Alan Burnett-Rae - Aleister Crowley: A Memoir of 666

from

Victim Press, 1971.

My knowledge of that strange man Aleister Crowley dates from 1934, continuing intermittently until I joined up in 1940. For a period of some weeks he was a tenant of mine in Welbeck Street, and I saw him almost daily, often for the bootless purpose of asking for the rent or remonstrating with him for disturbing the peace of the house. At other times he lived elsewhere. I remember visiting him in Bloomsbury, Chelsea and Wimbledon. Our relations were, on the whole, friendly.

The first occasion on which I met Crowley was in the Mayfair Hotel one Sunday afternoon late in May, or early in June 1934. A certain Dr. Alexander Cannon, sometime Head (if that be the title) of Colney Hatch Asylum was giving a lecture and a demonstration of hypnotic phenomenon in the hotel and a number of invitation cards had been distributed to various persons, many of whom were doctors, among them my father, then in practice in Harley Street. He was not particularly interested and I asked him for the invitations and went to the hotel with my mother and sister.

Cannon had recently written a book entitled The Invisible Influence which had caused a considerable stir. It concerned occult matters and had led some influential people to a conclusion not altogether favourable to Dr. Cannon, and casting doubt on his fitness to be in charge of a lunatic asylum. By some chance I had read the book and it was this that made me attend the meeting at the Mayfair. After thirty-five years it is not easy to remember exactly what was said, but I do recall that an attempt was made to "levitate" a young lady, said to be a daughter of the famous dancer Nijinski. To my disappointment, but not surprise, the experiment failed; although Cannon invited me to place my hand under her ankle and test the weight of the leg and indeed, it seemed strangely supple and light. The girl was certainly in some kind of trance. Cannon later told me, when I approached him with some questions, that the experiment would have succeeded had it been feasible to strip the girl in the main lounge of the hotel. The weight of the clothes, he said, was fatal to success. While other questions were being asked, a large man with a heavy face and what remained of grey hairs, clad in a brown tweed, knickerbocker suit which matched the colour of his face, rose and asked a question in a rather contentious voice. He was answered in kind and a rather sharp argument soon developed with Cannon. I recall that at last some of the Audience began to shout "Sit down" and, at this, I myself stood up and asked why the unknown's question should not be fairly answered. The meeting ended shortly afterwards and tea was served.

In the course of tea, while chatting with my mother and sister, I observed the man in brown tweed making his way over the lounge in our direction.

He came up and thanked me for my intervention on his behalf and made some observations, more or less uncomplimentary to Dr. Cannon. I talked to him for some minutes about the lecture and the levitation, and while so engaged I noticed my mother and sister rise and leave. They later said they could not endure the proximity of the man any longer and wondered how I could endure it either! They had never seen him before.

I believe I offered to drive Dr. Cannon back to his house. At all events he asked me to visit him at his new asylum at Bexley Heath (he had left Colney Hatch) and this invitation I accepted with some interesting results. He told me that the man in brown was the notorious Aleister Crowley, a would-be Black Magician, drug addict, author of strange books and a man of stranger reputation.

Some time later, perhaps two years, I had become the possessor of a house in Welbeck Street divided into some eight or nine flatlets. I occupied one of these and let the others to various tenants. I employed a Belgian steward, his wife, his son and a housemaid.

This brought me in a comfortable income and allowed me leisure to interest myself in various subjects which had attracted me, including the Occult. A person I got to know at this time was a West Indian negro named Rollo Ahmed, who had written a book about the negro struggle for what are now called 'human rights'. He was also interested in Magic and voodoo, and claimed to be an "adept" and I had watched him try various experiments of an inconclusive nature. One day he rang me up and said that if I had a flat to let he would bring a friend of his whom he described as "a very highly evolved personality" who would be a satisfactory tenant in every respect.

When they arrived I had no difficulty in recognising the 'highly evolved personality' as Aleister Crowley.

He was wearing the identical knickerbocker suit of two years before and that face was unforgettable. Much has been said about his teeth, which apparently he had filed into points (à la vampire), but I did not notice this detail, only that they were widely spaced, suggesting the black keys on a piano board.

