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THE LIVERPOOL ECHO Liverpool, Lancashire, England 11 April 1934 (page 16)
BLACK MAGIC ALLEGATIONS.
Further Amazing Disclosures.
AN INVISIBLE MAN.
Mr. Crowley’s Story of Ceremonies.
ASSAILED BY “FORCES.”
Miss Nina Hamnett (right), authoress of “Laughing Torso,” with Miss Betty May, who is one of her witnesses.
More remarkable disclosures of “magic” were made when the hearing was resumed, before Mr. Justice Swift and a special jury, in the King’s Bench Division, to-day, of the libel action by Aleister Crowley, the author, against Miss Nina Hamnett.
Miss Hamnett is the author of a book entitled “Laughing Torso,” which Mr. Crowley alleges imputed that he practised “black magic.”
Other defendants were Constable and Co., Ltd. publishers, and Charles Whittingham and Briggs, printers.
The defence is 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 practised “black magic” there.
In his cross-examination yesterday Mr. Crowley agreed that he assumed the designation of “Beast 666” and “the Master Therion” (“the Great Wild Beast”)
“666 is the number of the sun, and you can call me ‘Little Sunshine,’ ” he added.
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.
“I CONGRATULATE YOU”
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 the author of those words had been “dead for years.”
Mr. Hilbery.—Is the Aleister Crowley who wrote it dead?
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.
“I created this work of an imaginary author,” Mr. Crowley added.
“DISGUSTING AND INFAMOUS”
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?—Yes. Mr. Crowley explained that what he wanted to do was to overbalance the sanity of German propaganda by turning it into absolute nonsense.
Mr. Hilbery.—That is your explanation after the Allied cause is safe and no longer in danger?—Lots of people knew it at the time.
WITH BROAD ARROWS
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 me ‘the worst man in the world.’ ”
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.
ANOTHER REPUTATION
“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.
Mr. Hilbery.—Was that your black magic or your white magic?—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.
Questioned further about articles he had written. Mr. Crowley declared: My duty in my writing is not to man, but to God.
Mr. Hilbery.—As a part of your magic, you do believe in a practice of bloody sacrifice, do you?—I believe in its efficacy.
If you believe in its efficacy, you would believe in it being practised, and say it could be practised without impropriety?—I do not approve it at all.
Don’t approve it? You say (in his Book of 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.
CEFALU CEREMONIES
Mr. Crowley said that at the villa at Cefalu, in Sicily, 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 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 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. |
