THE MAIL

Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

6 December 1947

(page 1)

Secrecy at Cremation.

LONDON. Saturday.—Undertaker, mortuary attendant, and mourners were all pledged to secrecy about the "magic rites" performed at the Brighton funeral today of the alleged black magician Aleistair [sic] Crowley, who was cremated.

After the ceremony one mourner warned a reporter "Better be careful what you write—Crowley might strike at you."

As the tiny gates to the furnace opened, a young, pretty married woman from Leicester wearing a magnificent fur coat, ran forward and placed a bunch of pink carnations on the silver-handled coffin.

There was no religious ceremony, but Crowley's adherents assembled to hear extracts read from the "Book of [the] Law," which Crowley had claimed to have written at the dictation of a supernatural power.

These were read by the mystery story writer Louis Wilkinson, who, however, said he was not a disciple, but a very old friend of the dead man.

Crowley, who was 72, was said to have believed in blood sacrifices, regarding human sacrifices as "best of all."

At a court case in 1934, the judge referring to some of Crowley's writings, said, "I have never heard such dreadful, horrible, blasphemous, abominable stuff as this man has produced."