As Related by Charles Richard Cammell

from

ALEISTER CROWLEY: The Man, the Mage, the Poet

University Books, New Hyde Park, New York, 1962.

(various pages)

A year-and-a-half later, in the autumn of 1935, I left Edinburgh to take up an editorial position in London. The contrast between the overgrown metropolis and the Scottish capital was complete. Edinburgh was still an entity, despite its lost parliament. Around a few defined cultural centres, revolved the mind of the city, and that mind was still large. In London there were no centres of intelligence, only cliques and clubs, unconnected and mutually contemptuous or hostile. I had few acquaintances, and missed my Athenian friends with their sound and various erudition, their inspiration, their genius, their eloquent conversation. In that lonely state of mind I rediscovered Viola Bankes, now Mrs. Hall, and suggested a meeting with Crowley. Nothing at first came of the suggestion; and then one day she telephoned, asking me to tea. "Do come," she said, "I want you to meet Aleister Crowley."

In that early spring of 1936 Crowley was sixty years of age. He was a big man, tallish and stout, with an air of physical power, despite the delicacy of his small hands, of which he was extremely vain as indicating aristocracy. The impression his personality made on me was somewhat different from what I had expected from Viola Hall's book. Neither at this first meeting, when I observed him minutely, nor ever afterwards when I came to know him well, did I feel in him the artificial atmosphere which her description had suggested. That falsetto tone was dissipated immediately and for ever. It is certain that he had dramatised himself from his earliest years, that he had deliberately created his own daemonic legend; but so certain was he of his daemonic, his elemental origin, so sincere was he in his claim to seerdom, to the prophetic character, that his personality remained absolutely natural and unaffected.

I noted at once an error of detail in Viola's portrait of Crowley: she had described him as having "glittering green eyes". I saw that his eyes were not green at all, but "of the colour of horn", as Vasari describes the eyes of Michelangelo Bounarroti, a sort of yellowish-brown. What did strike me about his eyes was that they were unusually round—the roundest eyes I have ever seen, and that he employs habitually the hypnotic gaze of the practised occultist, using it much too frequently for a major effect. His right eye was appreciably larger than the left, His eyebrows were rather long and were curled up at the outer corners—the only suspicion of theatrical effect about his appearance.

Crowley's forehead was broad and round, rather than high: his head and face small compared with his burly frame. He was bald, except for two tufts of dark hair, shot with grey, which were brushed back and upwards. His face was broad; the nose short, straight and well-shaped; the mouth unusually small, with tight straight lips; the teeth, of which several were missing, were uneven and discoloured; the jaw and chin round, full and eminently strong and resolute; the complexion, without the least touch of red, was tanned almost to the colour of yellow parchment by Eastern suns. Such was the impression that Aleister Crowley's appearance made on me, nor did acquaintance modify it. At this time of writing, fifteen years since that first meeting, I recollect him exactly as I have described him. I will add that his voice was hoarse, and his speech, till one was acquainted to hearing him, somewhat indistinct. He never, as he himself notes in his autobiography, could pronounce the letter "r" clearly.

In March 1939, Crowley, dedicated to me his quarto volume Eight Lectures on Yoga, at the delivery of the first two of which I had acted as Chairman. This book is one of the most remarkable of his later works, and displays to the full that union of erudition and satire of which he was capable.

During the second lecture of these "Yogi" lectures, which few of his listeners understood, being at a loss to distinguish the remarks which were serious from the solemn ribaldry in which they were sandwiched, A.C. interrupted his reading abruptly to ejaculate in a loud voice, "To Hell with the Pope!" and again, "To Hell with the Archbishop of Canterbury!" When I remonstrated with him, after the lecture, concerning these abrupt outbursts, he replied that they were deliberate, and designed to clear the audience of any highly prejudiced elements which might create a cloudy psychic atmosphere, hostile to the reception of his wisdom by more open minds. What he had, too, in his own mind was the intention to shock his listeners into acute attention, a method also used by his contemporary Gurdjieff (or Dorjeff), the Russian-Armenian-Greek (he has been said to spring from all these nationalities) occult philosopher and expounder of mysteries, who numbered among his one-time pupils the celebrated metaphysician Ouspenski. It was at that lecture in an upper room at the Eiffel Tower restaurant in Charlotte Street, that I first met Edward Noel Fitzgerald.

