The Unknown God: W. T. Smith and the Thelemites (Oxford Studies in Western Esotericism) 0197744516, 9780197744512

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The Unknown God

OX F O R D S T U D I E S I N W E S T E R N E S O T E R IC I SM Series Editor Henrik Bogdan, University of Gothenburg Editorial Board Jean-​Pierre Brach, École Pratique des Hautes Études Carole Cusack, University of Sydney Christine Ferguson, University of Stirling Olav Hammer, University of Southern Denmark Wouter Hanegraaff, University of Amsterdam Ronald Hutton, University of Bristol Orion Klautau, Tohoku University Jeffrey Kripal, Rice University Michael Stausberg, University of Bergen Egil Asprem, University of Stockholm Gordan Djurdjevic, independent scholar Peter Forshaw, University of Amsterdam Jesper Aa. Petersen, Norwegian University of Science and Technology CHILDREN OF LUCIFER The Origins of Modern Religious Satanism Ruben van Luijk

GURDJIEFF Mysticism, Contemplation, and Exercises Joseph Azize

SATANIC FEMINISM Lucifer as the Liberator of Woman in Nineteenth-​Century Culture Per Faxneld

INITIATING THE MILLENNIUM The Avignon Society and Illuminism in Europe Robert Collis and Natalie Bayer

THE SIBLYS OF LONDON A Family on the Esoteric Fringes of Georgian England Susan Sommers

IMAGINING THE EAST The Early Philosophical Society Tim Rudbog and Erik Sand

WHAT IS IT LIKE TO BE DEAD? Near-​Death Experiences, Christianity, and the Occult Jens Schlieter AMONG THE SCIENTOLOGISTS History, Theology, and Praxis Donald A. Westbrook RECYCLED LIVES A History of Reincarnation in Blavatsky’s Theosophy Julie Chajes THE ELOQUENT BLOOD The Goddess Babalon and the Construction of Femininities in Western Esotericism Manon Hedenborg White

MYSTIFYING KABBALAH Academic Scholarship, National Theology, and New Age Spirituality Boaz Huss SPIRITUAL ALCHEMY From the Age of Jacob Boehme to Mary Anne Atwood, 1600–​1910 Mike A. Zuber THE SUBTLE BODY A Genealogy Simon Cox OCCULT IMPERIUM Arturo Reghini, Roman Traditionalism, and the Anti-​Modern Reaction in Fascist Italy Christian Giudice

VESTIGES OF A PHILOSOPHY Matter, the Meta-​Spiritual, and the Forgotten Bergson John Ó Maoilearca

LIKE A TREE UNIVERSALLY SPREAD Sri Sabhapati Swami and Śivarājayoga Keith Edward Cantú

PROPHECY, MADNESS, AND HOLY WAR IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE A Life of Ludwig Friedrich Gifftheil Leigh T. I. Penman

THE UNKNOWN GOD W. T. Smith and the Thelemites Martin P. Starr

HÉLÈNE SMITH Occultism and the Discovery of the Unconscious Claudie Massicotte

Wilfred Talbot Smith (1875–1957)

The Unknown God W. T. Smith and the Thelemites M A RT I N P. S TA R R

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2024 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Starr, Martin P., 1959– author. Title: The unknown God : W. T. Smith and the Thelemites / Martin P. Starr. Description: Second edition. | New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2024] | Series: Oxford studies in western esotericism | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023057362 (print) | LCCN 2023057363 (ebook) | ISBN 9780197744512 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197744529 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Smith, Wilfred Talbot, 1885-1957. | Ordo Templi Orientis. | Occultism—United States. Classification: LCC BF1997. S65 S73 2024 (print) | LCC BF1997. S65 (ebook) | DDC 130.92 [B]—dc23/eng/20231229 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023057362 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023057363 DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197744512.001.0001 Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America

Contents Foreword  Prologue 

ix xv

1. The Skeleton in the Cupboard 

1

2. First Steps 

6

3. British Columbia Lodge No. 1 

15

4. Isis, Therion, and Hilarion 

28

5. A Master of the Temple 

43

6. In the Red Room of Rose Croix 

52

7. Nemo Abest 

74

8. The Detroit Working 

82

9. Viator in Regnis Arboris 

90

10. New Orders for the Ages 

101

11. Psychomagia 

120

12. The End of the Beginning 

137

13. Jane, Kath, and Leota 

148

14. Salve Regina 

166

15. Rosicrucian Amity 

186

16. Chants before Battle 

211

17. Ten-​o-​Three 

234

18. Apotheosis 

250

19. Hoc Id Est 

272

viii Contents

Epilogue 

295

Appendices 

301





A. W. T. Smith Diary  B. The Trail of OTO  C. Crowley and H. Spencer Lewis  D. OTO Degree Work, 1938–​1943  E. Manifesto of December 7, 1941  F. 132–​666/​1943  G. Liber CXXXII 

Notes  Works Cited  Index 

301 309 311 317 319 321 335

343 393 405

Foreword It is with great pleasure and enthusiasm that I introduce Martin P. Starr’s seminal work, The Unknown God: W. T. Smith and the Thelemites. Originally published to critical acclaim in 2003, Starr’s comprehensive exploration of the life and legacy of Wilfred Talbot Smith (1885–​1953) remains an indispensable contribution to the study of 20th-​century esoteric traditions and the development of modern occultism. Starr’s dedication to meticulous research and his keen scholarly acumen shine through in every page of this volume. By delving into the life and enigmatic personality of W. T. Smith, a figure often overshadowed by the prominent presence of British magus Aleister Crowley (1875–​1947), Starr brings to light an essential chapter in the history of Thelema. The depth and breadth of his research are evident, as he unearths previously obscure documents, correspondences, and firsthand accounts to reconstruct a vivid portrait of this lesser-​known yet influential figure. Moreover, Starr’s dedication to presenting an unbiased and objective account of historical events and personalities sets The Unknown God apart from mere hagiography and sensationalism that often clouds studies of esoteric subjects. In The Unknown God, Starr expertly traces the evolution of Thelema, highlighting the intricate interplay between W. T. Smith and Crowley, as well as their respective contributions to the Thelemic tradition. Through an engaging narrative, readers gain insight into the philosophical, spiritual, and magical underpinnings of Thelema, while appreciating the complexities of the personal relationships and ideological conflicts that shaped its development. Born on June 9, 1885, in Tonbridge (Kent, England), Smith relocated to Canada in 1907, ostensibly driven by the desire to disassociate himself from the societal stigma stemming from his upbringing as an illegitimate offspring within the confines of a Victorian household. His arrival on Canadian soil marked a transformative juncture in Smith’s life trajectory. In due course, he exhibited a renunciation of the ethical and religious precepts in which he had been reared. Instead, he veered toward the exploration of yoga, Eastern philosophy, and the occult. It was through a fellow colleague at the British

x Foreword Columbia Electric Railway Limited, Charles Stansfeld Jones (1886–​1950), that Smith’s foray into the writings of Aleister Crowley transpired in 1912. This encounter significantly steered the course of his destiny. Subsequent to this pivotal year, Smith’s life became inexorably interwoven with that of Crowley and the doctrinal principles encapsulated within Thelema. Smith eventually joined both of Crowley’s initiatory societies: he became a member of the OTO in 1915 (British Columbia Lodge No. 1, the first OTO Lodge to be opened in North America) and the A∴A∴ in the following year. While a brief encounter transpired between Smith and Crowley in 1915, it was Jones who truly assumed the role of Smith’s spiritual mentor, exerting his influence well into the 1920s. Jones, referred to as Crowley’s “Magical Child,” was the head of the OTO in North America until a chain of events led to a fallout between him and Crowley, followed by Jones’s departure from the Thelemic movement. As Jones embarked on a quest for spiritual progress within other enigmatic orders, such as the Universal Brotherhood and the Psychomagian Society, it fell on Smith to act as Crowley’s representative in the United States and to rekindle the activities of the OTO, which were in decline. In the year 1935, Crowley conferred upon Smith the authorization to conduct OTO work, and shortly thereafter the first initiations were performed at Agape Lodge No. 1, situated in Hollywood, California. As Smith engaged in consistent and direct correspondence with Crowley, a realization began to crystallize that Crowley did not align with the flawless leadership ideal that Smith had initially envisioned. On the contrary, Smith’s personal diaries and the exchanges of letters between him and Crowley serve as documented testament to the burgeoning frustration experienced by Smith. This frustration stemmed from the revelation that Crowley was utilizing the OTO as a conduit for his personal financial sustenance. Moreover, the correspondences also lay bare the paradoxical behavior exhibited by Crowley, a pattern that frequently eroded Smith's influence and control over the members of Agape Lodge. Crowley, though aging, endeavored to assert his dominion over Agape Lodge, which at that juncture remained the sole operational OTO lodge worldwide. He pursued this dominion through the medium of written communiqués and telegrams, seemingly deploying conflict as a tool of governance. The escalating conflicts between Crowley and Smith reached a climax in 1943, precipitating Crowley’s decision to eliminate his apparent rival through an ostensibly eccentric stratagem—​one of the most baffling

Foreword  xi schemes he ever devised. This stratagem culminated in the creation of a concise text, Liber CXXXII (presently published for the first time by Starr), wherein astrological assertions were posited to substantiate the claim that Smith “is not a man at all; he is some Incarnation of some God.” This proclamation mandated Smith’s withdrawal from the broader world to ascertain the nature of the deity he purportedly embodied. This mystical seclusion was to be executed in complete isolation, and stringent injunctions were placed upon the members of Agape Lodge to abstain from any form of interaction with their former Lodge Master. For Smith, it became unequivocally apparent that Crowley’s intentions revolved around his own disinterest in Smith, and the text Liber CXXXII functioned as a veiled mechanism to extricate Smith from the Thelemic community in California. In effect, Smith found himself excommunicated. His endeavors to re-​establish contact with the individual to whom he had dedicated over three decades of his life were met either with disdainful disregard or silence. Upon learning of Crowley’s demise on December 1, 1947, Smith inscribed in his diary: “The Sun went out.” Although Smith subsequently re-​immersed himself in the Thelemic movement in California, his reintegration was met with skepticism by Karl J. Germer (1885–​1962), Crowley’s successor as head of both the OTO and the A∴A∴. Following Smith’s death on April 27, 1957, a Thelemic ceremony was, nevertheless, conducted to commemorate the occasion, merely a day later. *** The first edition of The Unknown God was published in 2003 by Teitan Press, a small private publishing house that specialized in beautifully produced and carefully edited works of Aleister Crowley. It was through these publications that Martin P. Starr established himself as a leading specialist in the life and work of the British magus, and his introductions to Snowdrops from a Curate’s Garden (1986), The Scrutinies of Simon Iff (1987), Golden Twigs (1988), Konx Om Pax (1990), The Scented Garden of Abdullah the Satirist of Shiraz (1991), The Winged Beetle (1992), and Little Poems in Prose (1995) mark a new phase in the publishing history of Crowley’s works.1 Compared to earlier editors of Crowley’s works, such as Israel Regardie (1907–​1985),2 John Symonds (1914–​2006), and Kenneth Grant (1924–​2011),3 Starr’s editorial approach is decidedly more scholarly and analytical.4 At the time of the publication of The Unknown God, the academic study of Aleister Crowley and Thelema was still very much in its infancy and only

xii Foreword a handful of articles had appeared in peer-​reviewed journals, with the first academic article to be published on Crowley having appeared in The Drama Review in 1978, J. F. Brown’s “Aleister Crowley’s ‘Rites of Eleusis.’ ”5 Other notable early scholarly studies include Alex Owen’s groundbreaking 1997 article, “The Sorcerer and His Apprentice: Aleister Crowley and the Magical Exploration of Edwardian Subjectivity,” which can be considered the first serious attempt to analyze Crowley’s use of magic,6 and an article by Richard B. Spence published in 2000 that appeared in the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, in which Spence argued that Crowley had been a spy for the British government during his stay in the United States during World War I.7 There was thus surprisingly little scholarly literature on Crowley and Thelema when The Unknown God appeared in 2003, but from then on we can witness a slow but steady increase in scholarly works devoted to Crowley. In 2012 several of the articles that had been published up to that point were collected with newly commissioned texts in the anthology Aleister Crowley and Western Esotericism, edited by Henrik Bogdan and Martin P. Starr for Oxford University Press.8 This marked the first publication on Crowley and Thelema to be published by a major academic publisher, which has been followed by important monographs such as Marco Pasi’s Aleister Crowley and the Temptation of Politics (2014) and Manon Hedenborg White’s The Eloquent Blood: The Goddess Babalon and the Construction of Femininities in Western Esotericism (2020).9 The academic study of Crowley and Thelema can, somewhat roughly, be divided into four interconnected areas of research. First, there are several scholars, such as Marco Pasi and Egil Asprem, who have analyzed various aspects of Crowley’s particular type of occultism, especially the practice of magic and other key aspects of the religious-​philosophical system Thelema of which Crowley saw himself as the prophet. In particular, Crowley’s appeal to science as a legitimating strategy in formulating his understanding of magic(k), and the use of psychology to explain supernatural or occult experiences, have been the subject of extensive research.10 Second, there is a growing interest in questions relating to sexuality, gender, and authority, with scholars such as Hugh Urban and Manon Hedenborg White having written extensively on these aspects in Crowley and Thelema. The exploration of sexuality was in many ways central to Crowley’s occultism, and he not only integrated it with his practice of magic as a means of energizing the will, but also considered sexual freedom as fundamental for the exploration of the self and the discovery of the True Will or essence of each human

Foreword  xiii being.11 A third area of research includes studies that either seek to analyze the global and entangled nature of Crowley’s writings, such as influences from Hindu and Buddhist traditions,12 or the reception history of Crowley in later New Religious Movements, for instance in Gerald Gardner’s (1884–​1964) Witchcraft movement or within L. Ron Hubbard’s (1911–​ 1986) Church of Scientology.13 Finally, a fourth major area of research is from the perspective of literature studies,14 in which the relationship between Crowley and the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa (1888–​1935) stands out as the topic which has received the most detailed scholarly attention.15 While The Unknown God offers important perspectives and in many ways can be seen as indispensable source on all these four areas of research, it is set apart by the insights it offers on lived esotericism, or esotericism as lived experience. In Starr’s book we gain detailed insight into how first-​generation Thelemites, both as individuals and as a community, practiced and experienced their religious beliefs and traditions in everyday life. The academic field of lived religion, which has influenced the emergent study of lived esotericism, aims to go beyond formal doctrines, texts, and institutional structures to explore how religious beliefs are integrated into people’s daily routines, personal narratives, social interactions, and cultural contexts. Scholars in this field thus aim to provide a more nuanced understanding of religious phenomena by exploring the dynamic and diverse ways in which people experience and practice their faith in their daily lives—​themes that are explored at great length in The Unknown God. Through the extensive use of diaries and letters, Martin P. Starr reveals how early members of the Thelemic movement in North America interpreted the religious tenets of Thelema, what it meant to integrate the practice of magic and mystical techniques like yoga in their daily life, what spiritual freedom meant to them and how sexually could be used to achieve this goal, and perhaps most importantly, how the members actually viewed their prophet, the Great Beast 666. As we approach the new edition of this enduring classic, it is essential to acknowledge the lasting impact of Martin P. Starr’s research on the study of Aleister Crowley and Thelema. His work has inspired countless scholars, researchers, and practitioners to delve deeper into the rich tapestry of Thelemic history, further illuminating our understanding of Thelema and Western esotericism. In conclusion, this new edition of The Unknown God: W. T. Smith and the Thelemites is a welcomed event for both seasoned scholars and those

xiv Foreword newly venturing into the realms of occultism. Martin P. Starr’s lasting contribution to the field stands as a testament to the enduring power of scholarship in illuminating the lesser-​known facets of history and fostering a deeper appreciation for the diverse spiritual currents that continue to shape our world. Henrik Bogdan

Prologue Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars’ hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription: to the unknown god. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands. . . . For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring. —​Acts 17:22–​23, 28

This book is the first attempt at telling the story of a man who some wished to believe was a god incarnate. A few extraordinary individuals, now more famous or infamous than the truly humble Wilfred Talbot Smith (1885–​1957) could ever have been, crossed his path and left their mark on his career as a practitioner of the occult. Smith’s life has hitherto remained little more than a footnote, and that usually replete with errors, in the accounts of a small but influential twentieth-​century esoteric movement called “Thelema.” Otherwise, he lived and died an unknown. Outside of the circle of contemporary believers and an even more diminutive group of scholars, who would have reason to recall his common name today? To those familiar with the literature of Western Esotericism, the paucity of bona fide historical treatments of Thelema is apparent. Over the passage of time, new religious movements tend to have their origins either wrapped in mystery by and for their adherents or buried in libels by their critics and competitors. It takes an effort to understand on their own terms people as deviant from the religious mainstream as were the contemporary followers of Aleister Crowley (1875–​1947). To add to this interpretive puzzle, occultists are prone to approach history like a personal myth. Proponents are prone to seek legitimation from the past for their novel approaches. I have endeavored to record the facts of this fissiparous movement. My job has been made much easier by the wealth of the documentary source material. The participants

xvi Prologue in the extended circle of Crowley habitually retained their correspondence, kept diaries, and generally treated the material evidence of their involvement in Thelema with a care typically bestowed on items of historical or religious significance. Owing to their fraternal obligations of frankness, many of them circulated copies of their letters, especially when they contained criticisms of others. This process may not have drawn them closer, but it unquestionably enhanced the record of their religious community. Smith and the Thelemites left behind no monuments, no buildings, no visible organizations, nor any publications beyond the ephemeral. I postulate that one reason for their careful preservation of the letters was that, without the evidence of the written word, they had nothing to show for their efforts. Most of Smith’s contemporaries died without any reasonable expectation of a future for their life’s work and beliefs. The key figure in the preservation and transmission of the documentary legacy of Smith’s life was his widow and my friend, Helen Parsons Smith (1910–​2003). During the decades following Smith’s death in 1957, she lovingly preserved and augmented his archives and library against a day when they might be used again. She had the foresight to seek out the contemporary followers of Crowley and offer to retain their papers, many of which would not have been otherwise saved from the sieve of time. Previous researchers have been limited by the partial source materials available in public institutions; Helen opened her heart and her home to me, entrusting me with the story of her life and bequeathing to me Smith’s extensive papers, as well as her own. As the sole proprietor of Thelema Publications, she committed her retirement time and resources to the task of publication of Crowley’s works in imaginative editions. It was my admiration for her efforts which first brought us into contact in 1977, when I bought the first of many books from her. Her bibliophilia made each item a treasure to be savored. She didn’t sell books as much as put them up for adoption in approved homes. Wilfred Talbot Smith promised to reincarnate and help Helen spread the Word of Thelema in a new human vehicle. Personal beliefs in metempsychosis notwithstanding, from the beginning of our relationship in 1985, Helen Parsons Smith was a constant source of encouragement and information. True to her magical name of “Grimaud,” her life was one of selfless service to the men who embodied her ideals. I never had a greater friend. This book is dedicated to her eternal memory. The two decades since the first edition of this book was published have given me ample time for reflection on its contents and presentation. It was

Prologue  xvii the first book I authored, and like many such efforts, the subject I chose was close to my own life. My research sprung from my involvement in the prior millennium with descendants of the two Western esoteric new religious movements of the “magical family” type,1 the same ones that consumed the life of Wilfred Talbot Smith. The drive I found to establish the history of these groups came from a nagging sense that the belief systems of the participants in these 20th-​century esoteric orders were often imperfectly rooted in what I found to be a verifiable and well-​documented past. The key events took place in relatively recent times, yet the participants I encountered lacked critical interest in the abundant documentary evidence of the movements connected to their founder and prophet, Aleister Crowley. True, they had diligently collected the papers they believed were sufficient to prove their mundane and spiritual claims, but these documents were read and quoted selectively, with contradictory evidence being ignored or reinterpreted to suit the polemics of the moment. Their real concern was supporting the emic history of their collectivity and its leadership. I did not grant proper respect to the fact that their history was their functioning reality. The kind of documentary history that I pursued was a peripheral interest at best to the participants; I wrongly thought it would change minds as it did my own. Authority in the occult hierarchy was their central concern from which all others flowed. Their disagreements over the property and leadership of the OTO led to legal actions in several countries. The net result was an increased balkanization of adherents of Crowley’s occultism, especially those committed members of the derivations of the oath-​bound esoteric orders. It was a battle for the divine king of the hill, and there could be only one supreme ruler of each mons abiegnus. The divergences between their internal self-​generated history (intermixed with perceived spiritual realities) and facts that would be accepted in a court of law were incapable of being resolved to the satisfaction of all parties prior to the publication of the first edition of The Unknown God in 2003. As my research progressed, I saw myself as an outsider to the subject. The material and theological conflicts among the contemporary participants were endless and increasingly meaningless to me as a person; I did not share their beliefs in Crowley’s exalted status or see value in his revelations. I sought to be a chronicler of the past. A side effect of document production in the legal cases was that the information that came to light in the process continued to heighten my interest in research. My goal in writing the book

xviii Prologue was to provide a comprehensive history of the major Crowley-​based orders, focusing on North America, through reconstructing the social network of its longest-​lasting member. I knew that Smith had engaged relatively few contemporary participants and there was not an extensive or continuous organizational history to recount. The OTO lodges outside of North America were evanescent micro-​communities with modest levels of ascertainable activity. In addition to the problems of size, there is also the issue of secrecy, sometimes imposed by oaths within the organization, and at other times a survival mechanism in the face of significant societal and legal opprobrium. There was no reward for being open about one’s involvement in occultism, let alone one mixed with free love. The activities of Smith and his associates in esotericism were overwhelmingly inward-​facing to the group. Public attention was rarely positive, and a bad reputation preceded the mention of Crowley and the OTO. A history of the several OTO lodges in North America in Smith’s lifetime would have superficial resemblances to a typical local masonic lodge history, and then only in the first period of OTO activity in British Columbia. Agape Lodge of Pasadena and Hollywood was not a secret society, but it did not lead with the OTO. The public activities in Hollywood took the forms of a secular party or a play or a religious ceremony. The essential story was personal and private. At one level, the book project became a kind of family history, and it served as background for my dialogue with Helen Parsons Smith. Although she had been the keeper of Smith’s papers since his death, only select parts of them had she read, with her attention centered on the texts of the OTO degree rituals as they started to be conferred again in the 1970s. Helen had a deep love for genealogy, which led to her collecting records relative to Smith and making contact with human sources for his biography in the United States and England. She tried to trace Smith’s family in England, with middling success, a difficult enough task when your surname is assumed and a common one at that. The story of Smith’s birth and childhood was complicated but sufficiently clear, and I was able to find enough to put the biographical data he preserved into context. The people in Smith’s life were not just names on paper to her; her rich memory and accurate recall of details made the characters come alive for me. As Helen said to me countless times, “ask me questions when I can answer them.” Helen’s recollections, combined with the records, made it possible to start to sketch a much fuller account of the development of Crowley’s occult orders which was the mainstay of Smith and Helen’s existence, where their lifestyle was generically termed “the Order.”

Prologue  xix I had not anticipated that anyone discussed at length in my book other than the “little old ladies from Pasadena,” Helen Smith and her OTO sister Phyllis Seckler, would be alive at the time of publication. I had not even considered trying to find Smith’s first son, Noel Talbot Smith (1917–​2014). Much to my surprise, I received a clue that he was still living, which proved to be true. In Smith’s papers, the trail of his son had long grown cold, save for a lock of his blonde hair and an address in Glendale, California. I found Noel’s telephone number and called him cold; he was receptive and open about his father, whom he recalled only meeting once; they spoke through a car window and his father never got out of the car. Noel’s mother, Katherine Talbot Smith (1898–​2000), had lived a long and happy life and never left her longtime residence in Glendale until a few years before her death. I sent him a copy of my book, and my follow-​up call ended very quickly. He did not wish to speak further to me. Noel eventually spoke with his half-​brother, Kwen Lanval Smith (1943–​2017), and told the latter that he did not read my book, but he reported that his wife Maxine had done so and enjoyed it. I respected Noel’s desire not to know more about his largely unknown father. Noel had led a conventional life with decades of involvement in the United Methodist Church; it was at odds with his father’s faith in Thelema. And what of the reaction of the professed Thelemites to my book? The only one whose reaction would have concerned me was Phyllis Seckler (1917–​2004). I was a guest in her house twice, and she spoke to me with unvarnished frankness which I much appreciated. I also felt like I could engage Phyllis more deeply in the subject matter of occultism than I could with Helen. Phyllis had the benefit of receiving more formal education than did Helen, who freely admitted to me that the intellectual side of Thelema escaped her in this incarnation. Phyllis demonstrated an ongoing interest in the history of the OTO. In her privately circulated journal, In the Continuum, she had published a biography of her teacher, Jane Wolfe (1875–​1958), which Phyllis had composed primarily from documentary sources she had inherited. Without any sense of shame or regret, she told me that she had sex with all the men in Agape Lodge as her path to becoming its priestess, after the pattern of Smith’s mistress Regina Kahl (1891–​1945). Phyllis put me under few restrictions in the information she imparted to me. However, I chose not to share my work with her prior to publication. She was the only one who I thought might have had grounds for alleging invasion of privacy. It was with some trepidation that I opened her letter acknowledging receipt of my book, which she said caused her a great deal of trouble: she could do

xx Prologue nothing until she finished it. She closed by thanking me for being so fair to her and her friends. The English occultist Kenneth Grant (1924–​2011) never met Smith but knew Crowley and after the latter’s death had a brief exchange of letters regarding the OTO with Smith. I had enjoyed many years of correspondence with Grant, along with a few in-​person interviews where he recounted to me Crowley’s indignation at Smith, which he found hard to comprehend. Grant consumed historical data for non-​historical purposes and wove it into his surrealist narratives of occultism in his Typhonian Trilogy. In person he was no fabulist and told me that he knew the OTO existed entirely on paper in England at the time of Crowley’s death. Grant led the effort to establish the OTO anew in England in the 1950s with the sanction of Crowley’s successor, Karl Germer. Within a few years, Grant faced an intractable conflict with Germer, who withdrew the former’s authority for OTO and expelled Grant from the order. Grant persisted for a few years after his expulsion and then dispersed his lodge. Grant later took a central position in the continuity of the Crowleyan teachings with his co-​editorship of The Confessions of Aleister Crowley (1969), in which Grant affirms his belief that “The Book of the Law contains the key to the principal occult mysteries of the present age.”2 I posit this publication as a defining event in the revival of interest in Crowley and Thelema, along with the first publication of the Thoth Tarot deck of Crowley and the reprinting of Crowley’s accompanying work, The Book of Thoth, in the same year. The worldview of Crowley presented in these works makes an argument for the necessary and sempiternal existence of a spiritual hierarchy in which the outer and mundane world should be governed under the system of the OTO and the inner is ruled by the A.˙.A.˙., all operating under the Law of Thelema. For this worldview to be true, these orders must exist. Grant met the demand to revive the OTO by laying the groundwork for his collective, now denominated the Typhonian Order. A parallel development occurred in the United States, with Seckler and her husband Grady McMurtry (whose OTO contact information was included in the “Caliph card” included with the Thoth Tarot deck) who began to confer in California traditional OTO ceremonial initiations according to Crowley’s degree rituals. In time and with a sufficient body of initiated members, their work led to the chartering of an OTO Grand Lodge under McMurtry’s leadership. Grant had expressed a wish to me that their efforts, however disparate, might be seen like the double-​headed eagle symbol of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry.

Prologue  xxi In the case of Wilfred Smith, Crowley raised questions of identity dependent on his doctrines of reincarnation. In his response to my book, Grant was intrigued by reading that Crowley speculated that Regina Kahl would have taken an oath to return and continue the Great Work. This had been recently brought to the fore by a correspondent who appeared to be the reincarnation of a member of Grant’s New Isis Lodge. As Helen had speculated that I could have been the fulfillment of Smith’s promise to reincarnate and help her out, in our meetings Grant had pondered the notion that I was a reincarnation of the former Crowley disciple and preeminent collector of his literary remains, Gerald Yorke (1901–​1983). He demurred as our life spans overlapped—​and like Smith, I was a correspondent of Yorke’s. Grant saw Yorke’s life in London as a ceaseless round of society events which never left time for the latter to write anything of substance. Grant had worried this was my fate as well and that I would never finish my book project. I was glad to allay his concern. No matter how I chose to envision my role, I was seen as part of the Smith biography by his contemporaries. Rev. Michael Bertiaux significantly aided my research by imparting a thorough grounding in the history and teachings of the Theosophical movement. Our extensive dialogue focused my attention on the scope of Crowley’s efforts to differentiate and instantiate his charismatic authority in a milieu where Theosophy was the most accessible form of esotericism. In the period in which this book was composed, I had a constant stream of stimulating communication with Kenneth Anger (1927–​2023), who became familiar with the California Thelemites after the death of Jack Parsons but never met Wilfred Smith. He told me how he had worked through decades-​long depression all the while creating films whose production were often stymied for years. He understood the process: as he wrote me, the solar worker must labor while the sun is out. My writing commenced following the receipt of his gift to me, a statue of Ganesha, the breaker of obstacles. In a project that stretched over more than a decade of my life, I have accumulated a substantial list of people deserving thanks. In particular I would like to acknowledge the assistance of the following individuals: Maria Babwahsingh; Hymenaeus Beta; Lee M. Boe; Dr. Henrik Bogdan; Marjorie E. Cameron; Rolando Cervantes; Alexis V. Connolly; Arturo de Hoyos; Dr. Omar Delacruz; C. Gary Ford; R. A. Gilbert; Kenneth Grant; John Hamill; Harry Hay; William E. Heidrick; Ridgely Hunt; Anthony W. Iannotti; Prof. Alan Iliff; David G. Kairis; Philip Kaplan; Frederick J. Kayser; Francis King; Steve King; Dr. Derek Lamar; Russell A. Leadabrand; Robert J. Lund;

xxii Prologue Grady L. McMurtry; Lucas Mellinger; Dr. Mark V. Mellinger; Marguerite Montenegro; Marcelo Ramos Motta; Paul J. Neugebauer; Thaynne Patterson; Bjarne Pedersen; the Rev. Dr. Bertil Persson; Keith Richmond; Marilyn Rinn; C. F. and Barbara Russell; Prof. James A. Santucci; Phyllis E. Seckler; Kwen Lanval Smith; Noel Talbot Smith; Philip Smith; Michael Staley; Prof. Bradford Verter; Dr. Lisa Whatley; Robert Williams; Oliver Marlow Wilkinson; and Gerald J. Yorke. Any errors that remain are solely my responsibility. Thanks are also due to the following institutions and their staffs: the George Arents Research Library, Syracuse University; Bedales School; Kent County Council, Centre for Kentish Studies; Grande Loge de France; Kent Family History Society; the Lilly Library, Indiana University; the Newberry Library; the Pennsylvania State University Libraries; the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin; the Joseph Regenstein Library, University of Chicago; the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum and Library, Inc.; the Societas Rosicruciana in America; the Library of the High Council of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia; the Library and Archives of the Supreme Council, 33˚, Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, Southern Jurisdiction, United States of America; the Theurgical Martinist Order; Tonbridge School; the Library and Museum of the United Grand Lodge of England; the Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study, University of London. The front jacket art, “The Dweller on the Threshold” (1927), is by Arild Rosenkrantz (1870–​1964), a personal disciple of Rudolf Steiner. I found it tipped into the front of a copy of the Blue Equinox formerly owned by John P. Kowal of the Universal Brotherhood (UB), a long-​forgotten secret society whose demands for a time engaged Wilfred T. Smith. Its presence in the book seemed to be monitory, as if it were placed there to serve as a warning to those who might again take up the labors of the Crowleyan orders. The image is appropriate to the spiritual struggle depicted in this book. With his defiance from birth of the “region of Prescription and Custom,” and guided by Crowley’s occultism, Smith sought to confront his malevolent shadow self—​ the “Dweller” in Edward Bulwer Lytton’s Zanoni (1842)—​and to transform his negative karma through aspiration to the Higher Self.

Margaret Cox, “Little Grannie.” WTS Papers.

Harold Cox. WTS Papers.

Marl Field House, Tonbridge, Kent, England. WTS Papers.

Katherine Talbot. WTS Papers.

Wilfred T. Smith, dressed for OTO meeting, North Vancouver. WTS Papers.

Katherine Talbot. WTS Papers.

The unhappy family: Nem, Noel, Smith, and Kath. WTS Papers.

Smith and Noel. WTS Papers.

Noel and Kath. WTS Papers.

Aleister Crowley, Cefalù, Sicily, ca. 1921. WTS Papers.

Charles Stansfeld Jones. WTS Papers.

Disciples at Cefalù, Sicily, ca. 1921: (front row) Hans Hirsig, Jane Wolfe, Howard Shumway; (back row) Frank Bennett, C. F. Russell, Ninette Shumway. WTS Papers.

Leota Schneider. WTS Papers.

Regina Kahl. Portrait by Jesse Tarbox Beals. WTS Papers.

Max Schneider. WTS Papers.

Georgia Haitz. WTS Papers.

Winona Boulevard, Hollywood, 1936: (front row) Georgia Haitz, Oliver Jacobi Regina Kahl, Wilfred T. Smith, Jane Wolfe; (back row): Frederic Schwankovsky, Ethel von Tempski Ball, Rev. Wayne Walker. Portrait by Paul Rose Freeman. WTS Papers.

The Gnostic Catholic Mass, Hollywood, 1933: Wilfred T. Smith and Regina Kahl. WTS Papers.

The Church of Thelema, Hollywood, 1938: Wilfred T. Smith, Priest; Regina Kahl, Priestess; Paul H. Seckler, Jr., Deacon. WTS Papers.

Regina Kahl. WTS Papers.

Frederic Mellinger. WTS Papers.

Joseph D. Miller. WTS Papers.

Phyllis Seckler. WTS Papers.

Wilfred T. Smith.

Helen Parsons.

John W. Parsons.

Sara Northrup. Pasadena, 1942. WTS Papers.

Roy E. Leffingwell. WTS Papers.

Louis T. Culling. WTS Papers.

Ray G. Burlingame. WTS Papers.

Karl J. Germer. WTS Papers.

Wilfred T. Smith, Malibu, August 1954. WTS Papers.

Kwen’s first day at the beach, August 24, 1944. WTS Papers.

Kwen and Wilfred T. Smith, Hollywood, ca. 1952. WTS Papers.

“Hod Id Est,” Malibu, July 4, 1956: Helen Parsons (far left), Kwen (shirtless), Wilfred T. Smith, Jane Wolfe (far right), and neighbors. WTS Papers.

1 The Skeleton in the Cupboard Beginnings are always hard. Leah Hirsig (1883–​1975), Aleister Crowley’s mistress of the longest endurance and the mother of one of his children who died in infancy, once remarked to him that he attached too much importance to birth. In the case of Wilfred Smith, his birth was the product of a concealed “upstairs-​downstairs” relationship. He born the weight of the stigma of illegitimacy in Victorian England, which resulted in his being raised as if he were an orphan. First, the facts as presented: the man known as Wilfred Smith was born on June 9, 1885, in Tonbridge, Kent, England. According to his natal chart, the judgment of which would forever alter his relations with Crowley, the time was 12:40 a.m. Crowley pronounced that Smith’s horoscope foretold such a level of genius that it was “completely absurd and nonsensical: indeed ‘a giant’s robe upon a dwarfish thief.’ ” And that was the sum of what Smith knew, other than the name of his mother, whom he listed in various official documents as “Ann Wenham.” The rest of the pertinent details remained hidden from him for years, as he was the family “skeleton in the cupboard,”1 and there is no evidence that Smith himself ever knew his own proper birth name. No birth certificate survived among the papers of his well-​documented life. When attempting to recollect his childhood, Smith wrote that he had no consciousness of ever seeing his mother, who was said to have been a nurse or a governess in Marl Field House, Tonbridge, Kent, the seat of the Cox family. Its patriarch, Homersham Cox, was a county court judge in Wales and later in the Mid-​Kent District. Judge Cox had five daughters, Agatha, Margaret, Ethel, Hilda, and Dora, and four sons, Homersham, Harold, Oswald, and Cyril, all living in the great house. The sons, like their father, were day boys at Tonbridge School,2 which for a year Crowley also attended. The nine children of Judge Cox were known to Smith as his aunts and uncles. Crowley, who made a practice of bullying his disciples, claiming it as an essential part of his regimen of personal training, found frequent occasion

The Unknown God. Martin P. Starr, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2024. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197744512.003.0001

2  The Unknown God to denounce what he termed Smith’s “low breeding.” Witness the following lampoon: Little of fame as little of stature, Common his name as common his nature, A low-​class Cockney turned Colonial, You should see him togged for ceremonial! It’s an awkward job to give commands When you don’t know what to do with your hands. The more he boasts of rank and authority The more he feels his inferiority. It’s hard to get out of the life-​long habit Of feeling oneself a mingy rabbit. And megalomania won’t make up For the yellow hide of a mongrel pup.3

The truth is otherwise, at least in respect of his father’s family. All his uncles had achievements to their name. Homersham Cox, M.A. (1857–​1918), was an author and professor of mathematics at Allahabad University. Harold Cox, M.A. (1859–​1936), an economist and journalist who served as a liberal member of the British Parliament in 1906, earned a place in the Dictionary of National Biography, a honor first extended to Crowley in 1993.4 Oswald Cox (1868–​1957) was admitted a solicitor in 1890 and was awarded the O.B.E. (Order of the British Empire) in 1918 for service in World War I. Cyril Cox (1877–​1945) became a chartered accountant, served in the British Navy for many years, and wrote a series of books on naval subjects. Nor was fame only found among Smith’s uncles. Several of his aunts married well. Ethel Cox married Captain Alfred Carpenter, brother of the sexologist Edward Carpenter. Margaret Cox went on to marry Sidney Olivier, later the first Lord Olivier, K.C.M.G. (Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George), the first Labor Peer, founding member of the Fabian Society, twice the governor of Jamaica and uncle to Laurence Olivier, the second Lord Olivier. In every way, Smith’s paternal side outshone Crowley’s, but true to his restrained manner when confronted with abuse, Smith never bothered responding to Crowley’s taunts that he had “no birth, no breeding.” Who was his mother? A search of the birth records at Somerset House, under the date and place of birth given and the name “Wilfred Smith,” produced nothing. Given the commonness of his surname, genealogists

The Skeleton in the Cupboard  3 had cautioned his widow Helen Parsons Smith5 that finding his birth record would be nearly impossible if any part of his birth data was incorrect. Contemporary British law required that all births be registered, locally in the county of birth and then transmitted to the General Register Office at Somerset House in London. It was a certainty that some record existed if one could determine the particulars. The clue to his correct birth name came from a county vaccination record,6 which shows that on June 9, 1885, a Frank Wenham was born at Vale Street, Tonbridge, Kent. The corresponding birth record7 was then located, which gave his mother’s name as Minnie Wenham (1868–​1897),8 domestic servant, with the father not named. Her sister Mrs. Maria Longley was present at the birth. So here we have part of the mystery: as Smith eventually knew, his birth was illegitimate, and his paternity was concealed. Under the law of England, his mother could have named any man as the father, but instead she chose to keep silence. But the child appears never to have been known as “Frank Wenham.” Smith was told he was given the name “Wilfred Smith” by Homersham’s wife Margaret Lucy Smith (1833–​ 1919), his paternal grandmother. And if Margaret was his grandmother, who was his father? It was not until Smith was more than 20 years old that he learned the truth: Margaret’s third son Oswald, age 16, impregnated a maid in the house. The maid gave birth and was then sent away, with the offspring being covertly “adopted” into the prominent family. But the presence of an unwanted child would prove to be a lasting embarrassment to this proper Victorian household. Uncle Harold wanted to adopt the child, as he had none of his own, but he was forbidden by his wife Helen. When his Aunt Ethel noted that the boy looked too much like other Cox children, Smith was sent away as little more than an infant to live with various relatives and foster parents, some of whom physically abused him. At the age of four he was old enough to be shipped off to a boarding school, more like a juvenile prison, run by a Miss Bartlett, where he lived in a state of privation, humiliation, and physical torture until the age of 10. Although his grandmother visited him periodically, he always received a prior prompting on what to say, with Miss Bartlett present to prevent him from telling the truth about his mistreatment. His grandmother consistently left with the impression that Smith was supremely happy. Finally, his aunt Ethel was sent word by a concerned German schoolteacher that her nephew was being severely mistreated, and she had him removed at once. In a new school Smith was taught the alphabet for the first time and learned how to read at age 12, his

4  The Unknown God first book being an edition of The Carved Cartoon: A Picture of the Past by Austin Clare. With such a late start on basic education, it is hardly a wonder that Smith’s spelling and grammar (usually corrected by others if the letters were typed) left much room for Crowley to criticize. Grandfather Homersham Cox died on March 10, 1897, and Smith was subsequently welcomed back into the family house by his beloved grandmother. Once within the safety of her care, Smith broke down and confessed to her all the horrors of his 10 years of exile from Marl Field House. His “Little Grannie,” as he fondly called her, tried to make up for lost time, and she took him and his Uncle Cyril for a year’s sojourn in Switzerland. Upon their return to England, Grandmother Cox enrolled young Wilfred in Bedales School. First opened in January 1893 in the Parish of Lindfield, near Haywards Heath, Sussex, then relocated in September 1900 to the Parish of Steep, near Petersfield, Hampshire, it was the most progressive public school of its day in England. It was a nondenominational school lacking a chapel, and it found favor with the Fabians. Smith entered in September 1899, the year after the school first admitted girls, and he left in April 1901, which marks the end of his formal education.9 A school picture for July 1900, in which he is believed to be present, shows a happy group of young boys and girls. Although he seldom remarked on his time at Bedales, it appears to have been a wholly positive experience; he pursued bookbinding as his “chief voluntary pursuit,” which hobby continued throughout his life. Smith preserved photographs and mementos of his school days and became a supporting member of the Old Bedalians’ Club. More than 50 years later, Smith could still fondly recount to another Gloucestershire man the pleasure of walking for 12 miles every Sunday to Gloucester Cathedral with Geoffrey H. Lupton, major, the eldest son of a chemical magnate, who refused his father’s millions and lived off the land in a simple thatched cottage at Oakridge Lynch.10 Both Lupton and Smith followed their Bedalian days with apprenticeships to cabinetmakers. Smith served his apprenticeship with Arthur W. Simpson, Kendal, Westmoreland. He availed himself of these skills in later years in building beautiful and functional furniture for both domestic and ceremonial purposes, including properties for the Gnostic Catholic Mass and the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) degrees. Smith left Simpson’s employ in July 1906,11 and it was about this time that he learned that the man he called “Uncle Oswald” was his father. The revelation must have come as a severe shock. One telling omission is that among Smith’s family papers there are no photographs of Oswald Cox, nor

The Skeleton in the Cupboard  5 any correspondence with him. Who revealed the family secret to Smith is unknown, but he knew that the cruel Miss Bartlett had been informed of the same by his aunt Amy Cox, wife of his uncle Homersham, and that she had used this as a club over the head of Judge Cox, Smith’s grandfather. At any event, it is believed that his “Little Grannie” induced him to leave England and start a new life in Canada, a common solution for English social misfits. He sailed for Halifax, Nova Scotia, landing on January 24, 1907. He was never to return to England, and he seldom looked back. The Old Bedalians lost track of him. When I wrote Bedales for information on Smith’s schooling, I learned that, having never heard from him again, they presumed he had died prior to 1929. If he had stayed in England and served in the military, he well could have perished in World War I, as did so many of his male classmates.

