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THE BUFFALO TIMES Buffalo, New York, U.S.A. 20 May 1923 (pages 16-17)
Astounding Secrets of the Devil Worshippers’ Mystic Love Cult.
Revealing the Intimate Details of Aleister Crowley’s Unholy Rites, His Power Over Women Whom He Branded and Enslaved, His Drug Orgies, His Poetry and Mysticisms, His Startling Adventures Around the Globe as “the Beast of the Apocalypse”
Chapter VIII.
"I still bear the whip-marks, welts and bruises of my twenty-nine-day horror as the trial bride of Albert W. Ryerson, the O.T.O. leader in Detroit."
That's the way a "love cult," as interpreted in the Middle West, appealed to one beautiful American girl, who says she would rather be dead than go through it again.
She is Mazie Mitchell Ryerson, third wife of the rich Detroit publisher, who put on the market Aleister Crowley's volume of the mystical "Equinox [Volume III, No. 1]," and from whom she fled at the end of her "trial marriage."
Mazie Ryerson, as She Posed When a Model at the “Chalet d’Arts” in Detroit Before Her “Trial Marriage.”
She went on record as declaring,
when asked the reason for her renunciation of the "O.T.O.":
Crowley went away before Mazie Ryerson appeared as the "persecuted heroine" of this extraordinary human drama. His direct participation ender after he had gone to Detroit, preached his "Do What Thou Wilt" doctrine to a little coterie of prominent persons, established a "temple" and published his book—with the help of Ryerson.
Crowley says Ryerson is a "weak fool," who totally misunderstood his doctrines.
Ryerson says Crowley is a "scoundrel," an "inhuman devil," and denies that he ever really became a member of Crowley's cult.
Be that as it may, this is what happened:
Crowley appeared in Detroit to establish a chapter of the "O.T.O." He was a guest in Ryerson's home and Ryerson published his book. Then twice during the year the "O.T.O." loomed up in Detroit court proceedings when shocked wives appealed for divorce because their husbands had become affiliated with this order.
Crowley Clad in the Ceremonial Regalia of the “O.T.O.”
There was a great scandal. The big book publishing house of which Ryerson was the head became involved, and Ryerson was charged with spending its money to further the "O.T.O."
Bertha Bruce Ryerson, a defiant, bobbed-haired and acrimonious beauty," who declared herself then the wife of Ryerson, was brought into court, where it was testified that she was to have become the "high priestess" of the new cult in Detroit.
Following that scandal, she and Ryerson separated. Crowley meanwhile had gone away. Later, Ryerson, middle-aged and rich, met and fell in love with Mazie Mitchell, a beautiful young art model. He said, at first, according to her story, that he wanted to adopt her as his daughter.
What then occurred, according to her version of the tragedy, she tells as follows:
"I was changed from an ignorant, innocent girl into a woman with knowledge of much that is evil, mysterious, horrible. I was initiated into the mysteries of the occult. I became acquainted with turbaned Hindus discussing theosophy, ancient cults, practicing magic and hypnotism.
"I learned for the first time that thousands of persons in the world to-day are practicing the secret rites of ancient cults and worshiping idols.
"I thought at first that Ryerson was just a kind, fatherly man, taking an interest in a young girl who was trying to earn her own living. What girl of seventeen would not feel flattered if a rich, middle-aged man wanted to make her his adopted daughter and heiress?"
She tells, then, how he took her to his luxurious apartments, hung with weird tapestries and gorgeously decorated in Oriental style. He treated her, at first, she says, exactly like a daughter, and promised to have adoption papers made out soon. But his two Hindu servants, Maneck and Jamsed, filled her from the first with uneasiness and fear.
Ryerson bought her an expensive motor car, showered her with luxuries. But, according to Mazie Ryerson, the idea of adoption was very soon dropped.
"Well, Mazie," he said to her one night, according to her story, "the world may not think it quite the proper thing for you to be living here with me. It would be safer if you were my wife. If you are not certain you would like to be my wife, we can have a thirty-day trial marriage. At the end of that time, if you do not like me as a husband, you can get a divorce. I will not contest it."
He promised her, she says, jewels, clothes, a beautiful home, an artistic career. And she at last consented. They were married by a prominent rector of Detroit, and she was taken to Ryerson's magnificent estate on Riverside Drive, near Ford City, Ontario.
