THE EVENING EXPRESS

Liverpool, Lancashire, England

11 April 1934

(pages 1 & 2)

Magician Claims To Have

Walked Street Invisible

PEOPLE ATTACKED BY UNSEEN

FORCES IN HALL OF MIRRORS

Pupils Who Cut Themselves With Razors

Mr. Aleister Crowley

The astounding claim that by the efficacy of his knowledge and practice of magic he had once walked along a street in Mexico dressed in a scarlet robe and wearing a jeweled crown on his head without being visible, was made by Mr. Aleister Crowley, at today’s resumed hearing of the libel action which he is pursuing against Miss Nina Hamnett, the authoress.

He also declared that in a London flat he once had a “hall of mirrors,” the function of which was to concentrate the invoked forces. On one occasion some people there were attacked by unseen assailants.

In his villa, in Sicily, there was, he stated, a square box which was used as an altar for magical ceremonies at which candles were lighted and incense burned. The other articles used included a dagger and a sword.

Mr. Crowley added that in these ceremonies he endeavoured to obtain “concentrated spiritual ecstasy,” but he denied using hasheesh in this connection.

Mr. Malcolm Hilbery, K.C., cross-examining, referring to the house in Sicily, asked: “With your approval an inmate had a razor or knife with which to cut himself if he stumbled into using a forbidden word whatever it was?”

Mr. Crowley: “They were not gashes but minute cuts. You can see marks of them on my own arm.

Asked if heroin was used there he said that it had been prescribed for him for asthma. He also said that he kept opium and strychnine in the house.

Mr. Crowley declared that he believed in the efficacy of bloody sacrifice in magic but did not approve of it.

He stated that he had never performed a ceremony naked in the presence of any person.

COUNSEL READS A POEM

Miss Nina Hamnett is the authoress of a book entitled “Laughing Torso,” in which Mr. Crowley alleges that it is imputed that he practiced “black magic.”

Other defendants were Constable and Co., Ltd., publishers, and Charles Whittingham and Briggs, printers, the defence being a plea of justification.

The case is being heard in the King’s Bench Division, London, by Mr. Justice Swift and a special jury.

At the material time Mr. Crowley had a villa on the mountainside at Cefalu, Sicily, which was known as the “Abbey of Thelema.” He denied that he practiced “black magic” there.

In his cross-examination yesterday, Mr. Crowley agreed that he assumed the designation of “Beast 666” and “The Master Therium.”

He also said he had the distinguishing marks of a Buddha at birth and still had some of them. He claimed to be a “master magician,” saying that he took a degree which conferred that title.

Miss Hamnett was once a student of his, but he denied that he supplied any of the information on which she based the remarks in her book.

Mr. Malcolm Hilbery, L.C., for the printers and publishers, in cross-examination today, read a poem from the book “Clouds Without Water” and he asked Mr. Crowley: “is that not filth?”

Mr. Crowley: You read it as if it were magnificent poetry. I congratulate you.

Mr. Hilbery: Is the meaning of it filthy?—In my opinion it is of no importance in this matter. You have read a sonnet out of its context, as you do everything.

You have been well known as the author of all these things that I have been putting to you, for years?—No.

Aleister Crowley has not been well known as the author of these things. Do you really say that?—You have mentioned three books of mine. Of one of those I am known as the author. The others not.

Mr. Crowley agreed that his publishers had sent out a list of the books he had written. Included in the list was “Clouds Without Water.”

“ONLY FEW KNOW ABOUT IT.”

“But that book has only been circulated in a very small way and only very few people know about it,” said Mr. Crowley.

Mr. Hilbery: Do you still swear you were not known as the author of that book? Not generally known. I regret that my reputation is not much wider. I should like to be universally hailed as the greatest living poet. The truth will out, you know.

I asked yesterday whether you had openly expressed your contempt for the ordinary views and standards of ordinary citizens and I think you said “No”?—Well, for some of them.

In this poem, is there a verse which says, “Still we can laugh at burgesses and churls”?—Yes.

That is at us ordinary folk?—I consider you far from ordinary. You would not have attained the eminence you have if you were ordinary.

Mr. Hilbery read the poem and asked if Mr. Crowley had written it.

“I should like to point out that the author of those words has been dead for years,” said Mr. Crowley.

