As Related by Mabel Dodge Luhan

from

MOVERS and SHAKERS

University of New Mexico Press, 1936

(pages 141-142)

Aleister Crowley was one of the strange creatures who turned up in New York that year. He was supposed to be a magician. It was said of him that he had celebrated the Messe Noire in London and for that reason had been asked to leave the British Isles.

The Hapgoods met him at dinner and found him to be a most conventional Englishman with good manners. Neith, sitting next to him, and remembering rumors, asked him if he was a Rosicrucian. He looked at her in apparent puzzlement and queried:

"Rosicrucian? Do you mean am I a member of the Red Cross? Oh, yes. . . ."

He gave lectures on esoteric aspects of Buddhism, and Hutch and I went to hear him one night in a house someone had lent him. The room he spoke in had a gold ceiling and was very stuffy. Mr. Crowley darted out onto a small platform dressed in the usual Nordic evening clothes, but in addition to those he had a broad red ribbon across his chest, and a sword that clanked buckled around his waist; and his rather thin hair was brushed straight up into a point that turned over towards his audience like the horn of a unicorn. Very odd. But his talk about Buddha was really excellent and there didn't seem to be anything louche about him.

Yet afterwards when he began telephoning and asking if he could come to see me, he made me feel nervous. It was queer that sometimes at the telephone his voice sounded weak and thin as though he were scarcely in the flesh, and at others it was full-bodied and robust, very hearty. I could never bring myself to receive him.