THE PENSACOLA NEWS JOURNAL

Pensacola, Florida, U.S.A.

10 June 1923

(pages 20-21)

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”

By W. B. Seabrook

Chapter XI.

The London Daily Express, which has been conducting a series of startling attacks on Aleister Crowley, recently publishing the story of a “beautiful young wife,” who told of “unspeakable orgies” at Crowley’s “holy abbey [of Thelema]” in Cefalu, Sicily. She described how her young husband died there, in dreadful circumstances, after he had come under the influence of the “Beast.”

The story was printed anonymously. The names and identities of the young widow and her dead husband were carefully concealed by the Daily Express.

The statement of the girl has been reproduced in several American newspapers, still with the names and essential details left out.

Here, for the first time, are the extraordinary facts:

The husband, who died at Crowley’s “abbey” after becoming his disciple, was Raoul Loveday, a brilliant graduate of Oxford University, a deep student of mysticism and a member of a well-known English family.

The young widow, whose denunciations of Crowley and his colony the Express published, is Betty May Loveday, who was an artists’ model in London prior to her marriage.

Despite the sensational accusations thrown over this affair, Loveday died a natural death, from enteritis (inflammation of the intestines), with a physician in attendance.

I have these facts, not from Crowley, but from sources in England which I believe are dispassionate and just. The circumstances of the death were attested by the Italian municipal authorities, just as required in American cities, and the records are on file.

Betty May Loveday, Young English Widow and Former Artists’ Model

Whose Husband, Raoul, Dies While Both Were at Crowley’s “Abbey.”

I have, also, however, a long letter from Crowley himself, in which he comments on Betty Loveday’s story, frankly admitting many of the things she charges, but declaring that others are “cruelly distorted in some instances and absolutely untrue in others.”

Here is part of what Betty Loveday says about the experiences of herself and her husband when they became members of Crowley’s extraordinary colony:

“We reached Cefalu. Our reception was startling. The door was opened by a woman whom we were to know later as Jane (Jane Wolfe, of Los Angeles, one of the American girls who joined Crowley’s colony).

Jane Wolfe, Former Movie Star and Author, Now One of

Crowley’s Assistants at His Sicilian “Love Cult Abbey.”

“ ‘Beast’,” she cried out, ‘her are Mr. and Mrs. ——.’

“Crowley appeared. He raised one hand above his head and said, ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.’

“To this I heard half a dozen other voices reply, ‘Love is the law; love under will.’

“As a general rule, Crowley is not seen by anyone 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 hasheesh and bottles of cocaine, heroin, morphia and ether. He distils his own opium, a lot of which is smoked in the ‘abbey.’ You can have whatever dope you like by asking for it.

“At four o’clock my husband and I were summoned to ‘Cauchemar.’ Crowley received us lying on his bed, his totally bald head covered with a black wig. (At certain periods Crowley shaves his head like a Buddhist monk.) He gave us our instructions. He named me ‘Sister Sibyline’ and instructed me to do the cooking and keep the house clean. My husband, for the present, was to play chess and read with the ‘Beast.’

“Once a day every one in the colony must come inside the ‘magic circle.’ At 7:30 we all trooped into the temple where the circle is marked on the floor. A great charcoal fire burns in the center. 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 inside the circle and was allowed to remain outside. Incense was burned before Crowley, who was robed in scarlet and wearing magnificent rings. Lea [Leah Hirsig], former New York school teacher), known here at the ‘Scarlet Woman,’ Crowley’s companion and high priestess, was clad in a red robe edged with gold. All the trappings were of indescribable richness.

“The days went on. My husband was initiated into Crowley’s mystic cult of the O. T. O., but he would never tell me about the ceremony. All I know is that he wore gorgeous robes, that the ceremony lasted eight hours, and that he was presented with a book, for which he was supposed to pay.

“Now I come to the sickening episode of the cat. At tea one afternoon Crowley was in a peculiar mood, irritable and uneasy. Suddenly he arose and said, ‘There is an evil spirit here.’ He noticed a cat in the room. ‘Within three day,’ the ‘Beast’ ordained, ‘that cat must be sacrificed.’ Then a very remarkable thing happened. As a rule, the cat would run away if anyone came near it; but Crowley approached it and made passes over it with his magic sword and the cat never moved.

“The third day arrived. I wanted to get the cat away, but my husband would not let me interfere. Crowley had told my husband that he must kill the cat. The hour arrived. 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 at the side.

“My husband, trembling from head to foot, stood by the altar, armed with a sharp, curved sword. 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 until it became quiet.

“The reading of a long invocation was concluded. ‘Now,’ said the ‘Beast.’ My husband struck at the wretched animal, but only half-killed it. He had to pick it up again, and finally, with a hard blow, severed its head from its body. Jane his the body of the cat, which happened to belong to a neighbor, and threw it into the sea the following day.

“Other incidents and practices indulged in at the ‘abbey’ it is impossible to describe. With every day my horror and repulsion grew.”

