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THE EVANSVILLE JOURNAL Evansville, Indiana, U.S.A. 28 October 1933 (page 2)
This Girl Gossip Insulted the Best of ‘Em— Nobody Squawked but “Beast 666.”
Now that an English Authoress Has Called Him a “Poseur”—Is He Angry!
Aleister Crowley, high priest of a black magic cult, who resents the remarks made about him by an English authoress. The signature is his adopted name.
The rumor that the spectacular cultist, Mr. Aleister Crowley, could not be insulted appears to be unfounded. Not that the rumor was without basis. In fact, when you consider the wealth of abuse and epithet that Crowley has been subjected to, you would come to consider that his imperviousness to insult was not rumor but fact. However, Achilles had his heel.
It is difficult to think of any term of disparagement in the English language that has not been applied to Aleister Crowley either by word of mouth or in print. He has been labeled charlatan, fakir, scoundrel, thief, torturer of women, foe of men, and so on, through the whole gamut of adjectives used to describe an evil person.
He has adopted “Beast” as his own signature. Not just any beast, but “Beast 666.” France and England have each ushered him to the nearest frontier and requested him to be gone and not to come back. The courts of Detroit, Mich., once rang with denunciations of him. The Italian authorities in Sicily haunted his “castle” hoping to find proof enough to get rid of him. In the midst of their investigations Crowley betook himself to Paris and never went back.
A LITTLE REMARK TOUCHES OFF A TREMENDOUS EGO.
Never has the man offered the slightest protest in rebuttal of all this. While his far from dainty reputation has been pictured in this way he has kept silent, except for one occasion when he emerged from his calm and announced:
“These are pretty contingencies. Eastern philosophy and magic raise the soul above them.”
You may well wonder what searing blast of denunciation has finally overcome the “Eastern philosophy and magic” that have protected his ego until now. You could well expect it to be of such force as has never issued from the human mind in the whole annals of epithet. You would never guess it, so here it is.
Just a gentle criticism that is bandied around all the time among less hardy souls with no bad feeling, but Mr. Aleister Crowley rushes to court and sues for libel in England.
Miss Ethel Mannin is the culprit who has stirred Crowley. An English authoress who has lived widely, highly and handsomely, Miss Mannin recently wrote a book called “Confessions and Impressions.” Half of the book is autobiographical, and the latter half devoted to word pictures of famous people she has known. Some of the portraits are complimentary, many are distinctly critical. Her mention of Crowley is merely in passing. It is a featherly sideswipe compared to some of her other strictures, and of all who endured the blows of her opinion only “Beast 666” takes umbrage!
For instance, to sample what Miss Mannin is capable of, take this about Gilbert Frankau, English author.
Or her dealing with Hanned Swaffer, London dramatic critic.
And then she caps the article by describing him as “power without intelligence.”
This sort of thing was not new to Swaffer. An American actress, Lillian Foster, once walked into the fashionable Savoy Grill, where he was dining, and very publicly slapped him in the face.
Miss Mannin paid a visit to New York, and in the visiting English tradition departed full of ideas about America, most of them unfavorable. She admits that New York is a beautiful city, that everyone she met was exceedingly kind, and that she had a lovely time. After some mild carping about the quality of prohibition liquor, she goes on to the larger aspects of American life as she found it.
AMERICA GOES IN FOR TOO MANY FLOWERS AND GIFTS.
“A slow, insidious increase in lack of manliness is the price America is paying for Americanism. The result is that the women run to a chronic sentimentalizing over sex, and the men run to gifts—the unconscious love substitute.
“The American male has no self-consciousness about ‘saying it with flowers’; he has been, as the women day, ‘trained up that way.’ The American woman has set a price upon herself, and the road to romance is strewn with orchids and dollar bills.
In New York City there are no husbands; only married men. “the men usually have a bachelor apartment somewhere, though the wives don’t generally know this. Charles Higham once said to me that the American business-man’s ‘sweetie’ was the salvation of American home life.
Having thus disposed of the American home, Miss Mannin embraces still wider territory and makes the following observations:
“It (America) produces wood-alcohol, canned goods, chewing-gum, waffles, gold-diggers, sugar-daddies, red-hot-mammas—Babbitts, hot dogs, bootleggers, sweeties, and most of what is bad in modern civilization . . . It is the only country in the world which could have produced Aimee McPherson, Henry Ford—a squabble in the second decade of the Twentieth Century over Darwinism-versus Genesis.
“Everything you have ever heard about America is true.
“It is the country where machines think like human beings and human beings like machines. Time can but increase and custom emphasize its infinite vulgarity. It is the country without a soul.”
Miss Mannin finds that she cannot read ). Henry, only maybe she is thinking of somebody else as she writes his name O’Henry.
You can gather the tone of the book from these quotations and can readily see that of all the people touched upon to have Mr. Aleister Crowley turn out to be the only sensitive person is indeed a shock to Miss Mannin.
There are those who do not feel Mr. Crowley to be an utter charlatan and who grant him a measure of some strange genius. His life certainly has been unusual and contradictory.
He first attracted attention when, as a young man in his twenties and recently graduated from Oxford, he wrote some highly praised poems for the Oxford Book of Mystical Verse. He numbered among his friends distinguished authors, poets and painters. His early mystical turn developed with his years and he nurtured this leaning by prodigious study and long wanderings throughout the world.
He crossed China on foot; explored Mexico without guides; has climbed the highest mountains of the world; has sat immobile as a naked yogi in India and begged for rice; and has been heard from in every hidden corner of the globe.
During this time he studied esoteric philosophy and finally appeared in New York announcing himself to be the “Beast of the Apocalypse” and as such adopted the signature, “Beast 666.” He made his headquarters in Greenwich Village and started what was called a cult of evil.
This was known as the Order of the O.T.O. and was enmeshed in an elaborate ritual designed to impress the participants, or just make it more fun. Meetings of this group were attended by mysterious circles, black gowns, incense, gibberish, the “Black Mass,” and all the other routine mumbo-jumbo that is associated with such doings.
But when Mr. A.W. Ryerson [Albert Ryerson], of Detroit, was sued for divorce by his young and beautiful ex-model wife it became apparent that there was more to the O.T.O. than secret services. Stories were told of orgies of great barbarity. The details have never been published, because they were so lurid.
It came out that the motto, or commandment, of the group was:
“DO WHAT THOU WILT SHALL BE THE WHOLE OF THE LAW.”
If there was any doubt in the minds of the practitioners as to what to do a hand-book of the creed explained it to them.
Immediately a storm of abuse descended on Mr. Crowley, as the Purple Priest and head man of the group. He fell into signal disrepute, but was completely unconcerned. He went to Cefalu, Sicily, and for a time nothing was heard of him.
Betty May Loveday, whose husband died while living in Crowley's "Abbey." She shocked all England with tales of the O.T.O.
Then Mrs. Betty May Loveday, wife of a young English poet [Raoul Loveday], arrived in London claiming that Crowley had killed her husband. The charge proved unfounded, but as a result of it further details of the carryings-on of the O.T.O. came to light.
Young Loveday had come entirely under the spell of the hypnotic Crowley and had joined the O.T.O. His wife had refused to do so, but she had been present during the ceremonies and told all. It was the same sort of recital as came from Detroit. Again Mr. Crowley moved. This time he went to Paris, as usual, accompanied by violent denunciations be less esoterically inclined people.
Finally came the news that the French Government had requested him to leave—a request that would brook no refusal. Further abuse was given him, and he disappeared from public notice.
Now a memoir writer chides him with being a poseur and he resents it. Aleister Crowley is truly a devious person. |