2 First Steps Canada was Smith’s first place of refuge from the sadness of his life in England. For a man of 21 whose experience had been rather limited, he seemed to learn quickly how to make his own way in the world. Promptly on his arrival in Canada in January 1907 he found work on a farm in Saskatchewan; he stayed there nine months. In time he moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, where he was employed from July 1909 through June 1911 in the warehouse of Ramsay Brothers Limited, a manufacturing confectioner.1 He left for a nine months’ stint in a logging camp, then returned to Vancouver and began work in April 1912 for the British Columbia Electric Railway Limited (BCER).2 He was employed in the Light and Billing Department as an accounting clerk, the type of position he was to hold for the rest of his working life. As he had turned his back on the country of his birth, so too was he motivated to shed its moral and religious baggage. Smith had acquired a distinct loathing for the mores of the Christian country in which he had been born, and to his mind he and his family had been victims of the hypocrisy of Victorian morals, which made a scandal of his paternity. This youthful revolt against the religion of his parents led him to the study of yoga, Eastern philosophy, and the occult generally. Smith recalled reading three books on yoga by the prolific author William Walker Atkinson, publicly known by his literary name of “Yogi Ramacharaka.”3 With all the enthusiasm and certainty of a novice, he happened to be expounding on occult subjects with a coworker at BCER, Charles Stansfeld Jones,4 who unexpectedly revealed himself to be a student of the occult—​and of one Aleister Crowley. This seemingly chance meeting set the course for the rest of Smith’s life. According to Smith’s widow, Helen Parsons Smith, the rendezvous took place walking down a rail track. There is an entry in Jones’s diary for September 17, 1912, which may record their initial encounter: “Have noticed coming on ferry a man +​woman. She is carrying a book on Yoga Philosophy by Ramacharaka, the man is a weak-​ looking individual, the woman reminds me of Rhoma.5 I take an interest in her somehow—​I don’t know why.” If, as is likely, the man in question is Smith, the woman may be Smith’s common-​law wife. She was the English-​born The Unknown God. Martin P. Starr, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2024. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197744512.003.0002

First Steps  7 Emily Sophia Jackson (1862–​1953), widow of an English Master Mason, Ernest Talbot (1858–​1904). She was familiarly known as “Nem.” Jones thought to enlighten Smith by lending him a recently published book on yoga, Book Four, Part I (n.d.). Like the Yogi Ramacharaka books, its authorship was pseudonymous; it was attributed to two mystical teachers, whose identities would become clear in time: Frater Perdurabo (Crowley) and Soror Virakam (known to the profane world as Mary Desti, mother of the future Hollywood director Preston Sturges). His first reading of Crowley left Smith cold. By his own account he was accustomed to reading “sentimental trash,” and Book Four, with its rational approach to mysticism, went far afield of the typical occult book of the day. More significantly, the book also offered the chance for gratis personal instruction from Frater Perdurabo and the Brothers of the A∴A∴, “an organization whose heads have obtained by personal experience to the summit of this science” of meditation (yoga) and its parallel discipline of “Magick.” To enroll as a Student of the Mysteries of A∴A∴ or to obtain the list of necessary books, one merely had to write to Frater Perdurabo’s London publishers, Wieland and Company. The aims and methods of the A∴A∴ were made plain in an advertisement for its official organ, The Equinox: They [the Brothers of the A∴A∴ consider that the time is now come for a more general diffusion of Their own knowledge, and have founded The Equinox as one means to that end. They wish to discover suitable pupils for special training. Such pupils must be prepared to work on strictly scientific lines. Prejudice and dogma must be laid aside. The Brothers of the A∴A∴ do not ask for faith: They insist on each pupil making his own experiments critically, and that he should never believe or assert that which he does not himself certainly know. The Brothers do not attach Themselves to any external system, though They are in essential harmony with all living systems, by reason that Truth, even when it appears to be buried beneath the greatest errors, is the life of all that lives. As a registered subscriber to The Equinox, you will have an opportunity, should you desire it, of being examined by the A∴A∴ as to your fitness for instruction and assistance in your search for Truth.6

Jones himself had swiftly sought to enroll in this program of study, having become a Probationer 0˚=​ 0□ in December 1909,7 taking the motto

8  The Unknown God Unus in Omnibus (Latin, “one in everything”). According to the surviving numbered copies of the Oath of a Probationer, he was the twentieth person to join the fledgling order.8 Jones had emigrated from Britain to Canada in May 1910 and settled in Vancouver, British Columbia. Jones had been received into the order by a Neophyte (1˚ =​10□), Frater Per Ardua, known in the world of men as Captain J. F. C. Fuller (1878–​1966), military officer, author, and illustrator for The Equinox. For a time, Fuller served as a gifted amanuensis to Crowley. For a man with a military career, Crowley’s unrebutted reputation as a homosexual—​his Golden Dawn colleague, George Cecil Jones, had sued a newspaper for libel over the issue and Crowley did not testify on his behalf—​cast a shadow which Fuller could not abide. Fuller broke with Crowley and withdrew from the A∴A∴ prior to Jones’s advancement to Neophyte in February 1913. This left Jones in direct contact with Fuller’s occult superior, Crowley, whom he had previously met in London at the offices of The Equinox. Since the time of his joining, a preliminary grade of Student of the Mysteries was added to prepare candidates intellectually for the work of the order—​too many people joined wholly ignorant of the basic books, and their questions were time-​ consuming. As a Neophyte in good standing, Jones was qualified to receive Students and Probationers. Smith’s initial exposure to Crowley’s philosophy only whetted his appetite for more. On strict promise to return the book the following day, Jones lent Smith volume 1, number 1 (1909) of The Equinox, the premier issue of Crowley’s semi-​annual occult journal, described aptly as a “completely new adventure in the history of Mankind.” Certainly nothing like its editorial mix had ever been seen before. Smith stayed up late into the night and read nearly all of it, close to 400 pages of poetry and prose intermingled with instruction in the basics of ceremonial magic, most of which would have been obscure in the extreme to anyone outside the small circle of initiates of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the fons et origo of Crowley’s form of Western Esotericism.9 What most attracted Smith’s attention was one of the “word pictures” in the first installment of Crowley’s serialized spiritual biography, “The Temple of Solomon the King,” written by Fuller, a militant anti-​Christian who came to Crowley’s teachings through an advertisement for his Collected Works in publications of the Rationalist Press Association. Fuller shared Crowley’s attitude toward Christianity, indicting it as “historically false, morally infamous, politically contemptible and socially pestilential.”10 The section in

First Steps  9 question is “The Miser” and the target is the smug, well-​oiled evangelical Christian preacher of their youth: Listen: “Have you got religion? . . . Are you saved? . . . Do you love Jesus?” . . . “Brother, God can save you . . . Jesus is the sinner’s friend. . . . Rest your head on Jesus . . . dear, dear Jesus!” Curse till thunder shake the stars! curse till blasphemy is cursed from the face of heaven! curse till the hissing name of Jesus, which writhes like a snake in a snare, is driven from the kingdom of faith!11

One cannot underestimate the degree of alienation from contemporary morals and religion posed by Crowley’s writings, and for some, such was their appeal. They gave intellectual strength and vigor to the process of shedding one’s burdensome past with the hopes of an illuminated future free from the constraints of the Victorianism of their upbringing. Crowley was a revolutionary, armed with words. His radical ideas strongly appealed to Smith, whose disgust with the rules of “polite society” only grew with time. The appeal was so strong that it did not take long for Smith to enlist himself in the cause. It was a shot in the dark. As Smith later reflected on his initial steps, his youth and his lack of education made it impossible for him to judge these works on their merits. He was driven by an inner compulsion to take up Crowley’s teachings, a decision he would never gainsay. Smith answered the call for Students of the Mysteries of the A∴A∴ published in Book Four, Part I and wrote on October 17, 1913, to Wieland & Company to be properly enrolled as such. He enclosed the sum of six guineas (an archaic denomination much favored by Crowley), which entitled him to copies of the necessary books for Student: The Equinox; 777 (1909); the Works of Aleister Crowley (1905–​1907); Konx Om Pax: Essays in Light (1907); The Book of Lies (1913); and The Book of Goetia of Solomon the King (1904). These titles had been published and were largely authored by Crowley.12 Smith’s housemate and fellow Aspirant Hubert John Lawrence (d. 1979) ordered the balance of the required books not authored by Crowley: Swâmi Vivekânanda’s Râja Yoga; the Shiva Sanhita; Tao Teh King; the Spiritual Guide of Miguel de Molinos; and Transcendental Magic, the A. E. Waite translation of Éliphas Lévi’s Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie. Lawrence also made a deposit on Crowley’s “forthcoming” Book Four, Part III, of which the publisher expected copies in a month or two and promised to dispatch a copy immediately.13 It was a considerable course of reading, designed, in Crowley’s phrase,

10  The Unknown God to strengthen the fit and to eliminate the unfit. Crowley qua guru had quickly perceived that more people were willing to join an order than were willing to do the hard labor it required for mastery. In addition to the value in exposure to a wide base of esoteric thought, the stiff reading requirements of the Student grade did a fair job of screening out the idle and the merely curious. Smith’s steadfastness and determination in the face of his limited education soon demonstrated he was neither a wastrel nor a dilettante. In this he was helped by his mentor Jones: “Have occupied a fair amount of time in giving what instruction I can on occult matters to those who have requested information. [W. T.] S[mith]. and [Hubert John] L[awrence]. have become sufficiently interested to apply for Studentship, and W[hite] has at last written and asked re Probationership.”14 One of the essential disciplines of the A∴A∴ was the keeping of a diary of spiritual practices, typically referred to as a “magical record.” Although Smith was not yet a Probationer, he began his diary on March 14, 1914. Like a good bookkeeper, he neatly ruled off columns to track his activities, labeled “Date,” “Work” (the hours spent on his mundane job), “Diet,” “Exercise,” “Events,” “Exercises” (the type of spiritual practice), “Time,” and “Results.” The “Exercise” column has a cryptic remark that “numbers in this column refer to page 43 of —​.” Turning to page 43 of Book Four, Part I, we find the following passage: The only difficult question is that of continence, which is complicated by many considerations, such as that of energy; but everybody’s mind is hopelessly muddled on this subject, which some people confuse with erotology, and others with sociology. There will be no clear thinking on this matter until it is understood as being solely a branch of athletics.

In “whiter words,” Smith thought it useful to keep an accounting of his sexual activities, as did Crowley himself in his post-​1914 diaries. This he does faithfully for the first few months of his diary, then lapses and later admits that he had “not kept count no doubt was a little ashamed of the frequency” (April 29, 1914). His early practices were simple forms of yoga asana in which he endeavored to hold a given posture, combined with dharana (visualization) and meditations on breath. The object in all of these was to still the body and the mind. His initial attempts were met with typical problems of beginners on this Path: Smith experienced tingling, involuntary muscle movements,

First Steps  11 and ceaseless wandering of his mind. He made a point of making a daily diary entry and practicing almost every day, whether he felt like working or not. He had a room set aside in his and Nem’s North Vancouver house, where he was visited by Jones and his wife Ruby.15 His occult exercises were as constant as his carnal ones; Jones pronounced the resulting atmosphere in his home temple to be beautiful. Amid his work on the transcendent and the eternal, Smith had to attend to his earthly responsibilities. He noted in his diary on April 11, 1914: “7 hours train journey to Seattle to get married ‘What’ realy [sic] married 9 month ago. This trip to please the crowd.” There was no legal marriage. Neither British Columbia nor Washington State vital records hold proof of a marriage to Nem. The issue of his marital status would be the subject of further dissimulation when Smith conveyed his North Vancouver real estate to Nem in 1920 in the name of Mrs. Emily Sophia Talbot-​Smith. Just as there is no proof of a marriage to Nem in 1914, there is no evidence of a subsequent divorce. He proceeded to compound his problems. Smith swore he was married and that his wife’s name was “Katherine” in his 1924 United States Naturalization Service declaration of intention. This lie ultimately would prove a bar to Smith’s naturalization as a U.S. citizen. He gave his correct marital status as single in his application for a marriage license in 1927 to Nem’s daughter Kath, but by that time there was no undoing the prior false sworn statement. One lasting consequence of his presuming to take Nem as his wife was that Smith assumed her prior married name of Talbot as his middle name, to help distinguish himself from the numerous other “W. Smith” entries in the Vancouver telephone directory. The happy couple honeymooned for a weekend in the Richmond Hotel, Seattle, but even this event did not prevent Smith from recording more practices in addition to “exercise.” The new couple returned to Vancouver on April 13, full of hope and promise for the future. His diary entries following their Seattle trip repeatedly mention his great happiness with Nem. He saw her as his twin soul, who was as ardent about the spiritual quest as he was. She read the Student books and seemed to share in his development, even though they began to argue regularly, often about her faith in Christian Science. But they quickly grew to perceive a realization of the sacredness of sex; as Smith wrote, “one feels a desire for something so much more than the corporeal act, beyond the sense sensation” (May 24, 1914). It would seem that their close reading of The Equinox, in particular Crowley’s essay on the magical powers of wine, women, and dancing,

12  The Unknown God “Energized Enthusiasm,” was beginning to have real effects in their lives. They were apt pupils for the development of the Crowleyan philosophy of life which found its application in the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO). But the next step for Smith was an intellectual task. It was now time for him to take the Student examination based on the extensive reading he was supposed to have performed in the prior months. The paper set by Crowley would have presented a challenge to anyone, and Smith quite correctly felt himself to be severely limited intellectually given his deficient childhood education prior to Bedales. But he was not so cowed as to give up before he started. Smith began working on the following list of questions in May 1914 and labored over them until February 1916. To give the reader a distinct notion of what was involved, here is Smith’s Student examination in full:



1. Write down the principal correspondences of the signs Leo and Aquarius, the planet Jupiter and the Sephira Tiphareth. 2. Make a study of all the multiples of the number 17 below 1000, and endeavor to trace a connection between them. 3. Make a study of the various methods recommended by the A∴A∴ and endeavour to classify them under as few heads as possible. 4. Give an interpretation of Tannhauser, Adonis and Sir Palamedes the Saracen in terms of the Qabalah.16 5. Write an essay on the mystical meaning of the Vesica Pisces, the Right-​ Angled Triangle and the Hyperbola. 6. Compare the mystical methods of Molinos and LaoTse. 7. Give some account of the Hindu idea of the parts of the Body and the Soul. 8. Compare the Wands described by Eliphas Lévi, Abramelin, the Author of the Goetia and Frater Perdurabo, stating which you would prefer, and why. 9. Design a Pantacle to synthesize the number 666. 10. Write out a Ritual complete with Talismans, Plan of Temple, etc., for producing a thunderstorm. 11. Discuss the differences between Hinduism and Buddhism with regard to Atma, stating to which doctrine you incline, and why. 12. Give either (a) a full and careful comment of any 5 consecutive chapters in the “Book of Lies”, or (b) a commentary and criticism on the “Psychology of Hashish” or The Training of the Mind, or “The Soldier and the Hunchback.”17

First Steps  13 Note:—​The Student may consult his works of reference in answering this paper. He should remember that a full and satisfactory reply would entitle him—​so far as intellectual attainment is concerned—​to the Grade of Exempt Adept, so that he should not imagine that too much is expected of him.18

After being set such a task, it is little wonder that Smith had doubts about his own worthiness. In an effort to compensate, for the rest of 1914 Smith read nothing but the books on the A∴A∴ Student reading list. He confessed to his diary on June 7, 1914, that he “cant ever see my self a member of the A∴A∴ The[y]‌want a man with a brain like I don’t know what.” But he persisted to the best of his ability, writing and rewriting answers three and four times until he was satisfied with his responses nearly two years later. Meanwhile his yoga practices continued on a regular schedule. He added to his repertoire various methods of “nose drinking,” which involve drawing a volume of water through the nostrils and expelling through the mouth, or vice versa. Smith also began to experiment with mantra yoga, starting with an Egyptian phrase taken from the “Stélé of Revealing” described in Book Four, Part I. Dejectedly, Smith noted that “I don’t think there is any religious feeling in my make up” (July 5, 1914). He tried again two days later, this time in a group mantra in the woods in company with Jones and his student Howard E. White, who both achieved a spiritual result, while Smith felt nothing—​he maintained that he had not a “lump of reverence” in his being. Despite all his sense of failure and emptiness, Smith’s spiritual senses were gradually unfolding. Parallel to the interests of his mentor Jones, Smith began to investigate the structure of the Tree of Life. Although he felt profoundly ignorant of the kabbalah, Smith’s mechanical sense hit on a simple method of drawing the Tree of Life using five generating circles, later published by Frater Achad in The Anatomy of the Body of God (1925) and still taught today in at least one Crowley-​influenced occult school. He described the technique in his diary (July 8, 1914) thus: On a perpendicular line draw 5 circles of the same size. The point at which the first cuts the line being the centre of the 2nd circle +​so on. The centres of 1, 2, 3 +​5 being the sephiroth Malkuth, Yesod, Tiphereth, +​Kether respectively +​the six points where circles 2, 3, 4 +​5 cut one another give the other 6 sephiroth.

14  The Unknown God Smith patiently plodded his way through the summer of 1914, working almost every day on his various practices. As the summer began to give way to fall, a visitor appeared whose advent changed Smith’s life profoundly and forever: Nem’s daughter, Katherine Madeline Victoria Talbot (1898–​2000), usually referred to as “Kath.” She arrived on September 10, 1914, and Smith recorded his first impression of her as a “nice little thing.” The following day Smith, Nem, and Kath went to look at a lot in North Vancouver where Smith planned to build a house for his family. Smith had purchased the lot in 1911 for $1,500 with a loan from his Grandmother Cox. The architect was none other than Howard E. White. The house was completed in a month’s time, and on October 22, 1914, the then-​happy trio moved to 138–​13th Street East, North Vancouver. Smith took the north end of the attic, laid a floor and converted it into a Temple. It was a precursor of the Temple in the unfinished attic that Smith erected some two decades later at 1746 Winona Boulevard in Hollywood for the celebration of the Gnostic Catholic Mass. But this was a private place for the individual practices of magic and yoga taught in the Outer College of the A∴A∴. The fraternal activities of the OTO would take place elsewhere, and soon.

3 British Columbia Lodge No. 1 There is a break in Smith’s record between November 16, 1914, and January 14, 1915, followed by another hiatus in writing through February 24, 1915. In the interim, the seeds of an enterprise which was destined to envelop his life were being laid in British Columbia: the social, religious, and fraternal body known as the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), the Order of the Temple of the Orient, founded by an enthusiastic promoter of masonic rites, Theodor Reuss,2 and transmuted by Aleister Crowley into a vehicle for his proposed feudalistic reconstruction of society under his ultimate direction. As it is central to the course of Smith’s life and work, an understanding of the origins and development of the OTO is essential. Its roots are in Freemasonry, mixed with ritual sexual practices derived from a variety of sources. The masonic origins of the OTO lie in a charter for a German Sovereign Sanctuary of the “Antient & Primitive Rite of Freemasonry,” a masonic body which conferred the degrees of the Scottish Rite as well as the Rites of Memphis and of Misraim. The charter was issued on September 24, 1902, by the Grand Hierophant 97˚ of the Antient & Primitive Rite, John Yarker (1833–​1913)1 of Manchester, England, to Theodor Reuss (1855–​1923)2 and two colleagues. The Grand Hierophant’s regular masonic career in England was checkered. Yarker had been expelled from the Ancient and Accepted Rite in 1870; he spent the rest of his life in opposition to the latter’s regularity of origin. Yarker in turn brought the Antient & Primitive Rite to Britain in 1872. Despite its impressive name and claims of origin, Yarker’s Antient & Primitive Rite was viewed by the recognized Scottish Rite authority in England, the Supreme Council 33˚ of the Ancient and Accepted Rite for England and Wales, as an importation of the unrecognized American “Cerneau Rite”3 which had merged into the recognized Scottish Rite Supreme Councils after the close of the Civil War. The Cerneau bodies of the Scottish Rite had all but disappeared from the United States as independent and unrecognized organizations by 1902.

The Unknown God. Martin P. Starr, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2024. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197744512.003.0003

16  The Unknown God By statute, no women were admitted to the Antient & Primitive Rite, a limitation for the aims Reuss had in mind. In the welter of high-​grade fraternal bodies in Germany, the launch of the Antient & Primitive Rite was abortive, just as it had proved to be in England. Out of the ruins of Reuss’s plans for a German Sovereign Sanctuary of the Antient & Primitive Rite and his Berlin College of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, which was declared extinct on July 11, 1907,4 grew the dreams for a new order which was to admit men and women to Freemasonry on an equal basis, as a preparation for the sexual mysteries of the OTO. To state this openly would have been suicidal. Reuss cloaked his aims, using a sort of “twilight language,” comprehensible to his intended audience of freethinkers, that would not alert the outer and profane world of his actual plans. The predominant and numerically largest esoteric group then active was the Theosophical Society (TS). Reuss was careful to wrap his fledgling order in terms familiar to sympathizers of the Theosophical movement. Reuss himself claims to have been acquainted with Madame Blavatsky and that he joined the TS in 1885; he served as vice president of the first national convention of the Theosophical Society in Europe (Germany) in August 1896.5 Borrowing a phrase from the American Theosophist William Q. Judge’s speech to the 1893 World Parliament of Religions in Chicago, “we insist that Universal Brotherhood is a fact in nature,”6 Reuss established as Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution for his proposed society: “The O.T.O. declares that Brotherhood of all things created is a Fact in Nature.”7 The principal purpose of the OTO was to teach Brotherhood, casting the intent of the OTO in a similar light to the first object of the TS, which was “to form a nucleus of the Universal Brotherhood of Humanity, without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste, or color.” The subsidiary aims of the OTO were not unlike the second and third objects of the TS, which were “to encourage the study of Comparative Religion, Philosophy, and Science” and “to investigate unexplained laws of Nature and the powers latent in Man.” Reuss added the plan of diffusing the teachings of the OTO through schools and homes, called “profess houses,” devoted to this purpose, an ideal Smith would eventually make a reality: (a) to spread the knowledge of Hermetic Science, and to initiate its members in the Secret Doctrine of Hermetic Science; (b) to establish and administer schools, lodges, etc., where Hermetic Science is taught; (c) to build,

British Columbia Lodge No. 1  17 establish, found, manage and administer Homes, Colonies, Settlements, etc., where initiated members may live according to the tenets of O.T.O.8

No mention of Freemasonry was initially made, nor of sex. The phrase “Secret Doctrine” pointed straight to Blavatsky, author of The Secret Doctrine (1888), while “Hermetic Science” would have called to mind the esoteric Christianity of Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland, whose new gospel was proclaimed in The Perfect Way; or the Finding of Christ (1882). Kingsford’s work formed a bridge to the Eastern traditions represented by the TS, set comfortably in a predominant framework of Western mystery traditions.9 The name “Oriental Templars” suggested this marriage of East and West, which found its fruition in the “Gnostic” teachings of the central degrees of OTO (VII˚–​IX˚). The link to Crowley would come through his “Rosicrucian” connection. Crowley, for a time, followed the leadership of Samuel Liddell Mathers, a former member of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, in his claim to headship of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn after it broke into factions after 1900. Mathers was the sole author of its Rosicrucian-​themed Second Order, Ordo Rosae Rubeae et Aureae Crucis. Crowley announced in The Equinox the publication of the Second Order ritual, which appeared in the March 1910 issue (Vol. I, No. 3). Although it was rumored that Mathers had sold Crowley his copyrights in the ritual, the former sued Crowley to restrain publication, claiming he was the “sole authentic Chief of the Rosicrucian Order.” Mathers’s defeat by Crowley and the attendant publicity resulted in the latter being approached by innumerable “sole authentic Chiefs of the Rosicrucian Order.” One of the more persistent of these was Theodor Reuss, Frater Superior and Outer Head (OHO) in mundo of the Order of Oriental Templars. When Reuss first came to call on Crowley in the spring of 1910, he offered Crowley the VII˚ of the OTO, the equivalent degree to the 33˚ of the Scottish Rite which Crowley already held, having been coroneted in 1900 by an unrecognized Mexican Supreme Council.10 Crowley’s interest in Freemasonry had dwindled; he thought it “either vain pretence, tomfoolery, an excuse for drunken rowdiness, or a sinister association for political intrigues and commercial pirates.”11 Reuss convinced Crowley that Freemasonry concealed profound magical secrets unknown to the majority of its members. Reuss is the likely conduit between Crowley and John Yarker, who sent a review copy of his life’s work, The Arcane Schools (1909), to Crowley. His review

18  The Unknown God is pregnant with the assumptions of the “Esoteric School of Freemasonry”12 and a precursor of what was to come: He [Yarker] has abundantly proved his main point, the true antiquity of some Masonic system. It is a parallel to Frazer’s tracing the history of the Slain God. But why is there no life in any of our Slain God rituals? It is for us to restore them by the Word and the Grip. For us, who have the inner knowledge, inherited or won, it remains to restore the true rites of Attis, Adonis, Osiris, of Set, Serapis, Mithras and Abel.13

Yarker recognized his Mexican 33˚ and issued Crowley a patent,14 dated November 29, 1910, for an honorary 33˚ of the unrecognized “Cerneau Rite,” for whose legitimacy Yarker had argued in print for decades. Yarker conferred on Crowley the equivalent honorary degrees in related Rites he claimed to control in England, the 95˚ of the Egyptian Rite of Memphis and the 90˚ of the Oriental Rite of Misraim. Reuss again visited Crowley in the spring of 1912. He accused Crowley of publishing the “central secret” of the IX˚ of the OTO—​involving the magical use of sex—​and attempted to obligate him to secrecy. Crowley replied that he knew no such secret, whereupon Reuss pointed out a passage in one of Crowley’s books—​allegedly The Book of Lies (1913), although its imprint date is a year later than this incident—​which unveiled this mystery. Reminiscing about Reuss’s explanation of the IX˚ formula, Crowley noted that “the secret as at that time possessed by the Order was in a very crude and unscientific form and there was no explanation of the conditions which had to be brought about to get it to work, and I spent many years of experiment finding out what those conditions were.”15 Reuss proceeded to issue a charter dated April 21, 1912,16 in the name of “Aleister St. Edward Crowley, 33˚, 90˚, 95˚, X˚,” styling him “National Grand Master General for Great Britain and Ireland,” with the British section of the OTO denominated Mysteria Mystica Maxima (M∴M∴M∴), “Greatest Mystical Mystery.” The nature and extent of Crowley’s dominion would in time become an issue, but for the moment, Crowley considered his authority under Reuss to have covered all countries where English was spoken. Reuss granted Crowley a document which to the latter’s mind supported this view of his territorial sovereignty.17

British Columbia Lodge No. 1  19 Yarker followed Reuss’s lead and granted Crowley a gratis dispensation dated August 7, 1912, “to revive the dormant Mount Sinai and Rose of Sharon,” two long-​inactive London chapters of the Antient & Primitive Rite.18 He also privately warned Crowley about getting too close to Reuss, whose reputation in England and Germany, owing to a homosexual scandal, was certain to cause problems for a revival of the Rite. As in his own case, bad odor for Crowley was merely a veil of sanctity, and this negative information about Reuss in no way deterred him from continuing to work under his direction. Conventional morality was for conventional people, not Crowley. Magic was in the air. Starting in December 1912, Crowley made sporadic experiments with the IX˚ formula and elevated himself to a new secret degree, the XI˚. After he noticed how successful these casual attempts had been, Crowley began in September 1914 to keep an elaborate diary of his sexual magic workings, or opera. For the rest of his life Crowley practiced the OTO techniques of sexual magic in preference to the ceremonial methods he had learned in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.19 According to Crowley, Reuss had asked him to revise the order’s rituals and instructions. Crowley had found a lack of symbolic and dramatic coherence in the rituals used by Reuss, which were slight edited versions of ceremonies found in 19th-​century German masonic ritual exposures.20 It was a common practice in the creation of masonic orders to adopt preexisting rituals and adapt them to use in another context. To remedy what he saw as a fault, Crowley worked with Reuss in London, where a lodge had been established, in writing rituals for the OTO. The Minerval or 0˚ ritual was an original composition of Crowley’s and was the first to introduce the character of “Saladin.”21 The I˚–​III˚ were closely modeled on the “Emulation” workings in a well-​known English publication, The Perfect Ceremonies of Craft Masonry.22 These degrees would have been readily recognized as masonic by an English Freemason. The IV˚ was a variant of an English Sussex Royal Arch ritual, while the V˚ was a studied inversion of the Trinitarian 18˚ Knight of Rose Croix of Heredom as it was worked in Supreme Council of England and Wales. The VI˚ was modeled on an exposé of the 30˚ Knight Kadosh of the Scottish Rite. The ceremonies of initiation for the degrees of the OTO proper—​VII˚, VIII˚, and IX˚—​were never more than outlined by Crowley for reasons of secrecy. The mysteries of these degrees were communicated in the form of readings. Crowley composed an instruction paper for the IX˚, “Agape vel Liber C vel Azoth: Sal Philosophorum: The book of the unveiling of the Sangraal wherein it is spoken of the Wine of the Sabbath of the Adepts,”

20  The Unknown God and composed his personal comment thereon, “De Arte Magica: secundum ritum gradus nonae O.T.O.”23 Although the title page of Crowley’s 1912 MS of “Agape” stated that it was a translation from the German original, it includes a passage paraphrased from the works of the American self-​created Rosicrucian and writer on sexual alchemy, Paschal Beverly Randolph, for his occult order, the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor.24 Crowley’s uneasy collaboration with Reuss was ended by the outbreak of World War I and the departure of Crowley in November 1914 for the safety of the United States. He described the system of the OTO degrees thus: “The system is twofold. 0˚–​P.I. consists of 6 degrees [Incarnation—​Birth—​Life—​ Death—​Resurrection—​Nirvana is a loose way to put it]. The other degrees V˚–​IX˚ (X˚ is honorary for a Natl Gd Master [National Grand Master] +​ XI˚ known only to the X˚s) are a progressive comment on II˚ (Life).”25 The parallels between the OTO and the three rites it subsumes are in Table 3.1, Table 3.1  Comparison of OTO and Masonic Degrees OTO Degree

OTO Title

0˚ I˚

Minerval Man

II˚ III˚

Magician Master Magician Perfect Magician Companion of the Holy Royal Arch of Enoch

IV˚ Lodge of Perfection Council of Princes of Jerusalem Lodge of Knights of the East and West V˚

Scottish Rite

Rite of Memphis

Rite of Misraim

Entered Apprentice Fellow Craft Master Mason

Entered Apprentice Fellow Craft Master Mason

Entered Apprentice Fellow Craft Master Mason.

4˚–​7˚

4˚–​

Royal Arch Mason 4˚–​14˚

Perfect Initiate Prince of Jerusalem

15˚–​16˚

Knight of the East and West

17˚

10˚

Sovereign Prince 18˚ Rose Croix Member of the Senate of Knights Hermetic Philosophers, Knights of the Red Eagle

11˚

44˚

British Columbia Lodge No. 1  21 Table 3.1 Continued OTO Degree

OTO Title

Scottish Rite

VI˚

Illustrious Knight (Templar) of Order of Kadosch and Companion of the Holy Graal Grand Inquisitor Commander Member of the Grand Tribunal Knight/​Prince of the Royal Secret Very Illustrious Sovereign Grand Inspector General Member of the Supreme Grand Council Perfect Pontiff of the Illuminati Epopt of the Illuminati Perfect Illuminate Initiate of the Sanctuary of the Gnosis Sovereign Grand Master General Rex Summus Sanctissimus

30˚

65˚

31˚

65˚

VII˚

VIII˚

IX˚

X˚

XI˚ XII˚

Outer Head of the Order

Rite of Memphis

Rite of Misraim

32˚ 33˚

20˚

33˚ [95˚]

90˚

96˚

97˚

which is a composite of Crowley’s “Synopsis of Grades (GJY Collection)” and “The Grades of the O.T.O. and Scale of Fees appointed for each” (The Equinox 3 (1): 246 [1919]). The comparison between the rites and their degrees is not always exact. The degree of Royal Arch Mason is controlled by the Chapter of Royal Arch Masons, not the Scottish Rite, but the 14˚ of the Scottish Rite is a degree based on the ritual patterns of the Royal Arch and is the highest degree in the Lodge of Perfection in the Scottish Rite.

22  The Unknown God Crowley’s vision of the OTO did not fail for lack of promise to the potential initiate: The aims of the O.T.O. can only be understood fully by its highest initiates; but it may be said openly that it teaches Hermetic Science or Occult Knowledge, the Pure and Holy Magick of Light, the Secrets of Mystic attainment, Yoga of all forms, Gnana Yoga, Raja Yoga, Bhakta Yoga and Hatha Yoga, and all other branches of the Secret Wisdom of the Ancients. In its bosom repose the Great Mysteries; its brain has resolved all the problems of philosophy and of life. It possesses the secret of the Stone of the Wise, of the Elixir of Immortality, and of the Universal Medicine. Moreover, it possesses a Secret capable of realizing the world-​old dream of the Brotherhood of Man. It also possesses in every important centre of population a hidden Retreat (Collegium ad Spiritum Sanctum) where members may conceal themselves in order to pursue the Great Work without hindrance. These houses are secret fortresses of Truth, Light, Power, and Love, and their position is only disclosed under an oath of secrecy to those entitled to make use of them. They are also temples of true worship, specially consecrated by Nature to bring out of a man all that is best in him.26

Although Crowley had mocked A. E. Waite for his claims to masonic titles and degrees, among the long list of offices held by “Baphomet X˚ Rex Summus Sanctissimus 33˚, 90˚, 96˚” was that of “Past Grand Master of the United States of America.” It would raise an obvious question for any American Freemason: Past Grand Master of what? There is no such title in Symbolic Freemasonry in the United States, which is organized into independent grand lodges by state. It had been conferred by the most successful fraternal fraudster in the history of the United States, Mathew McBlain Thomson (1854–​1932), for his “American Masonic Federation.”27 If the source of Crowley’s preferment had been known, it would not have been viewed favorably by regular Freemasons. Intrigued by its possibilities, Jones had queried Crowley on the import of the announcements of the OTO in the pages of the last few numbers of volume 1 of The Equinox. Now that a small group was forming around Jones in British Columbia, a fraternal society like the OTO which gathered in

British Columbia Lodge No. 1  23 lodges began to be practicable. Nevertheless, the group working of the OTO was a complete departure from the plan of the A∴A∴, which actively opposed the same; Crowley considered group activities “only another name for slackness and gossip.”28 It was Crowley’s notion, given that within a year he had over one hundred candidates for the A∴A∴, where “the absolute rule of the adepts is never to interfere with the judgment of any other person whomsoever,”29 the OTO would provide him the means by which he could enforce discipline over the initiates in an order where he ruled supreme.30 Most especially was Crowley concerned with Probationers working together and thus blurring their individuality—​the OTO legitimated group activities. Significantly, OTO could charge for the conferral of degrees and collect annual subscriptions, all of which the A∴A∴ barred. In short, OTO sanctioned member activities in which A∴A∴ aspirants could not and should not be engaged. Although there may have been no confusion in Crowley’s mind regarding the distinctions between the two orders, the same degree of clarity was not found in his aspirants, as will be witnessed many times during Smith’s life. There was an immediate practical reason for an alliance between the two orders. The A∴A∴ and its official organ The Equinox entered into a five-​ year “period of silence” in September 1913—​a mystical rationale given for the mundane fact that Crowley had run through his inheritance and could no longer afford to publish his own books. All publications in the interim were to be issued under the imprimatur of OTO, including the latter order’s journal, The Oriflamme, which in fact never appeared under Crowley’s direction in the following six-​year publishing hiatus of The Equinox. Crowley had intimated that Jones would have to come to England to receive the degrees and his charter, or alternatively that Crowley would need to visit him in Vancouver. Neither proved to be absolute requirements to Jones’s getting started. Jones had Smith sign an undertaking on October 24, 1914, indicating his readiness to join the M∴M∴M∴ and take the initiations up to the III˚. With his typical alacrity, Crowley mailed Jones an elaborate patent dated January 1, 1915, signed by “St. Edward Aleister Crowley,” styled “IX˚ Hiereus Naou” (“Priest of the Temple”) and countersigned by his mistress Laylah Bathurst Waddell (1890–​1932) as “IX˚ Hiereia Naou” (“Priestess of the Temple”). The issuance of this document marked the beginning of the OTO in North America. To the mottoes of the 33˚ and 32˚ of the Scottish Rite, Deus meumque Jus (“God and my Right”) and Spes Mea in Deo Est (“My hope is in God”), and the OTO motto Deus est Homo (“God is Man”), Crowley added an alchemical motto, apposite for the Sanctuary of the Gnosis,

24  The Unknown God Centrum in Trigono Centri (“The Center of the Center in the Triangle”).31 It proclaimed “Right Worthy Bro∴ C. Stansfeld Jones” to be expedientiae causâ (“for the sake of expediency”) a holder of all the degrees of OTO up to and including “Sovereign Grand Inspector General of all rites, Our representative in the City of Vancouver VII˚.” In terms of its masonic parallels, by this patent Crowley elevated Jones to the equivalent of the 33˚ of the Scottish Rite and made him an active member of the Supreme Council of the OTO, akin to Crowley’s rapid induction into the order by Reuss. His excuse for the irregularity of the procedure was that “in the present world-​crisis the O.T.O. is urgently in need of depositories in remote parts of the inestimably valuable secrets of its higher grades.”32 The reference in the patent to “all rites” alludes to the fact that the roots of the OTO are in the Antient & Primitive Rite of Freemasonry, which itself claimed to represent three different masonic rites: the Scottish Rite, the Rite of Memphis, and the Rite of Misraim. Crowley advanced the position that the OTO was a new Supreme Council over all these bodies and that its rituals were the modern versions of these rites. After the death of Yarker in 1913, Crowley took no further interest in its precursors and concentrated entirely on his “reduction” of them in the OTO, just as the Antient & Primitive Rite was a reduction of the combined degrees of the Scottish Rite, the Rite of Memphis, and the Rite of Misraim into a system of 33 degrees. Questions of power and authority were central to Crowley’s conception of the proper function of esoteric movements. He constructed his own set of answers to the biblical questions, “By what authority dost thou these things? and who hath given thee this authority?”33 As one surveys the course of his life, it is evident Crowley attempted to gain control over a number of occult societies by means of usurpation, divinely inspired and otherwise: the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (1904); the Antient & Primitive Rite (1913); Freemasonry as a whole (1919); OTO (1921); the Esoteric Section of the parent Adyar Theosophical Society (1925); and the Ancient Mystic Order Rosae Crucis (AMORC) (1936). In the light of this pattern, it may be illuminating to consider the following passage. Do we find in it a reflection of the utility that Crowley the mage saw in Freemasonry and other esoteric sodalities over which he attempted to assert his magical leadership? When a man becomes a magician, he looks about him for a magical weapon; and, being probably endowed with that human frailty called laziness, he hopes to find a weapon ready-​made. Thus we find the Christian Magus

British Columbia Lodge No. 1  25 who imposed his power upon the world, taking the existing worships and making a single system combining all their merits. There is no single feature in Christianity which has not been taken bodily from the worship of Isis, or of Mithras, or of Bacchus, or of Adonis, or of Osiris. In modern times again we find Frater Iehi Aour (Allan Bennett) trying to handle Buddhism. Others again have attempted to use Freemasonry. There have been even exceptionally foolish magicians who have tried to use a sword long since rusted. Wagner illustrates this point very clearly in Siegfried. The Great Sword Nothung has been broken, and it is the only weapon that can destroy the gods. The dwarf Mime uselessly tries to mend it. When Siegfried comes, he makes no such error. He melts its fragments and forges a new sword. In spite of the intense labor which this costs, it is the best plan to adopt.34

And what did Smith and the other new members know of the masonic origins of OTO, an order which seemed so full of promise? Near to nothing, it would seem from the available evidence. Nor did Jones until he entered into direct communication with Reuss.35 To them, all meaningful authority began and ended with Crowley, whose views on Freemasonry were held by a decided minority. More importantly, joining OTO implied that the candidate was united in fraternal bonds with “the greatest Genius of our times, if not of all time. The Logos of a new age, TO MEGA THERION.”36 For the aspirants, this was a sufficient raison d’être. Smith and Nem signed the “preliminary pledge-​ form” of the M∴M∴M∴ on January 18, 1915, wherein the masonic claims of the order, under the headship of “Baphomet,” should have been apparent: I swear in the presence of the Great Architect of the Universe, by the Volume of the Sacred Law, that I have not at any time been initiated into Freemasonry. A. I acknowledge the authority of Baphomet, XI˚, 33˚, 90˚, 95˚, Grand Master, whose private seal is affixed to this paper, as the sole and supreme authority in Freemasonry; so that the obligations which I may take to him supersede and override any and all of my previous obligations; and I swear never to take obligations to any other authority without his consent. (Cancel A if necessary.)

