew what to do.
“Are you comfortable, dear?” I asked him.
“Yes. I do love you, darling, I do love you.”
These were the last words my husband ever spoke to me.
To my amazement I was asked to go to the town to buy an article for the sick room. I hurried off. When I returned the woman Jane stood in the doorway.
“He’s gone,” she said.
“Where?” I asked.
“He’s dead!” she replied.
I remember nothing till six o’clock—two hours later. It is a regulation in Cefalu that no dead body may remain in a house after seven p.m. It must be removed to the “Greenhouse.”
“I must see my husband,” I said. They took me to him. By the light of a candle in the dusk I saw him. He looked so peaceful, so comfortable, this brilliant, loveable husband of mine, whose life had been so uselessly thrown away.
They would not leave me alone with him. If I could have found Crowley’s gun I would have shot the Beast. But I could not find it; and later all my energy left me. I collapsed utterly.
They tried in vain to keep me from the funeral. The Beast wore his funeral robes; all the women, too, wore robes. The coffin stood on trestles beside a hole in the ground. Crowley tapped the coffin with his wand. The whole of the “Pentagram Service” was performed; it lasted an hour and a half.
Then I rushed to Cefalu. I must somehow or other send a telegram. But I had no money. While I was trying, in dumb show, to persuade the postmaster to send a telegram for me. It was in reply to my letter to the British Consul, and he had sent me fifty lire that I might come to him.
I flew back to the “abbey.” Escape—that was my one thought. Crowley, who had avoided me up to this, now came to me.
Fled from the "Abbey" and its "High Priest."
“You will make this your home,” he said. “This is your life. You have no money.”
“I will go,” I replied. “I have money. The British Consul has sent me fifty lire.”
“Jane is going to London shortly,” he retorted. “You will be back here in three months.” I turned and ran for the door. The Beast saw I was going. He laid one finger on his lips and said in a menacing tone half of advice and half of menace:
“Silence, you understand?”
The British Consul at Palermo sent me home to England.
If my revelations of the life at the “abbey” in Cefalu can help in any way to put a stop to the infamies of Aleister Crowley, and prevent others from becoming his dupes, my husband’s life will not have been given vainly, nor will my sufferings have been wholly useless. |
