THE HERALD

Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

2 December 1947

(page 5)

‘WICKEDEST’ MAN

IN BRITAIN DIES.

London, Monday—Magician Aleister Crowley, “the wickedest man in Britain”, who said he believed in blood sacrifices—“human sacrifices being the best of all”—died today aged 72.

In recent years he was a fat olive-skinned man with staring reptilian eyes, heavy jowl, and wispy grey hair. He wore an emerald diamond ring of two entwined snakes, which he claimed was a powerful magic symbol, on the third finger of his left hand.

Crowley was accused of black magic, celebrating black mass, raising devils, every kind of obscene ritual, systematic drug-taking, and even of being responsible for the death of a young man he employed as secretary in Sicily.

On the only occasion when he tried to vindicate his character in a court of law in 1934 he lost.

That was when he alleged he was libeled in Miss Nina Hamnett's book, “Laughing Torso,” in which it was said he practised black magic.

The jury stopped the case, and this is what Mr. Justice Swift said about him: “I thought I knew every conceivable form of wickedness. I thought everything that was vicious and bad had been produced at some time or other before.

JUDGE’S HORROR.

“I have never heard such dreadful, horrible, blasphemous, abominable stuff as that which has been produced by the man who describes himself as the greatest living poet.” (Crowley was described as a “devil-raiser” poet.)

Crowley was born of a Plymouth Brethren family at Leamington, Warwickshire, educated at Cambridge where he began his studies in magic, then travelled to China and Tibet.

He claimed to be able to make himself invisible, and to have walked in a scarlet and gold robe, with a jeweled crown on his head, unseen by anyone.

He claimed he had four hairs growing over his heart in swastika form, when he was born, adding “Before Hitler was, I am.”

He was expelled from Italy after establishing the Abbey of Thelema where he sacrificed a cat and drank blood.

He carried a box of unguent with which he anointed himself to make himself irresistible to women.

Crowley claimed that he had re-discovered the elixir of life which should have given him perpetual life, but he died at Hastings just as if he had never re-discovered it.