THE JOURNAL

Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S.A.

17 April 1929

(page 39)

France 'Gives the Gate'

To "High Priest of Evil'

BY SPECIAL CABLE TO THE JOURNAL

Paris—Even the traditional tolerance of Paris has proved inadequate to that mysterious, colorful person, Alastair Crowley, founder of a satanic oriental love cult, who has found himself persona non grata in America, Great Britain and Italy, and now has been given a writ of expulsion by France. He plans to try Brussels next.

Crowley, author of "The Diary of a Drug Fiend," and founder of the Order of the Temple of the Orient, whose ritual got him into trouble in Detroit and London on obscenity charges, was known around Greenwich Village some years ago as "the high priest of evil."

"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law," was the formula of his ritual, which he said had been dictated to him by Satan. He is indignant about his latest expulsion, which he says is founded on gossip about alleged orgies with a scion of the royal house of Spain and other untrammeled spirits.

There have been stories about Crowley's orgies; magic ritual in the course of which he was said to have drunk the blood of children and burned women alive. He denies these, but likes to talk about his reception and initiation by the lamas of Tibet.

Crowley, who has been living in Paris the last six years, was in America during the war, and in an interview with the Paris Midi Tuesday he discussed charges that he was a German spy, especially active before America entered the war.

Crowley asserts he was working for Capt. Gaunt, then British naval attaché to the United States, to get American merchant ships sunk by the German submarines and so hasten entry of the United States into the war.

During the war the British government denied any connection with Crowley, declaring he was suffering from hallucinations.