THE DAILY MIRROR

London, England

2 April 1948

(Page 3)

‘Black Magic’ in Town’s Chapel:

Protests to Council.

Protests at “black-magic ritual” at the cremation of Edward Alexander (“Aleister”) Crowley, who called himself “the worst man in the world,” were made to Brighton Corporation yesterday.

Councillor Joe Sherrot said, “This man boasted that he had practised black magic, and the service held in the chapel (of the corporation crematorium) was a black-magic ritual.”

Councillor Tom Cullen asked the cemetery sub-committee to see that any services at the crematorium were orthodox.

“Whatever we are—agnostic, atheist, or Christian—we do not like to see consecrated ground so desecrated,” he said.

It was last December that Crowley, 72, who had died in a Hastings boarding house, was cremated.

About twenty people, including five well-dressed women, sat in the chapel as the coffin was slid into the furnace.

Secrecy Pledge

All were pledged to secrecy about the rites.

It was stated that extracts from Crowley’s book “Magick in Theory and Practice,” read at the service, included a hymn to the pagan god Pan [Hymn to Pan] and “Collects” from the “Gnostic Mass.”