As Related by Eileen J. Garrett

from

MANY VOICES: The Autobiography of a Medium

G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1968

(pages 59-60)

Many came to the Cafe Royal in the wake of Aleister Crowley (whose books, such as Magic in Theory and Practice and Equinox of the Gods, can still be read with profit). Although Crowley was much maligned by the more orthodox members of society, I felt he had a mystical union with nature, whether or not he had occult powers. He was a student of the "Caballah Unveiled" and the works of Levi, which he studied with S.L. McGregor Mathers, in his day regarded as a wizard in his own right. Crowley was a rather rugged, athletic man with an undeniable force of personality. I was sitting with a group of friends one evening at the Cafe Royal when he approached our table, and leaning across it, reached out to take hold of my hand. "You are a pythoness," he informed me, "and a strong one." At the same time he slipped a ring on my first finger and looked at me intently with half-closed eyes. I remember that his eyes were protruding and his mouth betrayed a sensual nature. He may have been anywhere between thirty-five and forty at the time—but in those days everyone over thirty looked old to me! My giggling companions were somewhat surprised, and I, too, was startled, not knowing what a pythoness was. I quietly took off the ring and gave it back to him. He just walked away slowly to another table and joined a few companions.

People who knew Aleister Crowley well declared that he was a highly intelligent man, although all admitted that he was guilty of devil worship and more. They talked of his obscene ceremonies, which involved young girls known as his priestesses, blood sacrifices of cats, and ritual dances to the rhythm of drums. I was invited to a "black mass" he held in a room in Fitzroy Square. The drawing room was draped in black. Zodiacal signs were embroidered on the draperies, and the room was filled with incense. Highly intelligent men and women, both nationally and internationally famous, some of them connected with government, attended these meetings. Some came to partake of a sacred cup which, it was said, certain aphrodisiac substances were mixed to make union with Aphrodite herself. The girls, "virgins" of the cult, had an eerie glow on their cloaks, and Crowley himself wore a mantle with many zodiacal signs. There was a small altar with dimmed lights, and the cross was put on the left-hand side. Many of the women wept and made weird sounds such as I have since heard at meetings of the Holy Rollers in North Carolina. Actually, I have really seen more uncanny things in the voodoo rites in Haiti when the gods take control and where there are frequent blood sacrifices. If there was "authority" in Crowley's meetings with Lucifer, I never knew it.

Much has been written about Crowley, and much evil has been attributed to him. If he did have these occult powers, I think they must have been fleeting, for he often ran into monetary difficulties. I remember, when he was being evicted from the Queens Hotel in Leicester Square, that I was asked to find money which would enable him to live at Brighton. He did manage it somehow, and it was there that he died, cursing his doctor, I was told, with the anger of a man reduced by illness and despair. Some of the faithful followers who remained with him to the end assured me that his body in death glowed with an intense luster.