One of Crowley's eccentricities was a passion for shocking people. Lord Byron, Sir Richard Burton and that versatile genius, the second George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, had the same foible. Crowley could never resist this dangerous urge. To shock and mock were among his veritable delights; and like Buckingham,

"Beggar'd by fools, whom still he found too late;

He had his jest, and they had his estate".

Those violent extremes of heat and cold to which, in desert and on mountain, he had steeled his body, had endowed Crowley with insensibility to the rigours of climate. This insensibility was completed by the practice of Yoga. His habitual dress in the years I knew him was a jacket and plus-fours of Highland homespun cloth; with hand-knitted stockings and silk shirt; no underclothing, waistcoat, hat, gloves or overcoat. I have met him thus attired on the coldest day of the coldest winter, an icy wind driving the sleet about him: he had no sense of the cold. In the hottest summer he would wear precisely the same clothes without showing or feeling any effect from the heat. He always carried a walking-stick, a malaca cane, or a stick carved by an African sorcerer, with a demon's head and magical characters.

The Book of the Law is composed in that style of figurative eloquence characteristic of prophetic utterance. Its manner is that of the Hebrew Prophets, of the Koran, and of most other works of vaticination with which I am acquainted. Its matter, however, is distinct and peculiar. This is no Book of Sacred Magic, like Abramelin's. A fierce and haughty disdain of humanity informs it; yet it embodies a savage and awe-inspiring justice. The mind behind the maxims is cold, cruel and relentless. Mercy there is none, nor consolation; nor hope save in the service of this dread messenger of the gods of Egypt. Such is the Liber Legis in letter and spirit; and as such, and in consideration of its manner of reception, it is a document of curious interest. That it is in part (but in part only) an emanation from Crowley's unconscious mind I can believe; for it bears a likeness to his own Daemonic personality. With curiosity and interest I read it, on its appearance, till, reading it, I came upon a passage of enormous and atrocious blasphemy. No written or spoken words have ever angered or disgusted me as did these words. For publishing that phrase I have never forgiven Crowley. May God forgive him!

That abominable passage brought me near to breaking my acquaintance with Crowley forthwith. As it was, I challenged him vigorously. He was visibly shaken, and endeavoured to excuse himself. This was the only occasion I ever knew him to excuse his conduct; nor have I ever heard of him doing so to another man than myself. He said that the passage was not of his composing. He had acted merely as a scribe taking dictation. I countered that, if this were so, it did not excuse him from having transcribed, edited and published the phrase. He defended himself by saying that he acted on orders which he dared not disobey; that he was compelled to publish the book in its entirety without addition or deletion. His excuses were feeble as his action was indefensible.

Thirty-four years separated the time of reception from the time of publication which occurred in 1938. For months Crowley had been busy about the paper, the printing, the illustration, the binding. Everything he had designed himself. The book comprised the text, the commentary and (in a portfolio concealed in the binding of each copy) a facsimile of every page of the manuscript as written in Crowley's hand to the Spirit's dictation. During these months he was faced with countless difficulties, and (as he wrote me) the encouragement and mental support which I gave him helped him more than I had guessed. He talked much about this book, which he declared was the most important of all his voluminous publications. I expected a masterpiece, and accordingly encouraged him in overcoming the difficulties attending the production. The work was no sooner printed and bound than he presented me with an advance copy, inscribed with the warmest expressions of friendship and gratitude. He was not only shaken, but grieved at the resentment I expressed, a resentment which time did nothing to diminish. The blasphemy of Crowley's Communicant dwelt in my mind, and at the same time my mind was deeply troubled by a private anxiety.

