Mary Davies (née Brick)

Born: 1867 on Portsea Island, Hampshire.

Died: Unknown.

 Mary Davies was born in 1867 on Portsea Island, Hampshire, to Elizabeth and Edward Brick, the latter a Civil Guard sergeant at the Portsea Convict Prison. She was the oldest of five children. According to Davies:

"My name, Mary, was given to me in Baptism in the hope that I should be blessed by the Virgin Mother, so I was brought up and confirmed in the Faith soon after the age of seven, made my first Confession and Communion, and was enrolled in the order of the Scapular of our “Lady of Mount Carmel” at the age of twelve."

While a girl of seven, she awoke to a spiritual visitation from her patron, Saint Theresa. From that point, her childhood was filled with clairvoyant and other psychic experiences; this gradually led to her leaving Catholicism and devoting herself to study, public speaking, and holding classes. In February 1886 she married William Robert Davies, a friend of the family and a petty officer in the Royal Navy. She had two children, William Clemance (b. 1888), who died in 1893 from a childhood illness, and Theophilus Stewart (b. 1892). Relocating to London, they encountered a Spiritualists’ Society, of which Mary would become president; they also formed a circle of fourteen to sixteen people, holding meetings at their home twice a week and launching her career as a medium; her career up to 1912 is detailed in her memoir, My Psychic Recollections (1912). Although reviewed in The Theosophist and Atheneaum, it is Crowley’s 1912 review in The Equinox that is of most interest:

"Mrs. Davies is a “professional medium”; of such I have said things which only my incapacity for invective prevented from being severe. But though (no doubt) the phenomena recorded in this book are ‘non-evidential,’ I do feel the sincerity of the writer. I am confident of her good faith."

Indeed, Davies had been aware of Crowley and his circle as early as 1910, when she met George Raffalovich at one of the rites (whether one of the lesser rituals like the Rite of the Phoenix or the grand Rites of Eleusis is unclear). Both Crowley and George MacNie Cowie privately disparaged her interests in clairvoyance and spiritualism but quietly tolerated them in light of her other strengths. By the summer of 1913, she took her III° initiation, and by 1916 the Lodge, with her help, moved into its space on 93 Regent Street. At its new location, the M.M.M. thrived under her direction.

M.M.M. members were unanimous in her praise. Organist William Steff Langston described her as “one of the most lovable of her charming sex, she has sweetness, tact, power and ability in profusion . . . she is just the one to attract the people we need.” Cowie concurred. “She’s a good soul and a good sort altogether, and her gift, which appears to amount to ability to knock about on the plane next to material, is quite genuine.” That April, Davies reported, “we had 3 Initiations and an affiliation of a Master from Rugby—we now have only 2 First Degree all the others are raised, as a L[odge] we number 21 (9 M[inerval] & 11 F[irst]) with 3 waiting Initiation.” As G. M. Cowie recounted: “We owe much to Mary Davies. Practically every new member has been brought in by her. Besides, the membership is steadily growing.”

Alas, during this fecund period M.M.M. came under police scrutiny. Cowie was shadowed by an investigator, his reputation the subject of official inquiry. Late in the winter of 1917 he was finally questioned about what M.M.M. was, and the nature of his involvement. It soon became clear that this inquiry was connected to AC’s political writings. As Cowie wrote to Crowley:

"I learn that it is only my known probity of character, which unknown to me, has been closely inquired into, that has satisfied the authorities that the Lodge is exactly what is set forth in the Manifesto and that we have no political motive.… The authorities say that so long as I am in control in England and so long as we are not helping you, they are satisfied and we may continue. Otherwise, I have no doubt we should have been closed down … I must make it clear that everyone who has joined us did so in complete ignorance of your ‘views’—and is guiltless of any political motive."

The authorities’ assurances, however, proved fleeting.

A couple of months later—on Monday, May 14, 1917—Detective-Inspector John Curry of New Scotland Yard went with another officer to 93 Regent Street. The glass panel of the door bore the letters “M.M.M.,” which he knew stood for Mysteria Mystica Maxima. Inside, they found additional signage that read MARY DAVIES, SITTINGS 11 TO 5 and CLAIRVOYANCE. Entering a front room on the third floor, they found five men and five women dressed in Master Masons’ uniforms, and Davies herself dressed as a Worshipful Master, or head of the Lodge. The police presented a warrant for Davies’s arrest. Protesting that she had done nothing wrong, she was told, “I understand you call this the ‘Order of the Temple of the Orient,’ and your founder is Aleister Crowley, a man of evil reputation and a traitor to this country.” The arrest warrant, however, simply charged her under the Vagrancy Act for telling fortunes. She was taken into custody, and the police seized furniture, regalia, books, and papers for examination (never to return them). The arrest garnered headlines, like the Times’s “ ‘M.M.M.’ Mysteries: Order of the Temple of the Orient Raided.”

Witnesses for the prosecution recounted visits to her under false pretenses. Bertha Brondle consulted Davies about a fictitious sick child and received instructions on how to affect a spiritual cure. Similarly, Blanche Daisley consulted her about a similarly fictitious brother in the Flying Corps, to be told that he had died but that he was now being guarded by two spirits. For this advice, the women paid 10 shillings 6 pence. Davies protested that she did not profess to tell fortunes; she described herself as an author and preacher. Nevertheless, she was found guilty and fined £40, plus 10 guineas costs.

Crowley initially believed the raid was arranged by Everard Feilding as a publicity stunt to maintain his cover, but soon realized it was an official response to his wartime activities. This hampered fund-raising efforts to pay his passage back to England. As Cowie informed Crowley, “We could not even think of raising funds to bring you back, desirable as it is, when we are told you will certainly be arrested if you return.” As a solution, AC resigned as head of M.M.M. and appointed Frater Achad [Charles Stansfeld Jones] as nominal Grand Master. In subsequent letters, Cowie wrote to Crowley, “It’s just ‘care frater’ now, as in happier days of old9 and “As you are no longer G[rand] M[aster] but my guru as of old.” Nevertheless, efforts to continue operating were difficult. Other than membership dues, M.M.M.’s only revenue came from sales of Crowley’s books . . . and even this had to be discontinued. “I’ve not been able to supply one of the rare orders for books lately,” Cowie explained to Crowley at the end of 1917. “The real and vital reason however, and here you force my hand, is that the police were trying to trace your property in this country.”

In response to the bad publicity resulting from both her arrest and her connection to the “evil” and “traitorous” Crowley, Davies ran the following letter in The Occult Review:

"On May 15 last, the Press generally stated in connexion with the prosecution against me, Mary Davies, of 93 Regent Street, that I was the protégée of a man of evil reputation and a traitor to this country. I desire emphatically to disavow any such association. I have no knowledge whatsoever, nor ever had, of the views and actions—political, social or private—of the person referred to. The only link I had with this person was on Masonic grounds, in the mysteries which no one could be more profound. It is scarcely necessary to stress my own patriotism, as my public know since the beginning of the war my Intercessory Services at Kensington have been solely such as to encourage and to fortify every patriotic effort, and I deliberately repudiate the stigma implied by the quotation given above."

Davies appealed the ruling but, on 26 October 1917, the decision was upheld. The legal bill for her defense topped £250, and Cowie—indignant that this sweet and sincere fifty-year-old woman had suffered publicly and financially because of Crowley’s politics—adopted an increasingly bitter tone in his correspondence: “In one way and another, the Lodge has cost me more than the total contributions of the members; and all lost uselessly thanks to your politics.”