None of this seemed to matter to the candidates. As for Smith, he was delighted; he confided to his diary his pleasure that Nem joined with such ease. He saw ahead of him a life’s work in the OTO. Although Smith continued his

26  The Unknown God yoga practices in the months prior to his initiation, they were, in his words, “dead.” His mind was completely consumed with what he saw as the turning point in his life. Suitable meeting rooms had been found, an old Chesterfield School house, at 1352 Lonsdale Avenue in North Vancouver, where Jones and his family also resided. Howard E. White, signing himself as “Grand Secretary General (Van.),” informed Smith by letter of April 11, 1915, that his reception into the OTO was to take place at the above address on April 17, at 7:45 p.m. The minute book of British Columbia Lodge No. 1, written at first in White’s beautiful hand, opens with the event of the ceremony of Minerval or the 0˚ of the OTO on April 17, 1915, the first time Crowley’s ritual was performed for a group in North America: Candidates having duly arrived were shown into a Chamber of Reflection. The following Candidates were then Initiated into the 0˚. Bro∴ [Benjamin] Dawson. Sister [Emily Sophia Talbot] Smith. Sister [Catherine] Skidmore. Sister [Prudence Rubina Stansfeld] Jones. Bro∴ [Edwin] Parnell. Sister [Maude] Grady. Bro∴ [Wilfred Talbot] Smith The Ceremony was performed by Bros [W. C.] Clark and [Charles Stansfeld] Jones (Bro. J. =​Saladin, Bro. C. =​B[lack]. G[uard].) and was carried off without a hitch of any kind on the part either Officers or Candidates. Following this a short preliminary lecture was given by Bro∴ Jones, and a Lecture on the True Value of Secret Orders by Bro∴ Clark. Arrangements were made for Brethren to meet at Headquarters every Tuesday evening at 7.30 p.m. for the purpose of studying the Mysteries. After this meeting refreshments were served and the Brethren retired to their homes. The evening may be regarded as a very successful commencement of the work of the Order.37

Owing to their prior fraternal obligations, Brothers Clark and Dawson were affiliated to the III˚ and IV˚, respectively. Clark was a member of the Co-​Masonic Order, a group affiliated with the TS which admitted men and

British Columbia Lodge No. 1  27 women, as well as an active member of the TS itself.38 Dawson was a regular Royal Arch mason.39 The rest were all newcomers to the experience of a fraternal initiation ceremony, a mainstay of early-​20th-​century culture. The fees were $20.00, which entitled them to the III˚; the subscription for 1915 was $15.00. By comparison, Jones had to pay $250.00 for his VII˚ and subscription, a considerable sum for the times. Smith was enthralled. As he stood bound in front of the tent of Saladin, he thought he experienced a cold wind blowing past him, even though Clark assured him it was a perfectly calm night. He felt as if the scene were taking place in the wilds of the desert, instead of in the urbanized realms of North Vancouver. The Minerval ritual, brief as it was, formed a lasting memory picture, one which gave Smith great pleasure to revisit. Jones provided him with Crowley’s explanation of the spiritual meaning of the ceremony of Minerval, which helped him put the dramatic experience into some context. Smith immediately applied himself to understand and apply the inner meaning of the ritual, guided by Crowley’s insights and by his own meditations on the “formulation of the Negative in the Ego,” said to be the inner meaning of the Minerval degree.40

4 Isis, Therion, and Hilarion Over the course of 1915, the Brothers and Sisters1 of British Columbia Lodge No. 1 worked on perfecting their knowledge of the degrees and the basics of the systems of magic and yoga taught by Crowley. As most of the small group were also aspirants to the A∴A∴, the subjects were familiar—​the only one to find them difficult to understand was Benjamin Dawson, the affiliate from regular masonry. The running of these two orders under Crowley’s direction, in parallel or at least in proximity, was a constant throughout Smith’s career. The OTO was viewed as useful preliminary training for the A∴A∴. There was no need for candidates to choose between them; and most members of OTO wanted more than ceremonies of joining and social gatherings, which are the mainstays of a fraternal society. In addition, membership in OTO was promoted as a path to illumination, to a higher knowledge of the self and the world. To provide this within the framework of the relatively simple rituals drafted by Crowley on a masonic model clearly required supplementation; this lack was provided for by means of a steady stream of lectures, encyclical letters, and lessons. Any questions from the lodge were relayed by Jones to Crowley, who promised to visit shortly and confer the secrets in person that he would not commit to writing.2 Without question, the pioneers of the OTO in British Columbia received esoteric value for their fees and dues. The first call to duty was to increase the base of membership. How could OTO initiates attract the public to a secret order? The members had no supply of printed literature on the OTO to distribute, so they sought a dramatic means of drawing attention to their existence. Jones took his cue from the format of Crowley’s “Rites of Eleusis,” a set of ritual dramas employing poetry, music, and dance which had been openly staged for appreciative audiences in London in 1910.3 In like manner, Jones, with assistance from his A∴A∴ Student Howard E. White, had composed “A Rite of Isis,”4 which had been sent to Crowley for his blessing after his arrival in New York in

The Unknown God. Martin P. Starr, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2024. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197744512.003.0004

Isis, Therion, and Hilarion  29 November 1914. It is little wonder why the ceremony met with Crowley’s approval, as virtually the entire text, a skillful mixture of poetry, prose, and ritual, consisted of direct quotations from his works. The first public performance was on November 27, 1914, at the Labor Temple in Vancouver, with Frater Achad acting as the Magus and Frater Ad Alta in the part of the Assistant Magus. The performance was a success. It was decided to stage the ritual again, as a further draw for prospective members. Jones acted as director of the drama, as well as replaying the role of Magus; he assigned parts on May 18, 1915, while dividing up the 55 tickets to be sold by the 10 members of the lodge at 50¢ each. Jones and Smith (the Magus of Fire) both worked as bookkeepers and kept careful accounts of expenses, the largest of which was for chairs for their expected audience, which were later sold. Ruby and Nem portrayed Priestesses of Isis, and Dawson served as Acolyte. For the first time “Miss T. Smith,” that is, Nem’s daughter, Katherine Madeline Talbot, was involved in the lodge activities as music director for the Rite. The full public performance of the Rite took place on June 12, 1915. True to Crowley’s promise, with repeated performances the effect on its participants increased in strength—​later exemplifications were timed to the new moon and occasionally were done as a prelude to initiation into OTO. The “Rite of Isis” proved to be a good ceremonial warm-​up for the large number of degrees conferred in the lodge in 1915. There was a reason for the rush. It was in anticipation of a visit from Baphomet X˚ OTO, who suggested to Jones to get all the members through the II˚ by the end of September 1915, pending his planned arrival in Vancouver the following month. Cryptically, Crowley warned him to “be prepared for all sorts of fun.”5 The pace of the degree work was impressive, given the small number of available officers. Jones served as the presiding officer of the lodge throughout 1915, assisted by Clark and Dawson. The chief officer was titled Right Worshipful Master (the masonic equivalent of Worshipful Master). He was assisted by a second officer, styled Warden Within (Senior Warden), and a third, Warden Without (Junior Warden). Reducing the number of officers to a minimum was in keeping with Crowley’s aim of reducing the running time and the complexity of the degrees. This contrasted with the trend of contemporary masonic practice to increase the number of officers, lengthen the ritual, and embellish the whole with elaborate sets,

30  The Unknown God rich costumes, and full musical accompaniment. A theatrical style of degree conferral came to predominate starting in the late 19th century in the United States, which facilitated mass initiation in the Scottish Rite and the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, better known as the Shriners. The degrees were dramatic performances, replacing conferral of a degree on a lodge-​room floor with a single candidate to an enactment viewed on a theatrical stage. An exemplar passed through the ritual on stage while the class of degree candidates would observe the proceedings from theater seating. Not all typical elements of masonic initiation were abandoned in the quest for modernity and brevity. OTO degrees were brief enough to be conferred easily from memory, as is the standard practice in English and American Freemasonry and one which Smith likewise maintained rigorously in his subsequent initiation work. Crowley, a seasoned writer of esoteric ritual and drama, had taken the familiar English masonic degree ritual texts as his compositional base and reduced them to what he considered their essential elements. There were no lengthy didactic lectures on the myth and symbolism of the degrees of the type which were mainstays of Freemasonry since the 18th century. The conferral of Crowley’s degrees occupied minutes, not hours or days (Table 4.1). Table 4.1  Degree Work in British Columbia Lodge No. 1 for 1915 Name Daugherty, Paul E. Dawson, Benjamin Grady, Maude Grady, Merle Hammitt, J. C. Hohlenberg, Hagen Jones, Ruby Mills, Thomas O. Parnell, Edwin Shaw, Reginald W. Sheridan-​Bickers, Horace Skidmore, Catherine Smith, Emily S. Smith, Wilfred T. White, Howard E.

0˚ 11/​30 4/​17 4/​17 7/​6 10/​26 11/​9 4/​17 12/​7 4/​17 10/​19 10/​19 4/​17 4/​17 4/​17 4/​10

I˚

II˚

III˚

9/​25 9/​24

11/​19 11/​10

12/​3 9/​25

12/​31 11/​10

12/​3

12/​28

9/​24 9/​25 9/​28 9/​19

10/​27 10/​27 10/​23 11/​26

11/​30 9/​5 9/​7 10/​26 11/​9 9/​3 12/​7 11/​2 10/​19 10/​19 9/​7 9/​5 9/​3 9/​19

Isis, Therion, and Hilarion  31 Throughout the initial year of the lodge’s operation, Smith faithfully records in his diary his punctual, if seemingly unsuccessful, work with his A∴A∴ practices, his unceasing and repeated attempts to answer the Student examination questions, and his less-​ frequent fights with Nem. Smith documented an experiment with Jones in which Smith took 100 drops of a Crowley-​tested Parke-​Davis drug he refers to as “Anhalonium,” a fluid extract of peyote.6 The drug disappointed Smith with its lackluster results. There was little inner peace derived from his spiritual work, and Smith again and again confesses to his diary his feelings of inadequacy on all planes, a feeling that never completely left him. The turning point in all their lives was upon them. Reviewing the documentary record, one can feel the tension building as they wait for the promised arrival of a “Very Illustrious Bro. Clifford,” a Sovereign Grand Inspector General VII˚ OTO, whose movements, they were told, were not to be communicated as “it is a matter touching the welfare of the Empire.” In truth, Crowley was traveling incognito with a less grandiose purpose. He had left New York on October 6, bound for San Francisco and the World’s Fair of 1915. His traveling partner was Mrs. Jeanne Robert Foster,7 a poet with whom had been conducting an adulterous affair all summer long. Mrs. Foster, whose name in the order was “Soror Hilarion,” also brought along her considerably older husband Matlack, who (according to Crowley’s account) never guessed at his wife’s ongoing infidelity. The cover apparently worked. But all this mundanity was not the sole reason for their liaison. Crowley, who was slowly rising to accept himself in his position as the “Beast” prophesied in The Book of the Law, perceived Hilarion as his “Scarlet Woman” and the “Cat Officer” in his initiation to the Grade of Magus of the A∴A∴, whose goal is to proclaim a Word symbolizing the formula to rule the age. It was on this journey that Crowley began to identify himself with his Word of the Magus, “Thelema.” As the Logos of the Aeon of Horus, it was his duty to identify himself with the Word. Brother Clifford arrived on the 9:25 a.m. train on Saturday, October 16, 1915, wearing a gray overcoat and sporting a Malacca cane. Jones was waiting. He was introduced to Smith at 4:30 p.m. that afternoon. Smith found him as he expected, but having been caught off guard, he wrote in his diary for that date that “I did not recognize him on the instant or would have put more feeling into the handshake to one I respect so much +​have an affection for +​realy [sic] know so well through his writings. I hope he will set us all to work hard.” Exhilarating as the visit was for Smith, Crowley’s attentions were directed to his Viceroy Brother Jones; they had met previously in London,

32  The Unknown God so they were not strangers. Jones spent most of Crowley’s visit talking with him on all matters pertaining to A∴A∴ and OTO. Crowley took rooms at the Hotel Vancouver and there found the time to test Jones in the practice of astral projection. The supervision of A∴A∴ aspirants Smith and Nem was formally transferred to Jones, a Zelator of the order. Very Illustrious Brother Clifford and Very Excellent Sister Foster visited British Columbia Lodge No. 1 on October 19. At this meeting a candidate recommended by Crowley, Horace Sheridan-​Bickers,8 and Reginald W. Shaw,9 brought in by Smith, were initiated into the Minerval and I˚. The minutes recall that “Bro ∴ Clifford in a short speech congratulated the Lodge on its progress considering the short time it has been established, and expressed his entire satisfaction with our work. Sister Foster also expressed her pleasure at being with us on this occasion.” Crowley’s own account is full of praise: “I was warmly welcomed in Vancouver by my ‘Son,’ [Jones] who had established a large and increasing Lodge of O.T.O. They had made with their own hands admirably effective furniture and ornaments, and they had been splendidly drilled in the Rituals. I regretted the necessity of going on so soon.”10 The furniture and ornaments had been crafted by Smith; surviving photographs of the lodge room show a neat and orderly arrangement. It was soon time to depart. Smith’s diary for October 21, 1915, tells the story of his regrets at Crowley’s all-​too brief visit: Brother Clifford, A.E.C., Baphomet, has left Vancouver told for Victoria. But am inclined to think somewhere else, first at least. One can certainly feel him even so thick a person as myself. Should like to have had a bit of a talk to him. However it was hardly worth his while to bother with such a beginner. I have not made much showing. May come in for a little more of his attention another time. I understand he was very busy on important business with the war.

Evidently Crowley’s shore story held up. The business at hand was not the war but his “honeymoon” with Hilarion. Jones’s offer of hospitality had been refused as “your lodge, beautiful as it is, has not got a Red Room; and I had to hold some chapters.”11 It should be obvious that the “chapters” in question were not those of the Trinitarian Rose Croix. Crowley wrote to Jones from the Palace Hotel, San Francisco, apologizing for his failure in getting the officers together for Jones’s V˚ initiation while in Vancouver. He closed with a cryptic turn of phrase: “It’s not your fault, but Our misfortune. Better luck in a week or so, I hope!” It gives one pause as to the nature of the initiation he intended.

Isis, Therion, and Hilarion  33 There would not be another meeting—​it was a moment in time, not to be repeated nor forgotten, at least by Smith. A harsh denouement to Smith’s sole encounter with Crowley came nearly three decades later, once Crowley was done with Smith and his apparent failure at the magical retirement prescribed for him in Liber CXXXII. Smith had written a friendly letter, full of the same sort of longing for personal contact unfulfilled, which was met by a brusque brush-​off. Crowley dismissed Smith’s familiarity: “You write as if we had been intimate together in the past; my memory tells me that I met you only during my visit of, I think, three days to Vancouver B.C., and that even on that occasion I never had a personal interview with you: by ‘personal’ I mean one without other people being present.”12 Smith annotated the letter: “Forgotten. We talked privately for 20 min. to 1/​2 hour alone.” According to the reminiscences of Phyllis Seckler,13 Smith recounted that in their meeting Crowley asked him about the Wand, the magical weapon of the element of Fire. Smith responded with all the details a craftsman might need to fashion a wand from a branch of wood. All Crowley did was laugh contemptuously—​the Wand is a phallic symbol of the Will and he wanted more than mere details of woodworking. Baphomet entrusted all but the final details of the central secret of the IX˚ of the OTO to Jones. When he could demonstrate to the Supreme and Holy King that he had discovered the secret, he would be duly acknowledged a member of the Sanctuary of the Gnosis IX˚.14 The real change brought by Crowley’s visit to the lodge was the declaration that the doctrines of Thelema were to be part of the practice of the OTO. He had attained the Grade of Magus in this life and it was thus his duty to preach his Law: Therefore this is the Word of Baphomet to all members of the O.T.O. ΘEΛHMA [THELEMA]. In opening Lodge in any grade, the R.W.M. as he opens the book, will say, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. In closing, the second officer will say this before saying, I declare the Lodge closed accordingly. In greeting any other person, even a stranger, this may and should be said, e.g., “Pleased to make your acquaintance. Do what, etc.” If the person is one of us, let him reply: “Love is the law, love under will.” This should be the regular morning greeting in a household: also at “Good-​night!” It is not obligatory, though it is desirable to make it a habit. It may be omitted to a Superior, if you are afraid (but why should a King have a superior or be

34  The Unknown God afraid?) that he will think you mad. All letters, especially official O.T.O. or A∴A∴ letters, should open with that sentence.15

The scripts of the early state of the OTO degrees (I–​III˚) show these changes to the ritual added by hand. It was the initial step toward marshaling the OTO to serve the purpose of spreading the Law of Thelema. The transformation of Reuss’s Winkelmaurerei in Deutschland, with a social program promoting motherhood, to the thelemic ideals of Therion was a large theoretical leap for the diminutive movement. Smith took to it eagerly. Crowley’s aims for OTO were consonant with Smith’s search for a new guiding principle to replace the hypocrisy of contemporary morals which had made his early life hell on earth. In his zeal he even worked up the courage to salute several of the BCER staff with the Thelemic formulae. Buoyed by the visit of Baphomet and with a new Law of Thelema to guide their endeavors, Smith and the lodge members felt energized to pursue the widening path laid before them. “Clifford VII˚” had written the Right Worshipful Master Jones a letter of commendation, warmly acknowledging their successes (duly communicated to His Most Sacred Majesty). He asked the members to remember that, at the start of a movement, it was a signal duty of all to bring in as many new candidates as possible to build numerical strength. It was also pressing to build up the high degrees in as good a form as the lower; the secrets needed human repositories in the time of international strife, and the talents of their Right Worshipful Master might soon be called upon to establish the order in other parts of the country. It was essential to groom successors if the new lodge were to have a future. One change was soon in coming. Jones stepped aside as Master of the lodge at their 1916 New Year’s celebration. To succeed himself in the chair he appointed Dawson for the first half of the year and then Clark for the remainder.16 Skidmore was appointed Warden Within (second officer), and Brother Smith, Warden Without (third officer). Jones also appointed members to stations not strictly called for in Crowley’s sparse ritual: Inner Guard (“with special responsibilities to prepare the female candidates”), Scribe, “Invisible Guide” (“to be the unseen hand guiding Candidates, while in a state of Darkness, during their travels with the Moon”) and Tyler. Jones gave his wife Ruby the “difficult and delicate task” of musical director.17 The members pledged to employ their utmost endeavors to raise the membership to 40 by June 30. Since Crowley’s imparting of the secrets of the III˚ and the proper method of communicating them to Jones, eight members of British Columbia Lodge

Isis, Therion, and Hilarion  35 No. 1 had been raised to the degree of Master Magician by the close of 1915. Smith was the first to be raised. The ritual, based on the legend of the assassination of Grand Master Hiram, the architect of King Solomon’s Temple, by three ruffians, although close to its English masonic origins,18 mutatis mutandis, included a jab that Freemasons, universally ignorant of the meaning of their ceremonies, had corrupted the “Lost Word,” which was properly restored in the III˚ of OTO.19 Members of the OTO were not the equals of “Freemasons of other rites,” they were their superiors, and they were not to reveal details of the order’s organization or membership to anyone until the individual had signed the preliminary pledge-​form, making good on the injunction to “trust not a stranger.” No regular mason could have visited an OTO lodge and remained unaware of practices that violated the landmarks of the Craft.20 Despite their efforts to keep men and women separate below the V˚, which in the mind of the initiates of the OTO cleared them from the charges of being a clandestine masonic lodge, the presence of women in aprons not of the domestic sort would have been the first clue that all was not just or proper in a masonic sense. Nor would Freemasons have been welcome until they were obligated to the OTO, and even then, Crowley advocated taking a superior attitude toward them to make it clear that they needed to prove their right to be present: Re Masons at meetings. Don’t admit they are 32˚; prove them to be 3˚. Exchange signs +​F.P.O.F. [five points of fellowship] then when they give their word, ask them “How do you know that is the right word?” We have the true word, which has been found again; and it is a word which proves itself to be true. So make him affiliate before you admit him to be 3˚ at all. After that, it’s easy. If he is R.A. [Royal Arch], you can beat him again on the Word. If he affiliates to P.R.S. [Prince of the Royal Secret] (=​32˚) make him give you everything +​then say “Quite right!” You saw how I acted to Bro Dawson! and I’m a timid bloke.21

The contemptuous attitude toward regular masonry is encapsulated in a speech given at the “Congress of the International Masonic Federation,” headed by the confidence man, Mathew Mc Blain Thomson: Only we, representatives of Ancient and Primitive Masonry, claiming descent—​naturally not by diploma, but by ritus [sic] continuation of

36  The Unknown God principle and ceremony—​from the Oriental Franco-​Masons, the gnostic, Schismatic Templars, we alone dare to attempt to try to realize Union, Brotherhood, in the face of a sea of hatred. For we, Ancient and Primitive Masons alone have kept aloof from the deplorable political activities of the Moderns, and have kept ourselves free from the un-​Masonic campaign of hatred of the “regulars,” and unlike the “regulars” we are also the Keepers of the ancient and true Masonic secret which the Moderns never possessed. This genuine and true Templar-​Masonic secret is of such a nature that only it makes it comprehensible why our Masonic forefathers made the candidates swear such severe oaths. The secret is identical with the secret of the Mass and of the Gnostic Christian.22

The OTO had much more in common with the Theosophically oriented Co-​Masonic Order in its ideals and practices than it did with regular masonry. This comparison is one that Crowley himself would have been loath to draw, and he took great pains to neutralize his competition. Starting with the September 1913 issue of The Equinox (Vol. I, No. 10), Crowley started on a 13-​year campaign of active propaganda against the Theosophical leaders of the post-​Blavatsky ceremonial movements of Co-​Masonry and the Liberal Catholic Church. His primary targets were their presiding officers. Chief among them was Dr. Annie Besant (1847–​1933), president of the TS, Outer Head of the Esoteric Section (ES), and Very Illustrious Most Puissant Grand Commander of the British Jurisdiction of the Co-​Masonic Order. Crowley also had unlimited scorn for the first and second presiding bishops of the Liberal Catholic Church, the Rev. James Ingall Wedgwood (1883–​1951) and the Rev. Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–​1934). His ceaseless vituperation against them and their movements showed that he did not intend to share the stage with them. One can hardly say the feeling was mutual as they paid Crowley no mind, regarding him as a black magician. Like the English Freemasons, they did not need Crowley as an ally, and they did not fear him as an enemy. Leadbeater claimed to be in direct communication with the Inner Head of Freemasonry, also known as the Head of all True Freemasons, the Master The Count,23 and the Co-​Masons sought their inspiration from him. The leaders of Co-​Masonry went unscathed by Crowley and chose prudently to ignore him and his stream of libels.24 With the mildness of an Anglican curate, Wedgwood never did any more than gently question Crowley’s objections to his membership in the Antient & Primitive Rite; he replied that his standing was as good as Crowley’s, which has some basis in fact.

Isis, Therion, and Hilarion  37 Meek and mild did not become Crowley. He was an implacable foe and he never missed an opportunity, while the parent Adyar TS was in its heyday, to bring its current leaders into contempt. Crowley delighted in deriding the Co-​Masonic Order: “With regard to Co-​masonry: it was and is of no importance of any kind. It was simply a dodge of Annie Besant’s to persuade people that she was a man.”25 He warred in print and in private letters for more than a decade against the growing cult of Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–​1986), “the waxwork World-​Teacher,” and the one Leadbeater had declared to be the vehicle of the Lord Maitreya. As Crowley himself believed he had incarnated to fulfill this cosmic role, he would brook no rivals and he exercised every means at his disposal to destroy the reputations of Krishnamurti and his handlers. Despite all the one-​sided invective, the parallels between Theosophy and Thelema as developed in Crowley’s OTO were numerous. In keeping with the First Object of the TS, its lodges and allied orders of the Third Section, such as the Co-​Masonic Order, admitted men and women on an equal basis, as did the OTO. They both had connections to John Yarker, the Grand Hierophant of the Antient & Primitive Rite and a perennial thorn in the side of the Ancient and Accepted Rite. Blavatsky had been made a member of Yarker’s Rite of Adoption in 1877. The Co-​Masons attempted to seize control of the Sovereign Sanctuary of the Antient & Primitive Rite in England after Yarker’s death in March 1913, but they were thwarted by Crowley and Reuss, as detailed in the September 1913 issue of The Equinox. Both the Co-​Masonic Order and the OTO used rituals adapted from regular Freemasonry while believing themselves to be more spiritual in aim than their source. They each had their own church, the Liberal Catholic (founded 1916) and the Gnostic Catholic (of uncertain foundation). Post-​ Blavatsky Theosophists like Leadbeater saw the degrees of their fraternal society to be parallels to the orders in their church.26 And behind both the Co-​Masonic Order and the OTO were oath-​bound bodies devoted to “the investigation of the unexplained laws of Nature and the psychical powers latent in man,” the ES, the Second Section of the movement, and the Order of the A∴A∴. According to Golden Dawn scholar R. A. Gilbert, the ES oath was deliberately modeled on the Neophyte obligation in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Although their oaths were disparate, the denomination of the first level in both the ES and the A∴A∴ was that of Probationer. Perhaps most significantly, they each fostered the belief in a World Teacher, embodied in Krishnamurti (Alcyone) and Crowley (Therion), and in a World Religion (despite disclaimers),

38  The Unknown God Theosophy and Thelema. The movements were ultimately led by invisible superiors. The Theosophists had their Mahatmas who communicated regularly via their precipitated letters to the TS elite.27 The Thelemites had their Secret Chiefs, some discarnate like Aiwass, to whom Crowley attributed the authorship of The Book of the Law, and some seemingly present in the flesh; they too spoke through their sole authorized messenger, Aleister Crowley.28 The new year in British Columbia Lodge No. 1 was met with the first such communication. At the January 16, 1916, meeting of the lodge, Jones read The Message of the Master Therion, in which was the first of the thelemic tracts that the members were enjoined to circulate. Jones sent a copy to every parson in Vancouver, arousing “considerable attention and some opposition”:29 In the Eleventh Year of the Aeon of Horus, the Sun our Father being 18 degrees of the Sign Libra, and the Moon in 8 degrees of the sign Sagittarius [October 12, 1915] did NEMO that had sat nameless in the City of the Pyramids beneath the Night of Pan for Five Score and Six seasons, according to the word of the prophecy in Liber CDXVIII, having taken the Hand of the Prelate, the Scarlet Woman, Hilarion, and having been led by her through the appointed Pylons, become ΘΗΡΙΟΝ [THERION] a Magus 9˚ =​2□ of the A∴A∴ the Great White Brotherhood of Light. Now therefore must he of necessity take up the Curse of his Grade, and preach his Law to men. Here then is this Law as it is written in the Book of the Law. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. There is no Law beyond Do what thou wilt. The word of the Law is ΘEΛHMA [THELEMA].30

Even after Baphomet’s message to the OTO, some of this must have required explanation, but the members were certainly willing to learn. The essence was clear enough, however: one’s duty was to discover one’s path in life and do nothing else. But what was one’s “True Will”? The tract suggested practice of an A∴A∴ instruction, “Liber Thisarb,”31 a set of practices for acquiring the memory of past incarnations, as a useful method of discovering one’s will. The lodge members applied themselves to the first method it advocates, that of learning to reverse thought by performing otherwise normal activities—​ reading, writing, speaking—​backwards. On a more practical level, Jones had to deal with the fact that his successor in office as Master could not serve out a month. Dawson resigned at

Isis, Therion, and Hilarion  39 the meeting of January 25, having felt it was his patriotic duty to enlist in the military, which Crowley termed “going to feed the fiends,” a prophesy which came to pass. White was installed by Jones in his place. Crowley had thought the lodge members were bored by the learned disquisitions of Jones. Smith recounted the words of the Master: “What the hell are you doing teaching them Qabalah and Yoga, etc.? They don’t want to have their souls saved. Give them a good time!”32 This encouraged Jones to emphasize the social side of the lodge rather than the magical. The first step he took was to replace the voluminous robes used in the degrees with evening dress, a more sensible attire, at least for the men, to accompany the masonic aprons they wore in the degrees. The change met with resistance, although they began to incorporate programs of music and dancing into their meetings. Bickers suggested producing George Bernard Shaw’s play Major Barbara, but this proposed activity met with a lack of interest and they chose instead a group study of Éliphas Lévi’s Transcendental Magic. Plans were being laid for expansion of degree work to include the IV˚, which was very closely modeled on an English Sussex Royal Arch ritual. Smith, as would befit a descendant of Hiram Abiff, the skilled bronze worker of King Solomon’s temple in biblical and masonic tradition, began fashioning out of brass the altar paraphernalia for the degree. He had already rigged up an iron apparatus to hold the poles of the tent in place on a solid floor so that the Minerval degree could be conferred indoors, a useful innovation for a lodge in British Columbia. All the while, Smith’s persistence at the A∴A∴ Student task, begun October 13, 1913, finally paid off. He submitted his examination paper on February 28, 1916, after having written three or four drafts and consigning them to the trash.33 Even after all his time and effort, Crowley reviewed his answers and found them lacking. Frater O.M. 7˚=​ 4□, Acting Cancellarius (Chancellor), wrote Jones that “Wilfred Smith’s examination paper is far from satisfactory in the ordinary sense of the word. He evidently requires somewhat elaborate intellectual training. However, he has devoted sufficient thought to the matter, to allow one to pass him.”34 In the OTO every IX˚ was to take as a “mystic name” the name of a famous past brother or hero, hence Reuss’s choice of “Merlin.” A Probationer of the Order of A∴A∴ had to choose a motto, typically in Latin or in Greek, to symbolize his aspiration. Smith visited the local Free Library and after several hours of searching happened upon the Latin phrase Nubem Eripiam, which he correctly translated as “I will snatch away the cloud.” Under this motto he was duly received as a Probationer 0˚=​ 0□ of the A∴A∴ on March 13, 1916, with Jones (under his motto of Unus in

40  The Unknown God Omnibus, “one in all”) as his Neophyte Receiving. He commenced a record of his practices in a fresh diary volume, having reserved his first, locked diary for additional entries of a more personal nature, of which more anon. While Smith was starting out on the Probationer’s task, Jones continued to grapple with the job of deducing from Crowley’s writings the central secret of the IX˚ of the OTO. Although he wrote that there was a perfectly plain and simple instruction “somewhere in France”—​an allusion to the sexual nature of the secret—​Crowley’s correspondence with Jones after his visit to Vancouver is a non-​stop barrage of suggestions and comments which he hoped would lead Jones to tell Crowley what the secret was. He was adamant that “no more IX˚s will be given on theoretical grounds. I refuse to encourage the Professorial Spirit. You’ve got to make gold yourself, not merely to tell me how you think it might be made. I know already.”35 This form of sexual alchemy was Crowley’s chief magical practice throughout his life after 1914, and he had been keeping a steady diary of his workings, or opera, since that time. Jones had a grasp of the first part of the theory of the IX˚, but there were significant roadblocks in the practice—​for one, partners, or as Jones humorously termed them, “patients.” Crowley advised Jones to avoid lodge members—​this constraint being true only for those below the VII˚, where one was “taught to be sensible.” Jones accurately predicted trouble with his wife Ruby, who told him of her dream of finding him in flagrante delicto with a lodge Sister. Jones wrote Crowley that it “looked too much like a prophesy to need any encouragement.”36 Ruby as an unknowing magical partner also presented a challenge. He had been in a monogamous relationship with Ruby since they had emigrated to Canada, by his own choice and vow to her when he rescued her from a life of prostitution. Their sex life was limited in frequency and duration; he was concerned that Crowley’s advice on the proper length of time, measured in hours, required for a magical result would surely draw attention that something had changed. His worry was misplaced. Early experiments helped improve the “family relationship,” as he delicately reported it to Crowley. Jones also had his own sexual restrictions to overcome, and Crowley continually pushed him to expand beyond his set limitations of partners and preferences.37 Following from his master’s example, Jones kept a diary of his practices of sexual magic, which was sent to Crowley for approval.38 Crowley also encouraged him to comment on the A∴A∴ official instructions which allude to the subject, and Jones tried to make sense of the VII˚ paper he was given

Isis, Therion, and Hilarion  41 at his initiation. The alkahest began to work, and Jones was soon within sight of the secret: I must say that you have the first part of the theory fairly accurate; but of the second part you seem to have no glimmer, though God knows I have given you hints enough. I really did expect you to find out, as you are so good at exegesis. Why, damn it, man, it’s given in so many words in official instructions. However, I suppose you have not had a proper meal in your whole life, and this may make you stupid. . . . Really, if you read all my letters over together, I cannot see how you can possibly miss finding out.39

The answer was not long in coming. Jones replied in due course that to “succeed one must succeed.”40 Crowley promptly confirmed him in his attainment of the IX˚ and sent him a membership patent, a variant on the VII˚ patent he had previously received. On entering the Sanctuary of the Gnosis IX˚, Jones took the mystic name of “Parzival,” a fitting appellation for a Brother of the OTO, which numbered Wagner and his patron, the mad King Ludwig II of Bavaria, among its saints. Jones was busy on another plane, unknown to both Smith and Crowley: the attainment of the grade of Magister Templi 8˚=​ 3□ (Master of the Temple) of the A∴A∴. The central feature of this attainment is the “Crossing of the Abyss,” by which is meant the transcending of the gap in consciousness between the limitations of mortal man’s physical and intellectual needs and his transpersonal and hyperrational spiritual essence. This gap is symbolized on the kabbalistic Tree of Life by the lack of directly connecting paths between the fourth “sephira” or emanation of the kabbalistic Tree of Life, Chesed (Mercy), and the third, Binah (Understanding). The Abyss is populated by the “false sephira,” Daath (Knowledge). The greater part of Crowley’s advanced teachings concerned the substance and the technique of this “crossing.” During his visit to British Columbia, Crowley told Jones that anyone could assert their right to hold the grade of Magister Templi by swearing the Oath of the Abyss, also termed the Oath of a Master of the Temple, the text of which he had published in his edited magical diary “John St. John” (The Equinox 1 (1) suppl.: 10–​11 [1909]). Crowley saw no fault in taking the Oath when it was appropriate in one’s path, but it was an extraordinarily serious step, guarded on all sides with traps set to destroy the presumptuous and the unworthy. In an undated note on the grade of Magister Templi (ca. 1943, HPS Papers) titled “Smith +​the 8˚=​ 3□” Crowley commented: “Now the rule is

42  The Unknown God that if you claim to be 8˚ =​3□, you are 8˚ =​3□! And God help you! You accept the conditions—​see Liber 418. If there is one drop of your blood that has not gone into the cup of 156, it corrupts the whole man.” It was the only grade of the A∴A∴ that could be so claimed. To take this step when one was unprepared for the burdens of the grade was to court the greatest danger to health and sanity. Hubris in this matter would assuredly be followed by Nemesis.

5 A Master of the Temple Smith’s 31st year began on a happy note. As their gift on his birthday, June 9, Nem and Kath had the paperbound copies of the first two parts of Crowley’s Book Four bound in red leather with the initials of his Probationer motto stamped in gold on the upper boards. Jones presented Smith with what he termed an OTO IV˚ degree jewel, it being an English breast jewel for the Holy Royal Arch. With the departure in the previous month of Catherine Skidmore, the Warden Within in the lodge, Smith was promoted to her station, and Ruby took Smith’s place as Warden Without. Jones gave Smith the additional job of Treasurer, perhaps the most challenging as the members were hard-​pressed to meet their financial obligations to the lodge. Yet as Smith presciently remarked in his diary on June 18, “things seem to be happening.” The summer solstice of 1916 was to be a major transition, and the events which took place at this station of the sun set the course of his life, both mundane and magical, for the next 14 years. The threads of his existence and that of Jones were about to become seriously unwound and intertwined, in ways beyond their imagining a year prior. The disturbance to their affairs began a few days earlier. Jones had started arriving every day at the Smith home to take Kath for a long walk in the early morning hours. These rambles caused a considerable upset in both the Smith and the Jones households, and each suspected the worst. On the 15th, Smith vouchsafed his concerns to Nem, adding the real reason for his anger: he, too, was in love with Kath, his stepdaughter. This put the fat in the fire. Nem was furious. Nem and Smith skipped the lodge meeting the following day and Jones came over afterward. He put the question to them bluntly: he asked Nem and Smith if they trusted him. With an answer in the affirmative, Jones asserted that Kath was going with him tomorrow, which aroused Smith’s ire and made him resolve to stop Jones at all costs. The matter was settled, for the day at least, by Kath refusing to go with Jones. Smith’s reaction merely caused him to have a miserable night with Nem. On the 18th, Jones and Smith met again at the former’s house and mended their relationship. Jones revealed to Smith that he was now, courtesy of The Unknown God. Martin P. Starr, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2024. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197744512.003.0005

44  The Unknown God Baphomet, a member of the Sanctuary of the Gnosis IX˚ of the OTO. This was not happy news for all the parties. Ruby had threatened to cut her husband’s throat when she had seen Kath wearing a gold symbol of Venus given to her by Jones as a talisman. She correctly divined its import. Jones wanted Kath to be his partner in the IX˚ operations he planned, thus completing the formula of Tetragrammaton, where “[h]‌is mission is to redeem her by making her his bride; the result of this is to set her upon the throne of her mother, and it is only she whose youthful embrace can reawaken the eld of the All-​Father.”1 Part of the compact between Ruby and Jones, since he rescued her from the life of a prostitute, was that they were to be strictly faithful to each other. Jones was willing to let her out of their arrangement to satisfy her attraction to Howard E. White, but Ruby had wavered on her willingness to free Jones to be with Kath. Monday the 19th found Smith back at work at BCER. Jones had met with Brother White earlier that day and then saw Smith for lunch. Jones straightaway put three questions to him: Q. Was Smith in love? A. Yes. Q. With whom? A. Two persons. Q. What was Smith’s duty? A. Don’t know.