One night the anxiety and the resentment united to torment me. I was alone. The weather was cold and the hour late. The wind seemed to wail at the windows. I had built up a brilliant fire on the hearth. The thought of Crowley's book distracted me from either writing or reading. I resolved to destroy it. That, for me, was an extraordinary resolution. I have been from childhood passionately fond of books; they are my most intimate friends and most prized possessions. This was a beautiful book, and would be a rare one: it contained, moreover, an inscription in Crowley's hand of which I was naturally proud. Nevertheless I destroyed the Book of the Law. As the binding twisted red in the flames, as the strong, fine paper writhed and blazed, and the thin loose sheets in the portfolio whirled in sparks up the chimney, I fancied that Fire-Fiends caught and sported with them in a frenzy of senseless energy. When the flames sank and the tortuous pages crumbled to glowing dust, I stirred them with the poker, watching the little bursts of flame that sprang from them as they shrivelled; and as the last ember ceased to glow, a sense of immense relief stole over me. The night was fleeing fast. The work was done. From that night the trouble that beset me eased, and in due course departed.

I do not think that a sudden superstition was the cause of my action. Neither before nor after did any sense of awe mingle with my feelings for Crowley: with him I was always perfectly at ease. Moreover, I was familiar with books of Magic, with their imprecations and Daemon Worship. My action was rather the deed of a dragon-slayer.

There is a sequel to this tale. I did not tell Crowley of the conflagration. More than once I was on the point of telling him, but refrained because I thought it would hurt him, so great a store did he set by that book. I had not read the volume to the end. I had stopped at that accursed passage and read no more. Years later, after Crowley's death, I was given a copy of a small cheap edition which had been issued in pamphlet form, without illustration or facsimiles. I tore out the obnoxious page and glanced over the text. At the end of the booklet the following printed Comment caught my eye (it was by Crowley himself): "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. The study of this Book is forbidden. It is wise to destroy this copy after the first reading. Whosoever disregards this does so at his own risk and peril. These are most dire. . . . "

Explain to me the riddle of this man!

Crowley had by now settled down for the time being in Richmond, in a riverside house on the road leading out of Richmond towards Petersham. He had a large bow-windowed sitting-room overlooking one of the loveliest of all the lovely reaches of the Thames. There he was at rest for a while, reading and writing and entertaining his friends to those famous "curry-feasts" which he always conducted as though they were magical rituals. No one except Edward FitzGerald can ever have made such superlative curries as Crowley. Into these wondrous concoctions went every spice and aromatic condiment the five continents could provide. Crowley's curries, if less exquisite than FitzGerald's, were far more potent. They were, I am convinced, the most fiery dishes ever laid before mortal men: Demons must devour such delicacies at the table of Lucifer.

A.C. has described in his Confessions how that iron-souled, iron-limbed mountaineer Eckenstein [Oscar Eckenstein] and another explorer reacted to his curry on a glacier in South America: "It was amusing to see these strong men, inured to every danger and hardship, dash out of the tent after one mouthful and wallow in the snow, snapping at it like mad dogs. They admitted, however, that it was very good as curry, and I should endeavour to introduce it into London restaurants if there were only a glacier. Perhaps some day, after a heavy snowfall——" I sometimes think that Crowley's liking for me—certainly his respect for me—owed something to my ability to consume his hottest curries and strongest potations without inconvenience. The first time I ever dines with him I passed through my initiation with colours flying. He telephones to The Connoisseur in the afternoon to ask if I liked curry. I said that I did like it, but very mild—please! The reputation of those curries had reached me, also I knew his sadistic love of tormenting. I knew that I could manage any curry with impunity, and was resolved that the joke would be mine. He was then living somewhere in Bloomsbury. He served me with a curry heated seven-fold in the furnace of Nebuchadnezzar. I ate it with evident relish. Crowley, not a little surprised, asked at length: Did I like the curry? Yes, it was delicious. Did I perhaps find it a little hot? Not at all. Would I like a little more? Yes, please, and make it plenty. Crowley was visibly shaken. Would I have some vodka, after my wine? Yes, please. Did I find it a little strong? Not strong at all—rather a mild vodka; I would like another glass! Crowley was conquered and the ice of new acquaintanceship was broken. He owned to me later that I had defeated him over that curry; that he had expected me to collapse, and had an antidote ready to revive me. That was one of the rare occasions when "the cream of the jest" was mine.

