THE LIVERPOOL POST AND MERCURY

Liverpool, Lancashire, England

4 February 1930

(page 7)

NO WITCHCRAFT AT OXFORD.

LECTURE ON MAGIC BANNED.

From a Special Correspondent.

Oxford, Monday.—At the last minute a lecture on Gilles de Rais, the mediaeval magician who is said to have murdered 800 children about the time of Joan of Arc, was cancelled, at Oxford, to-day. The lecture was to be given to the Oxford Poetry Society by Mr. Aleister Crowley, to-night, but Mr. Hugh Speight [Hugh Speaight], the secretary, wrote to Mr. Crowley:—

“I am writing to tell you that we have been unfortunately forced to cancel next Monday’s meeting of the Poetry Society. It has come to our knowledge that if your proposed paper is delivered, disciplinary action will be taken, involving not only myself but the rest of the members of the society. In these circumstances you will, I trust, understand why we have had to cancel the meeting.”

Mr. Crowley told an interviewer:—“Since the accusation that I have not only killed but eaten children is one of the false statements that have been circulated about me in the past, probably the authorities are afraid that I shall kill and eat 800 Oxford undergraduates. Mine was quite a popular lecture; in fact, it really made fun of witchcraft.

Sandwich men paraded the streets of Oxford today, announcing that the banned lecture would be printed and on sale to-morrow.

Mr. Aleister Crowley, the English mystic writer, was recently refused the right to stay in France. He was born at Leamington, fifty-four years ago, and was educated at Malvern and Trinity College, Cambridge, He has been through China on foot, and has been received by the sacred Lamas of Thibet.