THE DAILY HERALD

London, England

14 May 1934

(page 11)

A TEA-TIME TALK ON BLACK MAGIC

BUT IT LACKED A DEMONSTRATION

In a darkened room of a fashionable London hotel, reeking with incense, 200 people, mainly women, took part yesterday in a tea-table talk on Black Magic.

With craned necks they sat and listened to stories of Eastern curses, of the “evil eye,” of death in its most horrible forms.

Dr. Alexander Cannon, the psychiatrist, who claims to be able to perform the Indian rope trick, quoted a case in which, he said, visions had been cut with knives—and the subject of the visions had died.

The audience thrilled.

A few minutes afterwards there was a scene. Mr. Aleister Crowley questioned the rank of the “Consul-General of Italy,” whose wife had written to Dr. Cannon.

“There is no such official,” he said. “Dr. Cannon’s good faith has been abused by some of his informants.”

Dr. Cannon thereupon passed round the letter, which bore the signature of an Italian woman described as “wife of the ex-Consul General of Italy.” The writer claimed to have personal experience of the influence of the “evil eye.”

But the sensation of the evening was Mr. Rollo Ahmed, of Clapham, an exponent of Raja Yoga, who said he could produce black magic in the heart of London.

The audience clamoured for demonstrations.

But nothing happened. It was explained there was no apparatus—and no motive.