Crowley loved parties. He gave a memorable one to celebrate his sixtieth birthday: it was really his sixty-second; but sixty is a round figure suited to festivity. A condition attached to the invitation, which was printed, ordained that every man should bring with him a lady. I took the (alas!) late Betty Roche. She was young and pretty, and sprang from a stock of artists. Her father, Roche, was a founder of the celebrated Glasgow School of painters; her maternal grandfather was Alexander, the Scottish Landseer; and Edwin Alexander was her uncle. It was a tremendous thrill for Betty meeting Crowley and "Louis Marlow" [Louis Wilkinson].

The company met at El Vino in Vine Street, off Piccadilly. That tavern (burned out in the war) was a little sister of the famous Fleet Street El Vino, where Frank Bower, most stately and genial of managers, presides. Except Louis Wilkinson, FitzGerald and Dolores Sillarno, none of the guests were known to me. We were fully a dozen, exclusive of Crowley and his lady of the hour—the hostess. From El Vino we strolled over to the Café Royal, where a large upstairs apartment was ready for the feast.

At dinner I sat beside Dolores. She was a beautiful girl, svelte, with pale gold hair; and hers was the extraordinary distinction of never having had the suspicion of a liaison with A.C. She enjoyed his company, and he availed himself of her really lovely voice for singling his lyrics. Dolores always maintained quite seriously that she and I had been married in a former life, and that I had caused her to be beheaded. In vain I protested that never in any frenzy could I have cut off so pretty a head.

The "guest of honour" was an Austrian Baroness, very rich and rather passée. Crowley's chief preoccupation during dinner was flattering her ample charms and endeavouring to sell her a small pot of his "celebrated magical sex-appeal ointment" for (he said) "the ridiculously small sum of two thousand pounds". He took pride in his knowledge of aphrodisiacs, as of strange drugs. The Baroness was often at the point of purchase; but prudence asserted itself, much to Crowley's disappointment. The dinner was sumptuous—course after course—arrosé by Montrachet and Richebourg (one of A.C.'s favourite Burgundies), Veuve Cliquot and Napoleon brandy.

When the brandy was on its last round; when the Coronas and Romeos were burning low; there was to my discerning eye, some trouble afoot. The bill (which must have been sensational) had just been presented—doubtless on Crowley's instructions—to our hostess, his amoureuse. She now rose from the table and, as I perceived, entered into elaborate diplomatic negotiations with the head waiter concerning the acceptance of her cheque. Crowley the while was looking anywhere but in the direction of the discussion. The maîitre d'hôtel, having no visible option, was at last persuaded to take the cheque ruefully. But the lady had no change for tips—a fresh complication. She went softly round the table, whispering in the ears of the most likely men of the party: Crowley, of course, was not included. I gave her a ten-shilling note which I had loose in my pocket; and perhaps she was luckier elsewhere. At any rate the regiment of waiters appeared to be appeased. I felt rather guilty about my share of that noble dinner, until, a week or two later, I met Crowley and his lady by chance in the Café Royal, which proved the solidity of the lady's banking account—and perhaps explained Crowley's attachment.

One evening I left the Centre earlier than usual. It was a lovely summer evening—in that glorious summer of 1940 which preceded the horrors of the blitzkrieg. I determined to go and see Aleister. It was a long walk from the Report Centre to Petersham Road, and dusk was falling when I reached his house. As I arrived, the clocks were striking the dreary hour of "black-out". I rang the bell. A minute later I heard light steps running downstairs. The door opened; I entered, and it was shut behind me. In those days, no lights were switched on after "black-out" till all doors were closed. The hall was pitch-black till the light went on.

During the past four years I had known A.C. in all kinds and conditions of dwellings—in Bloomsbury, in Chelsea, in Kensington, and in Richmond, and I was accustomed to meeting all kinds and conditions of ladies, and not quite ladies, who in a continuous but changeful stream kept house and home with him. Nothing or no one connected with Crowley had ever surprised me—till the light went on that summer night. The girl who stood before me, smiling with big red lips and the whitest row of teeth, was black! Ah, what a girl was that! A real fuzzy-wuzzy with a shock of sable curls, with eyes of jet and diamond, and a figure as light and lithe as a gazelle's and much more undulating, the waist small enough to be enclosed in a man's two hands: there were gold rings about her round almost-ebony arms. "So you (said I, when I had got my breath back)—so you are the girl with the golden voice!"

