As Related by Israel Regardie

from

The Eye in the Triangle: An Interpretation of Aleister Crowley

Falcon Press, 1989.

The station was noisy and rather gloomy. It possessed none of the pseudo-cathedral-like majesty that is associated with Pennsylvania Station or the Grand Central Station in New York City. The mid-October morning was cold and grey when I got off the boat-train at Gare St. Lazare. All the way from Cherbourg, surrounded by French voices and strange sounds only half-heard, I had been wondering what this moment would be like. The damp coldness in the sombre building had set up a muscular shiver, diffuse and fine, though anxiety with some degree of excitement had a good deal to do with it. Looking around the platform for a familiar face, I paused near the pile of luggage the porters were busily and loudly piling up.

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

This was said in a very British voice, thin and smoothly slurring, but hardly Cockney as alleged by Calder Marshall. Then I knew—for of course I was more than familiar with the phrase. Just to my right stood a tall figure, rather heavy set, in blue-grey tweeds, plus fours. There was a cap of the same material placed very conservatively over a large head. The eyes were not big, but gleamed pleasantly over the dark bags beneath them. A light smile played around the comers of a small mouth. The handgrip, which came next, was not very firm—nor was mine, for that matter. I was very nervous, despite my clear pleasure in confronting Aleister Crowley for the first time. A few months earlier I had sent him a photograph. And from a photograph in the Equinox I knew what he looked like. He could not be missed.

Here we were in Paris, after a desultory correspondence extending over two years. He had invited me to come over to Europe to be his secretary and to study with him. I had felt flattered. It all seemed a dream, one that could not be true for me. But here I was in this grimy station in the year 1928, the fulfilment of a long-cherished dream. Had I not just heard him greet me with the Thelemic watchwords "Do what thou wilt"?

Very quickly and easily, Crowley helped me to get my luggage together. There was no problem; customs had been cleared at Cherbourg. A taxi got us quickly to his apartment where we had coffee. While we talked, he brewed it himself in a small Cona glass apparatus—rather like what we would call a Silex coffee maker—heated by a diminutive alcohol lamp. I had never seen one before; I was impressed. Impressed by that as I was by everything else.

In order to join Crowley in Paris, it was necessary for me to obtain-both a passport from the U. S. State Department and a visa from the French Consul in Washington, D. C. where I was living at the time. I was still not quite twenty-one years of age, and so legally a minor. My father was supposed to have given his written consent for both of these diplomatic instruments of travel. Meanwhile I had told my parents nothing of Crowley, and not much more about my consuming interest in mysticism. Since I had been attending Art School, I simply told them that I had been invited to study painting with an English artist in Paris. With this explanation, they agreed to my departure, giving me the necessary document for the passport office.

However, I found it a nuisance to explain every step to be taken. When it came time to obtain the French visa, I typed a letter as though from my father and appended his signature. In other words-I compounded a felony; in addition to lying I forged his signature.

I thought nothing of it at the time. I was Jesuitical in intellectual attitude; the end justified the means. Now I had both the passport and the visa—and everything was in order for the trip abroad to come face to face with Destiny.

While all of this was happening, one of my several sisters—who for this narrative will be signified by Nosey Parker, since this does describe some of her characteristics—had glanced through my set of the Equinox. There she had read, without the slightest degree of comprehension, Crowley's brilliant essay Energized Enthusiasm. It dealt with the invocation of Dionysius, Aphrodite and Apollo, which he translated colloquially as the worship of wine, women and song, and it did deal with sex among other things. To her puritanical mind this was rather horrible.

She had a history of what I would now consider a severe' anxiety hysteria. She was emotionally and physically ill a great deal of the time, and her neurosis had gradually resulted in her discovery of the world of diet, nutrition and health. Had she given her psychic health as much attention as she did to calories, proteins and vitamins, we would all have been better off. Her prudery also found moral support in the lunatic fringes of the occult where sex was anathema. She made everyone's life her personal business, was a holy terror in her relations with the rest of the family.