"I cannot describe the first three days and nights of my marriage. It is better for me and others to cast a veil over the terrible things that happened. If there had been any love in my heart for my elderly husband he would have killed it then. He subjected me to unspeakable tortures, both physical and mental."
What some of these ordeals were she describes, or hints at, later.
"It was on the third evening that he first whipped me. He whipped me until I was black and blue and almost fainting. I screamed and screamed, but it made no difference. He seemed to take a fiendish delight in my screams.
"When he released me I ran from the house. I didn't care where I was going. I hid under the porch, like a cowering, whipped dog, and lay there shivering all night. I determined to run away, to go back to my artist friends and make a living posing again as a model."
But even after this, Ryerson was able to persuade her to try life with him again, she says. He was good to her for a while.
Then, she says, he began to torture her again.
"He would awake me in the middle of the night and commence whipping me. Once he whipped me so hard and long that I lost consciousness. The marks are still on my body.
Mazie Mitchell Ryerson, the Pretty Little Artists’ Model, Who Became the Third Wife of A. W. Ryerson, Rich Detroit Publisher. She Denounce Aleister Crowley’s “O.T.O.” Love Cult in Seeking a Divorce from Ryerson, Said to Be One if Its Leaders.
"One night he produced a book of clippings and told me of the O.T.O. Most of the stories were false, he said. I believe he certainly intended t make me a member of the cult. But he found me too determined to resist. I think that is why he commenced to beat me. He may have thought that by whipping and abusing me he could mold me to his will. But he couldn't.
"Soon after we were married strange people began to come to the house—mysterious, dark-skinned men from the Far East. Ryerson told me they were instructing him in old beliefs. Once there was a wild party and I was forced to be a member of it. I cannot describe it. I cannot tell you how much it revolted me.
"Sometimes when I threatened to leave him he promised to be good. At other times he said he would make it impossible for me to leave him and would 'fix it' so that I couldn't obtain a divorce.
"I became convinced that Ryerson was almost demented. he would talk to me for hours about reincarnation, telling me that he was King Solomon and I was Cleopatra. He boasted that he had a thousand wives scattered through the United States. All this bored me. I was just an average girl, not interested in this mystic stuff.
"I couldn't bear it any longer.
Twenty-nine days after we were married I fled from Ryerson's
beautiful home and went back to a life of hard work. I had
no money, nothing I could turn into cash. But I would rather
have died than live the life that an O. T. O. follower
wanted me to lead.
Ryerson paints another side of the picture, in which he "blames it all on the woman."
He denies he is an incarnation of King Solomon—but says his beautiful young art-model wife is a modern Cleopatra, Aspasia, Semiramis all rolled into one—"vixen" and "vampire."
He accuses her of being a bigamist and falling in love with his Hindu servant.
He says she was "heartless as a tigress and dangerous as a volcano."
He admits he "spanked her," but says it was for her own good, and implies that it "hurt him more than it did her."
Lest you doubt this, he explains that the "little tigress" turned on him and "sank her teeth into his arm."
And now he denounces her with fervor.
"It seems that I owe something to society and to the good of the girl herself," he says, "not to permit her to further conduct her career of destruction without a warning to the community as to the true character of this little vixen, who is a dangerous woman to be at large.
"Quiet, refined and demure, sweet, charming and young, she was experienced in wickedness, as I found out later, like a woman of forty. She boasts openly of being a vampire, one who can bring any man to her feet."
Although Ryerson published Crowley's "Equinox" and "O.T.O." ritual, and had Crowley in his home and was prominently present at the organization meeting of the cult at Detroit, he denies he ever participated in its ceremonies. It was not these doctrines, he says, that helped break up his home, but the hypnotic influence of an East Indian servant in the house, who went by the name of "Gim."
"Gim," he asserts, gained such an influence over the young wife that when the Indian was later dismissed she sold her jewels in order to supply him with money. This Mrs. Ryerson denies.
"One night when Mazie thought I was asleep," he says, "she slipped downstairs to the Hindu chauffeur's room. I followed quietly and heard her say that 'Daddy would raise the dickens if he saw me here.' He replied, 'He'd better not, because you know me. See this big knife! I can throw that thirty feet and land it in a man's heart. I could strangle him with a cord so cleverly that no one would know how he died. Then we could throw him into the river, pretend that e had been drowned, motor to Montreal, ship the car and go to India."