This devastating damsel, who bore the name of a jewel that has magical attributes, was a first-rate housekeeper. She and Aleister together cooked an excellent dinner, while I and another guest looked on. She served us prettily and made perfect coffee. She talked delightfully about everything in her golden voice. The other man left early to catch a train. When the girl retired, leaving A.C. and me to talk of poetry and what-not far into the night—or rather, the morning—as was our wont, I asked him point-blank, "Where did you find her?" He replied mysteriously, but with twinkles in both eyes, "Ah! I have ways and means!" The reign of this dusky houri was not of long duration; and after her deposition, the poet left his rooms and moved into pleasant first-floor apartments in a picturesque Queen Anne house on the Green, quite close to my new flat. Thus we became near neighbours and were much in each other's company.

His [Crowley's] life was, I think, happy enough on Richmond Green, till the bombing began in the late summer. He was busy writing his big book on the Tarot [The Book of Thoth], for which, under his tuition, Frieda Lady Harris [Frieda Harris] made her full series of beautiful symbolic paintings, some of which are reproduced in the sumptuous published volume. It was then that my knowledge of his mind became intimate. We talked of every subject under the sun and moon that is of any real importance. The baffling enigma of his mighty, but chaotic intellect, grew gradually more solvable to my perception.

By the bombing-raids, which, once they started, grew ever in fury, Crowley's health was progressively injured. The asthma, from which he suffered periodically, became frequent and more severe. Asthma is a disease of the nerves, and the incessant strain, day and night, and more by night than by day, of the bombing attacks, could not fail to affect him grievously. He had no sense of fear then, or I think ever in his life. No bolder man, physically or mentally, can ever have breathed on this planet of mortal fears; but courage is of little avail in resisting the onslaughts of a nervous affliction nightly aggravated by broken sleep and that taut condition of the nerves to which the bravest were perforce strung up. The disease gained on him, and I saw with concern the change it caused in his constitution.

One night I had just returned to my flat. I had the night off from my now arduous duties at the Report Centre: frequently I spent the whole night there. There was a telephone-call from Aleister's landlady, a good kindly soul whom I had got to know well when Basil Foster rented her rooms. Mr. Crowley was very ill, she said. She was worried about him. The asthma was incessant and she doubted, with his breathing in the condition is was, whether his heart would hold out through the night. Could I come to him? He was asking for me. Of course I would go to him. I was alone in my flat; my family was in Devon away from the bombing; there was nothing to keep me.

I found my friend in an alarming condition. His breathing was painful to witness, and the strain on his vitality was obviously great. He had a kind of machine, or apparatus, which usually relieved him, but it seemed almost useless that night. He was, however, as brave and stoical as ever. Whenever he was able to speak, it was to crack a joke, or to say something cheerful and kind. He was grateful (he had no need to be, for I was glad to be with him) and comforted to have my company.

It was a dreadful—one of the worst and longest raids of that appalling period. The German bombers were coming over hour after hour. There were at that time comparatively few big guns to deal with them. One very big gun there was, mounted on a carriage, which moved up and down the railway line just beyond the Green. But the bombers kept on circling round and round with impunity, unloading their hellish cargoes just when and where they pleased. As the bombs exploded the old house we were in shuddered to its foundations.

I remember my thoughts on that strange night very clearly, though eleven years have passed since then. As the night advanced and the raids grew more intense, Crowley's condition, for some reason, improved. His breathing was easier and he was able to talk a little on his favourite themes. My mind was in an abnormal state. Crowley appeared to my eye preternaturally old. Sometimes I have thought that I then saw him as he really was—a soul of incomputable antiquity, a soul hoary with the memories, the sins and sorceries of aeons of years. His eyes, bloodshot from long hours of laboured breath, glowed red like burning coals, his face looked like the face of a mummified pharaoh, dead many millenniums, so dry and yellow was the skin, so deep and countless the lines that furrowed the stern, suffering features.