Shocked beyond belief upon discovering that Crowley had written about sex in his own inimitable way, she became infected with what Wilhelm Reich calls the Emotional Plague. In a jocular vein, Crowley had written elsewhere that there would be no clear thinking on the subject of sex, continence and erotology until it was clearly understood "as being solely a branch of athletics." He wrote rather pragmatically "let the student decide for himself what form of life, what moral code, will least tend to excite his mind. . . . It is a purely practical code, of no value in itself." But these rational approaches had no meaning for her.

Her prurience being further excited by a recent Sunday Hearst smear of Crowley—she had only one recourse. High-handedly, without consulting me or anyone else, she marched off to the French Consul to beg him to deny me a visa to visit France. A visa had been granted she was told, and nothing further could be done at this end. She must have given the French consul a full run-down of the Crowley story as perceived through the dark scotoma of her hysteria, and it must have been a lurid story indeed. The French consul promised to refer the matter back to Paris for investigation.

Thus it was that some three or four months after I had arrived in Paris, the inspector from the Surete Generale came to see what kind of wicked monster this man Crowley was. The sinister coffee-brewing gadget evidently spurred him on to make a more complete investigation. In this process, he excavated a crop of vicious journalism of the Horatio Bottomley-cum-William Randolph Hearst variety, and the fact that five years earlier Mussolini had expelled Crowley from Italy on grounds of purely political expediency. He also discovered that Crowley had written in America about 1917 what appeared to be pro-German) propaganda. This is a fascinating story in itself and has been described very well by P. R. Stephensen in his Legend of Aleister Crowley. It was further found that Crowley was, at least nominally, the British head of the Ordo Templi Orientis—a German Rosicrucian society. Possibly the Surete Generale did not recognize the difference between an occult and a political organization, and so it came to the idiotic conclusion that Crowley was a paid Germ an spy.

In the meantime, two other minor events need reporting. Just prior to my arrival, Crowley had notified the police that Miroslava, a former mistress, had stolen some money from him. Some weeks after my arrival in Paris, I was the bearer of a letter from Crowley to the police headquarters in the 16th arrondisement announcing that it was all an error, that he had found the money and that the whole matter should now be dismissed—and would they issue a carte d'identite for his secretary, the bearer of this note. My limited high school French was altogether inadequate for carrying on a conversation with a most disinterested police official—so the matter of my registration lapsed and came to nothing.

When the Surete Generale matter finally came to a head six months after my leaving the United States, brought to a boiling climax by complaints from a public relations man whom Crowley had dismissed, all hell broke loose. Refus de Sejours were handed out in March to Crowley for being a German spy and a dope addict, to his current mistress Maria de Miramar who later became his wife, and to me both for being associated with him and for not possessing a valid carte d'identite. As a matter of practical politics, Crowley became ill forthwith so that he was enabled to stay on in Paris to find out what really was involved, while de Miramar and I were promptly expelled. We were not permitted to land in England (despite the fact that I had been born in London). We were considered, as colleagues of Crowley, "undesirable aliens," and were put back aboard the Channel steamer. Eventually we wound up in Brussels to wait for Crowley's arrival.

During the period that I stayed with him and served as his secretary, there was a nightly session after dinner—almost a routine or ritual—of chess-playing. After a while I came to loathe the game. It took me many years before I was able to return to it again for pleasure. Crowley not only enjoyed the game, he was a competent player. In addition, it was one of his contentions, which at that time was quite unintelligible to me, that by playing chess with someone, he was able to obtain a fairly clear picture of how he operated psychologically. Some people playa cautious game, others are more reckless in their expenditure of pieces. Some start out with a flair, and wind up after a dozen moves not knowing what they want to do or where they want to go or how to do it. Still others reach their best performance only towards the end of the game, after they are through probing their opponent's defenses and aggressive tactics. These attitudes are basic to the individual's general functioning, and operate in most areas of his life.