The final question was the most perplexing, as the answer was conditional upon the decisions of the two persons with whom he was in love, Nem and Kath. Smith suggested holding his answer to the third question in abeyance until mother and daughter had been queried, which had not previously been in Jones’s plan. Instead he curiously rephrased the question: “Would I do it if it were quite clear however hard?” Smith answered yes. Out of the blue, at 1:40 p.m. on the Canadian Pacific Railway tracks, Jones replied, “Then I confer upon you the degree of Prince of the Rose Croix,” the Scottish Rite degree adopted as the title of the V˚ of the OTO. This was not at all what Smith expected; he had been on his way to meet Kath. Jones told him to tell her nothing of his elevation. That evening, Smith met Nem, Kath, and Jones at the post office; Jones asked to borrow Kath for a while. Smith again writhed with anger while Nem “thinks among other things that we will have to part company.”2 Kath

A Master of the Temple  45 returned home by 8:00 p.m., not fully understanding the nature of the problem until Jones shared with her “a certain letter” which he had received. What the letter was, she could not reveal, but it involved her having to make a decision. Jones had also given Nem3 and Kath the V˚, the latter on condition of her returning the gold Ankh (a symbol of Venus) given to her two days prior. Jones declared that their relations “were of universal import, according to him at least in part. He is in the dark himself to a great extent.”4 Jones came to believe that his interior state was actually influencing the weather. By noon on the 20th, Jones received notice that a telegram he had sent to Crowley had not been able to be delivered. Kath told Smith she had decided “correctly” and was able to keep the gold Venus symbol. Jones affirmed to Smith that things were OK and were nearly all fixed up, in his view. This helped palliate Smith’s jealousy for the moment. The lodge had planned to confer the II˚ on Sister M. Roy and Brother Thomas Mills. Smith felt that the atmosphere in the hall was very solemn, more befitting a III˚ than the II˚. Once the initiation ceremonies were complete, Smith went back to his house to fetch Kath, provoking some question from Sister Roy why he would be bringing her back at that late hour to an important meeting of the lodge when Kath was not even a member, as far as the good Sister knew. The atmosphere was tense in the extreme. Kath sat between Nem and Smith on the north of the hall; Howard E. White and Ruby (with whom he was in love) were arranged on the south. Ruby was intended to act as the Scribe, but she looked “stormy” in Smith’s estimation. Incense burned on the spot where normally they would have placed The Book of the Law. Jones was laid out in front of the altar in the position of the “Hanged Man” of the Tarot. First White read aloud The Message of the Master Therion. Jones then arose and spoke, often mumbling, on its theme, stating that the way to avoid conflict is to take what no one else wanted. He then said “I take the grade of 8 =​3 because my master does not want it.”5 The members assembled were then asked to sign the V˚ “obligation of allegiance,” which included the following clauses: I . . . do most solemnly promise and swear full faith and true allegiance to Baphomet XI˚ 33˚ 90˚ 96˚ Grand Master of the O.T.O. and M∴M∴M∴ whose private seal is affixed to this paper. I furthermore promise to hold no mystic fellowship or intercourse with any magician or body of magicians, which may at any time have been, or

46  The Unknown God may hereafter be, established anywhere by any authority whatever, except with such as are duly recognized and acknowledged as being lawful and regular by the aforesaid Grand Master.6 I further acknowledge my advancement to the dignity of a Sovereign Prince of Rose Croix as an irrevocable act, and I understand that its stigmata are ineradicable so long as I shall live.7 Furthermore, I accept The Sacred Law; to wit, Liber CCXX or Liber L. vel Legis, as delivered by LXXVIII unto DCLXVI; I declare it to be the Letter and the Word of Truth and the Supreme Rule of Life.

Nem was the first to sign. Ruby promptly refused, saying that “I am not going to sign, I told you before.” Smith and Kath then took the obligation.8 White also refused, and asked to have the floor. He could not accept The Book of the Law (Liber CCXX) as the rule of life. Ruby explained she would not sign until she had properly earned the degree. Nem wrote that the atmosphere in the lodge hall was so tense that it took one back to the scene of the judgment hall in the Bible.9 Jones announced that he was giving up his possessions to the OTO, retaining only the Scottish Rite double-​headed eagle jewel until there was a VII˚ of the OTO on whom he could bestow it. Although Smith included the momentous events of the day in his diary, he felt that Jones was the proper one to record them. Without Smith’s record we would know little of what occurred. The entry for June 20, 1916, in Jones’s diary reads in toto: “11.34 pm Proclamation of M.T.” The strain on Jones’s face was immense—​Nem likened it to the visage of the crucified Jesus—​and they all felt for him. Nem went downstairs, then Kath and Smith went over to Jones, who was seated on the altar steps with Ruby. Kath and Smith both kissed Ruby and Jones good night. Jones dispatched a letter to Smith that the events that took place after Blue Lodge were secret under the seal of his obligation of the V˚.10 Jones’s diary for the following day, June 21, laconically records this supernatural event: “10 pm Died +​Retd. Abyss Passed.” Smith’s common sense was prevailing; he recorded that Jones had not slept. He gave him a small sum of money, all he had on him at the time, and “beat a hasty retreat.” A sense of the uncontrolled rush of ideas passing through Jones’s mind can be seen in his account to Crowley of the events of the same day: June 21. Smith in a way had almost been a Judas. He pitted his personal will up against a blank, at one time, and pretty well lost it. I explained

A Master of the Temple  47 later and he began to love me for it. He changed a good deal after that. The morning after I claimed M.T. he came round and gave me all the money he had. (I returned it later) so on that night, knowing I was about all in, and had had an awful pain in heart all day, I think he had an idea it might be his last chance to say good-​bye. Ruby had been instructed to record times very exactly when I called meeting re M.T., she had rather failed in this. She tells me on the night of 21st a sudden idea came to her to go to my room and find out the time. This she did. I had an awful pang in heart, then was wide awake and kissed her. I am not sure she did not provide a certain part of her life to pull me through. Some time after she was so badly obsessed that I came to the conclusion she had been taken possession of by Black Brothers. The solution that then came to me was that her life had passed over to me (Jly 9) [sic] and working on that supposition I let it flow back to her, since when she had not only got better, but is very much changed. Sol and Luna. represents an idea which came to me that the Two lives should be in the male and the woman only receive the ray in order to make a perfect union.11

The attainment of the grade of Magister Templi demands the loss of the Self to the Universal Self. But in Jones’s view, his initiation to the grade had radically altered the structure of the spiritual world. He came to believe that the Tree of Life was “smashed up” along with what he called the “Hebraic system” of the Old Aeon of Osiris. There was to be a pyramid of Spirit and Matter established on Malkuth under the night sky (Nuit) and the “Winged F in chrysilis of Chochmah, set free as Hadit.” There was no more need for the grades of the A∴A∴ because there was no more Abyss for man to pass as a renunciation; the OTO degrees would suffice for mankind’s emancipation.12 Crowley did not accept the above; in his view, the coming of the New Aeon of Horus did not smash the Tree and abolish the Abyss, but it required new methods of attainment which were rooted in the preexisting ones.13 Crowley, despite his reputation as an iconoclast, had a respect derived from experience for the received knowledge of both East and West, to which he distinctly believed himself to be linked. In time, the formulae of the new age would be revealed; in the interim, his duty was to help purge the old methods of their dated metaphysics. There was no need and no utility in throwing it all out and starting afresh. Nor was this all: Jones recorded in his diary that he attained the grade of Magus 9˚ =​2□ at noon on June 23rd and by 9:00 p.m. the same day he was an

48  The Unknown God Ipsissimus 10˚ =​1□. He then plunged from the height of Kether to Malkuth on June 24th and retook the grade of Neophyte 1˚ =​10□ under his old motto of Unus in Omnibus. Only the return to Neophyte did he confide to Crowley at this time; it made no sense at first until Crowley recounted that after his crossing he was “cast out” into the Heavens of Jupiter. Jones signaled the completion of the work with yet another cryptic telegram to Crowley on June 27: “OPERATION PERFECT HAIL IPSISSIMUS ONE NEOPHYTE MADE A BEAUTIFUL NEST,” with the initials of the first six words intended to spell out “Therion” and the last four in reference to the sacred word of the III˚ of OTO. Jones was in the throes of an initiation where everything around him assumed symbolic resonance. He sent off two more mystically worded telegrams to Crowley, who had just arrived at his place of magical retirement in Bristol, New Hampshire. The recipient was befuddled by the recent communications. All he could suggest in reply was that perhaps Jones had attained Samadhi violently and suddenly and thus had lost his balance. He temperately suggested that Jones sit still and do nothing; if the result was genuine, delay would not harm it. He took the opportunity to remind him that the balance of importance to Crowley at that moment was the bank balance; £5,000 was needed to publish the third volume of The Equinox, which he was preparing for the press. Jones replied that he listened to the advice to do nothing, as far as financial matters were concerned, since he had no money to offer. There was yet another plane on which all these magical operations were being reified. Unknown to Jones, Crowley had been attempting to impregnate Jeanne Robert Foster in series of couplings ending at the autumnal equinox in September 1915, just prior to their visit to Vancouver. As he later learned, he was attempting a physical impossibility. Although Jones’s telegrams were at first a series of meaningless cryptograms to Crowley, through their voluminous correspondence of the summer of 1916, Therion began to see the sense in them. He grew to believe that Jones was a “Babe of the Abyss,” born at the summer solstice of 1916 and destined to be his magical son and the “child of his bowels” predicted in The Book of the Law.14 By jumping over the intermediate grades and claiming the grade of Magister Templi, an action “unprecedented in the whole history of Magick” in Crowley’s words and the only grade of the A∴A∴ that can be so claimed, it removed one restriction on Crowley’s attainment in full of the grade of Magus, as the chain of initiates had to be complete from the Crown to the Kingdom. It was, however, incumbent on

A Master of the Temple  49 the claimant to fulfill all the tasks of the intermediate grades, to say nothing of the immense task of the Magister Templi, mystically described as the shedding of every drop of blood into the Cup of Babalon. Jones’s expansion of consciousness and skipping over grades seemed to be affecting everyone around him, or so he believed. Jones and Ruby took a short camping holiday; when they returned on June 25, Smith noticed that Ruby was wearing Jones’s 32˚ Scottish Rite jewel, a sign that he had elevated her to the VII˚ of OTO, Sovereign Grand Inspector General and a member of the Supreme Council of the order for Canada. Clearly, she was on the fast track for advancement. Although Kath had signed the V˚ obligation, she had yet to receive her prerequisite Minerval degree. Her advancement was swift on other planes as well. On June 22, Jones informed Smith that Kath, not even so much as a Probationer 0˚ =​0□, was now an Adeptus Minor 5˚ =​6□ of the A∴A∴ and had achieved the “Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel,” the phrase Crowley adopted from The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abra-​Melin the Mage15 as the conventional term to denote the central attainment of the grade.16 The lack of OTO degree work was remedied on June 27 when the lodge conferred the Minerval and I˚ on her before she left town that night for a stay in Seattle. Smith and Nem followed Kath on July 1, with Smith returning to North Vancouver on July 17 and Nem on July 25. In the course of their holiday, they went to see Nem’s family in Oswego, Oregon. She took great pains to tell all who would listen about Smith’s attraction to her daughter, or as she termed it, his stepdaughter. Kath’s acknowledgment of their de facto relationship is evident from her letters to Smith, which were addressed to “Dearest little daddy.” It is a painfully accurate foreshadowing of their future together. Although Nem’s family politely kept their distance from the interfamily entanglement, not the first of its kind among Nem and her daughters, they took keen interest in Nem’s wild stories about the OTO and the lodge. These tales prompted Jones to write Kath an epistle on “certain misunderstandings that appear to have arisen in regard to our Order.”17 Smith and Kath were thoroughly humiliated by the exposure of their love, to the point of Kath beginning to hate herself for the trouble she had caused her mother and Smith. On Nem’s insistence, Kath was left in Oregon, out of the reach of Smith and Jones. Both pined for her return. The complexity of the social arrangements among the Brethren of the lodge, to say nothing of the conflicts that they were engendering, left Jones

50  The Unknown God in a quandary. Jones explained to Crowley what “a devil of a business this R.C. affair is yet”: A. [Smith] is living with B. [Nem] and is in love with her daughter C. [Kath]. D. [Jones] is also in love with C., but married to E. [Ruby]. E. loves D, but is also somewhat attracted to F. [Howard E. White] F. loves E. and is married to G. [Margaret White]. G is a loose end but has recently joined Lodge. H [Clark], if anything has a sneaking regard for G. etc. When they read the Book of the Law, they feel a “change” would be a good thing, on the other hand certain pledges they have all given hold each back so that something tells them they have got to stick to their original contracts with their physical partners, because not having the key to the situation they cannot find an excuse for doing anything else. I on the other hand being a kind of guide post, have to lie mum and do nothing till I can find a way to arrange my own affairs without giving the game away.18

Crowley, never at a loss for answers to sexual problems, offered the following advice to the Sovereign Princes and Princesses of the Rose Croix, first taking his lessons from The Book of the Law: II. 24. means Enjoy yourself. II. 52 means Enjoy yourself as you will. I. 41 means α.  Let any one who wants to enjoy himself do so. β.  Do not allow anyone to hold you to any compact.

Following from the thelemic scriptural exegesis, the dilemma they faced could be resolved by spintrian means: So, in the problem you offer for my solution, call a meeting from A to H. A. and D. copulate with C., while E. enjoys D. and F. H. and G. look on, get really excited, and retire to a corner. All breakfast together, +​compare notes gleefully, and praise God. I should worry! If they can really all acquiesce in this free and easy arrangement, and yet not lose the sense of sacramentalism, all will be well. It’s all Point of View.19

The acquisition of this point of view was not so easily obtained. Despite his disgust at the yellow press descriptions of the OTO as a “love cult,”20

A Master of the Temple  51 Crowley heartily encouraged free love among its members. He maintained that this style of communal loving was common among the denizens of Montparnasse—seemingly forgetful of the fact that Paris was a long way from North Vancouver in every respect. Nor did he know the personalities involved well enough to advise them in this course of action. Cheerful acceptance of the realities of their situation was not to be found among the OTO initiates of British Columbia Lodge No. 1. The “free and easy arrangement” gaily envisioned by Baphomet would prove to be neither, especially for the now unhappy trio of Smith, Nem, and Kath.

6 In the Red Room of Rose Croix The summer of 1916 passed in agonizing slowness for Smith. His diary is full of endless longing for Kath, punctuated by receipt of her letters which promise her return, then reverse themselves. All along Nem was reading her daughter’s letters. They were increasingly passionate, making her path clear: she should leave, and Kath should return. The way was not so plain for Jones; the constant stream of letters from Crowley, filled with details of his magical systems mentioned nowhere else in Crowley’s vast correspondence, must have occupied most of his waking hours as he tried to meet his spiritual father’s incessant demands and suggestions, to say nothing of recovering from the great shock of the initiations of the summer solstice. Despite all the upheaval among the members, British Columbia Lodge No. 1 managed to meet throughout the summer. At the July 11th meeting it was announced that Jones had not only attained the IX˚ but had been appointed “Hon. X˚ and Viceroy of His Most Sacred Majesty of Ireland, Iona and all the Britains for the Dominion of Canada that is in the Sanctuary of the Gnosis.” A public meeting of the M∴M∴M∴ to proclaim the Message of the New Aeon was advertised for August 20, 1916, in the Vancouver Labour Temple at 411 Duismuir Street (two years later the site of a mob attack on union organizers during Canada’s first General Strike). Prior to the event, the lodge members covered the city in 2,500 handbills. Like their previous attempts to gain publicity, the event aroused a considerable amount of notice, but the attendance was slight, and the lodge netted no applicants. The upheaval of the war and the poor economy stifled interest. Crowley had been “living in the sunshine,” in the phrase of Soror Hilarion. The beauty of a summer in the country in New Hampshire, with its tranquility and simplicity of life, had stimulated Crowley to a great burst of literary productivity. Two full-​length books were written during his stay at the cottage of the American astrologer Evangeline Adams: The Gospel According to St. Bernard Shaw and Golden Twigs.1 The establishment of the OTO was much on his mind the entire stay. Crowley busied himself with writing OTO tracts: he composed “Khabs Am Pekht,” “Concerning the Law of Thelema,” The Unknown God. Martin P. Starr, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2024. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197744512.003.0006

In the Red Room of Rose Croix  53 and “The Law of Liberty.” He revised his texts of the OTO secret instructions and drafted his ideas on the government of that order, imagining it on the cusp of greater expansion of membership. As each liber was written, it was dispatched to Jones and promptly read and discussed in the lodge. Following Crowley’s example, Jones composed his response to The Message of the Master Therion, which he entitled “The Comment of Frater Achad,” and he wrote a string of encyclical letters to the lodge Brethren. In addition to the rebuttal of arguments against the OTO written for Kath, he composed an epistle to Ruby in her imagined role as the “Holy Mother” of their nascent Rose Croix Chapter, and a lecture on the need for obscurity. The chief of the letters was one addressed specifically to Smith and Nem, dealing with the “Sex Question,” or as they discreetly referred to it, the “S.Q.” Their unhappiness was manifest to all, and Jones naively thought he could resolve the situation with a few well-​chosen words of mystical import. He was mistaken. The focus of the controversy was the conflict over Kath, in which Jones also played a part, and her absence had not markedly improved matters. Jones continued to report to Crowley on Smith and Nem: The other two have been regular in attendance, have paid well, though never more that [sic] their actual fees in reality, at the same time they doubtless think they are in some way keeping us, and at the same time one of them has done some little harm by too much gossip, and the other is a bit disgruntled because he cannot get the girl he wants, she having decided to stay away, and in any case, if he did but know it, I had my eye on her myself.2

The self-​ styled “devilish devil” Kath returned to North Vancouver on October 14, to Smith’s great relief. She had kept a diary which Smith promptly read; it confirmed that she had longed for him, too. The agony of their separation had been so prolonged and intense that to his mind there was but a subtle difference between pleasure and pain; even so, he preferred pleasure. It had been in short supply in the Smith household for too long a time. And then Smith’s diary stops; the next entry is dated February 11 of the following year. The activities of British Columbia Lodge No. 1 continued feebly. The members present voted to move their meeting place from North Vancouver to Vancouver on November 7, thinking that it would be easier to draw a crowd in town. The landlord refused to let them out of the lease on the North Vancouver location. It was then decided to have meetings in

54  The Unknown God the city and North Vancouver. Jones had further suggested that Smith absent himself from his house for two weeks and see if matters might calm down. He took the advice and spent three days in Vancouver, starting on November 17, sleepless and fighting with himself over his desire to take the next ferry back. He passed the time by walking the streets swearing to himself and writing his thoughts in his pocketbook, which musings he did not forbear to transcribe into his diary. Sleeping or waking, he was in agony, and he could not put from his mind the thought that “I love two women +​two women love me +​because of their natures +​mine we cant [sic] be happy in it.”3 Jones dropped the ball on the unhappy trio with his letter of November 20, 1916. He accused them of ignoring his advice and demanded, considering clauses 26–​27 of “Liber CI: An open letter to those who may wish to join the Order,”4 that they each give a full statement of their grievance. The matter would then be put before the Grand Tribunal of the order for their decision. This plan of action was duly reported to Crowley and met with his approval, only adding that he would have acted sooner. Their joint answer of November 26 was unequivocal. Smith, Nem, and Kath resigned from the OTO forthwith. They had no wish to be the cause of any further hindrance to the order or annoyance to the Brethren, as had been suggested. Their dispute they wished to decide among themselves; they had no intention of having the course of their wills dictated to them. Jones was equally pointed in his response of November 28: he suspended all three of them for six months. They did not reply to Jones’s letter, nor to his letter of reinstatement of December 23; both letters are annotated by Smith as “ignored.” Smith commented in his diary that their resignation had not been accepted, and that the real reason for their upset was his conflict regarding Kath with Jones, whom he rightly suspected of wanting her love. Standing up to Jones seemed to cause “a marked improvement in this respect.”5 And coincidentally, Smith’s domestic atmosphere ameliorated itself, at least for the instant. After the Smith family’s return, the lodge met only a few times in 1917. Jones acted as Right Worshipful Master, with Ruby as the Second Officer and Howard E. White as the Third. Kath was passed to the II˚ on January 25, prompting an epistle from Jones on the subject.6 Jones called a special general meeting for February 21. The members were required to memorize the Crowley tract “The Law of Liberty” as a prerequisite for attending this meeting. He issued them a challenge “make up their minds either to set to

In the Red Room of Rose Croix  55 work even more seriously than before to make the movement a success, or to leave the matter alone. . . . We want no half-​hearted support, we can stand without it.”7 Jones queried the few members present at the meeting on the advisability of continuing the lodge and they responded unanimously in the affirmative. His strident call to action, however, was all that was needed to put the lodge to sleep, and several members resigned in response to the letter. The last meeting of the year was held March 13; the plan was to have a series of public lectures by Jones in the city on a variety of mystical topics. Although these helped launch Jones on his career as a public speaker, they aroused no interest in lodge activity. The lodge did not meet for another 13 months. Smith had passed through his year of Probation and turned in the record of his work to Jones. As Jones was uncertain of the qualifications for advancement to Neophyte,8 he referred the matter to Crowley, adding that there was little in the diary of which he was not already aware. In Jones’s view, Smith had no results at all worth recording, other than the fact that he persisted in his aspiration: I think, as you once remarked, that I should have treated K[ath]. in a different way,9 which would then have thrown Smith’s affairs into a different aspect (possibly). In any case, the affair seems to have turned him from A∴A∴ lines, although he may honestly have done his best to do what he willed in the way of Liberty. As far as I know he has never satisfactorily solved the problem yet, although he lives with the mother and daughter, and there is an outward appearance of harmony. I don’t think for a minute that he really expects to pass to Neophyte, but at any rate he has had sense enough to follow instructions by turning in his record at the appointed time.10

Crowley complained to Jones that he could not follow Smith’s diary, as it was not written so that a third party could understand it, or even know with certainty who were the dramatis personae. Jones put it to Smith to rewrite the entire diary, with a dictionary at his side as there were so many spelling errors, and to describe unambiguously the entire course of events.11 His probation was to be extended three months with a promise of advancement to Neophyte at that time. Jones once again found it necessary to describe in detail for Crowley the Smith imbroglio, with additional comments that show Smith’s jealousy of Jones had less of a basis than he thought: K[ath]. is Nem’s daughter. Smith is in love with her and I have still some desire towards her at times but have never had her. There was such an absurd

56  The Unknown God affair in connection with the whole matter, owing to the jealousy etc., particularly on the part of the women, that I have refrained from taking any active steps in that direction. I dont know if S[mith]. has had her or not. She is changed, and not for the better, is less vital and robust and I feel there is something going wrong somewhere. Sister S. (Nem) has made things pretty bad for S. and has spread their affairs about to such an extent, that a great deal of harm was done to the movement, and it needed the greatest care to put things right again.12

Smith was so ashamed of his diary that he had asked for it back, and he thought of starting afresh on another year as a Probationer. Both Frater Achad and the Master Therion took their turns commenting on Smith’s diary. In the rewritten diary, Smith’s troubled spelling (e.g., “aproaching” for “approaching”), perhaps a product of his lack of adequate childhood education, triggered Jones to remark: “I have arrived at the state where I am sick of indicating errors in spelling etc., which are entirely due to carelessness in copying the record again. What do you think I set you this task for?”13 Alas, hectoring Smith for his poor spelling did nothing to improve it, and throughout his life it remained a problem. The Master Therion read the diary in its entirety. Nothing in it would have shocked him; it is anodyne compared to his own sexually explicit records. Crowley, who pined over the loss of relatively few of the many women in his life, found Smith’s frequently expressed remorse and self-​ doubt over his dual affair with Nem and Kath unworthy of further serious consideration. His terminal comment to Smith centered on the latter’s domestic unhappiness: There was a brother in Madras who slept for 3 weeks with a mother and daughter, and had a splendid time with no mental torture at all. Why take these idiotic problems so seriously? To do so is to make yourself lower than the brutes. They never worry “Shall I? Shan’t I?” They do what they will. The only trouble is when two cocks fight for the same hen; +​this is fun, because it’s honest fighting. It’s stupid, though, because any hen can keep 25 cocks amused.14

In a similar train of discourse, Crowley shared his utilitarian view of women with Jones, advice of the type that is not infrequently found in his letters to his male disciples:

In the Red Room of Rose Croix  57 You may (my beloved son) after about 50 years more experience come to the conclusion that valuable as women are in the work, it is better to do without them. “The dull and boneless devotees of twat; Leave them to wallow; we are well a-​wing!” It appears to me that K[ath]. has distributed the smell of her cunt (as [Victor] Neuburg would say) with admirable impartiality, and that this was the principal cause of the general outburst.15

Not so impartially: Kath first gave herself to her “little daddy” on February 14, 1917. He faithfully recorded the less than stellar event in his first locking diary volume: “After all this time she gave way most sweet but nervous, which most infortunatly [sic] spoilt things. I too keen as well. Utter failure.” The next entry, of March 19, gives more detail of the operation: 8.15 to 8.45 L[iber] S[tellae] fairly well in hand O suggested 2 states. Excited, stired up +​ridgity [sic] likened unto death. It was suggested that this latter condition if prolonged might cause something to happen what?

Smith was taking his instruction from Crowley’s “Liber Stellae Rubeae,”16 one of his earliest writings on sexual magic. In addition, loose pages inserted into the locked diary opposite the above entries contained a version in Smith’s hand of another Crowleyan ceremony of sexual magic, “The Supreme Ritual.” It was originally published as part I of his “Two Fragments of Ritual”17 which Crowley, throwing dust in the eyes of the profane, claimed to have been discovered among the papers of Adam Weishaupt, the founder of the Illuminati. Both parts are entirely Crowley’s work. The officers in “The Supreme Ritual” are said to seek Nuit and Hadit through Babalon and the Beast, concealing themselves as Isis and Osiris. To add to the obfuscation, in the printed ritual Crowley reverses the parts where “O.” properly represents Babalon (Nuit-​ Isis) and “I.” represents the Beast (Hadit-​Osiris); Smith knew the corrections to the blinds. All these ritualistic couplings were not, in Smith’s mind, a mere excuse for concupiscence, as his entry of March 31 attests: “Twice, almost directly following to egar [sic] but attempted at start to keep mind on the higher.” But human nature and human biology did prevail, and Smith honestly acknowledged the former in his June 22 diary entry: Has happened several times since last entry Mar 31st. And perhaps treated in too much in the ordinary way. Perhaps slightly due to O’s own less

58  The Unknown God aspiring attitude of mind in regard to matter. O condition of course +​state of mind due to same partly to blame for that. Claims C.O.N.C.P.T. took place Mar 31st? I don’t know.

Smith may not have known, but she did. Kath had become pregnant with Smith’s child. The fighting between Nem and Smith over his desire for Kath ceased. Nem could no longer hope that she could argue or shame out of existence the love between Smith and her daughter. Yet this substantial change in their lives together passes almost without comment. There is no mention of Kath’s pregnancy in either Jones or Smith’s diary. Nor does Jones relay the fact to his master Crowley until October 1917, and then it is mentioned merely as an aside. Crowley replied that they were fresh out of illegitimate babies at the offices of The International: A Review of Two Worlds, George Sylvester Viereck’s literary newspaper to which he was a contributing editor.18 He would be sure to forward any arrivals to Jones in due course, terms cash with order. The lodge ceased keeping minutes or calling formal meetings for initiations. Jones gathered the order initiates together when he felt the need, as when Crowley set a task for the lodge members to rewrite “The Law of Liberty” in their own words. The primary activity of the members was reading and discussing the fresh stream of OTO libri being received from Baphomet, with Jones reading to the brethren the additions to the OTO literature as they were received, including an insert for the II˚ on the proposed government of the order.19 The text of the greatest long-​term significance received from Crowley arrived in late March 1917: “Ecclesiae Gnosticae Catholicae Canon Missae,” the Canon of the Mass of the Gnostic Catholic Church. It was described by its author as “the Ritual of the Gnostic Catholic Church which, later in the year [1913], I prepared for the use of the O.T.O., the central ceremony of its public and private celebration, corresponding to the Mass of the Roman Catholic Church.”20 It would become the center of Smith’s ritual praxis. Crowley legitimated his connection to the Gnostic Catholic Church through his descent from Theodor Reuss. He attributed his composition of the Gnostic Catholic Mass to his unconscious prophecy of the Russian Revolution, in which orthodoxy was defeated by materialist communism. His liturgy would be in accord with religious tradition, yet not be vitiated by rational science,

In the Red Room of Rose Croix  59 all in keeping with the motto of the A∴A∴: “The Method of Science; the Aim of Religion”: My relations with the Gnostic Catholic Church are like the annals of the Poor—​short and simple. My predecessor [Theodor Reuss] was rather keen about the Gnostics as the original founders of what, after many changes, has become the O.T.O. During my six weeks in Moscow in 1913 e.v., I had what I can only call, almost continuous illumination, and wrote quite a number of my very best poems & essays there. Of these, the Gnostic Mass was one. It was inspired, I think, by St. Basil’s. It sounds rather extraordinary, but I seem to have had some premonition of the Revolution in Russia, and my idea was to write a Mass which would in one sense carry on the old Tradition, yet not come into conflict with Science. The whole thing was, as is almost invariably the case with my work, written straight off at white heat, and never underwent revision.21

Crowley claimed that his Mass represents “the original and true pre-​ Christian Christianity,” a manifestation of the universal religion of the worship of the Sun in heaven and the Phallus on earth known to initiates of the Sanctuary of the Gnosis, IX˚. The Gnostic Catholic Mass was initially published in The International in 1918,22 the year after Bishop James I. Wedgwood issued his first liturgy revised from the Roman Rite for the use of the Liberal Catholic Church, which was then denominated, after its source of apostolic succession, the Old Catholic Church.23 Crowley’s historical antecedents, despite his blind that his Mass was “edited from the Ancient Documents in Assyrian and Greek,” are less clear. They were both novel for their use of the vernacular. Both were, after their own lights, gnostic.24 However, the aims of Crowley and Wedgwood for their respective liturgies were equally far afield from those of early-​20th-​century Catholic Christianity. The intent of the Mass of the Roman Catholic Church is the eucharistic sacrifice of the body and blood of Jesus Christ in memorial of His death and resurrection. The Liberal Catholic liturgy was created in service to the World Teacher (the Lord Maitreya) as the nucleus of His new presentation of Christianity to aid the religious development of the West. Crowley mistakenly considered the Liberal Catholics to be Papists when in fact they

60  The Unknown God repudiated papal authority. The purpose of the Liberal Catholic Church was to make ready the way for the Coming of the Christ: The future is with the Church, for the Seventh Ray—​the Ray of Ceremonial Magic—​is beginning to dominate the world. The day of blind and unreasoning devotion is passing; but that of intelligent comprehension and use of Nature’s forces is dawning upon us. The Lord Himself, who founded the Church, is coming to visit it once more; may He find it ready to receive Him, full of activity, devotion and love.25

The purpose of Crowley’s Gnostic Catholic Mass is the celebration of an entirely new gnosis: it is a dramatization of the synthetic religion of Thelema joined to the sexual-​religious mysteries of the OTO, with a unifying theme of the elevation of woman. Its creed summarizes the complex of ideas: I believe in one secret and ineffable Lord; and in one Star in the Company of Stars of whose fire we are created, and to which we shall return; and in one Father of Life, Mystery of Mystery, in His name Chaos, the sole viceregent of the Sun upon the Earth; and in one Air, the nourisher of all that breathes. And I believe in one Earth, the Mother of us all, and in one Womb wherein all men are begotten, and wherein they shall rest, Mystery of Mystery, in Her name Babalon. And I believe in the Serpent and the Lion, Mystery of Mystery, in His name Baphomet. And I believe in one Gnostic and Catholic Church of Light, Life, Love and Liberty, the Word of whose Law is Thelema. And I believe in the communion of Saints. And, forasmuch as meat and drink are transmuted in us daily into spiritual substance, I believe in the Miracle of the Mass. And I confess one Baptism of Wisdom, whereby we accomplish the Miracle. And I confess my life one, individual, and eternal, that was, and is, and is to come.26

The “Gnostic” elements in Crowley’s Mass are related to those found in the writings of the 19th-​century self-​proclaimed neo-​Gnostic bishop and worshiper of the “Divine Feminine,” Jules Doinel.27 The ideals of Doinel’s Église Gnostique, which continued after the resignation of its founding Patriarch in 1895, entered into the stream of late-​19th-​century French Occultism, especially

In the Red Room of Rose Croix  61 the Ordre Martiniste. Gérard Encausse,28 better known as “Papus,” the leading figure in the Ordre Martiniste, had been consecrated a bishop by Doinel, whose church provided sacramental support to occultists and Freemasons deprived of the ministrations of the Roman Catholic Church due to their de facto excommunication for participation in secret societies. Like Crowley, Encausse had been barred from masonic membership in his native country. The order he created from the Rosicrucian heritage of Louis Claude de Saint-​Martin, the “Unknown Philosopher,” was a mystical school of instruction with three degrees patterned after the rituals of craft masonry. The Ordre Martiniste admitted men and women on an equal basis; it served as an immediately accessible paradigm for Reuss, who was a Martinist representative of Papus in Germany. The elevation of woman was a cardinal concept of Crowley’s contemporaries in neo-​Gnosticism. Reuss had proclaimed that “thus the first aim of our Order in the esoteric-​practical realization of our teachings is that in future the ‘Mother’ is to be honored as ‘High Priestess’ in her family.”29 To those familiar with Crowley’s proximate sources, the text of the Gnostic Catholic Mass reads like a cross between a ritualized form of the quest for the grail exemplified in Wagner’s Parsifal with dialogue formed by extensive quotation and paraphrasing from The Book of the Law. Unlike its Theosophical counterpart, one would look in vain through the volumes of the Acta Sanctorum for the lives of the saints of the Gnostic Catholic Church, which include Doctors Gérard Encausse and Theodor Reuss and Sir Aleister Crowley. Crowley’s choice of saints was pragmatic and poetic. His professed lack of interest in history, as well as his skepticism about it as a discipline, led him to state that the denomination of “saint” in his Mass was “a rhetorical flourish—​little more.”30 Wedgwood and Leadbeater took a minimalizing approach to Catholic tradition. As they saw the whole system of commemoration of the saints to be anachronistic and the calendar of saints overladen with mythical or transformed pagan deities, the founders of the Liberal Catholic Church reduced the number of saints in their liturgical work to a short list. The source of Crowley’s ecclesiastical preferment has been the subject of some question. It has been asserted that Crowley was made a bishop in the Gnostic Catholic Church, over which Reuss claimed primacy. There is no known evidence of Crowley’s episcopal consecration by Reuss. Crowley acknowledged Reuss as the “Most Reverend Father of the Gnostic Catholic Church” in the page proofs to his unpublished book of poetry, The Giant’s Thumb (1915), but never laid claim to any similar title himself. Crowley made a sole direct reference to his clerical standing in his correspondence

62  The Unknown God with Jones: “I am ordained priest and consecrated Bishop and Arch bishop by the laying on of hands. Nothing else is valid.”31 This statement, however lacking in potentially corroborative detail (atypical for Crowley), bespeaks an awareness of the canonical procedures for ordination and consecration. There is a documented source for Crowley’s priesthood. By virtue of a patent dated March 21, 1913, from the High College of the Societas Rosicruciana in America, incorporated as the Society of Rosicrucians in America, Crowley was elevated to the priesthood and given the title of “Honorary Magus” (IX˚). These preferments came through the mediacy of the society’s founder and its Supreme Magus X˚, George Winslow Plummer (1876–​ 1944). Plummer, a graphic artist educated at Brown University, claimed to be a lineal descendant of Edward Winslow, a passenger on the Mayflower. In addition to his American roots, Plummer was a regular Freemason. Plummer was a member of an old and distinguished New York craft lodge, Independent Royal Arch Lodge, No. 2, and a 32˚ Scottish Rite member in the New York Consistory, under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Council, 33˚, Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry for the Northern Masonic Jurisdiction of the United States of America (N.M.J.). This Supreme Council ruled over the 15 states east of the Mississippi and north of the Mason-​Dixon Line. Plummer’s form of Rosicrucianism was derived from his contact with Edward H. Brown, the successor to the American Rosicrucian P. B. Randolph, and Sylvester Clark Gould.32 Gould was a VIII˚ member of the Massachusetts College of the Societas Rosicruciana in the United States of America, a masonic body originally chartered by the Societas Rosicruciana in Scotia, the Rosicrucian Society in Scotland. The American society had become dormant by 1896. Plummer’s attempt to receive a new charter from the High Council of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia (SRIA), the Rosicrucian Society in England, proved unsuccessful; their dilatory responses to Plummer were clear signals of their lack of interest in his endeavor. Plummer was undeterred and went on to found a novel Societas Rosicruciana in America by 1911, resulting in the same acronym as the English Rosicrucian Society but with an essential difference: Plummer’s Societas Rosicruciana in America did not require masonic membership. The masonic prerequisite only applied to its “High Council of the Most Holy Order of the Ruby Rose and the Golden Cross” (composed of IX˚ members). Later the masonic requirements for leadership positions were dropped altogether to allow women to head the society. The teachings of Plummer’s Societas Rosicruciana in America bore

In the Red Room of Rose Croix  63 little relation to “mild, harmless” English masonic society, whose members according to Crowley “indulge in a sort of washed-​out piety, and they have not the slightest idea of the real meaning of the symbols which they employ.”33 Plummer was said to have received training in Roman Catholicism in his childhood hometown of Providence, Rhode Island. In Crowley’s roman à clef Moonchild (1929), this is distorted into making Plummer a lapsed Roman Catholic priest. “Butcher,” the character representing Plummer in Moonchild, when asked if he was a priest of the Roman Church, responds in Crowley’s caricature of Plummer’s English: “Yep: I took a chance on Pop Dago Benedict. But it’s a con game; I’m from Missouri. Four-​flushing gold brick merchants! Believe me, some bull! I took it like playing three days in Bumsville. Those boobs got my goat for fair, babe, No pipe!”34 Plummer was drawn toward Anglo-​Catholic mysticism and the writings of Evelyn Underhill (1875–​1941). Plummer first taught the mystical nature of the Christian sacraments in his affiliated Anglican Universal Church seminary. His liturgical practice was instituted after he transitioned to Eastern Orthodoxy. When Plummer was re-​consecrated in 1934, he changed his church’s name to the “Holy Orthodox Church in America (Eastern Catholic and Apostolic).” It was to be a movement, he hoped, and not another sect or denomination. The church’s principal mission was the presentation of Eastern Orthodox liturgies in the English language. It claimed to be an autonomous body, all the while recognizing the spiritual supremacy of the Patriarch of Constantinople. Much like the tripartite framing of competing non-​masonic Rosicrucian societies of the day, the Societas Rosicruciana in America of Plummer under one parent organization offered to its members: (1) a church dispensing minor and major sacraments; (2) a fraternal order conferring grades through ritual; and (3) an esoteric college offering degree-​granting courses via in-​ person lectures and mail-​based distant learning. Plummer explained the schema to Crowley, whereby “The Society of Rosicrucians, Inc.” was incorporated in New York in 1912 as a religious society strictly for practical purposes: The Societas Rosicruciana in America, for the best furtherance of its work under existing conditions, is incorporated under the Religious Corporations Act. Thus, while it is not, of course, in any sense a church, the provisions of said Act enable us to maintain a discipline and to carry out functions and ideas of our own under the protection accorded by this Act.