Mr. Hilbery: Is the Aleister Crowley who wrote that dead?—Do I look like it? It is not Aleister Crowley who wrote that. It is an imaginary figure in a drama. I created the drama.

And you created the poem?—I created this work of an imaginary author.

Mr. Hilbery next quoted from a volume entitled “Winged Beetle,” and asked: “Are those poems all erotic?”

“No,” replied Mr. Crowley.

Would it be true to say that most of them come within the description I have given to your work?—No.

Would it be true to say that that book, like those others, contain disgusting words?—It all depends upon your views. The ordinary reviewer employed by important newspapers and magazines gave very good reviews of the books.

What about the point of view of the honest “burgess” or “churl” such as you refer to? Do you think he would think it was disgusting, the “Winged Beetle”?—Evidently not. I rely upon the general opinion of instructed critics of literature.

Mr. Hilbery, after quoting from another poem, asked: “On any basis, literary or otherwise, is that anything but disgusting and infamous?”

Mr. Crowley: It means, if I may say so, that even the vilest of women can, through the influence of love, become a refining and inspiring influence in a man’s life.

Mr. Hilbery: Before America came into the war, when the affairs of the Allies were in great jeopardy, did you contribute to a Chicago magazine?—I did.

Mr. Hilbery read an extract from an article in the magazine. “Did you write that against your own country?” he asked.

“PROUD OF IT”

“I did, and I am proud of it,” replied Mr. Crowley. “I suggest that you should understand a little of the context and why I wrote it.”

Was it part of the German propaganda in America?—Yes.

And written as such?—I endeavoured, successfully, to have it accepted as such. What I wanted to do was to over-balance the sanity of German propaganda, which was being done very well done, by turning it into absolute nonsense. How I got Mr. _____ to publish that rubbish I cannot think. He must have been in his dotage.

That is your explanation given after the Allied cause is safe and no longer in danger?—Lots of people knew it at the time.

Mr. Crowley admitted that he was the author of a publication in 1922 entitled “The Diary of a Drug Fiend,” which was assailed in the Press.

Mr. Hilbery: Inconsequence of the attack in the Press upon it, did your publishers withdraw it from circulation?—I don’t know. They did not print a second edition.

Questioned about a newspaper article, Mr. Crowley admitted that he wrote “I have been shot at with broad arrows. They had called me ‘The worst man in the world.’ ”

“The first part meant,” he said, “that my principal assailant was sent to penal servitude.”

Mr. Hilbery: Publicly called the worst man in the world?—In some papers.

Mr. Hilbery (reading from the article): “They have accused me of doing everything from murdering women and throwing their bodies in the Seine.” Is that true?—I hear a canard about me every week. Any man of any distinction has rumours about him.

Does any man of distinction necessarily have it said about him that he is the worst man in the world?—Not necessarily. He has to be very distinguished.

Did you say ‘Horatio Bottomley branded me as a dirty degenerate cannibal’?—Yes.

There was some laughter at this and Mr. Justice Swift sternly intimated that a repetition of the laughter would cause him to have the court cleared.

Mr. Hilbery: You never took any action against the people who wrote and published those things about you?—No.

But because this silly paragraph in this book appeared, you run to your lawyer to bring an action for the injury to your reputation?—that reputation being that you are “the worst man in the world”?—I also had the reputation of being the best man in the world.

Is there a portrait of you with the article?—Yes.

In a magical position?—Yes.

With the thumbs in a particular position?—Yes, representing the horns of a ram.

You announced in that article, didn’t you, that you were “the Master Therium.” Did you say, “Practically my whole life has been spent in the study of magic?—Yes.

Did you have a flat in your early days in Chancery-lane?—Yes.

Did you have two temples in that flat?—Yes, but one wasn’t really a temple. It was just a lobby, which was not used.

You said: “I constructed a temple in the flat. It was a hall of mirrors, the function of which was to concentrate the invoked forces?—Yes.

Mr. Crowley agreed that in the article he referred to an occasion when he invoked the forces with the result that some people there were attacked by unseen assailants.

Mr. Hilbery: Was that the result of the spirits which your magic had brought to the place?—That is the theory of certain people.

“I had not the experience to control the forces then,” added Mr. Crowley. “I was trying to learn how to do something and made a lot of blunders, as beginners always do.”