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THE LEICESTER EVENING MAIL Leicester, Leicestershire, England 11 April 1934 (page 4)
‘BLACK MAGIC’ LIBEL ACTION
MORE AMAZING CLAIMS BY ALEISTER CROWLEY
AUTHOR MAGICIAN ON HUMAN SACRIFICE
“DEGENERATE CANNIBAL” REFERENCE IN COURT
ALEISTER CROWLEY LIBEL SUIT
The hearing was resumed before Mr. Justice Swift and a special jury in the King’s Bench Division, London, to-day, of the libel action, against Miss Nina Hamnett, authoress, of a book entitled “Laughing Torso,” which he alleged 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.
At the material time, Mr. Crowley had a villa on the mountain-side 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”—the great wild beast.
K.C. CONGRATULATED
Mr. Malcolm Hilbery, K.C., for the printers and publishers, in cross-examination to-day, read a poem from the book, “Clouds Without Water,” and asked Mr. Crowley: “Is that not filth?”
Mr. Crowley: You read it as if it were magnificent poetry. I congratulate you.
Later Mr. Crowley remarked: “I should like to be universally hailed as the greatest living poet. The truth will out, you know.”
Asked about another poem, Mr. Crowley
said that the author of those words had been “dead for
years.”
Mr. Crowley: “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.
“EVEN VILEST OF WOMEN”
Still another poem was mentioned by Mr. Hilbery, who asked: “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 read an extract from an article which Mr. Crowley said he contributed to a Chicago magazine before America came into the war, and asked: “Did you write that against your own country?”
Mr. Crowley: I did and I am proud of it.
Mr. Hilbery: Was it part of the German propaganda in America?
Mr. Crowley: Yes.
Mr. Crowley explained that what he wanted to do was to over-balance the sanity of German propaganda by turning it into absolute nonsense.
Mr. Crowley agreed that he wrote “The Diary of a Drug Fiend,” which was assailed in the Press. He agreed, too, that in a newspaper article he had written “I have been shot at with broad arrows. They have called my ‘the worst man in the world.’ ”
“DEGENERATE CANNIBAL”
Mr. Hilbery: 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.
“I also had the reputation of being the best man in the world,” declared Mr. Crowley a few moments later.
He agreed that he had been depicted with his thumbs in a position representing the horns of a ram.
In a London flat which he once had was “a hall of mirrors the function of which was to concentrate the invoked forces.”
On one occasion he invoked the forces with the result that some people were attacked by unseen assailants.
ROBE AND CROWN
Mr. Hilbery: Was that your black magic or your white magic?
Mr. Crowley: It is white magic in which you protect yourself from such things.
Mr. Crowley said that because of his magic he had once walked in the street in Mexico in a scarlet robe and with a jewelled crown without anyone seeing him.
Mr. Hilbery: As a part of your magic you do believe in a practice of bloody sacrifices, do you?
Mr. Crowley: I believe in its efficacy, but I do not approve of it at all.
Don’t approve of it” You say (in his book on magic) “For nearly all purposes human sacrifice is best?” Yes, it is.
Mr. Justice Swift: Do you say that you don’t approve it?—Yes.
“SQUARE BOX” ALTAR
Mr. Crowley said that at the villa at Cefalu there was “a sort of square box” used as an altar. On it were a book purporting to contain the Laws and candles for ceremonial purposes.
Incense, a dagger and a sword were used, and he wore an appropriate robe.
Mr. Hilbery: In some of the ceremonies were you endeavouring to get concentrated spiritual ecstasy?—Yes.
Did you keep hasheesh and other drugs at Cefalu? There was no hasheesh, but there was opium and strychnine.
Are you skilled to administer hasheesh?—I can get the desired results in ten minutes.
Mr. Hilbery, referring to the “Abbey” in Sicily, asked: “With your approval an inmate had a razor or knife with which to cut himself if he stumbles into using a forbidden word, whatever it was?”
Mr. Crowley: They were not gashed, 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. |