64  The Unknown God The holder of our Ninth Degree Diploma, there enjoys all the rights, privileges and benefits accorded to all duly ordained and authorized clergy in this country.35

The High Council was further incorporated in New York under the name of the “First Rosicrucian Church of America.” Unlike the English and American masonic Rosicrucian societies, Plummer’s ritual of initiation to the IX˚ in the Societas Rosicruciana in America included a full ordination to the priesthood. The sacrament of ordination was dispensed by their Junior Magus, the Rt. Rev. Manuel Ferrando (1866–​1934), an Episcopal bishop. Never one to decline an honor or a meal, Crowley graciously accepted the IX˚ diploma from Plummer. On his arrival in New York in November 1914, in return of the favor granted, Crowley personally presented Frater Khei X˚ with an OTO patent attesting to Plummer’s standing as a 32˚ Mason, in recognition of the fact that the Supreme Council of the OTO—​“the real Rosicrucian Order”—​was working for masonic unity. Plummer’s friendship with Crowley was of short duration and they did not part in Rosicrucian amity. According to R. A. Gilbert, by 1917 “the ‘degenerate’ ‘Saint Edward Aleister Crowley’ was ‘dropt’ from the roll of members and considered to be ‘officially deceast’ (Plummer used reformed spelling) because he was said to be under indictment in England for Sodomy and Treason.’ ”36 These indictments were no more factual than the libelous assaults on Plummer’s character in Crowley’s Moonchild (written in 1917), where “Butcher” is falsely portrayed as an ecclesiastical accomplice to the murderous black magic scheme of S. L. Mathers (or “Douglas”). Plummer had a special “Mass of the Four Elements” used in the opening of Colleges of the Societas Rosicruciana in America. Following his Orthodox consecration, Plummer adopted the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom; a modernizing departure from the norms of Orthodoxy was that it was conducted in English.37 Crowley’s Gnostic Catholic Mass was neither Catholic nor Orthodox. Its elements were not suitable for mass consumption, nor were they likely to have been understood by participants who lacked a Classical education. In the “Consecration of the Elements,” the text holds to Christian tradition with the Words of Institution (“this is my body; this is the cup of my blood”), all recited in Classical Greek. The rupture comes in the communion, “Mystic Marriage and Consummation of the Elements,” where the priest utters in

In the Red Room of Rose Croix  65 Greek “this is my seed.” As in the phrase of Gibbon: “My English text is chaste, and all licentious passages are left in the obscurity of a learned language.”38 Arnold Krumm-​Heller,39 whose Fraternitas Rosicruciana Antiqua had its own Gnostic church and liturgy, later warned Crowley that the inclusion of “Baphomet” in his Gnostic Catholic Mass made the liturgy impossible to publish in Central or South America, where the name smacked of Satanism; it was glossed by Crowley to mean “Father Mithras.” Jean Bricaud, the Patriarch of the Gnostic Church of France, after having read Crowley’s liturgy in Reuss’s German translation, declared it should not have been published openly. Some of the aura of the Evil One was clearly intentional. For its publication in The Equinox, Vol. 3, No. 1 (1919), often referred to as the “Blue Equinox” from the color of its binding, the Gnostic Catholic Mass was given the title of “Liber XV,” the same number as the tarot trump, “The Devil.”40 Although Crowley’s Gnostic Catholic Mass is not identical in form or function to the Black Mass described in J.-​K. Huysmann’s Là bas, the distinctions were easily lost on the uninitiated. All but the most liberal would have regarded the combination of these transgressive elements, along with the formulation of its host and the suggested nudity of the Priestess—​not present in its 1918 initial publication in The International—​to have been outside the pale of respectable religious worship. To Smith and the faithful of the OTO, however, it was a sacrament of the highest order and of the utmost propriety, and they conducted themselves accordingly. Contemporary witnesses attest to its inspirational quality and its decorousness when performed semi-​ publicly by Smith. Crowley’s Gnostic Catholic Mass achieved its widest circulation through its unacknowledged repurposing in ­chapter 22, “As to a veil they broke,” of James Branch Cabell’s fantasy novel, Jurgen,41 which caused a censorship-​ related sensation and impressed Crowley as the greatest possible form of tribute to his work. It was a literary bow to his genius, but as Philip Jenkins noted, “Crowley’s bizarre world became the subject of fictional writings in which all these diverse elements were mingled together, so that witchcraft, Satanism and black magic became indistinguishable in the popular mind, contextualized with sexual orgies and ritual violence.”42 The reputation for evil was a heavy burden for his disciples to bear. Jones was very enthusiastic about the potential for a public ceremony. He immediately recognized that a ritual of this kind was the most likely means of gathering new adherents. There were elements in it, like the open use of

66  The Unknown God the OTO degree signs, which might pose a problem. Jones answered his own question and came to the same conclusion as did Crowley when Smith raised the issue two decades later regarding the signs of recognition: employ them without explanation. The question never arose from practice. Jones never celebrated the Mass. Crowley himself only performed parts of it, primarily during his residence at the “Abbey of Thelema” in Cefalù, Sicily in 1920–​ 1923; the reduced liturgy is described in his novel, The Diary of a Drug Fiend (1922). Nevertheless, the primacy of performance of the Gnostic Catholic Mass was a constant in Crowley’s view of what constituted just and regular OTO work. With the revival of public activities in 1933, the regular exemplification of the Gnostic Catholic Mass became a reality and it grew to be the focus of Smith’s activities. The importance of this liturgy to the growth of the movement under his leadership cannot be underestimated—​it was by far the most potent means of attracting and retaining members. For the present, however, it remained, like most of the OTO described in the pages of The Equinox, a grand scheme on paper with little real hope of practical application on a large scale. Crowley had lectured Jones that what was wanted was money and not people—​patrons were preferable to pupils—​yet there was still a need for some members to carry out the plans for a new world order. The lack of popularity of the OTO movement could have only been disheartening. The membership of the OTO under Crowley’s direction in 1917 likely did not exceed 50 members. Despite the several schisms in the TS since the death of Madame Blavatsky, the Theosophical movement enjoyed a vast following by comparison with the fledgling OTO under Crowley’s direction. Their success at establishing activities around the globe was evident, and lodges of the TS were found in every major city in England, the United States, and Canada. In contrast to Crowley’s repeated attacks on the TS, one will find no notice given to Crowley or his books in Theosophical literature. There were exceptions, however. Charles A. Lazenby (1878–​1928), a Canadian Theosophical lecturer, author of The Work of the Masters (1917), and a frequent contributor to the English TS journal, The Path, gave a public lecture on magic at the Vancouver Labour Temple on July 31, 1917. Jones was in the audience and reported Lazenby’s remarks in a faux letter to the editor, which Crowley printed with his response in the October 1917 issue of The International. Lazenby described the Master Therion’s mission and methods in terms of ambiguous praise:

In the Red Room of Rose Croix  67 No living person perhaps had had such an influence on occult thought, and wrought so much change therein. He has knowingly taken upon himself a tremendous Karma, but what will be the ultimate result it is impossible to judge. To all appearance, as I remarked, he is the personification of evil. . . . Looking at from known standards he is evil, but from a distance, in perspective, one may imagine that he is taking this great Karma for some definite end, he may be the Savior of the World.43

Here was an opportunity he had long sought. The Master Therion saw fit to respond, and did not miss the opportunity of outraging the Theosophists once again: It is something to be hailed as a possible Savior of the World by one’s avowed and bitter enemies. Nunc dimittis! Anyhow, to be called the “Personification of Evil” is not exactly a precise charge. . . . I believe that H. P. Blavatsky was a great adept. . . . I consider that her work has been treacherously ruined by Mrs. Besant, the street corner atheist, socialist, and advocate of abortion. Of this offense she was actually convicted. Mrs. Besant’s whole object seems to have been to prevent disciples from making those bold experiments which open the gates of the higher planes. . . . To prevent men from confronting the unknown, to side track them with petty drivel about minor ethics, to deck them out with the stolen regalia of orders of whose secrets they are profoundly ignorant: these are the works of the Brothers of the Left Hand Path; and of these I believe Mrs. Besant to be the greatest now alive.44

This attack on Besant, repeating the libelous charge of advocacy of abortion, was setting the stage for Crowley’s work-​in-​progress to establish his position in the Theosophical world. It was an uphill battle. Much had changed from the time when Westcott and Blavatsky shared esoteric bonds; the magical world of Crowley was wholly divorced from the TS. His chosen means to this end was “Liber LXXI,” a deconstruction of Blavatsky’s inspired text, The Voice of the Silence.45 Crowley sought to demonstrate that the text proved that Blavatsky, despite the charges of mediumistic fraud brought against her, was a genuine adept in contact with the Masters. The secondary aim was to annoy her successors, especially Besant and Leadbeater, whom Crowley viewed as spiritually vacant materialists as well as immoral traducers of the Madame’s work. Crowley was Blavatsky’s true spiritual heir.

68  The Unknown God Crowley’s moral outrage against Besant and Leadbeater was not a defensible position. The “stolen regalia” charge leveled here is rich with hypocrisy. Crowley advocated use in the OTO of the insignia of the Craft, the Ancient and Accepted Rite, and even of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre, a degree in the high-​grade masonic Order of the Red Cross of Constantine,46 in which exclusive Trinitarian Christian body neither Reuss nor Crowley was ever a member. No matter; in his fight in the period 1913–​1926 against the success of Theosophy, Crowley brandished every propaganda weapon he could muster. This included attempting to incite ethnic and racial prejudice against Krishnamurti, anti-​homosexual prejudice against Leadbeater and Wedgwood, and anti-​Catholic prejudice against the Liberal Catholic Church. All these campaigns yielded him nothing, and he was almost completely ignored by the Theosophists. The more pressing danger was the threat of world war. News of Brother Dawson’s death on the battlefield traveled back home to British Columbia, making good on Crowley’s prophecy. Jones worried about the possibilities of being drafted; as the head of a household with a young child he thought he would be exempt, but there was a war on and nothing else was certain. Against this backdrop of global turmoil, Smith’s near-​constant devotion to the work of the Outer College of the A∴A∴ paid off. After reviewing the balance of Smith’s record, Jones passed him to Neophyte on October 4, 1917, taking a new motto of Voluntas Perfecta Omnia Vincit (Latin for “perfect will conquers all”). Even though Smith had rewritten his diary as instructed, the results were still wanting. Jones set his Neophyte Frater V.P.O.V. an additional list of tasks designed to improve his spelling and composition skills; he urged Smith to write him frequently on all matters concerning the A∴A∴ and the OTO. It was advice Smith took to heart. You see, Frater, I am rubbing this in rather hard, but you must not mind—​if you wish to continue with the Work—​because suppose you were to have a Probationer under you, you must be able to make yourself understood. Suppose you get some big result, you must be able to record it properly, or most of its value is lost. Suppose the Master Therion wants to see your record again???47

Inspired by Crowley’s article on the Ouija Board,48 Jones began a series of experiments to settle his mind about the future. He was joined at the

In the Red Room of Rose Croix  69 planchette by Kath and Ruby and they made numerous experiments in the months of October and November. Jones was looking for evidential phenomena, and after working on refining the magical preparations, he found that their results seemed more coherent. Jones even tried to get in touch with the spirit of Brother Dawson, who came back to the sitters with all of his old humor. At one of their sessions the spirit who identified himself alternately as “Raphael” and “333” predicted that Ruby would die at Easter and that Kath’s unborn child would be a boy,49 a prediction that proved half-​true. With the approach of the Winter Solstice of 1917, Jones’s thought again grew large as Kath entered the final month of her pregnancy.50 Jones had encountered J. S. Taylor, a disciple of Henry “Harry” Musclow (1870–​1959) who had led an astrology-​based “Aquarian Movement” in British Columbia. Musclow had been convicted on October 24, 1917, in Vancouver for selling fraudulent gold mine stock to his followers and sentenced to five years in prison. Jones contemplated how he might take its members into the OTO fold. Jones’s proposed takeover was merely a small part of a grand plan he foresaw. Jones envisioned his unbounded consciousness to be expanding over the whole of Canada. He entrusted Smith with the knowledge that he had understood the meaning of the grade of Master of the Temple on the material plane. His initiation of Summer Solstice of 1916 represented half of the alchemical motto Solve. The initiation of the Winter Solstice of 1917 would be Coagula. He had given up the Virgin (Kath) to Smith as part of the completion of the formula. An esoteric meaning of the name of the Order of A∴A∴ was revealed to Jones, in contrast to the one given him by Crowley which he thought implied duality. And, most importantly to Jones, he had received a secret word of which Crowley knew nothing. What these portentous secrets may have been, Smith does not say. The revelations continued apace. On December 22, Smith went around to see Jones at the office. He was too busy to talk, but in answer to his salutation, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law,” Jones proclaimed to Smith that the New Aeon had been established. The thelemic greeting to be used henceforth was “There is no law beyond do what thou wilt,” stressing the present tense instead of the future. Later that morning in the lavatory, Jones further revealed to Smith that the A∴A∴, its grade of Magus, the “old Hebraic laws,” the Qabalah, and the “curse of the beginning” (the meaning of which was uncertain to Smith) were

70  The Unknown God all eliminated. As there was no Abyss, initiation would now be comparatively easy, and the law of love would reign. Without furnishing his particulars, Jones now claimed to hold the XI˚ of the OTO, and under his mystic appellation of “Parzival” he had taken over the entire order from Baphomet.51 The day prior, Jones had elevated a Mr. Taylor (his first name is never mentioned), a follower of Musclow, to the VII˚. He bestowed the same peculiar mark of his favor on Smith, with the words, “I make you a 7th now and for ever.” He then held Smith by the hands and kissed him, saying, “I bind you with love instead of with an oath.” Now there was a Supreme Grand Council of OTO for Canada, composed of Ruby, Taylor, and Smith, the three members of the VII˚ making up 777. Jones’s visage resembled a less intense version of how he appeared at his initiation of June 21, 1916. Jones was most positive that the “curse” which Ruby was under had been lifted. He now knew that every word of The Book of the Law was true, and that he had the key to it all. Later that day they went to see White, who was ill with what he was convinced was tuberculosis. Every last detail was fraught with significance. Smith struggled to record it all as best he could, as the sole witness to these momentous events. Smith found it nearly impossible to write down all that Jones said, as he talked so fast and said so much. Jones’s brief record of the same events parallels Smith’s. The Jones family dined with the Smiths on December 23. Kath was experiencing labor pains, but she was not due to give birth for another two weeks. Jones was deep into thoughts of his own initiation. He revealed to those present that he would die on the spot and immediately reincarnate in the coming child, who was destined to be the “crowned and conquering child” mentioned in The Book of the Law, a role he had previously reserved for himself. Ruby grew furious with Jones and told him to talk sense, that no one was going to be dying. Jones agreed and sought solace in the poetry of his Master. Kath went into labor about 1:30 a.m. the following morning; Smith and Jones went for Dr. Martin. Jones, lost in his own world, talked incessantly and he was convinced that Crowley would soon arrive to welcome the newborn—​ Dr. Martin was his substitute, and was in fact the god Hermes. All the while Jones pored over the numerical significance of each passing minute with his well-​worn copy of Crowley’s “Sepher Sephiroth,” a kabbalistic dictionary. Despite Smith’s entreaties, Jones gave freely of his wisdom to the good doctor,

In the Red Room of Rose Croix  71 telling him that the child was bound to arrive at 4:18 a.m. and the war would then cease; the doctor replied with skepticism. The boy was born at 5:38:40 a.m. on December 24. They named the child Noel Talbot Smith (1917–​2014). Jones promptly wired Crowley to say that Horus was born and that he should come and see for himself.52 The telegram was returned for lack of a proper address. Jones and Smith both decided to take a holiday from the BCER and lunched together after having been up all night and Jones having hardly slept for several days prior. Jones gave him an explanation of the magical formula of Tetragrammaton, referencing a penciled hieroglyph by Crowley on the envelope of one of his countless letters. Jones thought Smith was Joseph, then Judas, then Joseph disguised as Judas. This explanation was “quite lucid” to Smith at the time, being “half illuminated myself.” Jones and Smith went Christmas shopping, then parted company. Each spent the holiday with his respective family. Jones went into the office on Wednesday, December 26. His supervisors at the BCER had wondered at his absence on Monday, and Jones walked off the job in protest that afternoon after giving them oracular warning about the railway bridge to Kitsilano. Jones believed that the bridge was in imminent danger of destruction if his post office box 70 was opened, as it was the Eye of Shiva. When he returned home, he performed a ritual to Nuit. Ruby had lost all patience with his behavior, “rolling off magical stuff,” as she put it, for days on end until she was at wit’s end. Sitting by the fire that evening, he uttered a favorite phrase now tiresome from repetition, “I and my Father are one,” to which she retorted: “Well go and be one with him.” Jones arose, put on his hat and coat, and picked up his copy of the “Stélé of Revealing” and The Book of the Law. Smartly bowing to Ruby’s back and front, he went out into the cold North Vancouver night. Jones disappeared. Ruby became frantic and kept the home fires burning as a vigil while uncommonly severe storms raged around Vancouver, cutting it off from Victoria. Ruby and Smith later learned that Jones had gone to see a local psychic of Blavatsky-​like proportions, Mrs. Sinclair, in whose advice Jones had taken considerable stock. After a brief interview with her, he took the boat to Victoria, where he, sitting in the smoking lounge on the Stélé with his thumb in his mouth, talked of the Rose Croix the entire way to a stranger he took to be a Brother. All the while Jones was on the astral plane in the grip of an initiatic trance state.

72  The Unknown God On December 27, with the manic drive of his consciousness pressing upon him ever more acutely, Jones wandered about Victoria, balancing the universe by crossing and recrossing the streets in a magical manner. He went to the King Edward Hotel, believing he would meet the king there for an audience. Jones had confided in Smith his scheme to have Crowley put on the English throne, as he was the rightful claimant. “The idea was big,” as he told Smith, but “one might as well dwell on big ideas, as little.” Instead of finding the king, he found the queen. Jones walked unasked into some woman’s room at the hotel, believing she was the queen of England, and had sex with her, breaking his compact with Ruby. Delightful as it was, he could not remember her name. His mad meanderings in the hotel brought him unwanted attentions from the police. He was arrested on suspicion of being a draft dodger and was believed to have been feigning madness to evade conscription. Jones was thrown into jail “with a general riffraff of Chinamen and Whitemen” where he remained for three days, lost in a reverie of “big ideas” which he attempted to summarize for Crowley: I got to understand all the Rituals with which the mind had been stocked and the complete scheme of the Universe on New Lines was presented to me in a series of visions. I then began working on heliocentric lines and fixed up the elements and the planets. Re Tree of Life I finally fixed up Aleph and Shin and then the whole mind broke up. It was reformulated on a centre point (Hadit) and now works concentrically. I was taken back to the beginning of the alphabets etc until they were all balanced and reversed and working backwards or forwards from the sourse [sic]. The Tree of Life seems to have resolved itself into a single sphere as the Logos. I was shown all the old scheme of Plantagenet and Tudor Magick and obtained an understanding of the succession of Kings and popes. . . . I have found my true Will and Purpose here and the Way is open. I have received most definite proof that the Masters are guiding the whole thing and also that I am recognized.53

Jones was mocked by the white prisoners and, he claimed, admired by the Chinese for his lectures on the Tao. According to Smith, the jailers gave Jones the “third degree” at some point; what form this roughing-​up took he does not specify. On the third day of his incarceration, he rose again and concluded that it was time to effectuate his departure from jail. Jones asked to see a doctor, explained that he was a married man and thus not subject

In the Red Room of Rose Croix  73 to conscription; his “worried” mental condition was due to the intolerable pressures of working for the BCER. He was released on December 30 and sought out Charles Lazenby, whom Smith had previously telegraphed in the search for Jones. Straightaway from jail, unwashed and disheveled, he lectured a Vancouver Theosophical group in the evening. The Great Initiation was at an end.

7 Nemo Abest There was little immediate reaction to the events of the Great Initiation. Crowley acquiesced in Jones’s descriptions of his travails, never even so much as questioning his sanity, for the moment. Baphomet proclaimed to the inner circle of OTO leaders that Jones as Frater O.I.V.V.I.O. had crossed the Abyss on all planes and had thus filled the position left empty by Crowley’s assumption of the grade of Magus. Prophecy had been fulfilled, and for this he was glad. Jones settled as much of his worldly affairs as he could, placed Ruby and Dede with friends, and left to commune with Crowley in New York on March 25, 1918. He was seen off by his wife and daughter, Brothers Smith and Maurice Phelps,1 and the redoubtable Mrs. Sinclair. Smith maintained a measure of his A∴A∴ discipline, as witnessed by his frequent correspondence with Jones; his diaries for the period have not survived. The birth of his son ushered in a period of domestic harmony, as Kath and Nem busied themselves with the care of the infant Noel. The departure of Jones redirected his attentions inward; Jones had been the source of all the revolutions in his worldview, as well as the moving force in the lodge. Jones arrived in New York on March 30; he had hoped to have been met at the train by Crowley, who was nowhere to be found. Jones waited, then decided to search for him at the offices of The International, where his patience was ultimately rewarded with the appearance of its “contributing editor.” Jones was immediately thrown into the occult milieu of Crowley, and quickly discovered that Crowley had been communicating since January 1918, via his seer and mistress Roddie Minor (Soror Achitha, the “Camel” in Crowley’s Magus initiation), with a discarnate entity named “Amalantrah” or “the Wizard.”2 Jones was presented to the Wizard via the Seer that evening, who gave him the name of “Abdullah,” perhaps an allusion to Crowley’s homoerotic fictive Sufi text, The Scented Garden of Abdullah the Satirist of Shiraz (1910). The following day’s interview began with an experiment with hashish, followed by Crowley performing the Greek “Bornless One” invocation, a spell from a Greek magical papyrus later reinterpreted by Crowley in “Liber Samekh” as an invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel.3 The Wizard The Unknown God. Martin P. Starr, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2024. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197744512.003.0007

Nemo Abest  75 renamed Jones “Arcteon.” Their “Mystic Trigrammaton” was to be established in the flesh at the advice of the Wizard, who showed the seer an image of two pens stuck in one inkwell. They followed suit, seriatim, with the “Sacrament” of their sexual magic working communicated to Jones first, then Crowley. The Wizard was a continual font of revelation. Through his mediacy, the secret meaning of “Akamrach,” the “Word of the Equinox,” was uncovered and duly issued to Brother Smith from “the Sanctuary of the Gnosis which is in the Island of Manhattan.” It signified “a flood of water crystal-​clear, flowing in the Paths of Teth and Mem, and it is the Universal Solvent.”4 Solvents were much on their minds. Drugs had become a regular factor in Crowley’s magical practice. He had written extensively on the virtues of hashish “loosening the girders of the soul” in The Equinox,5 and his drug repertoire was expanding. Crowley mentions in his Confessions that he visited the Detroit laboratories of the pharmaceutical company Parke-​Davis in October 1915, where they were kind enough to make for him a special peyote preparation, a welcome addition to his abundant personal pharmacopoeia.6 Roddie Minor routinely smoked opium, discreetly described as being “with Our Lady of our Dreams,” prior to their meetings with “the Wizard.” And to this list of psychoactive substances Crowley added ether, which he considered “invaluable for mental analysis; also to discover one’s own final judgment on any matter.”7 As a result of his experiences with the drug under Crowley’s supervision, Jones suggested to Smith that he try to obtain a “definite mental state, other than normal” by means of inhaling ether: Therefore, for your encouragement, and also as a definite practice and experiment, you should do as follows. Purchase a half-​pound can of ether, then, at week end, when you have time to get the smell of it out of your system during Sunday, make yourself quite comfortable on the bed. Lie on your side, or on stomach taking the cork in one hand and the can in the other. Proceed to inhale quite freely and without any fear whatever, and keep on doing so till you get results. Results continue as long as you keep inhaling, and stop almost immediately you leave off. I was all wrong about taking a few little sniffs. You may find it takes two hours to get complete results, and uses up half a can. I continued for that time with no ill results after. You will find different layers of the mind are made conscious during the process, in a most interesting way. Make a very careful record of the whole thing and send it to me for comment. Do not do any further practices

76  The Unknown God till you hear again, and don’t experiment on anyone else for the moment. You will find that you cannot get too much into your lungs, and after a certain stage you may breathe it out through the mouth, as you get used to it. You need have no fear of falling asleep, as it seems to be generally agreed that should you do so, you will subconsciously replace the cork in the can.8

Smith, ever the willing disciple, put this method to the test promptly. He told Kath that he would be busy and should not be disturbed, locked himself in his bedroom and started to inhale. After over an hour he had experienced no change of consciousness whatever other than heaviness in his legs. He passed out at some later time, carefully putting the recorked can of ether under the bed beforehand and was awakened by Nem and Kath rattling the door. They were terrified at what they saw; they reported finding Smith unconscious, his face and lips a ghastly white. A row ensued, with Smith trying to mollify them by stating he was only doing this for the good of others.9 In response to Smith’s report on this failed experiment, Jones believed that his good Brother had taken too much, and gone well beyond the “interesting state” and instead ended up blind drunk. After more than a year of darkness, on April 30 Smith called the lodge to labor at his house, 138 13th Street East, North Vancouver, which had been deeded to the OTO, the gift duly acknowledged by Baphomet. The new “insert to the II˚ ritual”10 made it a requirement for the VII˚ members of the OTO to endow the order with real property. Crowley had previously done so, after a fashion, with the only home he ever owned, Boleskine House in Foyers, Scotland, which was heavily mortgaged by the time of his gift.11 Henceforth the lodge was to be named “Agape,” the Greek for “love,” which was spelled “Agapae” to avoid mispronunciation. Jones, the Viceroy for Canada, appointed Smith as Right Worshipful Master of the lodge in addition to serving as Treasurer. Ruby was named as Second Officer and Nem as the Third Officer, Secretary and Mistress of Ceremonies; Ruby declined the office and Sister Skidmore was appointed in her place. The latest thelemic tract from Baphomet, “De Lege Libellum,” was read to the small gathering, and it failed to rouse much enthusiasm. Without Jones, the lodge was not the same vibrant center it had been. Degrees were conferred and meetings were held, but Smith termed their efforts “feeble.” Although Crowley did not welcome her presence, Jones sent for Ruby, and she departed for New York on June 3. She had kept herself largely apart from

Nemo Abest  77 the lodge Brethren, and Smith informed Jones on how happy she seemed to be on her way to see him. Concurrent with Ruby’s arrival in Manhattan, another person was entering into the minutum mundum of the Thelemites, C. F. Russell.12 He was on active duty as a pharmacist’s mate at the U.S. Naval Hospital at Annapolis, Maryland, and had been attracted by the series of articles by the Master Therion in The International on the revival of Magick. Russell first met Crowley at his New York apartment on June 9, 1918, which happened to be Russell’s birthday as well as Smith’s. The same day, Russell signed the Oath of a Probationer in the A∴A∴, taking the motto Γενεσθαι (“Genesthai,” the aorist infinitive of the Greek verb meaning “I am born”), with Crowley acting as his Neophyte Receiving. Later that evening, Jones and Ruby assisted Crowley in conferring upon Russell in a “special rush Initiation” the degrees of the OTO through the III˚. Jones opined to Smith that this sort of degree work was not all that could be desired.13 The candidate in question was worth the bother. In Russell, Crowley saw the makings of an ideal aspirant, a young man gifted with “amazing ability, backed by exceptional energy and other moral qualities such as the Great Work, or indeed any work worth the name, requires.”14 He was also sexually attracted by the “sailor-​boy,” as his Cefalù diaries reveal in graphic detail; alas, Crowley’s “Circean enchantment” failed to arouse Russell. Yet all that raw talent possessed a dark side; in Crowley’s words, he was “surly, mulish and bitterly rebellious.” Theirs was a crossing doomed from the start, but for the moment, Thelema had acquired another passionate adherent ready to serve the cause. On the material plane, the needs for funding the Thelema movement were an ever-​present concern. There were worrying hints in the letters from Jones to Smith that his regular contact with Crowley was giving Jones second thoughts about the propriety of Crowley’s handling of financial matters. Crowley had been put out of work—​arguably the only salaried job he ever held—​when The International was sold in April 1918. He took some delight in the fact that the new proprietors published one issue before folding. Jones had found work within a few weeks of arriving in New York and he thought it a mark of pride that he was able to hold down a mundane job and still pursue spiritual work. He wrote Smith that “[i]‌t’s a damned sight better, I’m convinced than trying to live entirely on the Order or something of that sort—​ unless of course it were really necessary to do so for the sake of the Order +​ not for our own sakes.”15

78  The Unknown God In July, Crowley had replaced George Macnie Cowie as Grand Treasurer General and installed Jones in his stead, at the same time elevating him to Deputy Grand Master General. Crowley departed the city for a “magical retirement” on Esopus Island in the Hudson River in Dutchess County, New York, and this left Jones in charge. Jones joined him on the otherwise uninhabited island on August 10, intending to stay for a week. He returned on August 16; Crowley came down to the city on the 19th and they set up the OTO accounts receivables and banking accounts. Crowley had been frank with Jones in his correspondence regarding his attitude about money and OTO adherents. A few good patrons were all that the OTO work required. This view did not square with Crowley’s statements of the order’s lofty aims for mass personal liberation through promulgation of the Law of Thelema. Jones’s suspicions about Crowley’s intentions to use OTO funds for personal upkeep led to a serious break. On August 27, Jones wrote Crowley a formal letter of resignation from the OTO: I feel that this Order might have been of value for the Freeing of Humanity under the New Law, as a business concern, it fails to interest me in any way. I have to admit that certain suggestions you have made have every appearance on your part to make use of the Order for private and personal ends, and this is very distasteful to me. I feel that I cannot continue further along these lines without going against my True Will and I therefore entirely sever my connection with the Order both in my Official Capacity of Deputy G.M.G., Grand Treasurer General and Viceroy of Canada, and as a private member of the Order.16

Regarding the Order of the A∴A∴, Jones reserved “my absolute Freedom to act as the True Light is given unto me.” He sent a more mystically worded letter to the leading Brethren of the OTO, renouncing all his titles therein and reiterating his offer of help, freely given, to the whole of humanity, which now constituted his Brothers and Sisters. Crowley did not receive these letters until Jones delivered them personally on September 10; Jones felt a profound sense of calm, “an entering into the True Tao.” Crowley professed to be puzzled by Jones’s resignation. Smith was naturally disappointed that his friend and mentor was giving up on the OTO, as he knew full well how few members there were in the order, but he had a premonition that “another current” was running; their correspondence reverts to matters of the A∴A∴. It had been a year since he

Nemo Abest  79 was advanced to Neophyte and it was time for Frater V.P.O.V. to submit the diary of his work to his Zelator, Frater Achad. He read it over and returned it with his comments; in general the Zelator was pleased with the amount of work done by his Neophyte; he only wished the diary entries were fuller. He encouraged Smith to “have more confidence in yourself, for you are God, if only you can realize the fact, and train your whole being accordingly.”17 He was set a test for advancement to Zelator, which included the following tasks: G. Perform Section A.A.A. of Liber H.H.H.18 and give a complete record of results. H. Design a Pantacle to represent the Universe, and submit for approval. I. Type out the chosen Chapter of Liber VII19 from memory, and submit for approval.20 It was yet another stiff assignment for Smith, who had enough on his mind, including the outbreak of the worldwide Spanish Influenza epidemic, which had reached Vancouver with fury. Smith, whose understanding of medicine and science was limited and overlaid with irrationalism, speculated that the epidemic may have been due to the baleful influence of Charles Lazenby and the “Black Brothers” of the TS. To add to the burden, it was Smith’s sad duty to report to Jones the death on November 29, 1918, of Howard E. White, Jones’s first Probationer. Smith had wanted to visit him, knowing the end was near, but he showed up at White’s house the day after his passing. White was 33 and had succumbed to tuberculosis—​Smith opined that a possible cause of “consumption,” as it was then called, was sexual restriction. For the first time in his life, Smith attended a funeral, which saddened him greatly. The lodge held a feast on December 3 in memory of White’s passing. The only bright note was Smith’s son Noel, who was a pleasure for all in the Smith household. Domestically he had managed to stay out of further trouble, and this was certainly an improvement over the prior unhappy situation. Smith remained hopeful that Jones might take up OTO work again. He was greatly cheered by Jones’s remark: “There is a possibility that the rituals may be revised, and the Words of the first Two Degrees correctly given, and the Masonic connection made less in evidence.”21 And this wish was to be fulfilled, at least partially. Crowley had been contacted in the winter of 1918 by a group of Scottish Rite Masons in Detroit who (according to Crowley) sought his instruction. The experience did not strengthen their fraternal

80  The Unknown God bonds, as witness his rancorous recollection of the “Detroit Working” in his Confessions: During this winter, I was approached by a powerful body of high grade freemasons in Detroit. They knew only too well that their Order was at the best tomfoolery; and, for the rest, anything all the way down to fraud and blackmail. They desired the light which they knew me to possess. I offered to reorganize freemasonry, to replace the pomposities and banalities of their ragbag of rituals by a simple, lucid and coherent system. I soon saw that any effort would be waste of time. Even their compact group was torn by bitter jealousies. Their leader [Frank T. Lodge, Esq.], for all his fine talk, had only one real desire —​to communicate with his dead wife, a silly smirking society waxwork, a pink-​tea princess! Their second string was a doctor [Dr. Cedric P. Sibley], who spent sleepless nights sweating with shame and sentimentality in an agony of anxiety as to whether it was his duty to get divorced in order to marry a white-​ haired spinster, half-​crazy with the pain of cancer, with whom he had no sexual relation at all, but an overwhelming obsession that she was his sister-​soul, his mystic mate, his psychic partner and his Ouija Wife. . . . The only member of the group who had even a smattering of education, as we understand it in Europe, was more than half insane on the subject of sex [Albert Winslow Ryerson]. He had got it into his head that a secret method of managing such matters existed, the possessor of which could perform all sorts of miracles, from curing consumption to making a million dollars. He spent his life hunting for books on sexual Magick; and, knowing that I was in possession of the secret he sought, spent a whole night shivering in the corridor with his ear to the keyhole of my bedroom, in the hope of hearing something that would give him a hint. He even tried to use his own mistress [Bertha Bruce] to spy on me: when she came from my room, he started to browbeat and bully her into giving the minutest details of her adventure!22

Not surprisingly, the “simple, lucid and coherent system” offered to the Detroit Masons by Crowley was the OTO. Its ritual cycle, as authored by Crowley, was intended to portray the course of human existence, to teach the initiate how to make the best use of his life, and to lead to the gradual revelation of the central secret of the IX˚:

Nemo Abest  81 In the reconstituted O.T.O. there are therefore six degrees in which is conveyed a comprehensive conception of the cosmos and our relation therewith, and a similar number to deal with our duty to ourselves and our fellows, the development of our own faculties of every order, and the general advancement and advantage of mankind.23

Whatever the masonic Brethren thought they wanted, they were soon to receive far more than they were prepared to accept.

8 The Detroit Working The spring of 1919 marked the end of the “five years of silence” in the publication of The Equinox. The gap was not due to mystical reasons; more prosaically, Crowley had run out of new material and the funds to publish them. His sojourn in the United States had afforded him plenty of time to write, and he had hopes of issuing another 10 numbers. Prior to the war Crowley had a small publishing business, but the conflict and his absence from Britain combined to curtail his sales. His present lack of resources now required that he seek a publisher. He found one for his proposed new series in the Detroit bookseller Albert W. Ryerson,1 general manager of the Universal Book Stores, Inc., and a 32˚ Scottish Rite member of the Valley of Detroit (NMJ). Ryerson visited with Crowley and Jones in New York in October 1918; the meeting was productive. In addition to a willingness to act as Crowley’s publisher, Ryerson wanted to sell the stock of unsold Crowley books which had languished in storage in London. On learning of the new Equinox publication scheme, Smith wrote to Ryerson, who informed him that the first number of the new volume would appear at the spring equinox of 1919, at a cost of $6.66 a copy.2 Smith promptly placed an order with Ryerson for 10 copies. To coordinate the publication program and “help the occult work along there,” Jones made plans to leave New York for Detroit. Just prior to his departure he had managed to be invited to lecture on the qabalah to the Central Lodge of the TS—​Jones believed that his old Theosophical nemesis, Charles Lazenby, had tried to disrupt the proceedings, but to no avail.3 Ryerson had offered Jones a job in the Universal Book Stores, and Crowley now had a trusted colleague on hand to oversee the details of his forthcoming book. Jones and Ruby arrived in Detroit on Sunday, February 16, 1919. He lectured that evening to a gathering at the law offices of Most Worshipful and Illustrious Brother Frank T. Lodge 33˚, the leader of a small group of esoterically inclined Detroit Masons.4 Jones promptly started work at the Universal Book Stores the next morning. Smith, with his typical willingness to follow Jones’s lead, inquired about the possibilities of work in Detroit; he correctly saw that there was no future The Unknown God. Martin P. Starr, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2024. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197744512.003.0008

The Detroit Working  83 for him at the BCER. He also questioned whether his domestic problems had any solution in sight; the truce between Nem, Kath, and Smith was never a settled matter. Funding his ability to leave town was a £100 inheritance from his beloved “Little Grannie,” Margaret Cox, who had died on December 1, 1918; his uncle Cyril handled her estate. Jones advised his Neophyte to wait until an opportunity presented itself. He let Smith know that he had withdrawn his resignation from the OTO, a movement he now recognized as being of importance to the world, and to which he was devoting most of his energies. Jones regretted the notion of abandoning Vancouver Lodge, which was practically moribund, as he felt that there would be “a big revival soon.”5 He was pleased to be regarded by Frank T. Lodge’s esoteric masonic study group as a teacher and an emissary of the Great White Brotherhood. In service, Jones, under his mystic name of “Frater Arctaeon,” given to him by the “Wizard” in the Temple of Jupiter, had initiated a whirlwind cycle of lecturing on New Aeon topics, leaving his audiences only wanting more. Their desire for more light on the path expounded by Jones was met in the rebirth of The Equinox. The new issue, the first number of volume 3, was known from the color of its binding cloth as the “Blue Equinox.” Appearing on March 21, 1919, the large book, beautifully composed and printed by the DeVinne Press of New York, its upper cover embossed with the eye in the triangle in red, could not fail to draw attention of all sorts. An account skillfully edited by Crowley of Jones’s progress in the A∴A∴, entitled “A Master of the Temple,” promoted Jones as a paradigm of success in the Great Work. Jones also contributed his own thelemic essay, “Stepping out of the Old Aeon into the New.” Like the prior numbers of The Equinox, the bulk of its contents were written by Crowley, who described it as “a complete programme of my proposed Operation to initiate, emancipate and relieve mankind.” The world needed religion, and the Law of Thelema was proclaimed as the solution to mankind’s need for truth. The thelemic tracts that Jones and Smith had so dutifully distributed in Lodge and elsewhere, The Message of the Master Therion, The Law of Liberty, “Khabs Am Pekht,” “Concerning the Law of Thelema,” and “De Lege Libellum,” met their first publication in book form. The secret Holy Books of Thelema, formerly available only to Probationers of the A∴A∴, “Liber LXI vel Causae,” an account of the origins of the A∴A∴, and “Liber Cordis Cinti Serpente,” a chapter of which the Probationer had to commit to memory, were now freely given to the world. Crowley’s grandiose designs for the establishment and extension of the OTO were given full treatment in the new number of The Equinox. The order

84  The Unknown God documents did not fail from promising too little, for “to become a member of the O.T.O. is to hitch your wagon to a star.” Following an extensive list of occult and masonic bodies whose secrets the OTO was said to possess, there was an addition to the Manifesto of the O.T.O. which did not appear in the original text of the Manifesto of the M∴M∴M∴ published circa 1913. The revised text claimed that the OTO in no way conflicted with or infringed on “the just privileges of duly authorized Masonic Bodies.”6 The words were chosen to allow plenty of room for future hairsplitting if needed. Crowley deconstructed this phrase in a letter to Hugh George de Willmott Newman: As a lawyer you will appreciate the words “Just” and “duly authorized”; for that leaves us a loophole if at any time we become strong enough to tell the Grand Lodge of England to do what the old man of Newcastle did when he was so requested. But at the present moment it would simply be silly to make ourselves enemies in influential, however imbecile, quarters.7

The most shocking of the OTO contributions to the Blue Equinox for the contemporary reader was “Liber XV, Ecclesiae Gnosticae Catholicae Canon Missae,” the Canon of the Mass of the Gnostic Catholic Church. The suggested nudity of the Priestess in the Mass did not go unnoticed by the good citizens of Detroit or their newspaper reporters, and its inclusion would provide ample fodder for the coming scandals. The Blue Equinox was designed to create controversy, with something to offend almost everyone. From the depiction of Christianity as a hag with dyed and bloody hair in Crowley’s painting “May Morn,” to the frontal assault on the post-​Blavatsky Theosophists in his extended commentary on the Madame’s inspired work, The Voice of the Silence, Crowley used his polemical skills to draw attention to his ideas. Even his old enemy A. E. Waite was mercilessly lampooned by a collage of newspaper headlines regarding a similarly named Michigan dentist turned murderer. Although Crowley was not present for its publication at the spring equinox, the new book stimulated a strong desire among the potential aspirants to meet the Master Therion. At the invitation of Frank T. Lodge, Crowley visited Detroit in April 1919. Little did the Detroit Masons perceive the goals of the purported Mason who was to be their guest. The preliminary pledge-​form of the M∴M∴M∴ made it clear that the first aim of the OTO was to unite the Craft under Crowley as its sole dictator. The next targets were the so-​called higher degrees. Crowley had vouchsafed to Jones his

The Detroit Working  85 plan for extending the dominion of the OTO: for a price, he would cede the Rites of Memphis and Misraim to the NMJ. Crowley abhorred the Supreme Council, 33˚, of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry for the Southern Jurisdiction (SJ), United States of America, the Mother Council of the World, referring to it as the “Pike Fraud,” a prejudice learned from John Yarker who, alluding to its city of origin, called it in turn the “Charleston Fraud.” In exchange for conferring the authority for these degrees, Crowley and Jones would be coroneted 33˚ members of the Supreme Council for the NMJ. Baphomet was willing to make the necessary revisions in his OTO rituals to eliminate the obvious plagiarisms from the degrees of the Craft, the Royal Arch, and the Scottish Rite. But fraternal goodwill was not in abundance with Crowley. Jones was to make it plain to those they wished to affiliate, especially Ill∴ Brother Lodge, 33˚, that “even our eighth degree wipes its arse with the thirty third. As you and I need toilet paper, they can give us or sell us their dirty sheep skin.”8 If the Supreme Council for the NMJ did not agree to elevate them, they would run all the rites themselves, since “theirs is a forged charter,” another echo of Yarker’s lifelong hatred of the SJ. Crowley seemed to have been unaware that Detroit was under the control of another Supreme Council altogether, namely the NMJ. It is easy to imagine how these sorts of contemptuous overtures would have been met. In the end, Crowley’s gambit gained him nothing. His detailed reminiscence of the “Detroit Working” casts light on the ritual history of the OTO and the relationship he perceived between OTO and Freemasonry: Reuss was in the habit of initiating people with the merest skeleton rituals boiled down from those of Continental Masonry. There was, to put it plainly, no order or decency in the proceeding. He realised that perfectly well, and it was one of the reasons for his asking me to reconstruct the whole system of initiation. I made a comparative study of numerous rituals to which I had access, and produced a series which were perfected up to and including the 6th degree (equivalent to the Kadosh) and these were worked in London with the greatest success. . . . The accounts of the new Rite made a great impression; and in particular, attracted the attention of the Supreme Grand Council, Sovereign Grand Inspectors General of the 33rd and Last Degree of the Scottish Rite in the Valley of Detroit, Mich. This Council deputed two Princes of the Royal Secret [32˚] from the Consistory dependent from their jurisdiction

86  The Unknown God to interview me in New York. It was of course impossible for me to deal with subordinates, and I refused to discuss the matter except with Sovereign Grand Inspectors General [33˚]. I was therefore invited to Detroit, and a series of conferences was held. A Supreme Grand Council of the 7th Degree of the O.T.O. was formally initiated.9 However, when it came to the considerations of the practical details of the rituals to be worked, the general Council of the Scottish Rite could not see its way to tolerate them, on the ground that the symbolism in some places touched too nearly that of the orthodox Masonry of the Lodges. While we are of course in no sense subordinate to the vulgar convivial Masonry of the Craft Lodges of England and North America, or to the political Masonry of Europe, we recognise in them what is an influence for good, especially as they have a tendency to militate against the foul sorcery of all Christian Rites.10 We are therefore anxious to avoid in any way appearing to infringe on what they consider their peculiar privileges. In order to meet these views, it was suggested that I should re-​write the rituals in an entirely new symbolism, which would in no way be considered as in competition with the accepted ritual of the Craft.11

The ritual revisions for the 0˚–​III˚ were completed in 1919.12 Crowley replaced the legend of the murder of Hiram Abiff in the Third Degree with a story of a Sufi martyr Mansur el Hallaj and otherwise altered the ritual texts to obscure their masonic origins. The changes in these degrees were thought sufficient to remove the appearance of being a clandestine body, at least as far as the male candidates would be concerned. The higher degrees were never revised by Crowley and kept their masonic character. But Crowley grew tired of attempting to better the Masons at their own game and his own views took an anti-​masonic turn. He gave vent to his anger in his preface to his revised rituals of the OTO: Whereas the institution of Free Masonry has fallen to complete and deserved contempt among all men, but especially among true Masons, and whereas the traditional knowledge which it was designed to guard has been lost, degenerated, prostituted, or exploited, and whereas, especially in America, the institution serves as little else but a cloak for the operations of various gangs of swindlers, be it resolved by Us, the authorized representatives of its highest degrees and the faithful depositories of its ancient secrets, that the present machinery for communicating those secrets, be

The Detroit Working  87 declared obsolete and the work of all those who may unlawfully attempt to usurp Our authority be declared void and of no effect. Be it further resolved that Our own powers be, during the period of reconstruction, concentrated in a single dictator.13

The Detroit Masons failed to accept Crowley as the supreme masonic dictator, and his criticisms of the Craft and the appendant bodies had no effect. The development of revised OTO rituals proved premature; the British Columbia brethren continued to use the old rituals. The revised degrees would first be conferred when Smith started initiated candidates again in 1935 in California. By the time the revised rituals were complete, the Detroit Masons had lost interest in Crowley. The feeling was mutual, if not considerably more bitter on Crowley’s part. In the “demoniacs of Detroit,” as he termed them, all Crowley saw was an attempt to exploit his nobility and generosity, with the evil returning upon their heads many times over.14 He particularly hated Frank T. Lodge, who he believed without evidence was publicly speaking against him. In return of the favor, Crowley threatened to distribute photographic enlargements of Lodge’s signed “obligation of allegiance” to the OTO. Crowley never clearly stated what it was the Detroit brethren had done to arouse his ire. The fraternal slipper was on the other foot. To offset some of the ill will Crowley’s visits had aroused—​he returned for a second time in November 1919—​Jones struggled to pay the bills incurred by Lodge for entertaining Crowley at the Detroit Athletic Club. The Master Therion was not mollified, and he made it clear to Jones that he owed Lodge exactly nothing, but paying him money he wasn’t owed only cleared Crowley’s hand to say what he thought of the “confidence trick” Lodge had played on the OTO. Crowley’s dislike only deepened following his return to England in December 1919; he wrote Jones that “everyone in Detroit can kiss your arse in my absence.”15 The Great Lakes Council VII˚ OTO had fallen apart as fast as it had been formed. The “Detroit Working” was Crowley’s last attempt to subordinate Freemasonry to his plans for the OTO, and the experience deeply embittered him against American Masonry. The right of Masons to affiliate to the corresponding degrees in the OTO was summarily withdrawn, although Crowley would make use of the procedure when expedient. He was content to allow the masonic origins of the OTO to be part of a dim historical past with little bearing on the future. Smith asked if removing the words “in Freemasonry”

88  The Unknown God from the preliminary pledge-​form might be allowed, and he found out that the same suggestion had already been made by Jones to Crowley.16 The change no longer mattered; the closing of the fledgling Detroit group marked the end of the OTO in the United States for more than a decade. None of these tantrums deterred Jones from pursuing the degrees in regular Masonry. He records in his diary for September 9, 1919, that he took “another important step” and petitioned Detroit Lodge No. 2, Free and Accepted Masons of the State of Michigan, for the degrees in Masonry. Jones was initiated as an Entered Apprentice on March 13, 1920, passed to the degree of Fellowcraft on April 6, 1920 (as candidate no. 31), and raised to the Sublime Degree of Master Mason on April 27, 1920.17 Jones subsequently petitioned the Scottish Rite Valley of Detroit for membership, but he was rejected, thus further disheartening him about American Masonry. Crowley’s furor was boundless; he wrote Jones: “I am more and more convinced that Free Masonry in the States is one of the most evil organizations that has ever existed. Despite individual exceptions and their professed principles, they are selfish, greedy, and envious. They are against all that the Law stands for, especially that aspect of it which you personally emphasize.”18 These extreme statements did not motivate Jones to withdraw from membership in Masonry. He remained on the rolls of Detroit Lodge No. 2 until September 3, 1929, when he was suspended from membership for nonpayment of dues—​by that time Jones was resident in England and the lodge may have simply lost his current address. Although Smith respectfully followed Jones in his other esoteric involvements, he never petitioned regular Masonry and remained skeptical of its worth throughout his life. The OTO was his choice in a fraternal body, and he stuck with it through the long dark night that was to follow. All the while, Jones had kept Smith informed of his work in Detroit by a constant stream of letters. The developments were promising for the Great Work, and Smith greatly missed the company of his friend and mentor Jones. Smith took ill with the flu in February 1920; when he returned to work, he was summarily fired by the BCER and given two and a half months’ severance pay. This was the break he needed. Smith had taken steps to convey the title to his North Vancouver house to the trustees of the OTO to fulfill his financial obligations to the VII˚, but Nem, Kath, and Noel were firmly planted there. He was not. He mentioned to Jones that he had made a serious move almost every seventh year exactly, so now was the time. Nearly 13 years at

The Detroit Working  89 BCER had been enough. Smith left North Vancouver for Detroit on April 13, 1920. Nem was appointed Right Worshipful Master in his absence. There is a hiatus in the letters between Smith and Jones between March 1920 and June 1921, since during that period they were living with or near each other, but the near-​daily correspondence from Kath began again in full force. She wanted her man back, to be her husband and father to their son.