One of the most amazing charges Ryerson makes is that his wife was all the time secretly in the control of a bunch of Hindu "mystics" and criminals who used her for blackmailing purposes.
He said members of the gang threatened to cut his throat if he interfered between them and Mazie, and boasted they were going to "have a party which would last a year" after Mazie had "hooked" him for large sums of money.
After Mazie left him at the end of the twenty-nine-day marriage he says, "I had various propositions through taxi drivers and Hindus to deliver the girl over to me for sums ranging from $500 to $5,000. One of the propositions came from the Hindus through a lawyer. It was hinted that the Hindus had hypnotized the girl, and that she never would come back to me unless they could be persuaded, by my paying them money, to take off the spell.
"The Hindus have been active in their demands and getting bolder all the while. I have since learned that this gang is from Bombay, India, and is part of a bad organization there. They are posing in this country as healers and religious men—roles in which the gullible American public was only too willing to accept them, myself included. They fixed upon me as their prey, and after living upon my philanthropy for an entire Winter they broke up my home."
To say that these amazing events, coupled with other incipient scandals among the followers of the "O.T.O." in Detroit, have made a sensation in the Middle West, would be putting it mildly.
It is more than a sensation. It is an uproar. In the civil courts a suit was started by stockholders of the book-publishing concern, of which Ryerson was the head, to determine whether he was using their capital to help the "O.T.O." cult. In the divorce court there were sensational charges and counter-charges. The "Chalet d'Arts," the art school where Mazie Ryerson had posed as a model, was raided by the police, and large numbers of nude paintings and drawings were confiscated and destroyed.
In defending himself against the accusations brought by his pretty young wife, Ryerson added additional bitter counter-charges against her, in the course of which he said:
"I fell for her and am paying the price.
"When I tell my story I will let the public be my judge. I shall tell how she boasts of being a professional vamp; one who can bring any man to her feet; how she has vamped, she says, as her latest victim, a young newspaper reporter, whom she claims to have ensnared so as to get her publicity to enable her to get into the movies.
"I was also informed by a man, a
fancy dancer, who claimed to have resided in India, how
these fellows operated, and that the reporter was merely one
of their unsuspecting tools. I shall tell how I was
horrified to hear Mazie say that her gang was going to get
Judge—— for sentencing a girl for eight years.
"I had begged Mazie to allow this divorce to go through, sane and suppressed. She refused because she wanted the publicity. She finally did agree, and proposed that after she got the publicity for her to withdraw the suit if I would later give her a quiet divorce.
"I shall tell you how she pretended in her press story that she did not want alimony, yet in her suit claims it, listing my properties; how the gang seized upon the O. T. O. notoriety to use it for their evil, blackmailing schemes.
"Concerning the O. T. O., it can, so far as I am concerned, be dismissed briefly. A few years ago several prominent men met in an attorney's office in Detroit to be introduced to Aleister Crowley with a view of forming a chapter in Detroit, to organize a tentative lodge by acclamation without initiation or ritual, pending the arrival and approval of the rituals.
"I was one of those present at this meeting. A day or so later four of the men met with Crowley at the D. A. C. and organized a supreme grand council.
"The understanding was that both of the meetings afore-mentioned were merely tentative, pending the arrival and examination of the rituals, which were to be sent to the attorney for revision and approval. Some action would be put forth in initiations if approval was forthcoming. Mr. —— went to Salt Lake City to confer with a member there, and when he returned the rituals had arrived under seal for his eyes only. He advised dropping the matter, which was done.
"The newspapers of Detroit tried to make out that a love cult existed. The O. T. O. was not a love cult, nor did ever any exist in Detroit of which I was a member.
Crowley As He Looked When He Was Startling Paris With His Mysterious Drug Parties. Shortly Afterward He Founded a Local Branch of the “O.T.O.” in Detroit.
"A certain prominent attorney was elected its head at the D. A. C. meeting. When trouble came and unsavory notoriety I was made the 'goat' for the bunch, although entirely innocent, and I have, in my silence, practically laid down my life for my friends.
"My home has been completely ransacked at various intervals, my papers and books seized, my servants bribed, my library robbed, and I have been persecuted beyond endurance by people seeking evidence concerning the O.T.O."
In my next chapter I shall make public the complete text of the "secret, sealed ritual" delivered by Crowley "to ten prominent men in Detroit," and on which, it is declared by the Detroit police, the local "love cult," which resulted in these scandals, was based. |
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