Mrs. Loveday tells next how her husband fell ill “from eating too many oranges,” and how she had a quarrel with Crowley which resulted in his ordering her out of the “abbey.” She went down to the little town of Cefalu, where she got a note from her husband saying he was worse.

“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, was face and didn’t wait to ask. I stayed.

 “Meanwhile the doctor had visited my husband and had gone away promising to send some medicine. But the medicine did not come until 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.’

“These were the last words my husband ever spoke to me. To my amazement I was asked to go down into the town to buy an article for the sickroom. 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 until six o’clock—two hours later. It is a regulation of the civic authorities in Cefalu that no dead body may remain in a private house after 7 p.m.

“They tried in vain to keep me from the funeral. Then I rushed to Cefalu. I must somehow or other send a telegram. But I had no money. While I was trying, in dumbshow, to persuade the postmaster to send one, a telegram form Palermo arrived for me. It was in reply to a letter I had sent the British Consul, and he was sending me fifty lire so I could go to him.

“I flew back to the ‘abbey.’ Escape was my one thought. Crowley, who had never paid me the slightest attention up to this time and rarely ever spoke to me or noticed my existence, said, ‘You will make this your home; you have no money.’

“ ‘I am going back to England,’ 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 tone half advice and half menace.

“ ‘Silence, you understand?’

“The British Consul at Palermo sent me home to England.”

How does it happen that this young woman consented to go to Sicily at all and become one of the colony? The truth—which I have learned from people who knew her in London—is that she didn’t willingly consent. She went only because her husband insisted.

This husband, young Loveday, was the person in whom Crowley was really interested in having as a member of the colony. The wife was only an incident. Loveday, like Crowley himself, was an ardent and serious student of mysticism.

Some of Crowley’s poetry young Loveday had read in the “Oxford Book of Mystical Verse,” a standard work published by the university itself and bearing its stamp of literary approval. In addition Crowley had just written a novel, “The Diary of a Drug Fiend,” issued by one of the biggest London publishers, which was making a tremendous sensation.

Young Loveday, therefore, went to Cefalu to learn more about mysticism. And Crowley saw in him a promising disciple who might carry on his work, which, as Crowley sees it, is to teach people to become supermen.

On the subject of young Loveday’s death and the things said about the “abbey,” Crowley has written me a letter, from which I will quote two paragraphs. Why? Well, I am still trying to give you a full-length portrait of this strange man, goodness and badness mixed.

“Much of what I have done has been indiscreet,” wrote Crowley, “and the result is that even many people who are more or less open-minded have supposed me to be a mere voluptuary and debauchee. I can hardly blame them. My best defense, is the quantity of work which I have produced—and the fact that I am trying, without hope of reward to make something stronger and finer of humanity. You know how intense and passionate is my devotion to that idea. I remember, in America, you told me I ought not to insist on trying to be a ‘messiah’—that I should give up trying to ‘convert’ people and devote my time to poetry. But I can’t help it, for I AM a ‘messiah.’ You can call it a delusion, if you please, but if so, it is a genuine delusion and not a pose.

“The unfortunate thing is that my ideas are so easily distorted and misunderstood. This is where the death of Raoul is such a heavy loss. Before meeting me he had put in two years and more of solid work in studying. He had the elements at the tips of his fingers, so that from the first I was able to make myself understood. In three years I could have made him the most brilliant and learned exponent that heart could desire.”

Perhaps you will remember, if you have been reading this true-to-life serial, that in the opening chapters I told you there were people who regard Crowley as a beast and monster and madmen—and others who regarded him as a poet and moralist and genius. I think, in this chapter, you can find a little of most of those things, for, mind you, a great deal of the fantastic stuff told by Mrs. Loveday of what she saw at the “abbey” is literally true, on Crowley’s own admission.

That Crowley or his “witchcraft” had anything to do with the death of Raoul Loveday—as some sensational British newspapers are hinting—is flatly impossible. But that Crowley has incense burned before him, did cause an unhappy stray cat to be killed under the impression it was an evil spirit, I think is quite likely, for it is thoroughly in keeping with the practices of “Black Magic” in which he believes.

These practices would naturally strike anyone not in sympathy with Aleister Crowley’s “magical” philosophy as wild, distorted, fantastic and even, in certain extraordinary circumstances, as perhaps malign and demonic.

Mrs. Loveday, for example, seems to have looked on the incidents that preceded and followed her husband’s death as extraordinary and terrible; and to her mind, they undoubtedly were. But that the ritual of the “O. T. O.” has, or had, anything to do with her husband’s illness is simply out of the question. Such a supposition would give the lie to Crowley’s passionately affirmed, if peculiarly expressed, “faith in mankind.”

Grotesque Sculptural Portrait of Roddy Miner, American Girl, Who was

a Guest at Some of Crowley’s Magical Seances While in The Country.

Roddy Miner Ready for a Dip, and Presenting a Striking Contrast to the Impish

Young Woman Represented in the Sculptural Study of Her on the Previous Page.

In a final chapter I shall tell you of Crowley’s experiences in the use of all drugs and his extraordinary methods of trying to “cure” people of the narcotic habit in his “Do What Thou Wilt” abbey.