Bertha Almira Prykryl, née Bruce

Born: 22 July 1887 in Illinois.

Died:   1 July 1978 in Bloomington, Illinois.

Bertha Bruce was born in 1888 or 1889 in Kansas. Her father, born in Kentucky, was named Robert Bruce, her New York-born mother was Anna Badette. Bertha met Aleister Crowley in 1918, at which point Crowley was seeking to establish Ordo Templi Orientis in the U.S. and launch a publishing venture through his Detroit acquaintance Albert W. Ryerson (1872–1931). A spiritualist and Freemason, Ryerson managed the Universal Book Store, which specialized in religious and occult literature. Ryerson and Crowley first met in autumn 1918. Ryerson was impressed by Crowley, agreeing to market the next installment of The Equinox, Volume III, No. 1, and inviting Crowley to visit him in Detroit.

Around this time, Bertha Bruce was running a boarding house at 381 West Grand Boulevard, at which Crowley stayed while in town. Bruce was also Ryerson’s lover and financial benefactor, lending money to the Universal Book Store and contributing to the publication of The Equinox, Volume III, No. 1. She also appears to have functioned as priestess in the Detroit group’s celebrations of Crowley’s Gnostic Mass. Crowley and Bruce began an affair, and he viewed her as a possible Scarlet Woman. She inspired Crowley to write the sensuous poem “Almira” (penned in November 1918), as well as the poem “Berthe”, which included the following lines, exemplifying Crowley's lyrical penchant for mingling erotic and deathly imagery:

“I make you pleasure and pain

As a paved work for your feet;

I twist and madden your brain

With the matchless musical beat

. . .

Supreme, Satanic, serene,

My love, my body of breath

I conjure thee, spell the obscene

Epithalamium, death”.

After Crowley left for Europe late in 1919, Bruce and Ryerson filed for marriage, though their legal union was not officially validated. On 27 December 1919, now back in Europe, Crowley performed a sex magical operation to bring Bertha to his side, though his wish did not come true. The reporter William Seabrook suggests that Bruce’s closeness with Crowley caused a rift with Ryerson, though Seabrook’s often sensationalized accounts should usually be taken with a spoonful of salt. An alternate source suggests Ryerson and Bruce clashed over her extravagant spending. Whichever the reason for their split, Ryerson had remarried by the following year. As of January 1920, Bruce was still running her boarding house in Detroit. By 2 June of that year, Crowley wrote that Bruce despite her strong “vocation” appeared to have “failed altogether” as Scarlet Woman, and that he was uncertain whether she was still “in office”. He later described her as “a doubtful case. Delayed assumption of duties, hence made way for No. 7”, whose apparent failure made way for her successor, Leah Hirsig. Following the 1921 bankruptcy of the Universal Book Store, the story of Ryerson, O.T.O., and Crowley in Detroit was dragged through the tabloid press, with Ryerson identified as leader of the “love cult”, and Bruce as its priestess.

From this point, there are scant sources for Bertha Bruce’s later life. The poem “Almira” was published, decades later, in Olla: An Anthology of Sixty Years of Song (1946).

Almira

To Bertha Almira Bruce

Strong poison of thy mouth, my love, faint amber of thy breath,

A fierce red wine that sucks me down a drunkard into death.

Snake of my soul, thou leapest up to feed upon my brain

That thrills and sobs wild music to the murder-lust refrain!

Come, there's a tent pitched on the sand; the camel-bells ring clear;

The stars are violent like young suns—I will to have thee here.

Why linger in the moody north? There's welcome in the south.

Strong poison of thy mouth, my love, strong poison of thy mouth.

Detroit, 1918

M.M.M. Pledge Form

(Front)

M.M.M. Pledge Form

(Back)