9 Viator in Regnis Arboris At first Kath and Nem were sorry to see Smith go. Their regrets did not last long. By June 1920, Kath had begun to style herself as “Mrs. Montfort”—​to Smith’s great annoyance, as he had told his acquaintances in Detroit that he was a married man with a son. Smith countered by offering Kath and Noel a home in Detroit. Kath promptly refused and went back to live with Nem, leading Smith to conclude: “the Talbots and the Smiths have traveled to the fork in the roads.”1 Kath’s love for Nem exceeded her love for Smith, and he felt that until she separated from her mother, they would never have a life together. He would send money to support his son—​he had quickly found work as a clerk in the offices of the Detroit City Gas Company—​but as a goad to his hopes for their reunion he gave Kath leave to work outside the home. The two women were now responsible for their own keep, in his eyes. He wrote a letter to his small son which could only have been read to him, reflecting that in his childhood “two women played ducks and drakes with my life”2 and now 35 years later, history was repeating itself. He would make certain that his son would have the father he had lacked. He said nothing about his having lacked a mother as well. Nem and Smith were able to retain a surprising degree of fraternal courtesy in their letters regarding the occasional business of the OTO as well as their own affairs. Whatever their relationship had been, there was a measure of respect between the two of them. In settlement of their partnership, Smith generously offered her his sole asset, their North Vancouver house; Nem was welcome to sell it and take whatever profits she may gain from it. Smith informed Nem of the ample supply of occult books that the members had been seeking. Although the Master Therion was no longer in the United States, his books were now in abundance. Crowley had shipped unasked six tons of his stock of books to Jones in Detroit; they arrived in September 1920, leaving Jones to pay a considerable customs duty as well as the cartage and storage charges. There was only one way to clear the debt, and that was to market the books. Jones quietly sold them from the Universal Book Stores The Unknown God. Martin P. Starr, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2024. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197744512.003.0009

Viator in Regnis Arboris  91 until his employment there was terminated. There was still an ample private market for Crowley’s books, and the sales of the stock were helped by the near-​constant lecturing of Jones, who offered them at the conclusion of each talk. Jones’s arrangement with Crowley was that he would receive 50 percent of the gross sales receipts as his commission and the rest would to be sent to Crowley. In addition to the regular editions, Crowley had also forwarded his collection of “rariora,” consisting of elaborately bound manuscripts and vellum and other special editions of many of Crowley’s books printed before World War I at his own expense. From this collection Smith obtained the high point of his Crowley collection: The Book of Lies (1913) printed on vellum, one of 10 copies issued in a signed and dated full morocco built binding by Zaehnsdorf, a distinguished London binder favored by many years of Crowley’s custom. When the Universal Book Stores were closing and Jones was about to be laid off, worrying they would be seized by creditors, Jones rushed to pack up these treasures without Ryerson’s knowledge. The collection of rare books and manuscripts, valued by their author at $17,000, was stored by Jones at Detroit’s Leonard Warehouses in January 1920. Neither Jones nor Crowley ever saw the contents of one of the two cases again. The loss of the “rariora” collection—​misattributed by Crowley to theft on the part of Jones—​was destined to play a significant role in the termination of Jones’s relationship with Crowley. Ever the optimist, Crowley held out hope that the second number of Volume 3 of The Equinox, scheduled for release in September 1919, would be published at last. The contents included the secret Holy Book “Liber Liberi vel Lapidis Lazuli,” formerly available only to Neophytes of the A∴A∴, and “Jesus,” his critique of the Shavian view of Christianity eventually published separately as The Gospel According to St. Bernard Shaw in 1953. One thousand copies of this new number of The Equinox had been printed, but the New York Linotyper William G. Hanson who had funded the production put the unbound sheets in storage until his bill of $1,500 was paid.3 The supply of available cash from Crowley’s disciples was at a low; by the time funds became available in 1928 to pay Hanson and bind the books, the sheets had been lost.4 The book was never published. There were some small signs of life in the British Columbia province of the OTO. Frank Page of Kamloops, who had been raised to the III˚ on March 21, 1920, immediately prior to Smith’s departure for Detroit, wanted to start a lodge in his hometown, since it was far enough from Vancouver to

92  The Unknown God make regular attendance burdensome. Smith corresponded regularly with Page and suggested he needed to gather a reasonable minimum of serious petitioners who had paid their fees and dues in advance to make the effort worthwhile. Smith knew all too well that Brethren of the OTO were few in the province. The Agapae Lodge report of dues for 1920 shows nine paying members on the rolls. It was lessened by the death of Maurice Phelps from tuberculosis on January 28, 1921. He was 47. The remaining members passed the hat to aid his widow and raised $30 for her relief, but their “usual way” of commemoration was not conducted, as no regular meetings were being held. In his absence, Smith had not lost contact with his unhappy family in North Vancouver. After the exchange of so many painful letters, by the close of 1920 Smith had finally lost his patience with the notion of his son being raised by Nem. He wrote Kath that she should send Noel to Detroit even if she does not want to come herself, otherwise he would be forced to take legal action to gain control over his son. These were all empty threats, but in their correspondence Smith again and again affirms that he wants to have a family with Kath—​and not with Nem. The circle of disciples in Detroit was at least some source of comfort to Smith. On Crowley’s suggestion and with encouragement from Jones (who thought he would make an excellent Black Guard in the Minerval degree), C. F. Russell left New York for Detroit in May 1919, ostensibly to assist with the OTO. He kept in correspondence with Crowley, to whom he expressed his doubts regarding the movement: “I am not as thoroughly certain of the purpose in establishing the order in Detroit, or in any other part of the world. The exoteric answer to that question is of course in a description of the order itself, but the real why is beyond me, just as why any of us happen to be connected to it.”5 In Russell’s view, both Jones and Smith were far too indolent in their approach to expanding the membership base of the OTO. With the energy and impatience of youth, Russell soon tired of what he saw as their lackluster attempts to organize activities. There were much more exciting prospects on the front lines of Thelema. Like Jones, Russell was entreated by Crowley to join his “Abbey of Thelema,” his thelemic commune founded in April 1920 at the Villa Santa Barbara outside Cefalù, Sicily. Russell saved what money he could and departed Detroit for Sicily and Crowley in November 1920. His year in Sicily would forever change the course of Russell’s life. To fill the void, Russell wrote regularly and at great length to Smith and regaled him with the details of their lives in the Abbey. The surviving photographs provide a frank view of the uninhibited atmosphere of the Crowleyan commune,

Viator in Regnis Arboris  93 where nudity went unnoticed and one of their “favorite indoor sports” was smoking opium. Another wayward disciple made his way to Detroit in his quest for the Beast. Norman Mudd, a disciple from the early days of The Equinox, showed up in Detroit in January 1921, hoping to find Crowley there. Much against his will and fearing for his mathematical scholarship, Mudd had separated himself from the Crowley circle in 1910 while he was an undergraduate at Cambridge. Yet his heart still pined for Crowley’s love. He had seen a copy of the Blue Equinox and intuited that he would find his beloved Master in the Motor City. Although he was disappointed by Crowley’s absence, Jones and Smith treated Mudd with such kindness that he once again ventured to take up the Great Work he had abandoned more than a decade ago. Jones admitted him as a Probationer of the A∴A∴, taking the motto Omnia Pro Veritate.6 Jones was delighted to visit with Mudd as he knew so many of the old London crowd, and he recommended him to seek out further light from James Thomas Windram,7 his OTO Brother in South Africa, where Mudd held a mathematical professorship. The current in Detroit had exhausted itself. With Ruby gone for an extended visit to England, Smith and Jones packed up their belongings and departed for Chicago on March 26, 1921. Smith saw in the city’s motto, “I will,” a happy harbinger of their chances for success in promoting the Law of Thelema in the growing metropolis on the shores of Lake Michigan. Another compelling reason for the move was that Jones had fallen in love with Leota Schneider,8 the young and captivating wife of their fellow A∴A∴ aspirant Frater “Ich Dien,” known in the world of men as Max R. Schneider.9 Leota’s luminous beauty is evident from her photographic portrait, which Smith lovingly preserved. Jones thought that Leota would be the perfect partner for his IX˚ operations but, in keeping with the terms of his III˚ oath, Jones obtained Schneider’s permission before he sought to have sex with Leota. She at first consented and then refused his advances. Their parlay continued for months until the Schneiders suddenly found it necessary to move to Chicago on a day’s notice. Jones was quick to follow, but his attraction was never successfully consummated, to his great regret.10 After more play back and forth, she decided that she loved her husband and bid Jones adieu. All the while Smith had his eye on Leota as well, and in time would achieve his desire. Shortly after their arrival in Chicago, Jones obtained a post office box in the name of the “Collegium ad Spiritum Sanctum Publication Department”

94  The Unknown God and began to sell Crowley’s books while planning to issue his own titles. It was an ambitious program for someone with little publishing experience. At the same time, the mass of letters from Kath took their toll on Smith’s nerves. The call to be with his son proved to be too strong. Smith had to return. On June 21, 1921, he arrived in North Vancouver and was reunited with Nem, Kath, and Noel. Despite having previously elevated him to the VII˚ in December 1917, Jones confirmed Smith’s position as provincial Grand Treasurer General and “conferred upon him the title of Hon. VII˚ O.T.O. in order that he may take up the duties of Sovereign Grand Inspector General”11 in the province of British Columbia. He gave Smith sufficient money for his passage from the Grand Treasury of the order, and prayed that he would settle harmoniously all lodge disputes and differences. Immediately prior to his departure, Smith was believed to have taken a riskier step in the dark. Jones wrote Crowley that, like Jones before him, Smith had sworn the Oath of a Master of the Temple, the final clause obligating the newborn “Babe of the Abyss” to “interpret every phenomenon as a particular dealing of God with my soul.”12 Crowley was thrilled with the news: “This morning your dateless note about V O V N—​and commend your caution in not proffering the Latin equivalent. I suppose Velle Omnia Velle Nihil [to will all to will nothing] will do. I am naturally extremely glad of the news which I must take as an accomplished fact, but I hope you will urge our Brother to fill up the gap.”13 He recorded the event in his diary: “Great good news from the Coll ad S.S. in Chicago, our Bro Wilfred Smith having taken the Oath of Magister Templi, with the motto Velle Omnia Velle Nihil.”14 In fact, he was only a Zelator. From this point forward, Smith is known in the order as “Frater V.O.V.N.” or “Voven,” and he also employed the numerical equivalents of the initials of his motto, “Frater 132.” There were other peculiar phenomenona which signaled Smith’s taking the Great Obligation. Max Schneider had manufactured for Jones a pin in the form of the Tree of Life. The loss of one of its stones occasioned this report from Jones: I want to tell you an interesting physical phenomenon which occurred at the time S. took the M.T. plunge. I had had a platinum Tree of Life Pin made with Stones for the Various Grades. I was sitting at lunch with S. and he suddenly remarked “Look one of the stones is gone from your new pin.” I looked and it was Binah. Almost involuntarily S. put his hands together and said I plunge into the vacant Grade. I had no idea up to that time that since 1916 he has been aspiring to something of the sort, and even then did not take the

Viator in Regnis Arboris  95 matter very seriously. I found afterwards that K. had recently written him, without any suggestion on his part and asked whether he had not in some peculiar way become M.T. since he left Van. The next day I felt as if a great load had been lifted from me, and I cautiously asked S. if he had meant what he said. He burst into tears and told me of much he had silently gone through in the past months. I had the stone replaced, and the day after that was completed, another—​who knew nothing of the incident, showed signs, quite unexpectedly of being prepared to take the plunge. I was dumbfounded, and said it was quite unnecessary as far as I was aware. Next day, I again lunched with S. and the new stone had disappeared from my pin. Again Binah was an empty circle. I put the pin away, and did not wear it again until today, when I got your letter on this matter on arrival at the P.O.15

Yet was this story accurately reported? As we will see, once Smith is in direct correspondence with Crowley, the details of this event and its meaning would be corrected—​yet the Jones version of Smith’s claiming of the grade of Master of the Temple had a long life of its own and would later be added to Crowley’s list of Smith’s doctrinal errors. Over the past several years, Jones had enjoyed an infrequent correspondence with Theodor Reuss, the OHO and Frater Superior of OTO. Then a thunderbolt hit. Jones informed Smith that he had received, unsolicited, a special charter from Reuss accompanying the latter’s letter of June 19, 1921, “giving me Authority in Misraim, Memphis and Scottish Rites”16 in North America. Jones was in a quandary. What should he do with the charter? He was clearly concerned how Crowley would react to it. Was this an attempt by Reuss to undermine Crowley’s claimed authority in the OTO over all English-​speaking countries? And where did Crowley’s title of “Past Grand Master of the United States of America” originate? Jones already had plans to establish “Zodiac Lodge” as his Grand Lodge of the United States, with subsidiary lodges according to the signs of the Zodiac—​judging by his sun sign, Smith he felt would be ideal for Gemini Lodge. Jones was relieved by Crowley’s helpful response, which demonstrated that he, at least for the moment, acquiesced in Reuss’s chartering of Jones and had calmed down from his prior vehement attitude toward American Masonry: With regard to the O.T.O., I agree entirely with what has been done. . . . I must observe, however, that the whole business of Memphis is unworkable and rather a hindrance than otherwise, especially in dealing with

96  The Unknown God Masons. My own adventures in that country have tended on the whole to distract attention from the Law. My advice is, therefore to accept the position gracefully and do nothing about it. What we want is to work our own new rituals without reference to Masonic affairs.17

This was not at all the idea of the OHO, who wrote to Jones that it was essential for members of the OTO to pass through all of Masonry to be assured that there was nothing in it! The OTO proper began where Masonry ended. And there was more: Thelema and the A∴A∴ were verboten where the OTO was concerned. Jones apprised Smith of the ongoing disagreement: The O.H.O. wrote me as His representative here, and said he did not accept “Do what thou wilt etc” personally or for O.T.O. and that I should keep A.A. things separate entirely. He said that A.C. had been informed of this too, and we might expect to hear from him. Now we, in Canada, are under Baphomet, so I do not know that there is any need to take any notice till we hear what A.C. has to say—​if he troubles to say anything—​Personally I wrote back to the F[rater]. S[uperior]. and said I could conceive of no better reply than: Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law, so I do not know just what will happen to me as far as America is concerned.18

With Reuss and Jones now in correspondence, it was not long before the breach widened. The source of the disharmony was Crowley himself, who had made the not at all fraternal suggestion in a letter that Reuss was senile and needed to be replaced as OHO by Crowley. This solution was offered despite the fact the OTO Constitution (1906; revised 1917) dictated that the OHO, its sole executive officer, served for life or until his resignation. It was the bound duty of the OHO to appoint his successor. The Crowleyan correspondence reached Reuss and it provoked a pointed response, laying out terms and conditions for their continued relationship in the OTO. He had no intention of capitulating, and he demanded that Crowley make the following reparations if they were to continue to work together: 1. You had declared to your followers that the O.T.O. does not preach and propagate the Doctrine of the A∴A∴ which runs “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law,” and 2. that your followers should have been clearly instructed by you that the “O.T.O.” is not in any way an annex or even in any way connected

Viator in Regnis Arboris  97 with the “A∴A∴” and that the Teachings of these Two independent Bodies must rigorously be kept separate and distinct. And suppose these two principal points had been settled to my satisfaction and I should have received from your representatives assurances that they will teach the pure and unallayed principles of the O.T.O. in future, you would 3. have had to remember that you signed an understanding to pay a certain precisely stipulated Fee to me for every person or candidate which you admitted into the O.T.O.—​You may perhaps remember that you, as yet have never paid even a single penny to me ever since you were admitted, although you and your representatives in foreign countries (and I am told that you make your candidates in America pay very high fees for entering O.T.O.) do demand fees and cash fees for the admission of persons to the O.T.O. However, I shall not press this point. I have never pressed you for payment of fees, and have, as you well know, also never received fees from you. I only mention that you did years ago sign a paper to this effect to pay fees to me. If the above three points had been settled to my satisfaction a rearrangement of our badly tangled relations might have been possible. But your Brotherly suggestion that I am demented and your other suggestion to have your nominees, so to say “depose” me as O.H.O.—​makes all arrangements impossible. I can only use the words of your so-​called “Viceroy” “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law”—​of course only, as far as you and your followers are concerned.19 There was no question that Reuss had reached his limit with Crowley. His boundaries were about to be rudely surpassed. By return post he found himself swiftly deposed as OHO by Crowley’s sole fiat: It is my will to be O.H.O. and Frater Superior of the Order and avail myself of your abdication—​to proclaim myself as such. And—​for the benefit of you and your followers only—​I will quote once more from The Book of the Law—​“The slaves shall serve.” . . . You talk of my nominees. Do not forget that you sent the first of them a charter from yourself in the hopes that it would induce him to betray me. I should really be obliged to you if you would tell me how you got into your head that I am a weak man. I have never taken off my hat to anybody

98  The Unknown God except in condescension. Your undoubted age and your undoubted merit command respect but authority reposes on force. You are unknown outside an insignificant clique in a beaten and disintegrated nation. You cannot hope to prevail in an environment of bankrupt[cy] and moral collapse. You cannot contend against the Law “Do what thou wilt” because everything you do is an assertion of your will. And the stronger you are, the better I like you.20

This letter, signed “Baphomet O.H.O.,” was the last straw. As is obvious from his letter, Reuss did not abdicate. Their correspondence ended. For the rest of his life, Crowley maintained the fiction that Reuss, who “travelled to the Grand East” on October 28, 1923, had resigned his self-​created office of OHO in Crowley’s favor, and few seemed the wiser. Crowley dissimulated in a like manner when asked direct questions about his masonic status in Britain—​he had none. He had been initiated, passed, and raised in Anglo-​ Saxon Lodge No. 343, under the jurisdiction of the Grande Loge de France, which was never accepted as a regular grand lodge by the United Grand Lodge of England, and so his French degrees were unrecognized. Few of his contemporaries would have had access to the evidence to refute Crowley’s version of these events.21 Reuss had tangled with Crowley when the latter had been pushing himself to exceed the limits of his incarnation, with the results that, in Cefalù, Crowley felt he was at the peak of his creative and magical powers. During his sojourn in Sicily, he had ascended to the heights of both the A∴A∴ and the OTO and all was perfect in his world. There were no more summits to conquer. His blissful state of mind is well described in his unpublished poem “The poet’s sepulchre” where he wrote: “for a season Léa loved me, and nothing mattered at all.” Crowley now truly reigned sole and supreme in the OTO. He recorded his self-​elevation in his diary: “I have proclaimed myself O.H.O. Frater Superior of the Order of Oriental Templars.”22 Having replaced Reuss, it was a small matter to inform Jones of the present state of the order: Reuss is furious (poor old boy!)—​I enclose you a copy of his last letter to me, and of my reply. It is just as well to be independent of Germany. Reuss’s charters have never done any one any good so far—​I only accepted them as a formality, to save myself trouble by referring inquirers to headquarters.

Viator in Regnis Arboris  99 But he has always worked in a hole-​and-​corner way, scamping the rituals. I have to thank him for one thing only, which is the bare formula of the elixir; and this he himself failed to apply. He only claims two successful experiments in his whole career, and I have no evidence that the results were not due to coincidence. All the detailed knowledge about the method is due to my own research.23

Reuss, who lost control of several masonic bodies prior to his creation of the OTO, thought he had guaranteed himself in that order an unassailable constitutional position for life, a perpetual dictator whose power could not be usurped. He met his match in Crowley, for whom none of these provisions were binding. As he was to write decades later to Grady L. McMurtry on the succession to the office of OHO, paraphrasing John Bunyan: “my sword to him that can get it.”24 Crowley fancied himself a man of practicalities where fraternal matters were concerned; grades, titles, charters were only indicative data. When questioned on the limits of the authority he extended to Adam Gray Murray as Acting Deputy Grand Master General of the OTO, he replied: “Don’t you see that all these titles and rules are intended only to throw dust in the eyes of fools. They are its bonds for the slaves who serve.”25 Jones had accurately predicted the coup in a letter to Smith26 and subsequently ceased corresponding with Reuss sine die. Crowley opined that the OTO needed to be reorganized when the time came; for the present, he laid low and said little. The Great War had killed the English group which found itself unable to function under the leadership of Crowley, viewed as a traitor to England. The departure of Jones and Smith ended the Canadian lodges. The Crowley-​chartered branches in Australia and South Africa petered out of existence. Smith and Nem enjoyed an exchange of letters with the English and Australian representatives before they entered into the darkness. The OTO section chartered by Reuss in Italy faded out with the rise of Fascism; Reuss’s Swiss “anational” lodge was similarly short-​lived. The only European body chartered by Reuss that remained active in any real sense after the latter’s death was in Denmark.27 After reading Crowley’s pseudonymous article “The Present Crisis in Freemasonry,”28 Jones concluded that Crowley now considered the OTO itself in its present form to be defunct. Like Russell, Jones himself felt the movement had fulfilled its purpose. Should demand for a similar group arise, it would be preferable to start anew under some other aegis.

100  The Unknown God And he had other plans for the next phase in his occult work. He had labored long enough in the vineyards Crowley planted, but the hour had come to strike out on his own. Since the summer solstice of 1916, Jones held the belief that he had attained the supreme grade of Ipsissimus and had thus surpassed Crowley on the Path. A New Order had been revealed to him which eclipsed the defunct kabbalistic system. To this end, Jones had been silently refining his own plans for novel initiatic structures, all of which would be unveiled in time.

10 New Orders for the Ages With the OTO fissuring before their eyes, Smith and Jones perceived that there was soon to be a gap in their fraternal life. They knew that the expansive organizational plans and the equally extravagant social rewards promised in the Blue Equinox had not come to pass. Despite their best efforts at recruitment, OTO membership in Canada remained small and the international organization appeared on the brink of collapse, which in fact had already occurred due to the dislocations of the Great War, Reuss and Crowley’s political activities, and their personality clashes. There were even fewer candidates for the A∴A∴. Between Jones and Smith there were about 25 members of the grade of Probationer under their supervision. Even though Crowley had formulated a rigorous scheme of graded instruction, there was no escaping the fact that the tasks of aspirants to the order were exacting, and advancement in the grades was dependent on one’s diligence in the assigned practices. It was, in Jones’s words, too much of a good thing. Jones and Smith, leaders in the first generation of the novel religious movement of Thelema, had succeeded in instantiating the two orders. Like most new religious collectivities, the movement was essentially stillborn; it had failed to attract a numerically significant following, nor would it do so in Smith’s lifetime. By the close of 1921 there was another even more veiled and seemingly recondite secret society claiming space in the occult world of Smith and Jones: an enigmatic order whose outer name was the Universal Brotherhood (UB).1 Its inner name was the Integral Fellowship. Its secret name was the Mahācakra (Sanskrit, “great circle”) Society or Brotherhood, or the “M.” As Jones pointed out to Crowley, the acronym “U.B.” should not make one think of Ryerson and his Universal Book Stores nor the “Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society” of Katherine Tingley, the American rival to Annie Besant for leadership of the Theosophical movement.2 In an undated letter, Jones writes: “IO MAN! The M. is a structure built of Man for Man by Those Who Know that Man is made by God for God.” Smith speculated with the scant materials available to him what were the actual aims and purposes of this mystifying organization. He found few satisfactory answers, but in the The Unknown God. Martin P. Starr, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2024. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197744512.003.0010

102  The Unknown God extensive UB correspondence between Jones and Smith there are sufficient indications of its structure and methods at the time of the latter’s involvement. Early in my research for this book I was fortunate to be put in contact with Frederic J. Kayser (1915–​2003), the successor to Jones’s heir John P. Kowal (1900–​1978) as the Mahaguru of the UB and the keeper of their collective archives. Throughout our communications, Kayser was cordially evasive, just as he had been with others who had bought books and manuscripts from him which had once been part of Jones’s extensive occult library. He wrote that his UB papers were destroyed in a fire; this proved to be untrue when after his death the contents of his storage lockers were sold, leading to a massive quantity of instructional materials being auctioned online. I asked Kayser to explain the purpose of the UB. He replied: to make men think, which I later learned was a rote answer to this straightforward question. He had tried to interest others in the UB course of study, but he felt that the style and erudition of the instructional papers had proven too high an intellectual bar. I questioned Kayser if there were other members still alive; he believed there were, but he was unable to say where they might be located. Kayser was the last resident agent of the UB, which had been incorporated in Michigan on October 1, 1963, as a domestic nonprofit corporation and was dissolved on October 10, 1980. Kayser stated that, although he might be the only existing member, he still felt bound by the oaths of secrecy he had taken in the UB. He suggested I read From Bethlehem to Calvary (1937) by Alice A. Bailey for an introduction to the UB’s teachings. In this book, Bailey, a conventional Christian missionary turned Theosophist and medium, divided the life of Christ into five initiations, which correspond at least in number with a series of five levels of obligation known to exist in the UB. Yet Bailey’s work postdates the earliest references to the UB by more than several decades, and it is seemingly no more relevant than the Melchizedek Truth Principles (1963) of “another” Frater Achad, Rev. George Graham Price (1889–​1959), which Kayser also mentioned to me as clarifying the teachings of the UB. He speculated that Price might have been a UB member. I found Kayser’s responses to be unhelpful and did not press him further. He had forced one person to sign the UB obligations before he would sell materials to him, but I was able to buy books and manuscripts from him with no strings attached to the sale. Contemporary references to the UB are scarce outside of Theosophical history. Its secretive, cell-​ like organizational structure did not provide opportunities for members to know each other. There was nothing in the UB

New Orders for the Ages  103 teachings that would have given one insight into the actual origins of its instructional papers or even hinted who the teachers were. The secrecy was so intense that even the death of the founder was not known for several years hence. The American occultist Paul Foster Case,3 once a member of the UB under Jones, speculated that the UB was a “tawdry revival” of the Bavarian Illuminati of Adam Weishaupt, professor of canon law. Case was far from the mark, although he may have felt, like other contemporaries, that the UB was in some manner linked to the primacy of Catholic conceptions, if not the Catholic Church itself. The unknown founder of the UB was Merwin Porter Snell, also known as Merwin-​Marie Snell.4 He had been raised the son of a Presbyterian minister of Puritan descent and devoted his life to the comparative study of religion, holding a variety of academic posts in the field. The thousands of pages of anonymous instructions of the UB reflect Snell’s methodology for the integration of philosophy, mysticism, religion, science, and art. This dialectical process mirrored events in his own life, as in when Snell’s analysis of the foundational arguments of the Congregational Church (to which he previously adhered) resulted in his unexpected conversion to Roman Catholicism around 1885. Snell read extensively in philosophy, developing his own synthesis of comparative religion and philosophy, at first influenced by Herbert Spencer and Hegel. He eventually styled himself a pure Thomist5 and attempted to reconcile Thomism with Vedanta in a form that he termed “Transcendental Monism.” Snell sought interchanges with Theosophists and lectured and published critical articles on Theosophy, whose aims he admired. The work of examining the contradictions he observed in Theosophical literature when compared to Buddhism and Hinduism served as a useful case study for the application of Snell’s predominant belief in the principle of “perfection through universalization” in a cosmic brotherhood of faiths and philosophies. Snell saw the religion of universality as the future of humanity. He appeared as a representative of Catholicism, although not in any official church capacity, at the World’s Parliament of Religions, an interfaith gathering held in Chicago in 1893 at the time of the World Columbian Exposition. In Snell’s address he posited that a single universal religion of infallible truth already existed: the Roman Church, reified in the Pope: Is it conceivable that all diversities of race and talent and thought and tendency and environment may ultimately be coordinated into a

104  The Unknown God world-​wide organization? Can the religious federation of humanity be regarded as within the limits of a rational and legitimate home? This question has already been answered before all the world. The idea of universality has been in the world, however well or illy we may think it to have been carried out. The standard of organic union has long been unfurled, whatever we may think of the beauty of its blazoning. To that ideal let us pay every homage; before that standard let us stand with uncovered head. O white-​robe Pontiff of eternal Rome! thee do we hail as the living embodiment of our enrapturing dream. Thou hast handed on from generation to generation the sacred torch of cosmic thought; thou hast kept alive the flame of cosmic love. Thy name is inherited from prehistoric mysteries; thy mission is the preservation of the heritage of doctrine which unites the best thought of the flower of the Aryan and Semitic nations; thy home is amid the traditions of universal empire; we dare to see in thy triple crown the symbol of a unity in which Jew and Christian and pagan can alike participate; and we hail thee once more as the apostle of cosmic unity, the king of the first great brotherhood of the world. Hail to thee! and hail still more to the divine Master who taught and crowned thee! . . . To sum up, the religion of the future will be universal in every sense. It will embody all the thought and aspiration and virtue and emotion of all humanity; it will draw together all lands and peoples, all kindreds and tongues, into a universal brotherhood of love and service; it will establish on earth a heavenly order, and make all incarnate spirits vibrate with the harmony of the celestial spheres.6

Embracing Catholicism and its Sovereign Pontiff failed to move the delegates of the Parliament of Religions, organized chiefly by liberal Protestant clergymen. Snell’s address made no mark. The gathering was transfixed by the oratory of Swami Vivekananda; his offering of liberal Hinduism won the day. Snell was openly a Catholic and the UB was secretly his creation. Even though the UB did not teach Catholic doctrine, there was an unfounded and incorrect suspicion that the UB was a secret front for the Catholic hierarchy. Snell was not an official of the Catholic Church, but he held that it was the one true religion on whose guidance science and human institutions depended. The unanswered and free-​floating concerns about the relationship between Catholicism and the UB would prove an immediate limiting

New Orders for the Ages  105 factor in its appeal to the most likely target audience for a universal religion of truth, the Theosophists. Starting in 1912, the UB tried to recruit members from the ES group in the Krotona Colony.7 The incursion was detected and rebuffed; it was viewed as an attempt to implant Catholicism in the heart of the Theosophical camp. The ES leaders were particularly contemptuous of the fifth vow of the UB, which required swearing absolute obedience to the head of the UB. It was to them an imitation of the fourth vow of the Society of Jesus, popularly misunderstood to enjoin a Jesuit to unconditional obedience to the Pope. This was notwithstanding the fact that ES members were sworn to obey the Outer Head of the ES in all Theosophical matters, a pledge that Annie Besant exacted in its fullness. On orders from Outer Head Besant, and in keeping with their Rule 18, which forbade ES members from joining any organization teaching occult science, ES members were ordered to leave the UB at once. Those who preferred to stay with the UB in time converted to Roman Catholicism, a pattern that we will see repeat itself. Jones first obliquely approached the subject of the UB in a letter to Crowley of May 16, 1921. Crowley responded saying he knew nothing of the source of these queer papers. Jones and Smith’s initial contact with the UB seems to have occurred prior to their departure for Chicago in March 1921. A few years later, Smith was certain that they sent the preliminary documents to Crowley at the time of their joining,8 but if they did, Crowley never commented on them directly. The UB left little impression on Smith beyond what he saw as a series of incomprehensible doctrines, coupled with endless demands and their senseless requirements. In 1950, Smith recounted the initial stages of his involvement in the UB in a letter to Karl J. Germer, who, following from Crowley, wrongly believed that the UB was a creation of Jones: “The U.B.? I belonged once. Jones persuaded me to join, and we did at the same time through a man named Andrews in Detroit. Yes, the papers were unutterable. Jones was not the author; Jane [Wolfe] may remember who started it, I have forgotten.”9 Despite his memory having failed him on this point, Smith had retained documentary evidence on the curious epistolary practices of the UB in his correspondence files. The first of the surviving UB letters to Smith is dated November 19, 1921. It opens with the standard phrase, “Greetings in the Universal Brotherhood.” As with all UB official correspondence, no earthly names are used for the sender or the recipient. An attached note reveals the true name of the sender to have been Ellis E. Andrews (1887–​1978) of

106  The Unknown God Highland Park, Michigan. The rules of the UB required all mail to be sent in two sealed envelopes. The inner envelope was to be addressed with the recipient’s order name or serial membership number (derived according to a time-​related formula) in the UB, written in Devanagari script, care of the same person under his legal name. The return address of the inner envelope was care of an L. Freudberg in Washington, D.C. The outer envelope was simply to be addressed to the recipient by his own legal name and address, with no return address. Letters were headed with the date but not the legal name nor the address of the writer. There were even more fussy procedures: each student in the UB received his papers from a designated “scriptorium.” Each had to be typed with a purple typewriter ribbon and were fastened with a distinct form of paperclip designated for each paper. Smith and others recounted that the leaders of the UB spent vast amounts of time producing copies of the official teachings in the specified format. In addition to their being typed and annotated in purple ink, the prose of the “purple papers”10 was florid in the extreme. Max Schneider, who also joined the UB, labelled the organization the very incarnation of “Because and his kin.”11 Andrews informed him that since his Leader (Gaṇapati, Sanskrit “troop leader,” understood in the UB to mean “group father”) had recently assumed the status of “Stationary or Privileged Terobligate,” Bhratri (Sanskrit “brother”) Smith could no longer advance any further through him. He was being switched to the care of Ellis. Smith’s former Leader had been C. F. Russell, who had left Crowley and his Abbey of Thelema in Cefalù, Sicily, in November 1921, then journeyed east to Australia before returning to the United States and settling in San Francisco. Smith would now be under Jones in the UB, a satisfactory arrangement as far as the former was concerned. Russell wrote Smith that he “had personally decided to go no further for the present so have requested that I be placed on the waiting list.”12 Even though his connection to the UB was short-​lived, it left its mark on Russell’s thinking; he later adopted some of their procedures, along with the teachings of the A∴A∴, in his own occult order under development at this time. From Smith’s perspective, the borrowings were apparent. Under Russell’s guidance, Smith had taken the first three of the obligations of the UB. He retained no copies of them and within a few years could not even remember what he had pledged. He received their “Postinventional” open instructions “Aspiration and Attainment,”13 “Knowledge,” “Earnestness,” and

New Orders for the Ages  107 “Secrecy,” and their reserved lections “Universal Brotherhood,” “Reciprocal Service,” “Relative Values,” and “Dignity,” as well as the “Prerecognitory” and “Second Interrogatory,” a series of 169 questions, akin to a written confession. He was required to answer these questions within nine weeks of their receipt and return them with his $3 in “Terobligate Alms.” He would then have to ask for the status of “Stationary or Privileged Terobligate” or return all papers at once, severing his connection with the UB. He did neither. Smith wrote Jones that he had no intention of proceeding further with the UB as he had “never been satisfied that they are not R[oman]. C[atholic]s.”14 Although there was no Catholic doctrine taught in the UB papers Smith received, the inescapable sense he had was that the ultimate aim of the order was in some way Catholic. Andrews wrote again on December 31, 1921, pressing the matter of Smith’s advancement. He assured Smith that “the work of the Brotherhood can only broaden and deepen or perhaps correct imperfections in any other work of whatever kind so that you need not fear but rather welcome it whatever your position in regard to any religion or school of thought or practice.”15 Any question Smith could not answer, be it too personal or guarded by a prior obligation of secrecy, could be omitted. A deadline of March 1, 1922, was set for his answer. This time Andrews did not have to wait too long. Within a fortnight Smith followed Russell’s example and asked to be put on their waiting list, as he had neither money nor time to spare for the UB.16 Although he would take up the work again after more than a year’s constant prodding from Jones, Smith never could get a straight answer from his mentor on what was the purpose of the UB, whose discourses of interminable length strike a balance between vagueness and grandiosity. Smith extracted a typical example of the high-​sounding rhetoric of the UB from Jones, writing as Gaṇapati Mantrina, after more than a year of seeking an answer to a simple question: Therefore, in answer to your first question, “What is the intent of the U.B.?” I will give you a few pointers: The declared object of the M. is not alone to bring about a knowledge of God. The “objects” of the Integral Fellowship are all the objects of all human beings in all their relationships, insofar as these are included in its principal “declared objects” which are: the most perfect possible collaboration with the Celestial Powers and with the Creative Intent in the Great Cosmogogis

