LE POPULAIRE

Paris, France

18 April 1929

(page 1)

A Strange Figure

ALEISTER CROWLEY MAGE, POET

AND, SOME SAY, SPY

The complicated personality

comes to be expelled from France

Strange personality, without any doubt, but to which our sympathy refuses itself without hesitation. This you'll understand easily when you know what the question of Sir Crowley is about.

French police have "turned out" this less than desirable personality. You've probably read they expelled him yesterday morning.

There were good reasons for it. But I understand that we don't make it a shining gift to the country where Sir Crowley is intent on and which only he currently knows. Unless he is himself as little aware as ourselves.

Sir Aleister Crowley gives himself the title of English baronet. Of its legitimacy, nothing is less certain.

What's more certain is that his past is full of mystery. Shaking it a bit, a stack of stories more or less turbulent appear incontinently on the surface of a vessel of depths.

To believe many American papers, Aleister Crowley spied during the war to the profit of Germany. Defending himself, Crowley retorts, not without cynicism, that he served England in the same honorable conditions. Testifying to a unique vanity he flatters himself to the hilt with having been one of the Naval Intelligence Service's best agents.

Each takes his certificates where he can!

The Strange Life of Aleister Crowley

But nothing is lost to his glory. It's also said he's allied to a sect of Kabbalists. Multiple and astonishing initiations of sorcery are attributed to him. His name is bound to incredible scenes of black magic.

It seems however that these facts alone were insufficient for the police to proceed against him the expulsion measure.

Sir Crowley would have brought on himself official attention and hostility for failure to observe the rules of morality.

Sir Crowley was educated. He enjoyed in England a good reputation as a poet. He once frequented divers reputable salons in Paris—so it's said.

Tall, completely shaven, his nose lost in his face, the look of Aleister Crowley shone with singular flame.

He had, once, founded a luxurious revue of occultism: The Equinox. But, it was too many times taken for a state of impotence, his gifts of sorcery considered a vast joke.

Sir Crowley has therefore been expelled. Bon voyage all the same.