THE VANCOUVER DAILY PROVINCE

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

14 June 1934

(page 6)

Our Dark Ages.

The first doctor was probably a witch doctor. He professed to control the evil powers and to be able to prevent them from doing harm. . . .

[ . . . ]

At any rate, there is not only magic in the world, but faith in magic, as two incidents recorded in recent English papers show. The first was the trial in London of a libel action brought by one Aleister Crowley against Miss Nina Hamnett, authoress of “Laughing Faun [sic] [Laughing Torso].” Mr. Crowley alleged that Miss Hamnett had libeled him in her book by suggesting that he had practiced black magic in a temple on his property in Sicily, whereas he had all his life been fighting black magic. The evidence—Mr. Justice Swift of the King’s Bench said he had never heard such “dreadful, horrible, blasphemous and abominable stuff”—told of a circle with a pentagram inside it and an altar with a red star inside that, of the sacrifice of a cat, of the calling of gods and the invocation of the sun, of a bottle of hashish and six bottles of morphia and ether. The case was stopped by the jury which gave a verdict for the defendant, but it went far enough to indicate that all the black magic in the world is not confined to the natives of the Gold Coast or the Australian bushmen.