108  The Unknown God Emprise [sic], involved the Universal Terrestrial Realization of the Ideal, the deliberate carrying into effect and bringing to full fruition of the Divine and Macrocosmic Purposes, and to that end the study and diffusion of the Integral Truth and the methods of attaining and verifying it, the building up of the Integral Fellowship which is Humanity itself so far as it has become normally & organically united, the training of men and women for the doing of what imperatively needs to be done and which cannot be done otherwise, and the construction, testing, perfecting and bringing into full operation of the sociological mechanism or mechanisms necessary for the most perfect secure and speedy accomplishment of the Great Work.17

One wonders what sense Smith made of the lengthy sentence above. Despite all the obfuscation, Smith was encouraged that Jones had the respected author Sydney T. Klein18 as a disciple in the UB. Jones speculated that J. F. C. Fuller, Crowley and Jones’s former colleague in the A∴A∴, might also be a member. Fuller had responded with silence when the subject of the UB was mentioned in a letter of Jones, which was the proper response if one did not know another as a member. The involvement, real or imagined, of such occult luminaries helped stimulate Smith’s further interest in the Sisyphean demands of the UB. The glamour was not a sufficient draw; soon enough Smith would leave the UB behind him, forthwith and all, and none the wiser about its aims. By comparison, the OTO was simple and direct; its plan for elevation of humanity was comprehensible. Smith was more than willing to apply himself to its aims, and the involvement unquestionably brought him pleasure. Since his return to North Vancouver, Smith had busied himself with OTO work. Agapae Lodge initiated Major John Hampton Corbett into the Minerval and I˚ on June 21, with Smith, the newly created “Sovereign Grand Inspector General,” present on a “visit of Inspection.” He congratulated the B.C. Brethren on their ritual work and regaled them with tales of the Lodges in “Detroit, Chicago and other Eastern points.” There were none, but his remarks were warmly received by the few still holding up the sole lodge in Jones’s territory. The new member’s wife, Mrs. Nora Christine Corbett, received the same degrees the following night. Both she and her husband were raised before the close of the year. There were encouraging signs of life in the interior of the province. Frank Page in Kamloops had gathered 11 prospective candidates for OTO, and they petitioned “His Excellency Parzival X˚, 33˚, 90˚, 95˚, Viceroy of His

New Orders for the Ages  109 Most Sacred Majesty Baphomet” on August 29, 1921, for permission to form a lodge and affiliate with the order or take initiation to the III˚ at the prevailing English rates. Smith was all too happy to help them get started, and he made the long journey to Kamloops on September 19, 1921. In the postwar economy, money was a stumbling block, as was the wording of the preliminary pledge-​form; some of the prospective candidates were Freemasons who had taken their obligations to heart. Jones gave Smith permission to add the word “Esoteric” before “Freemasonry” if the language was an impediment to joining for a Freemason that Page had solicited. He further advised him that: This matter of O.H.O. is indeed a difficulty, for I do not know how A.C. will take it and what his next move will be. I’d rather not give an official paper in connection with the matter till I hear from him, so think you had better say that Lodge is started on a special dispensation and Charter may be granted later when we see how the work grows and progresses. . . . I’ve had a card from O.H.O. telling me not to dispense degrees under his charter for America, but A.C. will probably cut loose and do His Will. Do’nt [sic] get downhearted about this, just go ahead quietly, and say nothing, and the matter will straighten out.19

Smith presciently did not wait for the Merlin-​Baphomet conflict to be settled. He poured himself into the more enjoyable task of building the furniture for the lodge; he spent long hours talking with the interested parties. Their first “hall” was an old paint shop over a garage in an alley, entered by means of a ladder in the floor. Smith did the ritual for all parts in the degrees, moving from chair to chair in stocking feet, while Page (previously initiated in North Vancouver) conducted the candidates. For his missionary efforts Page was rewarded with the post of the first Right Worshipful Master of the new British Columbia Lodge No. 3; he had hoped it would function as a workingman’s lodge like the Elks and could attract new members with insurance benefits. As a more permanent meeting place, British Columbia Lodge No. 3 attempted to rent the hall of the Loyal Orange Institution, am Ulster Protestant loyalist society to which one of the new OTO members, Ernest Vincent Bergin, a bookseller and Freemason, belonged. Smith endorsed him to serve as the Second Officer. Another promising initiate was James Francis Cohoe Jackson, who had sought light in the TS and found it not; he was installed as the Third Officer and Secretary-​Treasurer (a minimum of three officers was required to operate an OTO lodge). During his visit

110  The Unknown God Smith raised the two men to the III˚ and initiated the two wives, Mrs. Willene May Jackson and Mrs. Mabel Page, in the Minerval and I˚. There were prospects of two more candidates to follow by the time Smith departed a few weeks later. The Kamloops Standard-​Sentinel, in its issue of September 23, 1921, gave Smith’s visit some good press, one of the few instances of positive media exposure in his life. Smith carefully preserved this clipping among his papers: Founding Ordo Templi Orientis W. T. Smith in City in Connection With Secret Order and Outlines It. The general public is probably not aware of the arrival in Kamloops of a visitor in the person of W. T. Smith who is a guest of F. Page, on whose invitation, coupled with that of Messrs. Bergin, Jackson and several other citizens, Mr. Smith came with the object of starting a branch of the Ordo Templi Orientis. Mr. Smith states that the O.T.O. is a body of initiates in whose hands are concentrated the wisdom of some twenty orders, some well known to the public at large, others of equal merit if of less fame. . . . Modest Tolerance The Foundation being universal brotherhood, naturally one of the outstanding principles was tolerance in the broadest sense of the word. No matter what their views on religion, for instance, every man and woman of full age, free and of good report, was entitled to become a member of the order. He also said that, apart from the fact that secrets of a deeply occult nature were revealed in the ceremonies of initiations into the various degrees, which were gradually made plainer as the brother advanced, there was an actual effect upon the individual to his general betterment of character and outlook on life.

The Orangemen were not pleased to accommodate their new modestly tolerant tenant and refused them further rental, to Bergin’s great anger. Page explained that “the Manifesto was a solar-​plexus knockout to their sectarian insides.”20 A local Baptist minister was alleged to be the source of their moral outrage. Bergin was willing to lend his home for meetings; they promptly passed the ladies to the II˚ on November 2. On pressure from Page and Bergin, the Brethren of the OTO were allowed to return to the Orange Hall for meetings.

New Orders for the Ages  111 This small burst of activity in Kamloops was not sustained. Within a year of its founding, British Columbia Lodge No. 3 ceased meeting altogether. By 1923 the marriage of Frank and Mabel Page had fallen apart; he left her for a younger woman. Sister Page appealed to Brother Smith for his support. In a display of projected jealousy, Page believed that his wife had been unfaithful with Smith during the latter’s initial visit, a charge Smith dismissed out of hand. Whether guilty or not, Kamloops could no more support an OTO lodge than could North Vancouver. Agapae Lodge of North Vancouver held its last recorded meeting on February 21, 1922, with the passing to the II˚ of Cyril Gaunt. It then entered a permanent sleep. Things were considerably worse back east. Although the Detroit OTO activities ended before they effectively started, the unraveling of the personal and business lives of the affiliates was featured in the tabloid papers. No story was too baseless to be believed. The Universal Book Stores went into bankruptcy in May 1921. Business was not helped by the attacks of Mrs. Elisabeth G. Stibbard, the wife of Albert A. Stibbard, a Detroit OTO-​affiliated Mason who had sued her for divorce, which she opposed as a “sting on my soul.” Attorney Frank T. Lodge represented the plaintiff. Mrs. Stibbard introduced into the divorce trial a letter she had written to her Christian Science practitioner, where she alleged that: “their cult is as bad as the days of Herod. On the frontispiece of their textbook is dancing and music and Christianity hanging up by the neck. . . . The cult Albert belongs to has a separate bible. It is so immoral. I am ashamed to tell you the contents. . . . The cult advocates free love.”21 In court Mr. Stibbard admitted his friendship with Ryerson, in whose shop he spent his leisure hours, but he flatly denied ever having read the Blue Equinox, the so-​called textbook of the virtually nonexistent “cult of the O.T.O.” All this negative publicity meant trouble all around. Ryerson was comforted by Smith’s kind, patient, and gentlemanly letters; he had purchased bonds in Ryerson’s business and the latter tried his best to pay back Smith’s investment. He felt that Smith was the only one of the “Crowley school” to give him any sympathy during the dissolution of his business coupled with the airing of his interlocking personal and religious life. The plaint was laid at Crowley’s door. The bankruptcy of the Universal Book Stores was alleged to have been caused by Ryerson’s publication of the Blue Equinox. It seems unlikely, given that the amount of debt the business had accumulated greatly exceeded the total costs of publication by a factor of seven. Grover L. Morden, counsel for the complainant shareholders, dragged in court

112  The Unknown God the red herring that copies of the Blue Equinox had been shipped to “the wife of a prominent moving picture director in Hollywood some time ago”22 and that the actress Mabel Normand would give testimony in the case. Given the susceptibility of actors, Hollywood was seen as a logical place for expansion of the OTO, being fed by 900 “missing” copies from the first and only printing of the Blue Equinox, which were now said to be rushing their way to the movie colony. The sinister trail of the OTO, with its advocacy of sex and drugs, indubitably led to the unsolved murder of director William Desmond Taylor. All these stories were, in a word of the times, bunk; however, the prescient phrase “Hollywood would be a fertile field for the promulgation of the mysticism of the O.T.O.” would later prove to be correct. Smith’s Probationer in Detroit, Roy Mendenhall, reported on the debacle, which resulted in Ryerson’s personal library being seized in judgment and ominous threats being made to search the home of members of the “love cult” for copies of the “obscene” Blue Equinox.23 The Assistant U.S. District Attorney, Francis Murphy, claimed to have been investigating the publication for over a year for potential prosecution under the postal regulations. He ludicrously labeled the Blue Equinox as “the most lascivious and libidinous book that has ever been published in the United States.” Mendenhall noted the irony that the main stockholder in the Universal Book Stores was a Mason and would not sue his Brother Ryerson over the matter; returning the fraternal courtesy, in court Ryerson refused to name the masonic Brethren involved in the formation of the “Great Lakes Council” of the OTO before the judge ruled the entire line of questioning out of order. The scandal was expanding. A reporter tracked down “Aleister Crowley’s lieutenant” in Chicago to learn more of the story, but Jones’s mild account was not considered newsworthy and thus was never published. As he knew well, the OTO had never been established or worked any degrees in Detroit. In reporting the turn of affairs, Jones took the opportunity to reiterate to Crowley his continued lack of interest in the OTO—​the A∴A was not implicated in the yellow journalism scandals—​and his belief that the blowup was really a slap at Reuss for his “silly attitude of recent date,” providing further proof that the OTO was “of no further use in the present scheme of things.”24 Knowing his correspondent and his love of infamy, he warned Crowley to leave matters alone; he should not consider all the negative publicity to be an unexpected source of advertisement for the Great Work. Crowley thought otherwise; he saw a libel judgment for Jones of $100,000, where the considerably less confrontational Jones preferred the Way of the Tao. Jones consulted the tarot for

New Orders for the Ages  113 guidance and saw his proper attitude in the trump “Strength.” As the Hearst Sunday supplement, the American Weekly, crowed: “a little wholesome publicity has smashed all those ambitious plans in Detroit.”25 Smith’s life was again at a crossroads. There was no reason to stay in North Vancouver; as before, as long as Kath’s mother was in the area, Smith could have no life with Kath and their son. The postwar economy was dismal. There was no work for himself or Kath and he felt guilty living off of Nem’s largesse, which he had done since his return. He disliked the situation, but he saw it was again time to leave, despite all the guilt it induced. With all their time together he had bonded with his son Noel, and he regretted the notion of being separated from him yet again. He thought of joining Russell in San Francisco; Jones deprecated its potential as an occult center. He opined that Los Angeles would be a superior location for work on every plane. On receipt of a letter from Crowley, warning Jones that “Russell is a really dangerous lunatic capable of murder,”26 Jones alerted Smith to make no “false alliance with dangerous forces,” since Russell had “chosen the formula of dispersion.”27 It was as shocking as it was true. In the grip of his radical beliefs, Russell had even begun to sign his letters “Choronzon-​333,” the “Dweller in the Abyss,” a personification of dispersion whose numeration was 333, invoked by Crowley in 1909 in his vision of the 10th Aethyr.28 But Smith had enough of a level head not to worry for his own soul, and he stopped in San Francisco in April 1922, en route from Vancouver to Los Angeles, in order to see Brother Russell. Prior to his visit, Russell enunciated the following plan of action to Smith: I propose to upset the wiles of Choronzon, both within our circle & beyond it, by destroying as soon as possible this prevailing “state of manyhood” where the individual & his soul are bound together yet loathing each other—​by creating as many Adeptus Minors (within) as possible as soon as possible by adopting the most efficient method possible, one grounded from the roots up on Simplicity.29

It was a long road to this sancta simplicitas; and the proposed means to this end was embossed upon Russell’s stationery starting in March 1922: Choronzon Club Headquarters Daath

114  The Unknown God Russell attempted to fend off less-​t han-​p ositive reactions to the name of his society: “In case you may be tempted to stare in horror at the above letter-​head—​please mark that it has been chosen to conceal the essential holiness of that for which it is a cloak of concealment. There is no president; one vice-​president’s chair is vacant awaiting an owner willing to invest about three-​hundred bones.” 30 Russell signed himself as Secretary. As could be expected from the closeness of their prior bond, Russell was glad to see his Brother and with his typical vigor he was all too eager to impart his vision of a fraternal future he hoped they would share. In his view, an OTO operated as an esoteric masonic fraternity was of no value as a means of initiation. The practices of sexual magic were of prime importance, but they could be taught outside OTO and without the irrelevant preliminaries of the fraternal degrees. He highly regarded the curriculum of the A∴A∴ for the training of adepts, but its pace was too slow. Russell felt he had made a rapid advance by means of the extremities he had endured in the Abbey of Thelema, but there was only one of those, and its future was doubtful owing to the perpetual lack of funds. There had to be a shortcut to initiation that could be marketed widely, and which could help earn its proprietor a living. Russell had been putting his considerable intellect to the task of devising a streamlined method from the practices he had learned in his tuition under Crowley. Smith was about to receive an adumbration of Russell’s occult synthesis, and the shadow it cast was not a welcome sight. For Smith’s part, it was not so pleasant a reunion. Smith promptly reported on Russell’s bizarre and troubling conversation to Jones: Re R. he seems to be in a peculiar state and seem to have learnt to talk big from A.C. with out the warrant of course that our Big Brother has. He tells me emphatically that the A∴A∴ is straight Devil worship and openly claims to be a Black Bro. He claims to be working on some scheme of his own to get Probationers and on my asking what A.C. thought of it he stated he had not consulted him, with something to the effect that he would destroy him and his Order if he interfered. He wanted me to assist him in his work when I got here, but stated I should have to swear by “333” who he seems to have set up as God and very God for himself, I told him I thought that none of my mottoes seemed to jibe with that formular [sic], so I really did not learn very much about his plans.31

New Orders for the Ages  115 Heeding Jones’s advice, Smith refused to swear allegiance to the “333 Formula,” whatever may have been meant by this. Although they may have horrified Smith, some of these vouchsafed ideas were not entirely original with Russell. One of his duties as secretary to Crowley at the Abbey of Thelema had been to type his abundant manuscripts. Among Russell’s papers he preserved a fragment of the diary of the Master Therion entitled The Book of the Great Auk which has not survived elsewhere. In this speculation, would Russell find the inspiration for the name of his new occult order? This theory of independence of units rushing through infinite combinations sounds like the abyss. This is an argument that Choronzon is God. Suppose that is the final secret. It may be that or the Secret of the Black Brotherhood. If so, bung must go my theory. These evidently two opposite theories and there is no question of good and bad but of the facts. So, we don’t know which are white and which are black brothers, till we know which theory is correct.32

Sensing Smith’s dubious reaction to his claims, Russell tried to provide the logic for his nomenclature, an effort doomed to failure in the former’s case: The word shit does not frighten a sophisticated adult; although the same may drive a weak silly woman into convulsions. Similarly on a higher plane, the word Choronzon does not terrify one who has attained a certain exalted Grade; although one is forced to conclude that to the individual below the Abyss no horror can be imagined which in any way can compare with the deadly emotion aroused by this complex. Now it is not my desire to frighten any one; but at the same time I do not propose to treat everyone like a child. My policy is not that of keeping the greatest mass of mankind in sheer spiritual ignorance; and my policy is not that which seems to have crept into the Eqxs, viz: since the word Satan has been found holy and discarded as a means to make people toe the mark, a new word must be invented to which it is necessary to attribute the conglomerate mass of terrors formerly connected with the old name. . . . I say all this because I gathered from our conversation in the vicinity of Chinatown that your mind was of somewhat a sceptical type; and to be frank you have demonstrated to me that you are following our first elementary principle, viz, not to credit anything which is not logically demonstrable, so well that, not knowing your motto, I should say it was Scepticus.33

116  The Unknown God Skeptical Smith remained of “Rusty.” Although they continued their correspondence through 1923, it is clear from the increasingly clipped responses that Smith wished to distance himself from Russell, with whom he had little in common. Russell revealed his pedophilic desires to Smith: “Ten-​year old manifestations are the choicest, if one has cultivated a taste for them!”34 Smith had not. Misreading one of Smith’s letters as a sexual overture, Russell replied: “Thought you didn’t go in for that Bag-​eee-​Mootah stuff! Well, I’m game, if you are.”35 Smith was not. Whatever they had shared in a positive way as Thelemites was now a thing of the past. Genesthai’s megalomania was rampant and unchecked: “My C∴C∴ plans are waiting for the Eqx. Word before being further materialized; I want to know just where I am at, as they say way down east, before putting into operation forces which might ultimate in the destruction of the continent.”36 Although his letters make mention of advertisements for Students, Russell’s principal interest at the time was his investigation of the electronic devices of Dr. Albert Abrams (1863–​1924), one of the most successful medical frauds in the history of the United States. Abrams believed that every disease had its own “vibratory rate,” and that each form could be diagnosed using a series of resistance boxes. All diseases could be cured (for a fee) by means of an “Oscilloclast,” which he leased to practitioners on condition that they never open the device. The fraud had prominent supporters, including Upton Sinclair, and based on the latter’s endorsement Crowley briefly thought Abrams’s treatments might have merit. Revealing a combination of scientific ignorance and anti-​Semitism, Russell could not decide whether Dr. Abrams was due to be hailed as the “long expected Jewish Messiah” or whether the “Electronic Reactions of Abrams” (ERA) were merely “a scheme to Syphilize the human race.”37 The latter is a reference to the fact that Abrams frequently diagnosed his patients with having syphilis. In a like manner, an early detection test for syphilis named for its developer, Jewish bacteriologist August von Wassermann, was believed by anti-​Semites to cause syphilis, which was itself falsely believed to be a Jewish conspiracy to destroy Gentiles. As the basis for their friendship had evaporated, their correspondence dwindled to a close by the end of 1923. More than a decade would pass before the paths of Smith and Russell would again intertwine, this time no longer as friends and Brothers but as occult enemies and rivals. The initial battle against the “333 Formula” was being secretly fought by Jones, who was invoking from the higher spiritual planes the magical power to nullify the dispersion of the demon Choronzon summoned by Russell.

New Orders for the Ages  117 After Smith had left Vancouver, Nem and Kath made plans to head east to Montreal. Their North Vancouver house was leased with view toward an eventual sale. No one was willing to carry on with Agapae Lodge in their absence. Indeed, no one was carrying on with the OTO outside their Valley, as the differences between Baphomet and the OHO had never been resolved and the movement virtually disappeared. Smith had been hired on April 21, 1922, as an adjuster in the Customers’ Department of the Southern California Gas Company in Los Angeles. He would stay in their employ for the next two decades; in the uncharitable words of Crowley, who held one salaried job in his life and only for a few months at that, Smith was a “white-​collar wage-​slave.”38 The work of bill adjustment was dull and petty—​people would argue over a few cents—​but it had the virtue of offering steady employment. Now that he had established himself in his new home, Kath held out the carrot of joining Smith in Los Angeles in the fall of 1922, when he could be reunited with his son, now known familiarly as “Mickie.” Jones also expressed an interest in visiting, on a paid lecture tour. The Gods had other plans for them both. Jones was preparing for the press his first book, containing his revelations of “the True Attributions of the Trumps of the Tree of Life,”39 entitled Q.B.L. or The Bride’s Reception. Jones was quick to point out that, despite the subtitle, the book would not read like a French novel. The book was written in a white heat, in accordance with a new cycle of illumination which started on May 31, 1922; he completed the text by June 13. Guided by these insights, Jones was inspired to reverse the attributions of paths of the Tree of Life. Most of the text was a straightforward account of the form of Christian/​Hermetic Kabbalah taught by the Golden Dawn and adopted by Crowley, leading up to the Law of Thelema. The revelations of the “Reformed Tree of Life” were confined to an appendix, in the form of diary notes. Although Crowley claimed to have taught Jones this mystical method of arguing by contraries, its unfettered application by his disciple would result in a further parting of the ways between them. It is a lamentable fact that a worthy Zelator of the A∴A∴, one Frater Achad, having been taught (patiently enough) by the Seer to use this formula, was lured by his vanity to suppose that he had discovered it himself, and proceeded to apply it indiscriminately. He tried to stand the Serpent of Wisdom on its head, and argued that as he was a 1˚ =​10□ of the Order, he must equally be a 10˚ =​1□. As the Book of Lies says, “I wrenched DOG backwards to find GOD; now God barks!” He would have been better advised to reverse his adored ONE and taken a dose of ENO!40

118  The Unknown God Smith was thrilled that his friend and mentor, who had composed so many epistles and lectured for years, had at last written a book. A limited numbered edition of 250 copies was planned, with a subscription price of $10, a considerable sum for the times. Jones, acting as his own publisher, reserved copy no. 132 for Smith, who generously contributed to the printer’s initial deposit. The pain and expense of seeing Q.B.L. through the press, with its extensive use of Hebrew, provoked Jones to feel sympathy for Crowley, veteran of many a fight with the printers of London. It was an ambitious project for a first publication. After having been the recipient of so many letters bearing Jones’s lamen and having been sent Russell’s rough design for the same, Smith tried his hand at drawing one of his own (Figure 10.1). His design included the

Figure 10.1.  Lamen of W. T. Smith.

New Orders for the Ages  119 initials of his mottoes as a Probationer (NE), Neophyte (VPOV) and Zelator (VOVN). He sent a draft of his lamen to Jones with his letter of June 23, 1922; its explicitness provoked Jones to remark wickedly in his reply of June 27: “I like your Lighthouse though it is perhaps a little too likely to lure some young ships on the rocks.” Smith was a well-​endowed lady’s man, and pursuing them was his hobby of choice for many years. He had met a lady by the name of Ann Barry (sometimes spelled “Barrie”) in Los Angeles, who in addition to her attraction to Smith, made suggestions of offering a serious donation to the publishing campaign. The gift did not materialize, but Smith made sure to introduce her to Jones on a visit to Chicago. The affair ended when she became pregnant; Smith was certain that he was not the father—​and also relieved. Given his preferred leisure-​time activity, it is remarkable that he did not father more children. Jones was nowhere near the sporting gentleman that Smith was. He had the occasional affair when Ruby was out of town, but his real interests were missionary in nature. To this end he had been working on a new scheme to bring more potential Thelemites into the fold, with the aim of cashing in on the latest self-​help craze sweeping the world.

11 Psychomagia The next current to sweep through the American Thelemites led by Jones was an interpretation of the work of Emile Coué, the originator of autosuggestion, intermingled with doctrines derived from both Thelema and Theosophy. On Crowley’s advice to acquaint himself with psychological literature, Jones took up the reading of Suggestion and Auto-​suggestion by Charles Baudouin,1 which he in turn recommended to Smith. Even though initiates of the I˚ of the OTO were forbidden to subject themselves to hypnotism or mesmerism, evidently autosuggestion did not fall under the ban. The leaven of autosuggestion was quick acting upon the mind of Jones, whose sparse diary entries show how brief was the gap between thought and expression when it came to matters of Magick. The “new word” was “Psychomagia,” which Jones pronounced to the world on September 17, 1922, with his intention to form a society based upon it. A week later, Jones convened a public meeting at Chicago’s Morrison Hotel. It drew an audience of about 150 people, of whom 66 became associates on the spot of the newly created Psychomagian Society. The concept was simple. Psychomagia was to be a further development of the Coué system, quietly aligned with the teachings of the New Aeon, with quiet borrowings from another source which would have aroused Crowley’s ire, had he been made aware of it. Jones enthusiastically reported the development to Smith: My idea with the Psychomagian Society is that it fills a place and has a good attractive name. We shall combine Psychology and Psycho-​analysis with Magick. We say that Psychomagia is “The Science and Art of Changing the Mind at Will.”2 Now I’ve ordered 1000 cards very like the United Theo. cards you sent me, and they will be printed on Sunday. I propose to charge 25 cents only for Registration as an Associate. We can then make them full Psychomagians later on, on some other basis if necessary. . . . I shall send you say 50 cards and you can begin to sign them up at once with the Local Los Angeles Branch.3

The Unknown God. Martin P. Starr, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2024. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197744512.003.0011

Psychomagia  121 Since his arrival in Los Angeles, Smith had been attending occasional meetings of the United Lodge of Theosophists (ULT), an independent organization founded in Los Angeles in 1909 by Robert Crosbie “with strict allegiance to the Theosophy of H.P.B. and Mr. Judge.”4 In distinction to the “pledge fever” of the ES and the consequent control of the members granted to the Outer Head, especially in the ES headed by Besant, associates of the ULT signed an open-​ended pledge which stated “being in sympathy with the purposes of this Lodge, as set forth in its ‘Declaration,’ I hereby record my desire to be enrolled as an Associate, it being understood that such association calls for no obligation on my part, other than that which I, myself, determine.” Jones did not hesitate to adapt this statement of intent to the Psychomagian Society (PMS): “Being in accord with the purposes of this society as set forth in its ‘Manifesto,’ I hereby record my will to be enrolled as an Associate. It being understood that such association calls for no obligation on my part, other than that which I, myself, determine.” The “Application For Full Active Membership in Local Constellation” expanded this pledge: “I, [name] Desire to enter the Orbit of the Golden Sun who gives freely but has no visible means of support. If admitted I will refrain from attempting to reveal that which should naturally remain invisible to those outside our Orbit.” The chief of these secrets was the financial requirements. The “Full Active Member” also had to sign an obligation promising to contribute $1 or more per week “to the interior support of our Constellation,” with a further promise “not to reveal to those outside the Society, or even to Associate Members, the nature of the support of the Constellation.” If these arrangements had prospered, it would have netted Jones a considerable income. Ruby Jones was put in place as General Recorder of the “North American Major Constellation,” the governing body of the PMS for the United States and Canada. With Schneider as the Local Recorder for Chicago, Smith for Los Angeles, and the potential of Russell for San Francisco, the Psychomagian Society, Inc., was off and running. Jones devised a slogan to advertise the new society: “Psychomagia, the teaching you have been waiting for” and glossed its initials to mean “Practice Self Mastery.” Smith backed Jones in this endeavor, having been enrolled as member no. 158 on the rolls, but the PMS was not what he sought. Smith still yearned for a system of initiation like the OTO—​he wanted to use the new rituals with some slight changes so that men and women could be in the same lodge together—​but Jones assured him that in time formal initiations could be part of the PMS.

122  The Unknown God Jones hurried to report the good news to Crowley, the first honorary (or “borrowed,” as Crowley termed it) member of the PMS. I can never thank you too much for mentioning Suggestion and Autosuggestion. People are taking to it like wildfire in America, which gives us a chance to use the opportunity to draw in the crowds and at the same time explain our System goes further still. As you will see by the enclosed card, I have avoided for the moment “Do what thou wilt” which on account of Detroit advertising prejudices many people till they actually hear the System explained. But I have used the idea of “Every Man and every woman is a star” as the first and most important step. People sign the card and agree with the principles, pay 25 cents registration and become associates. I intend to make them full members as they accept the Law. They will then be known as a Psychomagian, and sign another card. I have already initiated a current to start things in Los Angeles and Detroit. We call this the Chicago Constellation. We are also issueing [sic] a “Better Day Cord” or Coue Rosary with a green silk knotted cord with a silver Symbol of the P.S.M. [sic] attached round which is the Slogan “Day by day etc.” This will sell by the thousand I think and prove good advertising.5

The timing could not have been better. Along with mahjong and the Ku Klux Klan, the fad of Coueism swept America in 1922–​1923, heightened by the lecture tour of Coué himself, and Jones was in a good position to capitalize on the craze. In reply, Crowley endorsed the Solar Manifesto6 as “mild and inoffensive,” but he urged his magical son to introduce openly the principles of Thelema as the basis of the PMS. Jones was still smarting from the ill effects of the nationally circulated American Weekly exposé and assorted other bad publicity connected with Crowley. In the face of the hangover from the Detroit debacle, he encouraged Jones not to change his policy of publicly promoting the Law of “Do what thou wilt.” The Coué rosary he found “rather hard to swallow; but you are dealing with imbeciles lower than the cattle they slaughter; so go ahead.”7 Crowley eagerly awaited Jones’s Q.B.L., which had been published on October 14, 1922. The initial copy sent on publication was seemingly lost in the mail. Another copy was dispatched, and Crowley waited for what gossip had told him might be a denunciation of the general principles of the initiatic path on which he and Jones had previously been in accord.

Psychomagia  123 The principle of divorcing occultism from money was much at issue. There was a growing rift between the Magus and the Magister Templi over their respective means of support. Crowley averred that he had set himself a high standard in the matter. He claimed that it was “my first duty to prove to the world that I was not teaching Magick for money. I promised myself always to publish my books on an actual loss on the cost of production—​ never to accept a farthing for any form of instruction, giving advice, or any other service whose performance depended on my magical attainments.”8 Prior to 1914 he had been able to underwrite his publishing through his sizable paternal inheritance. After the exhaustion of his patrimony, Crowley’s income was uncertain and was often derived from what his long-​time associate Louis U. Wilkinson termed “involuntary contributions from his friends.” Jones, with no private means, had given up his day job as a bookkeeper. In its place he was lecturing many times weekly, offering private classes, and generally trying to keep up a steady income from the voluntary contributions of his students and well-​wishers. The issue of money for esoteric instruction had already made Crowley’s blood boil when in 1921 Jones had sent the former an “appalling circular” for his lectures, asking not for payment, but for “alms.” As a countermeasure, Crowley included in “One Star in Sight,” the manifesto of the A∴A∴, an “absolute prohibition to accept money or other material reward, directly or indirectly, in respect of any service connected with the Order, for personal profit or advantage. The penalty is immediate expulsion, with no possibility of reinstatement on any terms soever.”9 On receipt of the typescript of this work, Jones mockingly replied to its author that Crowley would first have to expel himself for selling his books!10 It was not, according to Crowley, a fair argument, as he claimed his books were sold at the cost of production, but there was more than an appearance of inconsistency in the Beast’s behavior. Crowley himself had issued a “private and confidential prospectus” of the occult classes he had planned to offer while resident in New York circa December 1914, along with their fees, but what was allowed to him was not sanctioned for others—​if done under the auspices of the A∴A∴. The OTO had always charged degree fees and annual dues; this was consistent with the practice of masonic organizations. It did not matter to Jones as he had other flags under which he could fly now, and in any case he made it clear he never charged money for A∴A∴ instruction or advancement. Still, the fact that Crowley’s books were the basis of so much of Jones’s teachings gave room for argument.

124  The Unknown God Finances were an abiding worry for all the disciples and most especially for the Master himself. It is clear from the correspondence with Smith that Jones was becoming dependent on the money he raised from teaching occultism and to a lesser extent from the sales of Crowley’s book stock. Jones was paying the storage charges for Crowley’s books in Detroit, both the stock of trade books and the collection of rare editions and manuscripts. By their arrangement he was allowed to keep 50 percent of the sales proceeds of the trade books for his expenses and the rest was to go to Crowley. Jones kept no sales records, which in time would become yet another point of dispute with Crowley. As part of his work, he also received “alms” from the members of the UB and the PMS. None of these sources provided more than a living wage for Jones and his family, who, according to his statements, lived very close to poverty. After over eight years of close collaboration, Jones and Crowley were in the process of drifting apart. Jones felt the need to assert his independence from Crowley, who in turn thought Jones was intellectually too subordinate to his work. The sharp criticisms Crowley leveled at Jones were both editorial—​the book was littered with typographical errors and there was an excessive use of capitalization—​and dogmatic. Here originality was not wanted. Crowley particularly took exception to Frater Achad’s reversal of the attributes of the Tree of Life in the appendix to Q.B.L., written in the form of a diary: From what I can see of the Appendix generally, it appears to have some very interesting ideas, but I think it is rather a case of rushing into print. The best ideas are none the worse for being allowed to mellow. The real interest in the Appendix is that it illustrates your rough working, and if we let it go as that instead of making a dogmatic revolution, it is impossible to take any objection to it. I think you have failed to realize that Athbash is no better and no worse a Temurah than any of the other systems. What I dislike about your proposed reversal of the serpent, and did dislike about your proposed rearrangement of the Sephiroth, is that such changes merely upset a meaningless convention. It is therefore the blow of a sword in the water. There is no point in proving that Sunday ought really to be Saturday because humanity has missed a day since the day of creation, unless there is a day of creation; and as we know there isn’t, it is much best to support the conventional calendar. I think you could have brought out all the truths of your Appendix without upsetting the language.11

Psychomagia  125 Crowley, however, was not the only reader of Jones’s first book; the reviews in the occult press were quite favorable. The publication of Q.B.L. established Jones as an author and helped create a market for his writing. In December 1922 the Yogi Publication Society, whose books formed the initial magical link between Jones and Smith, agreed to publish his Crystal Vision through Crystal Gazing, promised for March 1923. They also accepted his mystical essay on Wagner’s Parsifal, entitled The Chalice of Ecstasy (1923). Naturally Smith wanted them all, and Jones kept him informed as the books made their way through the press. Books were essential magical weapons. They were the chief source of inspiration for the few and the faithful Thelemites, and this fact was not unknown to Nem. She held Smith’s occult library against the sums she said he owed her for room and board during his final stay in North Vancouver. It was a crushing blow, but with time and money and the influence of friends, Smith regained his library. He had no intentions of returning to British Columbia; once he was settled in his bookkeeper job at the Southern California Gas Company, he drafted an application for first papers for U.S. citizenship. He made a critical error in his application: he lied and stated he was married to Kath. Although his application was supported by his employers, some controversy arose, and he pursued the matter no further. The letters discussing the problems surrounding his citizenship application are unclear as to the nature of the difficulty, but he blamed the trouble on coworkers, some of whom were Freemasons and members of the American Legion, which he believed to be a Roman Catholic organization. He would remain a registered alien in the United States the rest of his life. Jones was quick to learn that publishing is, as the saying goes, a fast way to earn slow money. For a first-​time author with an obscure subject matter and no experience in book publishing or distribution, he was fortunate. His self-​publication of Q.B.L. over the course of its first year in print sold enough to enable him to continue with his program under the umbrella of the Collegium ad Spiritum Sanctum, Publication Department. He planned to publish two more books. The first of these, The Egyptian Revival: or the Ever-​Coming Son in the Light of the Tarot (1923) was originally entitled IU, the Ever Coming One. It was intended to trace “the history of the Horus story throughout the ages,” intermingled with his presentation of Thelema and his ongoing disagreement with an unnamed “Authority” on the kabbalah. Under the imprint of Will Ransom,12 Jones published his most artistically sophisticated book, XXXI Hymns to the Star Goddess (1923). Here was a

126  The Unknown God work of Jones that met with Crowley’s unquestioned approval, sight unseen. Crowley extolled the virtues of this book, a set of poems to Nuit, the speaker of the first chapter of The Book of the Law. It was testimony to the fitness of the methods of the A∴A∴, which evoked sublime lyrics from someone without any previous indications of being a poet. He was also appreciative of The Chalice of Ecstasy, a Crowley-​like example of kabbalistic exegesis along New Aeon lines which related the Parsifal story to the mythos of the OTO. But Crowley and Mudd, knowing the limitations of Jones’s scholarship, expressed grave doubts over forthcoming titles announced by Frater Achad, The Anatomy of the Body of God and The Alpha and Omega of Initiation.13 The Jones books posed a problem for the Beast. Crowley held an ongoing debate with himself on how to get Jones to knuckle under to his authority. On Crowley ordering that Russell should not receive the Word of the Vernal Equinox of 1923, Jones decided to issue it to no one, making it a “word not known.” This initiative did not please Therion. It was time to set matters straight between them. Frater Achad: how to deal with him—​a letter should be written in the Occult Review14 & other rubbish heaps which he respects—​being a Copyright Hound (See From Crystal Gazing to Crystal Vision)—​to challenge his position. Is he a member of the A∴A∴ he boasts about all the time, &c. Point out that he has not complied with the Regulations of 7˚ =​4□ by publishing a complete statement of his Point-​of-​View, &c. True, 666 has accepted him: but that only means he has taken advantage of the rule that any man can be 8˚ =​3□ if he dare to claim the Grade. As he in fact did. This leaves a slur on him, as ignorant of intermediate Grades. 666 can only advise him to regularize his position by showing his title to 7˚ =​4□, &c. Also, we can force a definite public statement from him as to relations with 666: & make him sign a paper defining those relations as they should be.15

The public confrontation was yet to occur, and for the time, Crowley let matters continue as they had. It was hardly a satisfactory arrangement, but owing to his exile from Italy in May 1923, he had been without a permanent residence and had suffered from poor health for some time. All Jones could report to Smith was that he seldom heard from Crowley; what he did know of the Beast and particularly his attitude toward his “son,” he only partially shared with Smith. The handwriting was on the wall for the end of the magical partnership between 666 and 777, but the latter felt no

Psychomagia  127 need to communicate the full details to 132. Crowley saw Jones’s failure as a moral one: There seems to be much misunderstanding about the True Will. In argument, people are always making assumptions which imply an Uncaused Will. The fact of a person being a gentleman is as much as ineluctable factor as any possible spiritual experience; in fact, it is possible, even probable that a man may be misled by the enthusiasm of an illumination, and if he should find apparent conflict between his spiritual duty and his duty to honour, it is almost sure evidence that a trap is being laid for him and he should unhesitatingly stick to the course which ordinary decency indicates. Error on such points is precisely the “folly” anticipated in CCXX-​I-​30 and I wish to say definitely, once and for all, that people who do not understand and accept this position have utterly failed to grasp the fundamental principle of The Law of Thelema and may be expected to get themselves into all those kinds of trouble which result from uncriticized enthusiasm about the “revelations” which are made to them; their great Qabalistic discoveries, and similar man-​traps.16

But what of the PMS? From the start, Smith had expressed his concerns to Jones. How would Frater Achad manage to run the PMS in his absence, since he was typically so busy all around Chicago. He questioned whether Jones could have the time to devote to its proper development. For his part, Smith openly confessed that he had neither the time nor the interest to advance the Psychomagian cause. By the dawn of 1923, Crowley duly pronounced it a fizzle. Jones tried to rebut this judgment and to clarify his magical intent: Psychomagia, Inc. is not a fizzle. It is an education society, a New Aeon Organization for the Cultivation of The Good, the Beautiful and the True and the extension of Light, Life, Love and Liberty. Psychomagia, was my original word and formula for this purpose. The Psychomagian Society, as I see clearly now, served a very definite purpose for the short period during which the term “Psychomagian” was used. C.F.R. invoked Choronzon and proclaimed a 333 formula. I refused to cooperate. When I had to take him on and deal with him I was led to introduce into this country and to him, another formula of 333 for Psychomagian adds to that number. The result was that immediately these two were combined in his unconscious being—​forming 666—​he tries to get

128  The Unknown God back to you. We change our formula to the original one and Incorporate as Psychomagia, and the other current fizzles out being burnt up by the Solar forces. Psychomagia is still paying the expense of spreading the New Law to a number of people here, though I give my services without payment, and in fact subscribe my fee with the others.17

Despite his wishes, the “other current” represented by Russell was not so quick to disappear as was the Psychomagian Society, which was truly an occult flash in the pan. It vanished as quickly as it came; after February 1923 hardly a mention of it is made in the correspondence. Crowley questioned the method by which Jones derived the numeration of 333 for “Psychomagian”—​ by Greek values he suggested it should be 1662, “the reflection in the world of I A O”—​but the net result of it could be more closely equated to zero. Max Schneider opined to Crowley that the PMS would have grown into an excellent public thelemic movement if Jones had not insisted on gradually introducing its members to the UB, a secret society. In Schneider’s view, it caused a split allegiance in Jones’s will and sowed much confusion among the members; Schneider’s response to the muddle was to resign from the UB forthwith, which upset Jones considerably. There was still one significant Thelemite who had not completely thrown over the UB. Throughout 1923 Jones continued to push Smith to answer the Second Interrogatory of the UB. Jones repeatedly testified to the light he had received from the process. He broadly hinted to Smith, suggesting unnamed benefits to be gained by trying to answer all 169 questions. Any question deemed too personal or too impertinent could be marked as such; strangely, the only unacceptable answer was an ambiguous one. Nothing in the UB, he averred, would interfere with Smith’s work in the Order of the A∴A∴. Jones claimed that the UB would supply “the Order of the Universe” which the A∴A∴ lacked. According to Frater Achad, the UB was macrocosmic in nature, while the teachings of the A∴A∴ were microcosmic. The two orders in his view complemented each other’s perspective and their plans of study could be pursued at once with benefit to both. Smith had no interest in rolling away the stone from this particular tomb. He finally submitted his answers to the UB in November 1923. He wrote Jones that “the questions really annoyed and in places disgusted me. ‘Pure’ Hell! I do not know who or what the outfit is. You say the[y]‌are alright so I suppose you do by now.”18 Jones was delighted to be able to acknowledge Smith as a “Recommended Terobligate Aspiring to become an Adhyāpyi” (Sanskrit for

Psychomagia  129 “fit or proper to be instructed”). Jones glossed Adhyāpya as “those who have become Recognized as desirous of travelling by the Path open to Inquirers who are in real earnest.”19 Its symbol was the merman or mermaid, as the case may be. Smith was a part of the Lake-​Howard Gana (Sanskrit, “group”) of the UB. Continuing in the UB was an act of faith in Jones on the part of Smith. Despite his doubts, at Jones’s urging Smith introduced the UB to his Los Angeles Probationer, Camille Feider (1888–​1931). Feider, whose first language was German, struggled with the papers. Jones did not encourage telling Kath about the order, as he thought she was not ready for the teaching. She had enough problems without having to add to them the demands of the Mahācakra Society. By April 1924 she had taken a year’s lease in Montreal, so no swift reunion was planned. If their domestic situation could be settled by her moving to Los Angeles, sans Nem, Jones would reconsider the decision. Although Smith struggled along through the philosophical and linguistic muddle of the UB, Crowley was not so inclined. The prolixity of the English employed in the UB instructions and uncritically parroted by Jones reduced him to laughter: Heard from Achad: an importative of the Integrality of the Relationsism of the Ipsissimissity of Beingism with the Magusdom of Wordility, the Trutharianism of his Remarksosity is pleasantatious to my Sireanity, & has makated the Urge of my Soulology pyramidalize in a Wayism hithertoly almostiful as strangeiferous as I can remembranceify in this Incarnationality.20

Crowley tried making light of Jones’s pomposity and the lack of apparent meaning in his letters, hoping it would snap him out of what he viewed as Jones’s inflated sense of self; his efforts only further distanced Jones from his soon-​to-​be former mentor. For his part, Jones worried that the Great Work itself was being obstructed by Crowley’s personality, and that he would suffer accordingly. I cannot help feeling that either your personal or Magical Ego is trying to discount and avoid certain facts, which may appear to be unpleasant, yet which cannot be altered by merely attempting to throw a veil over them. Your attitude in this matter has been to accept what suited you to accept, and reject what did not, either by ignoring facts or trying to explain them away, or failing that to make a joke out of them at another’s expense. This

130  The Unknown God attitude has brought pain and suffering not only upon yourself but upon those who have the Work at heart and have done all in their power to forward the Great Purpose. Needless to say That Purpose will not be frustrated on account of inordination [sic] in the instruments used for Its fulfilment, although the instruments may suffer in the process on account of their wilful obstinacy or that of their leader.21

Beneath Crowley’s ridicule a serious issue was lurking. Since his initiation of the summer solstice of 1916, Jones had considered himself to have attained to the grade of Ipsissimus (10˚ =​1□), the highest of the grades of the A∴A∴. He had surpassed Crowley, merely a Magus (9˚ =​2□) of the order, on the Tree and was no longer subordinate to him. This belief about his rank in the order came to dominate Jones’s thinking—​this despite his seemingly humble assertions that on his assumption of the grade of Magister Templi (8˚ =​3□) he was “cast out” into the sphere of Malkuth and thus appeared to the world solely as a Neophyte (1˚ =​10□). With the “Formula of Reversal” in place, what was Malkuth is now Kether, and thus the Neophyte was now an Ipsissimus. Once Jones put forward these claims directly, Crowley wasted no time in rebutting them. With the autumnal equinox of 1923, Jones again refused to distribute the Word, citing his disagreements with the “tricky” regulations attached to them. The Word of the Equinox was in fact a password and a sign of good standing in the order; lacking the current Word was a sure sign that the person in question should not be recognized as a member of the A∴A∴. The newly promulgated rules stated that the Beast 666 was manifested solely in “the man generally known by the name of Aleister Crowley,” who was the Visible Head of the A∴A∴ and “the sole and supreme authority” in the order. Any claim for anyone other than Crowley to hold the grades of Magus and Ipsissimus was “ipso facto a falsehood until the Aeon of ‘the double-​wanded one’ (CCXX-​ III-​34).”22 And if anyone claimed the Aeon of Maat had arrived, Crowley laid out stringent proof for its advent. Among other requirements, Thelema would have to have been “wholly assimilated by the Spirit of Mankind, thus becoming reactionary, false and inoperative.” The process would take centuries, at a minimum. This left no room for argument except through retreat to a claimed higher ground, which path Jones chose. He surely had no wish to be under Crowley’s thumb anymore; what was once a liberating influence now seemed a dead weight on his own dreams of still greater attainment.

