As Related by "X" (Herbert Vivian)

from

MYSELF NOT LEAST: Being the Personal Reminiscences of "X"

Thornton Butterworth, Limited, 1925.

(pages 131-132)

Another unconventional acquaintance was Aleister Crowley, a very melodious poet, a champion player of dominoes, and a high authority on oriental mysticism. He might easily have become famous if he had not persisted in alienating the spirit of the age. Attracted by the brilliancy of his writings, I invited him to lunch at my house in the country and I found him a very entertaining companion. After lunch, he observed sadly, "Everybody is delighted to make my acquaintance, but usually no one cares to meet me a second time." And sure enough, I met with much discouragement whenever I mentioned his name. No doubt, Philistines found it difficult to cope with his sense of mischief. Some may even have made the mistake of taking him seriously.

After his visit mandrakes began to grow in my garden. There is a legend that they scream when they are pulled up, and that the person who disturbs them will die within the year. Not wishing to bring my gardener's grey hairs with sorrow to the grave, I consulted Crowley and received the following reply.:

"Mandrakes! This is our responsibility, for they appear as the result of a magically fertile conversation. Before pulling them up, they must be baptized. Use the forms of the Catholic Church, but, instead of water, use either human blood or consecrated water stolen from a font and then used to boil a live toad. Please give my mandrake the name of Apollonius. By the way, it is useless to give a mandrake the name of a success in your line of business; e.g. for a soldier Caesar is no good, because, so to speak, the flower Caesar has already bloomed. Better take some person great in himself, but baffled by Fate. Once baptized, the mandrakes need no further attention, except that they should be bathed in blood during moonlight in the wane of the moon, and with tears during moonlight in the wax of the moon. We should cherish these mandrakes, occasionally partaking of them as sacraments, and carrying them in your pockets as talismans on great occasions."

The following extracts from other letters illustrate his whimsical ways:—

"Will you lunch with me next time you are in town? I'm free every day after Tuesday so far, but get rapidly filled up, so if you could let me know soon, I should prefer it. It would be damned awkward to have to put off the Prince of Wales. Yours snobbishly."

"I am easily recognizable by my conspicuous personal beauty. I will go to the place one day this week and make trouble if they have not got le Fromage de Monsieur de Fromage. This is one of our test questions. If you are not a brother of the A.A., you think I jest."

"You reviewed my last book, 'Konx Om Pax' so kindly that I am emboldened to send you this. Hypercritical persons have detected in its pages an unhappy tendency to latitudinarianism, solipsismal-automorphism and cold feet. I am, Your obliged victim."