I reminded him of our previous meeting, which he recalled; I reminded him also of an occasion when he had visited Oxford when I was 'up' to give a lecture on Gilles de Rais [The Banned Lecture], the fourteenth century occultist and how the proctor had refused permission for the lecture to be given, threatening to 'send down' the undergraduate sponsor if it took place. I agreed to let him have a flatlet and he moved in, agreeing to a weekly rent. Of course, I know now that I was rash. I should have obtained references; I might have known that Ahmed was no reliable guarantor of anything, or anybody, that Crowley was an undischarged bankrupt and one or two other things that a prudent man of affairs would have made it his business to find out. But I was twenty-five years of age at the time and thought more of how interesting it would be to find out more about this notorious personality—'highly evolved' or otherwise. He moved in that day.

I was out of town for a while after this and it was on my return that the steward reported to me that the new tenant was making rather a nuisance of himself by burning powerful incense. This was beyond a doubt; I could perceive it myself. Further, he was most exacting in his demands. The Belgian steward's son Adolphe (soon to change his name to Jack for political and social reasons!) was constantly being sent on errands to purchase strange food and drinks. Pigs' trotters, I remember, were one of Crowley's favourite dishes, usually ordered at impossible hours. In the matter of drink, I remember he was remarkable abstemious for a man who had the reputation of indulging in every conceivable vice. When I knew him rather better and asked him in for a drink, I offered brandy. I had refilled his glass once or twice when to my amazement he toppled off his chair and slumped to the ground as if unconscious. A woman friend of his, the middle-aged widow of a naval officer, was with us and when we had got Crowley back into his armchair she explained that he should never be given spirits. He had asthma, recurrent malaria, this, that and the other afflictions, acquired over the years, which made him over susceptible to drink. I did not make the same mistake again.

The steward also informed me that Crowley had not settled his account since he came, that his telephone calls were frequent and lengthy, and no doubt expensive and finally that strange noises in his flat were to be heard during the night. Of the latter ground of complaint I had no doubt after the steward aroused me at about two in the morning and bade me listen, shortly after my return from London. There certainly were sounds of infernal screaming, shouting and general commotion on the third floor.

"It's Mr. Crowley beating up Mrs.——" explained Verhoeven quite simply.

"Well, go up and tell him to desist. I'll give him notice in the morning."

"After you, sir," was the reply. So up I got and having reached the third floor flat whence the din proceeded, I knocked and called Crowley's name loudly, demanding admittance, Verhoeven standing by in close support.

The row stopped abruptly and after a few moments the door opened and the face of the widow appeared. Although it must have been her screams that had aroused the house, she apologetically explained that poor Aleister had had one of his recurring nightmares but that he now felt better and it would not occur again. She was obviously opposed to my entering the flat and I did not insist, but intimated that I had had enough and would see him in the morning, when I had every intention of giving him notice to leave.

The pair anticipated me and called at my flat on the ground floor before I was even dressed. They appeared perfectly amicable with each other and deeply contrite about what they assured me was an unfortunate accident. He did have nightmares, he said. He had not had one for some time now and he doubted whether he would have another for a long time to come. I accepted this explanation, although it was an obvious fabrication, and then told him that I expected to receive the rent which had not been forthcoming. There was a prolonged story about assets in America; about a trust fund; and finally, a promise to settle the account. Indeed on the next day he did settle it—in cash, and I have little doubt that it was the lady's money that he handed over. I asked him to abate the nuisance of the incense and not make such continual demands on the staff and to these requests he agreed.

As far as the asthma was concerned, I do not doubt his story. I noticed a strange-looking machine in his room which at first I took to be a dictaphone, but which he told me was a gadget which enabled him to breathe when the fit came upon him.

This machine, the brown suit, the incense burner and some books seemed to comprise his entire property. One day he took one of these books, opened it, inscribed my name therein and presented it to me. This was his Equinox of the Gods, as the gold inlaid title announced. There was some cabalistic device, also gilt inlaid, on the cover with a hexagram, some numerals and the inscription "Sigillum Sanctum fraternitatis A∴A∴". The title informed one that it was the official organ of the A∴A∴ (meaning unknown to the author) and that this was also the official organ of the O.T.O. ("Ordo Templi Orientis").

