Norman Mudd

Born: 16 January 1889 in Prestwich, Lancashire.

Died: 16 June 1934 in Forest, Guernsey.

Norman Mudd was born in Prestwich, Lancashire on Wednesday, 16 January 1889. His father was William Dale Mudd, born 1861 in Manchester who was a certificated schoolmaster and later headmaster. He married Emma Byers (born circa 1860) in October 1886 in Prestwich, Lancashire and they had three children, Norman being the middle child. The first child was a girl named Nellie born in 1887 in Prestwich and after Norman’s birth followed Eva born in 1893 in Chorlton. In the English census of 1891 which was recorded on Sunday, 5 April, the Mudd’s were living at 46 Talbot Street, Chorlton, Hulme in the parish of Moss Side in Lancashire. William is 35, a ‘certified schoolmaster’; his wife Emma is 31, Norman is 2 and Nellie is 3. During the next census of 1901, taken on Sunday, 31 March, the family are living at 28 Bishop Street, Moss Side in the ward of Whalley Range. Both Nellie (aged 13) and Norman (aged 12) have Crumpsell, Lancashire as their place of birth and the youngest daughter Eva, aged 7 is born in Manchester, Lancashire.

Norman attended Ducie Avenue Schools in Manchester and earned a Mathematic Scholarship to Cambridge. He entered Trinity College in July 1907 and remained until 1910. I contacted the Archive Department at Trinity College, Cambridge and according to their admissions records Norman Mudd was ‘born in Manchester on 16 Jan 1888. He attended Manchester Grammar School before being admitted to Trinity on Tuesday, 25 June 1907, to which date he had an Entrance Scholarship later backdated. He was elected to a Senior Scholarship in 1910, the year he graduated with a BA having taken a first class in the mathematical tripos. Mudd was awarded the college Maths prize in both 1908 and 1910.’ At University, he was a member of the Pan Society (as was his friend Victor B. Neuburg) [Crowley read a few papers for the Pan Society on mystical subjects] and secretary of the Cambridge University Freethought Association, which also included Neuburg among its ranks. Unfortunately Mudd had to resign his position in the Freethought Society due to his association with Aleister Crowley, whom he had met in December 1907, and because he was distributing Crowley’s literature. When the Dean of Trinity College by the name of Rev. Reginald St. John Parry (1858-1935) heard that Crowley was giving talks at the Freethought Association meetings and that Mudd was an acquaintance, Mudd became the scapegoat for the Dean, who made accusations against Crowley concerning his sexual conduct' with male undergraduates. Mudd, coming from a poor background with little influence and relying on the scholarship for his education, had no choice but to resign and swear that he would not see or speak to Crowley again. This of course, he secretly broke. Yet, for a long time he felt that he had betrayed Crowley in his actions. He received his M.A. and an offer of two jobs, one at the National Physical Laboratory and the other as a Professor at Grey University College, Bloemfontein, South Africa. Seeking adventure, Norman naturally chose the latter. Three months before Mudd arrived in South Africa, he is listed on the English census for 1911, taken on Sunday 2nd April as a ‘Student Cambridge’ and he is 22 years old and living with his parents and sisters at 37 Middleton Street, Moss Side, South Manchester, a private dwelling with five rooms. His father, William is now a Head Master aged 49 and his mother Emma is 51. Nellie Mudd is 23 and works as a ‘Baker and confectionary shop keeper’ while Eva is 17 and works as a ‘staff clerk’.

Mudd arrived in South Africa in July 1911 and he ran the Department of Applied Mathematics from 1911-1912.

Mudd was the author of several mathematical papers including: ‘The Gravitational Potential and Energy of Harmonic Deformations of any Order’ (possibly written around 1911) and a criticism of Einstein’s theory of relativity: ‘the Generalised Theory of Relativity’ (possibly written in 1925). In 1915 Norman lost an eye due to a gonorrhoeal infection. From 1916-1917 he ran the Department of Pure Mathematics. However, Norman was prone to depression and bouts of low self-esteem. He decided to take a year’s sabbatical vacation in 1920—Norman had been searching for something which he never found, something he only felt during his time with Crowley at Cambridge where the two talked of science and poetry, philosophy and psychology. It was the only time Mudd felt alive! And so he sailed from South Africa on board the Balmoral Castle and arrived in Southampton on Monday, 13 December 1920. He searched like a devoted pupil for his master but could find him nowhere! Believing Crowley must be still in the United States he boarded the Imperator and arrived in America on Tuesday, 18 January 1921. He went to Detroit and was downhearted to find Crowley had already left for England; but he did find Charles Stansfeld Jones and Wilfred Talbot Smith there. Jones initiated Mudd as a Neophyte of the A∴A∴ and Mudd took the magical name of Frater Omnia Pro Veritate (All for Truth). Following his stay with the Detroit Thelemites, Mudd returned to England on board the Carmania and arrived on Monday, 7 February 1921.

In a letter to his friend Leo Marquard dated 10-12 February 1921, he writes in romantic mood 'The taking up of this Path is what is referred to variously as the Second Birth, or being Born of the Water of the Spirit, or (by Dante) the Vita Nuova, or (by the Egyptians) the Entrance on Light, or (by the Buddhists) the Noble Aryan Path, or (by the Alchemists) the great Work, and so on.'