Never during the years I had known him had the least sense of anything sinister touched me in Crowley's presence or personality; not that night did any fear enter my heart or brain. I realised, however—realised intensely—that we were together at the very door of death, that at any moment we might be hurled together out of the world I knew into that other world unknown whither sooner or later we must all travel. Watching Crowley, looking into his glowing eyes, listening to the words that came hissing from his weary lungs, I found myself wondering where we should go, the two of us, when the bomb burst and blew us to pieces. That crazy old house, shivering at every blast, was, I knew, a cobweb to protect us from an explosion, though it were five hundred yards away; and a direct hit would mean physical disintegration. Where then would we be, this strange companion of mine and I? Not once did I visualise the possibility of spiritual annihilation. I never dreamed that death of the body would entail a cessation, even for a moment, of thought. It is important to me now that, at such a time, my certainty of immortality should have been so absolute as not to admit the merest possibility, or indeed any thought at all of the soul's not being. I was quite sure about survival, but I was not so sure as to whither I might be heading. Would I go where he was going, or would he go with me? That was the curious drift of my fantastic thoughts. Somehow I felt certain that Aleister and I were not bound for the same port. That his ship was chartered for a voyage other than mine.

This ghastly train of meditation was broken violently by a terrific explosion high above the house-top, over the Green. There was a brilliant flash of white light which penetrated the thick "black-out" curtains covering the windows. Then a whirring, screaming sound, and the white light descended, rushing downwards past the window. I realised than what had happened. The big gun which had been firing its shells uselessly into the clouds all through the night, had hit the bomber that was droning overhead, seeking a spot for its murderous discharge—had hit it fair and square, and the bomber was falling headlong in white-hot flames.

I was out of the room in a moment, and down the rickety stairs, and out of the front door in a third. And, believe it or not, Crowley was after me, and in the road at my heels—the narrow road between the houses and the Green. Asthma is truly a mysterious disease, and the nerves of mortals are a problem for wise physicians. Here was a man who had been gasping his life away all through the night; and now at the crack of dawn he had run downstairs two steps at a time, and was shouting Hooray! and waving his arms skyward in a passion of boyish excitement and jubilation. No trace of asthma: it was gone to whence it came. Crowley was twenty-one again.

That scene justified Crowley. There was no calculated self-defence against accusers. It was a spontaneous burst of patriotism, in every way befitting that poet's character, who had written at the outbreak of war these stirring stanzas, England Stand Fast!

[ . . . ]

The night-raider fell beyond the river on the Twickenham bank. I remember that two distinct glares rose from the wreckage, illuminating the last shades of night: the one was yellow-white; the other mauve, of all colors! All the savage in one awakens at such moments. How I rejoiced at the slaughter of those German airmen! How I must have hated them when they were droning overhead with murderous intent! As for Crowley, his hatred of Hitler and Mussolini, and all they stood for, was a hundred-per-cent real. Had not the Nazi stolen his sacred swastika; had not the Fascist thrust him forth from his beloved Italy?

As dawn broke we drank our stirrup-cup—or "night-cap"—the toast, damnation to the Dictators! I went home for a few hours' sleep. Crowley, his asthma cured by that blazing bomber, slept like a child.

The cure was, of course, temporary. Though the worst was over for a season, he had recurrent attacks, and it was plain that the combination of air-raids and river-damp, which spelled Richmond that autumn, was no place for him. He managed to find some rooms at Torquay; and one morning early he came to me. With his income from America cut off by the war, and no prosperous provider within momentary reach, he was in a dilemma. Richmond was killing him; but how to get to Devon? I gave him the few pounds that were in my pocket. It was the only money I ever gave him. He swore he would return it by the first post. I knew better. I was glad enough to help him, and see him safely on the road to sunshine and peace.

So Aleister Crowley and I parted. I did not foresee that the parting was to be final. From Torquay he continued to correspond with me in the most friendly spirit: some of the most interesting and warm-hearted letters I ever had from him were written during the next few months. The rupture came without warning. A lady [Cammell's wife] was concerned and a sum of money involved. I did my best to arrange matters; to persuade him to act honourably or at least reasonably and courteously. It was useless. As was his wont when challenged, he became defiant. In some such way he lost so many of his best friends. They were, each in turn, compelled to break with Crowley, even as I was. I saw him only once again—in London, after the war. We did not speak.