He would often take one of the books written by the great chess masters, and patiently play out on the board before him the game described in the text. He would analyze the game played, attempting to see if there were justification for the conclusions reached by the writer, and how, were he playing the game, he might be able to improve upon it. Very often he would give me a piece or two to make the game more interesting; he would play minus a Knight or Bishop, sometimes even without a Queen. Most of the time he won, and on those rare occasions when I did beat him, it was only because, I am quite sure, he let me win.

On the occasions when Gerald Yorke would come over from England, or down from London after we moved to Knockholt in Kent, we would set up two boards. Crowley would play both of us simultaneously, going from one board to another, and would beat us both.

The feat, however, at which I marvelled then, and still do, was his blindfold chess. He would make himself comfortable in a big chair, where he would smoke very expensive cigars when he had them, or a big pipe filled with perique or latakia tobacco. This effectively put up a choking smoke screen. Through this he could be dimly perceived warming a large balon of brandy in his hands, rolling it, smelling its bouquet, and sipping it gently with all ceremonial art.

Yorke and I would be well away from him, or behind him, with a board in front of each of us. Yorke would call out "Pawn to King 4" and Crowley, having built up an imaginary chessboard in his mind, would respond with the appropriate move. When it was my turn to open and move, I would call out "Pawn to Queen 4" or whatever opening I had decided upon. Sometimes I would make it different from Yorke's only in the hope that Crowley might thus become confused. But no! He was able to keep the imaginary picture of both boards quite distinct. More often than not he was able to beat us both.

In those early days in Paris, an occasional gust of anxiety would well up within me. Long before I had left the United States, I had read the trashy Hearst newspaper "exposes" of Crowley. And while I had refused steadfastly to believe this wretched yellow journalism, the seeds of doubt had been well planted. Therefore, in trepidation, I half-expected some kind of homosexual advance from him. In point of fact, nothing of this kind ever occurred.

One week-end in the winter of 1928-29, Yorke took the boat-train over from London for a conference with Crowley. Yorke and I never had a great deal in common. There were only occasional distant-friendly chats. Our only bond of union was our common interest in Crowley, otherwise we would never have met. But I do recall, on one occasion when he let his hair down or I did, and we mutually confessed our latent apprehensions about the possibility of "the old boy," as we familiarly called him, trying some homosexual monkey-tricks with either one. We were both relieved to find out that we shared this anxiety. Sharing anxiety, like guilt, thins it out, making its burden more tolerable. And we were even more relieved that nothing really had transpired.

I learned soon after arriving in Paris, that Crowley had a mistress. I half-way expected this, but only half-way; for in my hypocritical state of pseudo-innocence of those far-off days, I did not let myself dwell on such awful moral possibilities. So I accepted her, whom Symonds [John Symonds] calls Miroslava. She was short, pudgy, and, from my vantage  point of today, the most unlikely person to be Crowley's mistress. But such were the facts!

One Saturday night, within the first weeks of my stay there, she invited me to go to a movie with her. I agreed with some alacrity. I desperately needed a change—a change to an old familiar pattern, a haven of refuge, a kind of security from all the new, disconcerting events that were transpiring in the Crowley ménage.

What the movie was I do not recall now. It was just prior to the advent of the talkies. But I know I did enjoy it, and she was very friendly and almost convivial. After the movie, we went to a nearby cafe for some coffee, or perhaps a drink. There to my sincere astonishment, she informed me that she was not going to return to Crowley. It never dawned on me to ask her why, or to discuss the matter with her at all. At this moment of writing, I would very much like to have known her attitude and her motives for leaving him. But in a very matter-of-fact prosaic way, I promised I would convey her message to Crowley.

On my way back to my hotel, I had the cab stop at the apartment on Avenue de Suffren, where I found him still up, reading, as usual, detective stories. When I informed him what had happened, his eyebrows raised a little—the one on the right more perhaps than the one on the left—and then he murmured:

"The Lord hath given. The Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the' Lord."