Hearing that Crowley was in Cefalù at his Abbey of Thelema, Norman undertook the journey there and arrived at the Abbey on Sunday 22nd April 1923. The next day Mudd attends a meeting with Crowley and Leah Hirsig at the Office of the Commissario and Crowley is expelled from Italy and given one week to settle his affairs (Mudd and Hirsig are allowed to stay on). Mudd became Crowley’s secretary (he had already turned down a job offer to organise a School of Astronomy at the University of South Africa. After the expulsion, Crowley left Cefalù on Tuesday 1st May and travelled to Tunis arriving on Friday, 11 May and Mudd joined him there on Wednesday, 20 June 1923. The devoted Frater Omnia Pro Veritate took dictation and copied Crowley's manuscripts and all the time he was determined to clear Crowley's name after all the bad publicity from the British Press. Mudd really believed that The Book of the Law held the key to unlocking a new epoch in mathematical application.

     Mudd returned to England to continue the Great Work on Friday, 6 June 1924 and lived at a flat in Chelsea, London. Soror Estai (Jane Wolfe, 1875-1958) joined him there and worked as his secretary in copying Mudd’s letters and Crowley’s An Open Letter to Lord Beaverbrook for distribution. They were very poor and had to sell items of clothing and manuscripts for food and rent. The two became lovers, although they were not in love with each other, Mudd still had deep feelings for Leah. Jane Wolfe found it difficult living with Mudd saying that he was a ‘fussy’ man ‘set in his ways’, stubborn, intelligent yet ‘lacking in social position’ and very excitable! On Thursday, 24 July 1924, Mudd had to take a rest from the Great Work as his nerves were suffering. He joined Leah in Paris on Tuesday, 30 September 1924 and on Friday, 3 October Leah placed the ‘Seal of Babalon’ upon Mudd’s phallus. By Sunday (5 October) they were married in an informal Thelemic ceremony, which was consummated two days later on Tuesday, 7 October. By Wednesday 19th November, Mudd was back in England, poor and homeless!

By 1925 Mudd was beginning to have doubts in Crowley, believing the Great Beast was misinterpreting the Law of Thelema as given in The Book of the Law thus failing in the eyes of the Secret Chiefs. Poor Mudd, suffering great poverty was duly banished from the A∴A∴ by Crowley, no doubt also because Mudd had fallen in love with Alostrael, Crowley’s Scarlet Woman, Leah Hirsig. Mudd returned to his father on the Isle of Man on Wednesday, 24 February 1926. He formally withdrew his name from the broadsheet ‘Ein Zeugnis der Suchenden’ [The Testament of a Seeker] which was signed by Crowley, Mudd and Heinrich Tränker (1880-1956) at the Conference of Grand Masters, held at Weida, Thuringia in Germany in 1925. By 1927 Mudd had lost all interest in magick.

On Saturday, 6 September 1930 he sent a letter (written in his own hand) on behalf of Leah Hirsig and himself, from Spain, renouncing their magical oaths.

On Sunday, 6 May 1934, aged 45, Norman Mudd of 220 Arlington Road, London, NW1, took a room at the Manor Hotel, Forest, Guernsey. He must have been suffering terrible depression and feeling the loss of Crowley and Thelema in his life which prompted him to take the awful steps he did. At a loss and determined to end it all, he put his bicycle clips on and filled his trousers with stones and walked into the English Channel. The Hotel Proprietor reported Mudd missing to the Police on Saturday, 16 June, saying that he was last seen at 7p.m. on Friday, 15 June. The Police recovered his body on Saturday, 16 June at Portlet bay at midday. The inquest was held on Monday, 18 June and the verdict was ‘suicide’. Norman Mudd, Frater Omnia Pro Veritate, Neophyte of the A∴A∴ was buried in plot number 8, grave number 1 in New Cemetery, Forest, Guernsey on Wednesday, 20 June 1934.

To whom it may concern.

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

I am an MA of Cambridge University (Mathematical Scholar of Trinity College). 

I have known Aleister Crowley for over thirteen years. He is admittedly one of the most remarkable poets and writers of the present day.

I have studied his scientific memoranda with great care, and I am satisfied that they would lead to discoveries which will furnish mankind with a new instrument of knowledge and a new method of research.

I have examined the accusations made against him by certain newspapers of a certain class, and find them without exception baseless falsehoods. I know that his ideals are noble, his honour stainless, and his life devoted wholly to the service of mankind. Having given his entire fortune to his work, he has been unable to refute publicly the calumnies of his assailants. He has found no men among those who know him, sufficiently prominent, powerful, and courageous to come forward and vindicate him before the world.

The honour of England is concerned that her greatest poet should not perish under the malice or neglect of his fellow-countrymen, as so often in history.

I shall come to London and devote myself to persuading some person or corporation of authority, wealth, or influence, to investigate the accusations against Mr. Crowley . . .

Love is the law, love under will.

Norman Mudd

[Vindication letter published in the Isis magazine. Oxford. 14 November 1923.]

Portrait by

Aleister Crowley

Portrait by

Aleister Crowley