City of the Beast

Aleister Crowley remains an enigma, for some a romantic, the last burning ember of revolt against Victorian conformity, for others, something more sinister, an ardent Satanist, for others again a deluded charlatan deftly deceiving the gullible.

He has long since become a literary commodity and figures in The Gift Trilogy largely because of his association with another who dabbled in the dark arts, Evan Morgan, Lord Tredegar. 

There is only one recorded account of a Crowley visit to Tredegar House, but there are rumours of other, longer visits when blood flowed in the cellars. 

I have no doubt that there are those who have sold their souls for fame, wealth and power, so it seems mighty strange that Crowley died an ailing addict in a Hastings boarding house. There is though, another way of looking at it. For the Christian ascetic or saint, material wealth means little in comparison to their communion with God. And so, it may prove with the practising Satanist, communion with the devil a reward in itself.

It’s a perspective that helped me in reading Phil Baker’s book, City of the Beast. The London of Aleister Crowley. On one level, the book is intensely depressing albeit with unexpected nuggets of gold. 

The book falls into the  psychogeography genre, detailing Crowley’s peripatetic life in London from grand hotels to every shabby bedsit that housed the great man.  It describes the restaurants and clubs he frequented and above all his sexual conquests. The man was obsessed, on the prowl night after night. It makes you wonder how much time he was able to indulge in ‘magic,’ though it helped that he was able to bring sex into it. The key was to focus on a profound need before and during ejaculation. So now you know. 

How did he attract so many women? It may have been his ‘sexual magic,’ a magnetic personality or, perhaps, his perfume: a concoction of musk and civet on a base of ambergris, which Crowley rubbed on his skin and into his eyebrows. ‘It gave him a sweetish smell and made horses whinny after him in the street.’

Some argue satanism too narrowly defines Crowley, but it’s undeniable he shared key Luciferian qualities: over-weening pride, deceit and manipulation. His most well-known dictum, ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Every man and every woman is a star. Love is the law, love under will. For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect.’

His reference to ‘love under will’ is far from wholesome or pure.

He was, for example sexually attracted to black women but showed nothing but contempt for their ethnicity, each of them listed in his diary: ‘Phyllis. The poor zebu (a type of humped cow) …quite upset when I pointed out that her chief charm was her musky nigger stench.’

He was a merciless sponger talking quite viciously about his various benefactors behind their backs. He referred to one Australian benefactor as an ‘imbecile hag’ and as the ‘Wailing Wombat of Wagga Wagga.’

He was outraged by the idea of state pensions. They discouraged ‘honest ambition,’ increased taxation, and took away from what should be spent on military defence. He wanted the death penalty to be extended to cover lesser crimes and championed the expulsion of ethnic minorities. 

Pride, an almost childish conceit, dominated his life along with food, drink and drugs.

The writer Maurice Richardson met Crowley at the French Pub in Dean Street, the great occultist smelling of ether having just drunk half a pint of the stuff. Asked what he wanted to drink, Crowley opted for a triple absinthe, followed by two more triple absinthes before setting off for a gargantuan lunch at L’Escargot. 

On another occasion, ‘After a few large vodkas (he enjoyed) lobster bisque, roast duck, and a runny Brie, washed down with several litres of Chianti followed by Cyprus brandy.

And talking about drugs, his diary extols  the virtues of heroin, comparing it to: “…thirteen masturbations, a menstruation orgy, a five-man buggery competition, sixteen rapes of assorted quadrupeds … and a pot of marmalade thrown in.”

Marmalade!

Despite a life of drugs, alcohol and every kind of excess, he achieved the quite respectable age of 72 before dying in the obscurity of a Hastings boarding house. The year December 1947, the month and year I was born – a good enough reason to reject reincarnation.

Accounts of his final words vary, which is par for the course with Crowley: 

I am perplexed.

 Satan get out. 

Sometimes I hate myself.

Whatever he thought of himself at these final moments, I suspect he may have been 'cancelled' today. Then again, maybe not.

For those interested enough to read a more sympathetic analysis of Crowley I can offer this.