THE DAILY HERALD

London, England

8 November 1934

(page 7)

JUDGE’S “NONSENSE” REMARK

IN “BLACK MAGIC” TRIAL

AUTHOR’S “BLACK MAGIC” APPEAL

COUNSEL ON “ATTEMPT TO

RESURRECT SKELETON”

Judgment is likely to be given to-day in the Court of Appeal in the appeal of Mr. Aleister Crowley, the author, against a High Court decision dismissing his claim for alleged libel against Miss Nina Hamnett, authoress of “Laughing Torso,” Messrs. Constable and Co., Ltd., publishers, and Messrs. Charles Whittingham and Briggs, printers.

“Laughing Torso,” he said, imputed that he had practiced black magic in Cefalu, in Sicily.

Mr. Malcolm Hilbery, K.C., for Messrs. Constable and Co., argued that out of his own works and out of his own mouth Crowley’s work was “a mixture or eroticism and sex in its most unpleasant and widest signification.”

Referring to “Confessions,” [The Confessions of Aleister Crowley] published in 1929, Mr. Hilbery said: “It appeared that Crowley had kept a skeleton in a ‘temple’ he had in a flat in Chancery-lane, W.C. He had endeavoured to give life to the skeleton, and fed it on little animals, but all he had succeeded in doing was to get it covered with an unpleasant mucous or slime.”