The general obscurity of the writing together with the signs and symbols, the use of Latin, Greek, Hebrew and even ancient Egyptian terminology was typical of the man's ordinary conversation which frequently provoked me to impatient protest. At other times, however, he interested me by anecdotes of his travels which had been world-wide, including notable ascents of mountains and explorings in many lands. Tales of the buried cities of Ceylon and South America, of the Russia of the Tsars and of the pre-1914 world were of real interest to me, and at these times I would enjoy his company. And then out would come some irritatingly outrageous statement such as "It was there that I materialised the Slyphs in 1906, of course!" and I would remember a pressing appointment and leave. It was inevitable that such a man should have tried Yoga and Crowley claimed to have attained "Dhyana", described by him in his book as a "tremendous spiritual experience, in which the subject and object of meditation unites with excessive violence in blinding brilliance and music of a kind to which earthly harmony affords no parallel". But the fact is that Crowley did not look like an ascetic who had by great self-discipline mastered a difficult and exhausting art or science. Although not more than sixty-one at this time, he was overweight, clumsy in his movements, asthmatic and generally unfit. Of course, it is probable that he had, as he claimed to have been, a fine athlete at one time, but as he also claimed to have been a drug addict and general bon viveur, these things presumably militated against fitness. Whenever I walked from the street with him he maintained a very sedate pace for a man who claimed to have held world speed records for walking uphill at heights over 16,000 feet. However, all that was thirty-six years before and much must have happened in the meantime.

According to his own works, and supported by his conversation, his great interests in life were a perverse sort of mysticism and Sex. As to the first, it seemed simply to consist of a cult of blasphemy in which he saw himself as a type of Anti-Christ. I recall how, whenever he passed any kind of clergyman in the street, he would always utter some kind of gibberish and make a gesture with his hand which, unlikely as it may have been, was rather like crossing his fingers. On one occasion my father the doctor, came to visit me and, on learning that Crowley lived in the house, expressed horror. It seems he had heard the story from one of his patients to the effect that Crowley and his disciples had broken into a Church in Brussels by night and celebrated a "Mass" where the altar was a naked woman on her hands and knees. I think he told me that the patient had been one of the participants in these on-goings and was now repenting his sins with a nervous breakdown. My father was almost equally indignant with me for laughing at this tale as for harbouring the man.

It became known to me that his father, Edward Crowley, was a member of the Exclusive Plymouth Brothers, but Crowley denied what everyone naturally suggested: that his present attitude was a reaction from an excessively strict religious parentage. He said his father, although a keen proselyte, never allowed his religion to "interfere with natural affection!" It was the people who brought him up after his father's death who caused his mental attitude to be concentrated in an almost pathological hatred of the Christian religion, and those who professed it. In so far as he had a religion, I suppose it was 'Crowleianity' and he was its Prophet and King under many and various titles.

The names by which he went in his time were legion. At Welbeck Street in 1936—7 letters arrived addressed to "Sir Aleister Crowley". At other times he had been Lord Boleskine, the Comte de St. Germain and other entitled gentleman, quite apart from being the Great Beast 666, Priest of the Princes, etc. He always asserted that he was of "Earth's First Blood", an aristocrat and a genius. He complained or boasted when reduced to poverty, or relative poverty, that he had never been brought up to work and was therefore now unable to. Nevertheless, he three times attempted to repair his fortunes by persuading me to back him financially. The first occasion was in December, 1936, when the abdication crisis was at its height and the King was known to be considering abandoning the throne. Crowley called on me very early one morning, and suggested that I should put up some hundreds of pounds to have discs stamped with the words, "We want our King" to be worn in button-holes. He was convinced they would sell at a substantial profit.

I declined this suggestion, but not long after he came out with another. If I would finance a trip to the U.S.A., accompanying him if I chose, and financing some legal proceedings, he could establish a rightful claim to the Headship of Primacy (whatever the title was) to A.M.O.R.C. the initials of the Rosicrucian Order. The rewards would be in the order of millions of dollars, waiting to be claimed by the rightfully entitled, and I was going to sit as his righthand when he came to glory. This suggestion, also, I felt obliged to turn down.

Another Crowleian enterprise was that we should market under his auspices, and with my money, the 'Elixir of Rejuvenation' itself. I had thrown him out by this time as an economic liability and he was living in Hasker Street, Chelsea. None the less, I kept in touch, chiefly because I was consumed with curiosity wondering what on earth he would be up to next. He would not tell me what the Elixir was, but one of his women friends did and if I had ever entertained any belief in it, it was now dissipated. But he had all the literature about it printed. It was in the form of a diary by an unnamed person, but it was obvious that the writer was Crowley himself, although he would not have admitted this as it would have been tantamount to the admission that the Great Beast 666 had recently suffered some decline in sexual potency, and this ran contrary to the very nature of things.

As he had written several books, his mind was always occupied with ideas that he might recoup his fortunes by a last supremely successful book; but he could no longer afford to publish it himself and it seemed no one else would do it now. The name of Simpkin Marshall was often on his tongue in this connection. Perhaps thirty years later he might, in a different climate of opinion, have had more luck in finding a publisher.

