THE STAR

London, England

20 July 1942

(page 2)

STAR MAN’S DIARY.

Aleistair [sic] Crowley.

“La Gauloise,” said the title on the card which lay before me on the table of the little Soho French restaurant. And underneath, in brackets, “Song of the Free French.”

But it was the author’s name that attracted my attention—“par Aleistair Crowley”—and there was an address given at a big block of flats in Piccadilly.

It was long since I had heard of Aleistair Crowley, though in the years following the last war he achieved a considerable notoriety in the High Court, where he was cross-examined about his alleged belief in the efficacy of “blood sacrifices” and the practice of “Black Magic.”

He Hates Germans Now

He brought a libel action over statements made in “Laughing Torso,” written by Miss Nina Hamnett, and published by Constable.

“Did you, in an article in 1915, describe the Kaiser as a genius of his people, an angel of God sent to save the Fatherland from savage foes?” he was asked, and he replied: “I did, and I am proud of it.”

I reminded Aleistair Crowley of his old pro-German sympathies when I spoke to him during the week-end. He laughed, “I hate them,” he said, “though at one time I had quite a following in Germany.”

“Magic” Experiments

During the libel action Crowley was questioned about the “magic” he was alleged to have practiced in a mysterious “Abbey of Thelema,” at Cefalu, in Sicily, and the initiates he had there.

While he denied that it was “Black Magic,” declaring that the experiments were in what he called “White Magic,” he admitted he believed in the efficacy of “blood sacrifice,” and in a book called “Magic” had written that “human sacrifice was the best.”

Crowley, who is 67, told me that last year he had nearly died of bronchitis.