Horace Algernon Sheridan-Bickers

Born: 15 June 1883 in County Galway, Ireland.

Died:   2 August 1957 in San Mateo, California.

Crowley's poem "Au Bal" was dedicated to Horace Sheridan-Bickers.

Horace Algernon Sheridan-Bickers, under Aleister Crowley, took the Oath of a Probationer in the A∴A∴ on 23 July 1909 choosing the motto Superabo (I will excel). He had been recently divorced from his first wife, Hermione Henrietta Margaret, and remarried to Minnie Elizabeth Hefford (b. 1880), who went by the name Betty [Betty Sheridan-Bickers]. While a student, Sheridan-Bickers was president of the Cambridge University Sociological Society and, as a doctor of laws, a frequent lecturer at the Eighty Club, a group within Britain’s Liberal Party that promoted political education and organization during the years 1880 to 1978.

In November 1909, Sheridan-Bickers also lectured for The Equinox at Cambridge University, where he became acquainted with Crowley’s lifelong friend, Louis Wilkinson. He was also announced as lecturing on behalf of The Equinox throughout 1910. From there, Sheridan-Bickers would travel to British Columbia, lecturing, working as a journalist, editing The Spokesman magazine, and helping establish Crowley’s magical organizations.

He would soon resettle in Los Angeles, working as a journalist for the Los Angeles Examiner, continuing lecturing, and writing the story and screenplay for the motion picture Her Body in Bond (1918). The latter is about “a show girl (of course she is poor but honest) who, in her efforts to save the life of her consumptive husband, is subjected to the insults of those who want to force money upon her—for a reason.” Working from Los Angeles, he would become established as a drama critic for the London Daily Express and, under the pen-name “Yorick,” edited Theatre World and Illustrated Stage Review in the 1920s.

For a time, he was also managing editor of Hollywood Life: An International Journal of Motion Pictures. While in Los Angeles, he and Betty served as Crowley’s representatives in Hollywood, playing an important role in promoting Crowley’s works. H. Sheridan-Bickers appears in The Confessions of Aleister Crowley as “Gnaggs” in a long and obscure story about jealousy and herpes. He died in San Mateo, California, on 2 August 1957