Elixir or no elixir, he continued to have women about him and he did not lose interest in that subject. Once he asked me to the Café Royal to meet one of his mistresses and his son. We arrived there and he introduced her [Deirdre Patricia MacAlpine] by some strange name and, also, "my son, Alistair Ataturk". I failed to see Alistair Ataturk, and Crowley added "Perhaps I should mention that Ataturk is still an inside passenger." I noticed that this was so. This seems to have been the girl who introduced herself to him during the law suit against Nina Hamnett and offered to bear him a child.

Once, before he left Welbeck Street, after I had given a party which he did not attend I went to his flat for some reason. He was quick to notice that I had a bite on the side of the neck and his eye gleamed with interest. I explained that the lady had been "one of those biting and scratching maniacs". Crowley immediately asked to be introduced at the earliest possible opportunity, and for some days or weeks he never saw me without repeating the request and quoting the words, "your biting and scratching maniac" with relish.

It was in the Café Royal, that he nearly landed himself in serious trouble. Crowley had gone in to the downstair restaurant where unaccompanied women had never been allowed. He saw some trouble going on and went to investigate. Finding the manager was trying to evict a member of the sorority who was declining to leave quietly, Crowley went up to them and said "It's quite all right, manager; this lady is with me."

"I think not, sir," was the reply, "I'm afraid we know her very well."

"Dog!" shouted Crowley and brought down upon the man's head his favourite walking stick which he told me was made from a rhinoceros's penis, stretched by weights and cured in the sun. I was not actually present at this episode but he himself advised me of it, wondering whether the Café Royal would be so parochial and obscurantist as to object to his going there again! I suggested he should let time elapse.

When it became known among my friends and acquaintances that the notorious Beast was to be seen, as it were, on application to the curator, many asked to be introduced. Not all, however. One, the top floor tenant, came to me and, with the utmost seriousness, asked me if I knew what risks I was running by having such a man in the house. I explained that the principal risk was in losing the use of a perfectly good flat without obtaining any rent from it. But he did not mean that. He was genuinely afraid of Crowley's evil influence on those who came near him and declared that he knew someone who had a friend who could testify that someone he knew of had a positive cataract of misfortunes as a result of merely knowing Crowley. He told me he could not himself remain in the house if Satan was to be his fellow-tenant. I contrived to laugh him out of this but he positively refused to meet Aleister face to face.

Others were only too pleased to drop in for a drink when they had been told that the Mage would be there. One fairly senior Civil Servant from the War Office, who had been at school with me and also with that other 'distinguished public servant' Kim Philby, was with me when Crowley rang down to ask me up for drinks, or with my friends, if I were not alone. My top floor tenant declined point blank, but the War Office man volunteered with enthusiasm, and setting his foot on the first step of the stairs, turned to us and declaimed, "It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done", and led the way up.

I often talked to Crowley alone. I remember once asking him why if, as he was the first to claim, he was a man of outstanding parts, he did not seek fame and reputation, rather than notoriety and more or less general public distrust, in the way he had done for so long.

"What is the use of most fame?" he answered. "I once thought of the Diplomatic Service as a career, but can you tell me now who was our representative at the Sublime Porte, say, eighty years ago?"

"Stratford de Redcliffe," I replied instantly, having some time before read up the Crimean War, inspired by seeing "The Lady with the Lamp" then running in London. He looked somewhat disconcerted but quickly said, "Oh well! You know what I mean. No one will remember in a few more years, will they?"

Among the women friends of Aleister Crowley, I met, whose names may be remembered more than a generation later, were Nina Hamnett and Betty May.

Nina was the model for the piece of sculpture entitled "Laughing Torso". This I believe dated from many years before and the model, when I met her, although adequate enough physically, did not suggest a Praxitelean goddess. Crowley was friendly towards her and she towards him as far as I could see, in spite of the libel suit he had brought against her and lost, following the publication of her first book.