And that was the end of that!

There was a curious chap named Aloysius Comet who used to come down from London to visit with Crowley, when we were living in Kent. Crowley found him interesting for a while. Comet could play chess moderately well, which Crowley appreciated tremendously at the time, for he was undergoing one of his recurrent attacks of phlebitis which kept him confined to the house. Comet was also a fairly good raconteur, and loved to talk about a prominent symptom of his masochistic neurosis, flagellation. Crowley thought him altogether amusing, though rather pathetic.

One day, while playing chess with Crowley, Comet admitted having just contracted a common venereal disease. He blushed while talking about it, thus confessing to a profound sense of guilt. It was like feeling dirty and unbathed most of the time, as he put it. At first, he took a gentle ribbing from Crowley who said: "Don't worry about it. It's no worse than a cold in the head!"

At this time Crowley was an inveterate reader and connoisseur of detective stories. He devoured them voraciously, partly because much of the time he was bored. Another reason was that he had once essayed a series of detective stories himself, patterned after an idealization of himself—a sleuth named Simon Iff.

In one of the stories he had just finished reading, there was a character named Badcock—a perfectly good and legitimate English name.

Whenever Comet turned up in Knockholt—which was quite often, for he was a disciple of sorts and knelt devotedly at the feet of the Master—he was called Badcock. It was always "Badcock, this!" and "Badcock, that!" He was given this nickname both when alone or whenever there were other people visiting Crowley. The. master thought it was enormously funny. He delighted in embarrassing and humiliating Comet in front of friends, first by using the fictional name, and then by referring facetiously to the malady which Comet had contracted.

To expose Comet was extraordinarily cruel. The poor fellow flushed and perspired freely, no doubt wishing for the ground beneath him to open up and swallow him whole. I once glanced at him sympathetically, but he could only lower his eyes. Eventually, in spite of his masochism, he could no longer stand this spitefulness and lack of consideration and disappeared. Crowley had thought it all a great joke!

In contrast, I remember vividly one incident where he showed a considerable degree of empathy, of concern, of not wishing to hurt tender feelings. When I joined him in Paris, I was timid and callow and naive. So far as my personal appearance was concerned, there could be no criticisms, save one minor though very obvious detail, which Crowley did not miss.

One day, while he was dictating some letters to me, he asked me to take one letter but to omit the opening line "Dear so and so." I should add that while in the United States I had procured a Stenotype, a shorthand machine, and a textbook dealing with the system, and had taught myself how to use it. Within a few months I had acquired a workable speed of well over a hundred words per minute.

I was seated. with the Stenotype on the table in front of me, looking at times at Crowley, or permitting my eyes and my attention to wander around the room while writing more or less automatically. lie began to dictate to the unnamed correspondent, but towards the end of the letter, in the last paragraph, he added quite nonchalantly, something to the effect that you might consider examining your fingernails more closely. Other people do, and judge you accordingly. An occasional manicure might prove more than useful, etc., etc.

In my stupidity and absent-mindedness, I had typed all of this down, never once realizing that he was doing this for my sake, and that he had not wished to hurt my feelings by calling attention to the fact that my fingernails were not well cared for, and that the general appearance of my hands could be improved. It did not occur to me until some years later that this had been a device he had used to help me.

Years ago, I recall talking to him about some of his short stories entitled Golden Twigs, predicated on Frazer's Golden Bough. Chuckling quite happily, he told me:

"They are all about murder and incest!"

When I appeared unimpressed and unmoved, so vast was my naiveté in those days, he continued:

''The Editors of the International," (this is the magazine where these stories were first published about "1917,) "had little notion of their contents."

"Didn't they read the stories?" I asked innocently.

"Yes. Of course they did. But the motif is not quite that on the surface."

He enjoyed this idea of having sneaked something past them. Little did he realize that he was considering his own history as well.