Far otherwise with Betty May, the "Tiger Woman". She had, it seems, been one of the company assembled at the Temple of Thelema in Sicily in the early twenties and had been the fiancée of the young man whose death there caused scandalous comment and was one of the causes of Aleister's expulsion by the Italian Government, although an inquest had returned a verdict of death by natural causes. The ill-disposed, however, among who Betty was numbered, ascribed his end to Crowley. The reasons given were always different. The most bizarre tat I heard being that the youth contracted some fatal disease after drinking the blood of a sacrificed cat. Judging from the evidence of other writers this is not impossible. The Tiger Woman at all events appeared to be wholly convinced of the Crowleian guilt and swore to me that he was the murderer of her young friend. She was clearly drunk at the time and the man who introduced me (I think it was at the Fitzroy Tavern) warned me not to let her know that Crowley was living in my house or she might create a scene or come round with a view to assaulting or denouncing him. As it was, she was that night in a most convivial mood, assuring me confidentially that she would one day kill Crowley and, further, that she was herself a witch! I remember that, although by then her hair was turning grey, she had the remains of attractiveness if not beauty. There were one or two other ladies Crowley knew, to one of which he was giving a ceremonial bath when he introduced us, and another of hideous appearance whom I recognised as the original of an oil painting by the Master himself, which hung on his wall. He was a painter of no small ability but his work always had a macabre quality. If he might have said, "Evil, by thou my God", he might equally have pronounced that "Truth was Ugliness and Ugliness Truth" as far as art was concerned.

His verse-making or poetry, too, was by no means despicable. He had a great love of words and particularly of names from ancient languages. He always renamed his women followers with titles as "The Scarlet Woman" or Astroel [sic] even as he was Frater Perdurabo himself. I once heard some young fellow recite his "Hymn to Pan" most effectively. Indeed, I have since been told that this hymn or ode was finally recited at Crowley's funeral in the chapel of the Crematorium at Brighton. The introduction to the Equinox of the Gods is in the form of a rhymed colloquy between an Adept and an Acolyte.

"Master! While yet the glory clings

Declare this mystery magical."

Marsyas, the Adept, who seems to be Crowley, has no hesitation in accepting the invitation throughout the remainder of the book, in which he declares a new 'Aeon' of which he was Lord and Prophet. I have mentioned that he was unusually temperate in his use of alcohol and that even a slight excess of spirits would cause him to 'pass out'. The same could not be said of his curries! I was invited to have one of these, prepared by himself, one day just before the war. At the first mouthful I thought I had burned my tongue with caustic acid and reached for the water and thereafter took water with every successive spoonful. Crowley, however, shovelled an enormous plateful away with record speed, fortifying it as he went with chilies and other spices, the sweat pouring down his face, as if he were in a Turkish bath. When he had eaten copiously, he helped himself to more and offered me another plateful but I had had enough, although normally I am fond of curry. He explained that he had learnt about real curry in India, Burma and Ceylon, that its object was to produce sweating, and hence a cooling process, also designed to stimulate the system generally in hot climates. He pointed out that this was only one of the many cooling processes he was familiar with in these lands and that one of the great points of hospitality was to have one's partes viriles lifted up by a maiden attendant, and fanned from below with an exquisitely painted fan. He gave me to infer that in the circles in which he moved and had his being in such countries this was most normal practice. He assured me I would soon get to enjoy such things, as well as curry, once I got out there, to say nothing of the delights of opium, hashish and heroin.

All this was shortly before the war. I was then considering what I should do about some kind of military service and I mentioned this to him and added that I might find myself in curry-eating lands sooner than I might otherwise have expected. "That is no way to go out East," he snorted. "What is this new military obsession that is seizing on everybody? Level of intelligence-military. I am surprised at you!"

I said something to the effect that having mismanaged affairs to the point than another world war was imminent, the only thing left to do was to apply ourselves to the winning of it, should it take place. I reminded him of the fact the he had often complained of dictators and dictatorship. Now, if ever, was the occasion for dethroning them. After all, hadn't Mussolini thrown him out of Italy?

He agreed with most of this, and particularly with the idea that successive Governments of Great Britain had botched matters. "And yet I have warned them time and again,' he added. There floated before me a picture of Aleister Crowley, the Beast, presiding over an attentive Prime Minister and Cabinet somewhere, if not in Downing Street, seeking guidance and enlightenment on the forthcoming convulsions of the Aeon.

A little later when I was actually in the Armed Forces and war was declared, I received a letter from Aleister enclosing a patriotic poem beginning, I remember, with the line:

"Resistless as the gales that sweep".

The suggestion once again was that I should finance the publication of this and it stood to reason that vast profits would accrue to us both, and great stimulus to the war effort. In the letter he also suggested that we should correspond during the war. I suppose I replied to this, but I believe I never afterwards saw or wrote to him again. The next time I heard of him was to read of his death in 1947.

I understand that his last words were "I am perplexed."

So am I.