Psychomagia  131 Although there was no advancement for Jones in Crowley’s occult domain, over the course of 1924 Smith made progress in the UB. It was a long and tedious road for Smith. By April 1924 he obtained Recognition as a Terobligate and now had to reformulate his aspiration. By advancing to this level, he was now made a part of Jones’s sub-​grouping in the UB called the “Thelema Grama” (Sanskrit for “dwelling place, village,” glossed in the UB as “unit”), which was exclusively for those in the Brotherhood who had been exposed to the New Aeon teachings. Smith reformulated his aspiration as “I aspire to Integrality” even though he admitted to his Gramani Jones that in his view “the only real business is that expounded by Mary Anne Atwood.”23 All he lacked for a successful performance of the Magnum Opus was a proper “vessel of art.” Having fulfilled all the prior obligations, Smith was passed to the fourth or Quartobligate level, usually called the Caraka (Sanskrit, “wandering religious student”) stage. The official letters now open with the phrase “Greetings in the Integral Fellowship.” He signed the Caraka obligation on June 24, 1924, sending along with his oath the “Full Normal Alms” of $25. In return he was given a new name in the Mahacakra Society, Nabhashcara, said to mean “moving in the Sky.” Along with other secret documents, he was also furnished a new mantra in English, which he had to rewrite in Devanagari characters. The task was a vain observance, but Smith considered that other demands of his new “Trial Caraka” station were much more of an imposition. He was told to send his superior a curl of hair from his left temple and a photograph. These requisites smelled to him like the makings of Black Magick. As he was already balding, he mockingly queried Jones if the curl of hair might be supplied from some area other than his head. Throughout the spring and summer of 1924, Jones held out the hope to Smith of settling his affairs in Chicago and moving himself and his family to Los Angeles. To have his beloved friend and guide Jones once again close by was a dream for which Smith was willing to make every sacrifice to come true. The unchanging problem was finances; Smith thought he could raise the money for Jones to relocate from sympathetic friends. When the time came, the money was not found. Smith was crushed by the news; Jones attempted to soften the blow by sending him a copy of the third volume of Crowley’s vellum-​bound “Holy Books,” which contained the first printing of The Book of the Law. It was a treasure that Smith had sought for several years, but it was hardly a substitute for the presence of Brother Jones. Smith inquired about Crowley; Jones replied that he had not heard from him in six months. The

132  The Unknown God obvious breakdown in communication left Smith feeling even more adrift and despondent as he contemplated his spiritual future: I dont want to get anywhere myself, but one has a feeling that one is getting older and has not done anything for the univers at large. I dont know what I would do anyway I thought perhaps one might find something to do in this outfit. The O.T.O. and A∴A∴ seem to have gone by the board and by the time ones [sic] gets to know anything about the schemes of the U.B. One will have two feet in the grave. I was about to say, I know that I am just bluffing myself because I would try to get out of it if there was anything to do and do not now do all I could. But it is not altogether true. I have not yet found that in which I want to put my energy. The O.T.O. looked hopeful at one time. This is such a dark horse, ponderous and one has no idea where it is travelling.24

He considered that being separated from Jones by merely a “miserable fare to L.A.” was poor recompense from the powers that be, considering all the hard work the latter had put into the OTO, the A∴A∴, and UB—​even bad employers would do better by their workers. Jones, ever the optimistic planner of the two, had a vision of how they might proceed, within the “Thelema Grama,” to carry on. He had 32 active Carakas or Adhyapas directly under him and about 70 Brothers total in his Grama. Most of them, alas, were not the responsible people needed to take a leadership role, so he thought of selecting nine of the best for a special endeavor to carry the work forward. He hoped that Smith could be one of the Elect. One can see in this plan that Jones was losing hope in the means they had previously employed to impart the secret traditions of Thelema to the few considered worthy of them. I want these NINE to have a double interest in common, viz: the U.B. Work, carefully studied as a very Orderly System, and the New Aeon Teachings well rooted so as to give them Force and Fire. Some knowledge of the O.T.O. System of the conduct of Lodges and of Official dignity and polite behaviour will be of additional advantage to those who have it. With such a group directly in touch with me, wide awake to the situation and willing to do their level best for the good of all concerned, it should be easy, if necessary, to select from such, a set of Officers wherewith to organize Thelema into an independent Integral Body, through which some of the most valuable of the

Psychomagia  133 “inner” A∴A∴ and O.T.O. teachings may be perpetuated and transmitted to other generations in their pure form, with less chance, perhaps, of their being distorted than will be the case where they are handed on in a less secret manner. The very conservativeness—​so to speak—​of the U.B. System, may then be turned to good account, if rightly used.25

It was a nonstarter. Jones had tired of Crowley and all his works. Smith for his part had his patience exhausted by the UB, and even Jones could not sell him on the notion that some great reward awaited his continued devotion to a cause he could not understand. His best and only gambit, lacking Jones in the flesh to talk it all out, was to try to reason with his friend over the inutility of the plan. Such arguments sounded very flat to Jones, now grandiosely writing as the “Mareschal” of the “Prefecture of Illinois.” He felt that Smith had failed to sacrifice himself for the cause of “Integrality” so he could expect no results. Jones had suggested that “the A∴A∴ desired its members to becomes Servants of Humanity, but when the opportunity comes along—​no matter how presented—​you show little inclination to Serve either those in your charge or those above you.”26 If Smith declined to show more active interest in the Work of the Mahacakra, Jones would straightaway transfer him to a local Sub-​Prefect of the society. Smith replied with equanimity to Jones’s rebuke. All he wanted to know was what the UB intended. He understood Jones and Crowley were better educated than he was, but his intellectual shortcomings in the dilemma in turn posed an advantage since “people with limited mental capacity have to have a peg, so to say, to hang an idea on.” The alignment between the work of the A∴A∴ and the UB suggested by Jones was a novel idea to him, but he bluntly questioned “how the handling out of these papers Serve Humanity, few understand them and none ask for more.” It seemed useless to ask any questions about the UB since they were met with non-​answers; if Jones did not want to work with Smith, he could spare himself the trouble of transferring him “for when you are through with me I shall be through with IT. I shall never believe in any one else 100th as much as I have in you.”27 If he could not find his way clear to continue with the UB, having had its aims explained to him in plain English, then only a few words more would be requisite to bring this matter to an abrupt closure. Jones’s 10-​page typed response, attaching cards for the “personal honors and counterhonors—​ magmic, typical qualifications for honoric taxical praxis,”28 helped temporarily ameliorate some of Smith’s impatience with the

134  The Unknown God incomprehensible plan of the UB. On a public level the UB was committed to opposing philosophical errors which undermine religion. Jones rattled off to Smith a lengthy “syllabus of errors,” from the relativity of human knowledge to the attribution of objective reality to anything but substances, all of which it was the UB’s goal to rebut. Smith pledged $132 annually to the support of the Integral Fellowship, but he demurred from Jones’s suggestion that he should start an introductory UB “Atrial” group of his own in Los Angeles. He reminded his very dear Brother Mantrina what a mess he had made delivering a paper at a Wednesday night meeting in Detroit. He doubted he could ever lead a group and he did not have the money to do so. Jones took the opportunity to inform him that careful reading of the papers would show him that an Atrial group would make him money. The name of Jones’s own such group was the “Treasure Seekers,” which speaks to its intent. After a long period of silence, there was news of the OTO. Since 1923, Jones had been in correspondence with Heinrich Tränker (1880–​1956), a Leipzig occult bookseller and publisher of a Rosicrucian journal Pansophia.29 He had become aware of Jones through the publication of Q.B.L., which attracted the attention of some very old men who were said by Tränker to be the descendants of the ancient Rosicrucian Brotherhood. Through Tränker they were reaching out to Jones to extend their work in the New World. It was an introduction he had long sought, having investigated the claims of the various Rosicrucian groups, and found them all lacking. Tränker’s organization was called the “Collegium Pansophicum” and he granted authority for this movement in the United States to Jones. What Tränker unquestionably possessed was a magnificent occult library, the real basis of his claims to ancient wisdom; he was also a genuine representative of the OTO in Germany. Tränker offered to publish German translations of Jones’s books; it was especially pleasing to Jones that they accepted Frater Achad’s new kabbalistic system as the key to understanding the tarot. Jones had both sides of his correspondence translated by Schneider, during which Tränker revealed that he was also the inheritor of the leadership of the OTO in Germany. Reuss had recognized Tränker as a X˚ of the OTO and its Grand Master for Germany and had given him a charter for the OTO on the same day he issued a similar document to Jones appointing him Grand Master for the United States. Tränker’s involvement was known only to Reuss; he was aware of Crowley but never corresponded with him prior to Jones’s introduction.

Psychomagia  135 Reuss had died on October 28, 1923, without naming a successor as OHO, his sole right under the OTO Constitution. News of his death was communicated by Tränker to Jones and from Jones to Crowley in November 1924. Lacking an appointed successor, the office of OHO was now open for nominations. Tränker was expressly not interested in the position, nor was he willing to take any part in the outer activities of the OTO. His association with Reuss had been long and unproductive, in his view. Tränker felt the teachings of the order regarding the chakras were faulty and that even the name of the order, implying that the Templars were involved with high-​grade Freemasonry, was false and should be dropped.30 Reuss had entrusted him with manuscripts of the degrees, and Tränker did not think it worth his time to copy them. Tränker’s interest in the order was minimal, but he felt that it might serve a purpose if it continued. Tränker left the decision on who should be the leader of the virtually defunct order to Jones and Crowley. Jones unequivocally chose Crowley; he took delight in “acclaiming you, my Beloved Father, O.H.O. and the Supreme Authority of the World-​wide Jurisdiction.”31 Crowley accepted what he felt all along was his by right, adding that “in the O.H.O.’s last letter to me he invited me to become his successor as O.H.O. and Frater Superior of the Order and my reply definitely accepted (I cannot give the exact dates of these letters and cannot be sure whether he died before receiving my reply).”32 None of this was true. Jones, recipient of the actual and final correspondence between Reuss and Crowley, knew the facts of the acrimonious denouement of their relationship in the OTO. The issue was settled by consent of the surviving ranking members: Crowley was at last the de jure OHO, by the leave of Tränker and with the acclaim of Jones. As his first official act as OHO and a return of their favor, Crowley reaffirmed the chartered authority of Jones and Tränker in OTO. Perhaps there was a chance of carrying the order forward after all the prior missteps; the secret was believed by Crowley to be of inestimable value to mankind and it required human guardians to transmit it to future ages, hence his willingness to confide this mystery to those who were ready, in his eyes, for its unveiling. For unexplained reasons, Jones did not communicate the OTO news expeditiously to Smith, even though they were in frequent correspondence on UB matters. Perhaps the issue was not of great weight to Jones, who was absorbed in the work of the Mahācakra Society. The first mention of the changes in leadership came in a letter signed “Parzival, X˚, P.G.M., U.S.A.,” dated March 2, 1925. It informed “V.I. Bro. W. T. Smith, Hon VII˚” of the

136  The Unknown God following changes that had taken place in the order, for the cognizance solely of those above the VI˚: Our Holy Father Peregrinus-​Merlin, O.H.O.—​on whom be Peace—​passed to the Great East some time ago, and the title of the successor to this High Office is Phoenix. The Phoenix has been duly acclaimed as O.H.O. by the reigning Grand Masters here and in Europe, and he has himself accepted this Exalted Station. This is also to inform you that the title of the present Grand Master for U.S.A. and North America is Tantalus Leucocephalus, and his authority is also confirmed by the Chiefs of other Countries. It is well you should know these things for the sake of historical accuracy.33

Smith promptly acknowledged the welcome developments; he hoped that they were a sign of potential renewed activity in the OTO. He asked for clarification of the earthly names of the OHO and the Grand Master of the United States. Jones suggested that Smith could easily guess who the “Phoenix” might be and the “Tantalus Leucocephalus”34 was the same as the previous American representative. Tränker, the other “reigning Grand Master,” formerly known in the OTO as “Recnartus,” took the new name of “Gryphus.” Crowley suggested that he and Tränker should meet in Germany at the summer solstice of 1925. Once again, the current was shifting. Little did any of them know where it would lead by year’s end.

12 The End of the Beginning The skies were full of signs and portents of what was to come. The hour had come for yet another revelation that Jones was destined to give unto the world, after a period of gestation in silence. A wave of inspiration had swept over Frater Achad on April 14, 1923: it brought proof that the Tree of Life was the veritable anatomy of Ra-​Hoor-​ Khuit. He signaled this discovery to Crowley, claiming that “if quietly left to go on with my work I shall be able to produce a definite scientific proof of the Kingdom of R.H.K. [Ra-​Hoor-​Khuit] and H.P.K. [Hoor-​pa-​kraat] in the course of the next few months.”1 Crowley was an astute critic of illogic and poor scholarship; inflated claims like the above gave him pause. He warned Jones that some of his statements would do harm to their reputation and the work they shared. He commented that in Jones’s books there were passages that suggested “American bluff, the tipsy optimism of Christian science, and in the acquiescence in enthusiastic assertion as rigorous proof.”2 He urged postponing any future publications making intellectual statements until he and Mudd had time to respond to them in detail. Given the criticism his prior efforts had received, Jones felt for the time it was best to keep silence on the certain proofs of the New Aeon and await the proper moment to unveil them. The chosen vehicle would be his book The Anatomy of the Body of God. Jones anticipated a publication date of September 23, 1925, and again asked Smith to help underwrite the initial costs, estimated at $500. Showing his friendship and solidarity, Smith sent $100 by return mail—​the UB could wait for the alms he had pledged. Jones used half of Smith’s funds to make a deposit on a revised “autograph edition” of Q.B.L. (1925), as the first edition was now exhausted. Jones also forwarded Smith evidence of the newest phase of the work of the Master Therion in the world. At the same time that Jones was contemplating the structure of the universe in relation to the crowned and conquering child, Crowley was attempting to manifest as the embodiment of the Word of the Aeon. Shortly after the fall equinox of 1924, he

The Unknown God. Martin P. Starr, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2024. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197744512.003.0012

138  The Unknown God formulated a statement of his destiny, which he issued in the form of a broadsheet in March 1925: TO MAN Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. My Term of Office upon the Earth being come in the year of the foundation of the Theosophical Society, I took upon myself, in my turn, the sin of the whole World, that the Prophecies might be fulfilled, so that Mankind may take the Next Step from the Magical Formula of Osiris to that of Horus. And mine Hour being now upon me, I proclaim my Law. The Word of the Law is Θελημα.

It was a year to remember: 1925 marked the golden anniversary of the founding of the TS as well as the fiftieth birthday of Crowley. Copies of the “Mediterranean Manifesto,” as To Man was called, having been composed on-​board a ship traveling from Marseilles to Tunis, were sent to Jones, along with a list of potential recipients. Jones’s suggested contacts included esoteric leaders known to Crowley: Theosophists Katherine Tingley and Alice Bailey; Rosicrucians H. Spencer Lewis and George Winslow Plummer; astrologer Evangeline Adams; and Wilfred T. Smith. The first on Crowley’s list was the president of the parent Adyar TS, his old nemesis Annie Besant. With almost unimaginable gall, given the years of his public and private attacks upon her, Crowley sent a confidential letter to Besant, who also held the office of Outer Head of the ES, suggesting that she should appoint him to be her successor: You must have observed with regret the numerous schisms in the T.S. and realized that in the case of your promotion to the Grand Lodge Above the confusion is likely to become infinitely more confused. There is no person of authority or capacity except Bishop Leadbeater, who will soon become too old to direct affairs. The author of the enclosed Manifesto has been in touch with you since he first met you on the “Osiris” in April 1904 e.v.; but has deliberately pursued a policy of silence and shrouded his real personality from the profane until this critical moment in the history of the Society. There are other coincidences which it would be improper to mention at present. . . . You are invited to appoint him as your successor as head of the E.T.S., not as that of the T.S. for he has no intention of disclosing his personality to any but a very few selected chiefs sworn to secrecy. The object of the

The End of the Beginning  139 appointment is so that the principle [sic] persons concerned may be informed and confer with him with a view to future action.3

Similar letters were sent to the president of the Blavatsky Association (London) and to Leadbeater; the response from all was silence. Crowley had correctly predicted Besant’s choice of successor; after her death in 1933 it was revealed that she had appointed Leadbeater to assume the position of Outer Head of the ES. Crowley also accurately surmised that Leadbeater was too old for the job; the latter died five months after Besant. Crowley’s OTO viceroy in Australia, Frank Bennett,4 was urged to contact C. W. Leadbeater and assure him that the author of the manifesto, To Mega Therion, knew that Leadbeater was Besant’s spiritual guide and was in the greatest sympathy with the Bishop’s work and all his methods. Such was not the case. Crowley had long held that Leadbeater’s attempt to promote Krishnamurti, “his boy-​mistress, imbecile from abuse,” as the Incarnation of the Logos was a black magical operation. Although Crowley has been accused of hypocrisy for condemning Leadbeater’s frequently alleged pedophilia, his real cause for concern was not quite so conventionally moralistic, as he made plain to his American bibliophile friend, Montgomery Evans II: About Krishnamurti. There is no objection on my part to paederasty as such. This is a totally different matter. It is a question of the following practice, which I class as black magical because it is unnecessary, unrecommended from the magical standpoint, and likely to arouse highly undesirable forces as being in opposition to the Law of Thelema. The practice consists in hypnotizing a boy and masturbating him while in that condition. He then becomes lucid. You will find it broadly hinted at in the re-​print of the Introduction by Wilmshurst to “A Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery” by Mrs. Southwood [sic].5

He confided in his South African OTO viceroy, James Thomas Windram, that the “Krishnamurti bluff ” had collapsed; he would put together a small book that would convince the world that To Mega Therion was its esoteric leader, and inspire belief in his mission in the way that the Theosophical work, At the Feet of the Master, did not do for their World Teacher.6 Crowley believed that Krishnamurti was employed by Leadbeater as a medium to receive the text; it was assumed by more skeptical contemporaries simply to have been the work of Leadbeater throughout. With Crowley, as his dutiful

140  The Unknown God disciple Karl Germer once noted, all that was needed was a bit of dirt in the oyster shell for him to produce a pearl. The result was his composition in March–​April 1925 of The Heart of the Master,7 an ecstatic vision of the spiritual history of mankind, culminating in the advent of Thelema and the Great Wild Beast 666 as the fulfillment of prophecy. The worth of the message had long been confused with the merits of the messenger, and Crowley’s thoroughly bad reputation was widespread. To attempt to counteract his negative charisma, Crowley wanted his identity as the author of To Man to be concealed to avoid prejudicing readers, in particular Theosophists, against the Law of Thelema. He had a simple aim for this subterfuge: “the point of the Manifesto is to give them a plausible explanation of their adhesion to a doctrine connected with so unpleasant a person.”8 The Theosophical movement, despite the schisms since the death of Blavatsky in 1891, had membership numbers of the size Crowley could only dream: the parent Adyar TS had 41,000 members in 1925. Crowley also enlarged his previous plans for a conference at the summer solstice of 1925 to include guests from all the heads of the world’s esoteric movements, with a preliminary rendezvous in Paris. Crowley himself would not appear at the conference, or if he did, he would merely be introduced as an “unknown Mohammedan from distant parts, apparently a fifth wheel.”9 None of these deceptive schemes sat well with Jones, who believed what was needed was a very perfect secret organization, and that already existed in the UB, whether Crowley was consciously aware of the fact or not. There was no use in tricking people into following Crowley. Frater Achad was certain that adherents would abandon any movement once Crowley’s leadership was revealed. Jones’s prediction was not far from accurate, and Crowley’s overtures to both Tränker and the TS resulted in no net gain in the spread of his message, other than the acquisition of the adherence of Germer, who remained in Crowley’s circle for the rest of the latter’s life and continued to publish the Master’s work. Despite all these rapid and potentially far-​reaching developments overseas, the primary hub of activity between Smith and Jones remained the Integral Fellowship. Their fraternal relations resumed their previous friendly and helpful tone. The one-​to-​one communication model of the UB engendered myriad organizational demands. Getting the correctly signed and sealed copies of the appropriate instructional documents and oaths in the canonical order proved a challenge as the Great Circle widened to encompass more aspirants. The UB correspondence of Smith and Jones is filled with minute details of their handling of their candidates and the explication by Jones of the complex rules

The End of the Beginning  141 for the circulation of the numerous UB instructional sūtras along the chains of authority. Although Smith had only convinced Camille Feider to join the UB, he in turn had been a very successful recruiter, increasing all of their workload. In this period Smith received copious correspondence from Jones, but much of the current Thelema news which was of actual importance to Smith was omitted. Smith was informed of the breaking chain of events in the Crowley-​Jones relations only after Jones’s course was already in motion. Instead, the tedious affairs of the UB occupied the bulk of the letters. Jones was not pleased with Crowley or his ally of the moment, Tränker. His attempt to exercise control over Tränker’s publication of his books in German translations was rebuffed by Crowley as rudeness. Jones rightly questioned Tränker’s abilities to have his books translated properly and he rejected Crowley’s attempt to edit his writing. Although Crowley had promised a detailed critique of Jones’s publications, it had not been forthcoming. The increasing tension between them spilled over into their correspondence, with Crowley striking the first hard blow. The message to Frater Achad was sent through his Probationer, Max Schneider: The first Chapter of IU assumes that a nine days’ wonder in the Chicago newspapers represents a permanent spiritual change in the temper of America.10 The title itself “The Egyptian Revival”—​There ain’t no sich animile! (I quote two flagrant matters out of perhaps 100). You must be completely insane with megalomania—​as you have been warned often enough that this was your greatest danger—​to take friendly criticism like this as “an impertinence.” There are no opinions on the other side among serious people: it is unanimously held that your books, while they contain much excellent work in the popular presentation of the ideas learnt from the Equinox and the Order, are calculated to arouse ridicule by their crudeness, lack of originality, and egoism. The style of the “sublime” passages is sheer imitation of mine. There are some lapses which are utterly incomprehensible to me. Notably, certain equations are given as Qabalistic “proof ” which are nothing of the sort. You, of all people, whom I took to know better than any one else alive what Qabalistic proof really means! I thought too, that your prospectus of the “Anatomy” was absurdly bombastic. You apparently have no idea at all how this sort of thing discredits you. Do learn that people won’t think you a great man because you tell them so in such a loud voice. They look for evidence in your work. . . .

142  The Unknown God I can only repeat once again my very serious warning that unless you kill out that inflamed ego, go back and steadily work through the grades you jumped so gaily, and adopt an attitude of probity and brotherhood with your fellow-​workers, you will come to the most almighty everlasting smash in the history of—​Chicago!11

There were sundry sources of disagreement. Crowley denounced the claims of wisdom and omnipotence of the secretive UB, though it is not clear if had read any of the UB documents. He was wrongly convinced the organization had been invented by Jones, perhaps as a joke; Crowley decried the crudity of the latter’s sense of humor. The UB system of almsgiving was a transparent breach of the regulations of the A∴A∴ forbidding the exchange of money for occult teaching and henceforth it would not be tolerated in any form. He remonstrated Jones for the lack of financial support for his work, which resulted in Crowley living close to starvation. The latter claimed that he received from Jones the grand sum of $5 in the last three years from the sale of his books. The figure may be correct; if Jones sent Crowley money, there is no mention of it in his letters. On the other side of the ledger, Jones had never received any reimbursement from Crowley for the monthly storage expenses of the book stock and the two cases of rare books and manuscripts. It was time for an accounting. Crowley asked Schneider to form a committee to investigate the charges made against Jones and make an inventory of all of Crowley’s property left in the former’s care. Schneider was authorized to circulate Crowley’s recent critique of Jones to all those who were a part of the work in Chicago. This move was viewed by Jones as both unwise, since it did not do credit to the cause, and disloyal to him personally. The committee invited Jones to a meeting on August 5, 1925—​he did not attend and in turn dismissed Schneider as his Probationer. Their attempts to gain control of Crowley’s property were met with a refusal, as Jones held a power of attorney from Crowley which had not been rescinded. It was only a delaying tactic which was easily countered. Crowley promptly gave Schneider power over his books and manuscripts in the care of Jones, who in turn chose to handle the matter through his attorney. Accounting for the depletions in the stock of regular books presented a problem, as they were originally received without a detailed inventory. The business had been conducted on a fraternal handshake and neither side had records to support its claims. It would take attorneys on both sides another 10 months to hammer out a

The End of the Beginning  143 document of mutual release to bring their material issues to a close—​or so Jones had hoped. The moment had arrived for their relationship to dissolve on the spiritual plane as well. Jones wrote directly to Crowley, “to release you from any bond that may have existed between us in the Order known as the A∴A∴ as I am not in sympathy with your present policy and I am therefore definitely disassociating myself with the Order as represented by you.”12 He had no more need to deal with Crowley, as in his view he had passed Therion on the Tree of Life and was no longer subordinate to him spiritually. His listening public needed to be informed as well. Jones included the following “special notice” in his regular advertisement for his Sunday lecture in the religion section of the Chicago Daily News. It appeared on August 22, 1925: “Frater Achad is no longer in sympathy with the policy of the Order known as the A∴A∴ as represented by Therion and has definitely disassociated himself therewith. This will make no change in the nature of Frater Achad’s own lectures and teachings.”13 He simultaneously submitted the same text for publication in the British Occult Review. To this notice and Jones’s several contemporaneous letters Crowley never directly responded—​ 11 years would pass before he would write to Jones again. As a final salvo, Jones tried to rebut the charges leveled against him, the chief of these being practicing occultism for profit: You may hear of a lot of other “orders” sometime—​The Treasure Seekers, for instance. Or you may hear of the U.B. . . . But as far as the A∴A∴ was concerned I held this for the last, and for the people that gave signs of real promise. Was not the Order to train Adepts? If I, in my outer work, must go into the highways and hedges, did you want everyone, fit or unfit, brought into the A∴A∴? Who would look after them? Remember, I have never taken a cent for money for direct A∴A∴ instruction from Probationers of the Order, or for individual advice and instruction from anyone. My public work has been of an educational nature. A∴A∴ books are read and studied among others, and people who took classes made voluntary contributions. But the A∴A∴ is not a group system, how could I work it in groups? But it is from groups that suitable people may be discovered, the others have to be taken care of in other ways suitable to their nature or until they eliminate themselves automatically.14

144  The Unknown God The break between Jones and Crowley would trigger the end of relations between Jones and Smith. The first installment of this sad story was communicated to Smith by Schneider in a letter of September 2, 1925. Crowley had advised Schneider that the obligations of the UB were not binding on anyone, as they conflicted with the Law of Thelema, to say nothing of the generally accepted moral code. He urged Schneider not to keep silent or otherwise risk being an accomplice to a fraud: they have persuaded you and others to pay money on the pretext that they represent a universal tradition etc. with mysterious Gurus. This is a false pretense. . . . I hope you will not allow any specious arguments about honour to stand in the way of your action. It is just this upon which such people always rely to carry on their malpractices with impunity.15

All those in the A∴A∴ who had joined the UB were urged to write directly to the Chancellor of the order, a post formerly held by Jones, to clarify their position. Smith, being unwilling to judge his beloved Brother Jones harshly merely on the statements of third parties, withheld further comment to Schneider and asked to be given Crowley’s address. It came via telegraph: Hohenleuben, Thuringia, Germany—​t he home of Tränker. Smith wrote immediately. His first letter to Crowley, dated September 11, 1925, is filled with sentiments of profound regret for the situation. As much as he admired Jones, he was frankly relieved at Crowley’s attitude toward the UB, an organization which had irked Smith tremendously from the start. He still lacked any idea of their aim, but he assured Crowley that the “bag of tricks” was not of Jones’s making. Naturally he was disappointed that Jones had never leveled with him on what was occurring between himself and Crowley. Smith stood firmly with Thelema and the A∴A∴, even though he had little notice of the latter order for the past four years, and as soon as he heard from Jones, their affairs would be promptly settled. He closed with a prophetic phrase: “Trusting you will write to me soon and that I may be kept in direct touch with you, at least until you find me too much of a burden, or I find you to severe a task master, the which I always imagin [sic] you to be.”16 Owing to his departure under less than friendly circumstances from Tränker’s house, the letter never reached Crowley. Another two years would pass before Smith would try again to get in contact with Crowley directly. Perhaps he thought his letter did not merit a reply?

The End of the Beginning  145 The stage was set for Smith to close the door once and for all on the UB. He did not himself confront Jones with all the adverse information he had received, but instead pursued the issue still remaining between them: the teaching of the Mahācakra Society: I have little to say but there is one thing I should like to ask you regarding a statement in the Fourteenth Abhimantric, just received. On page 2 it is stated:—​“Those persons who, from whatever cause, remain unmarried are obliged by the moral law to remain absolutely continent . . . but under no circumstance is it permissible for an unmarried person to deliberately indulge the sexual appetite in any manner whatsoever, even in thought.” I should like to know your view regarding the statement and if you indorse [sic] the sentiment.17

After all the non-​answers to simple questions, Smith did not anticipate that Jones would do any better by him this time, but at last there was something tangible in the UB teachings with which he could disagree. It was beyond his understanding how Jones could claim to accept The Book of the Law and the UB dictates at the same time. It surely did not square with his prior position: this much Smith knew. Had they not fought together for the liberty of the individual in Thelema? Mudd was instructed by Crowley to send out an official announcement dated September 24, 1925, that Jones, formerly the Grand Neophyte, had ceased to be a member of the A∴A∴. Any members whose relations with the order were conducted through Jones were urged to write the Acting Chancellor, care of Karl J. Germer, Weida, Thuringia, Germany, in whose home Crowley took refuge after parting from Tränker. As proof of their status, they were instructed to enclose copies of their papers admitting them to their present grade. Smith received his copy of the notice with Schneider’s letter of October 19, 1925. Now all the pieces for the separation with Jones were firmly and finally in evidence. Jones’s lack of frankness with Smith was about to rebound upon him. Jones continued in his correspondence with Smith during the period as if nothing had happened. Regarding the absolute celibacy for the unmarried advocated in the Fourteenth Abhimantric, he equivocally replied that the ideas in the UB papers were there to make members think and ponder one’s reactions to them. One was not required to accept their concepts without reflection. On

146  The Unknown God the larger problems of occult allegiance looming before them, he took refuge in vagueness. Jones thought it was up to Smith to make the first move: I expect you may wish to mention other affairs and had, in fact, rather expected you would have done so before taking any action whatever. However, of course you are quite free in that respect, but don’t be hasty, and in the event of your desiring a change of relations at any time, release one bond first before making another, thus Karmic confusion will be avoided. The enclosed notes may interest you as representing another angle.18

The notes included the text of the August 22, 1925, Chicago Daily News advertisement, of which announcement Smith had been apprised months ago, along with the copy for a further public message, intended for the November 7, 1925 issue. The declaration of Jones’s falling out of fellowship with the Brethren of the A∴A∴ seems to have been premature. After working to build up a movement in Chicago, the causes for his split with Therion needed more explication. TO THOSE WHOM IT MAY CONCERN In order that there may be no confusion let it be clearly understood that the statement made by Frater Achad to the effect that he was not in sympathy with the present policy of Therion as the Outer Representative of the Order known as A∴A∴, makes no difference whatever to their relationship which has existed, and still exists, between Frater Achad and those accepted by him as Probationers and Neophytes of the Order, or in his existing relations with Associates or Members of Psychomagia, Inc., or any other Society represented by Frater Achad, and that since 1916 Frater Achad’s Function in the Order of the A∴A∴ has in no way depended upon the authority of Therion as Outer Head of the Order, but solely upon the Superiors of Therion with Whom Frater Achad is still in perfect agreement and in the Bonds of Fellowship and Communion.

By the next mail, Jones had reconsidered. He would maintain a policy of silence and thus decided against running the second announcement. Although Crowley had stated that Jones ceased to be a member of A∴A∴, his membership would be revived once Crowley opened communications with him in 1936 at the time of the anticipated publication of The Equinox of the Gods, where Jones magically rejoined the catena in the imprimatur of the

The End of the Beginning  147 A∴A∴. For the time being, his name was removed from the rolls of the order and the equinoctial Password was withheld from him. Thus ended the career of the self-​proclaimed “Janitor” of the Outer College of the A∴A∴.19 It was an unhappy and unwelcome climax to the labors of a man once proclaimed as the hardest working of the Brethren. For the last time, Smith poured out his heart to friend and Brother Jones. He was full of pain and regret over the dissolution of their fraternal bonds, yet he was ready to accept what he felt had already occurred: However, what matters one more disappointment in a life that is so largely made up of them. You have had many and so have I. I feel disposed to tell you, not to hurt your feelings, but because I have always been open and frank with you even to the point of the ludicrous, that the change as far as I am concerned is a good thing. I feel myself entirely alone, and I say it is Good, for I was relying entirely too much on you and your opinion. I will sink or swim by myself now. Let’s forget the subject, even though our earstwhile [sic] mutual interest may have been the basis of it, I do not want to break a friendship if it can be avoided, for I think we both loved.20

13 Jane, Kath, and Leota The break with Jones was final and complete. Smith’s last heartfelt letter to his master went unanswered by Jones until June 26, 1926. In the interim, Jones had asked his UB associate Ellis Andrews to call on Smith personally in Los Angeles—​but the conversation did more harm than good, in Jones’s view, as Ellis was too far removed from the thelemic issues to be able to communicate Jones’s thoughts accurately. For his part, Smith was not about to open up his thoughts to a near-​total stranger who was subservient to the now-​rejected doctrines of the UB. Jones excused his prior lack of frankness with Smith by a passing accusation that Smith took up the Crowley-​Schneider party line against him without so much as asking to hear Jones’s side of the affair. Crowley, he felt, had suddenly turned on him in an unmanly fashion, using Max Schneider as his intermediary and ceasing to write to Jones altogether. The policy was, in his word, “suicidal,” and its futility provoked him to issue his public disclaimer of Therion’s conduct. When Jones perceived that Smith was aiding their “propaganda,” he felt no need to discuss the situation with him and instead “followed the Way of the Tao,” a ready mystical explanation for his lack of forthrightness with his once and former disciple. Smith was a stalwart defender of Jones’s reputation, and in accordance with his OTO obligations withheld judgment of his Brother for as long as he could. A reply to this letter does not survive, if written; and Jones indicated he would have no time for correspondence as he was committed to his lecture tours in the Eastern states. The brush-​off ended their correspondence for another decade, and it effectively dethroned Jones from Smith’s heart. The year 1926 went by with hardly any correspondence received or sent. A few letters were exchanged with Max Schneider, which filled Smith in on the developments in the Crowleyan camp, including the news that Norman Mudd had eliminated himself from the rank of the Thelemites. Mudd’s concerns with the hierarchy in The Book of the Law had been the subject of numerous interminable letters to Crowley. The irritation proved to be inspiration. In November 1925, while wintering in Tunis, Crowley composed a terse Comment to The Book of the Law, which was a palimpsest of the “Four The Unknown God. Martin P. Starr, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2024. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197744512.003.0013

Jane, Kath, and Leota  149 Powers of the Sphinx” of Éliphas Lévi: “Know—​will—​dare—​and be silent!” Read literally, the Comment anathematizes all study, discussion, or interpretation of the central holy book beyond a privately maintained understanding of Crowley’s exegesis of The Book of the Law. It left the Thelemites far from a “priesthood of all believers” familiar to Crowley from his childhood among the Plymouth Brethren and served to close off any source of doctrine other than the sola scriptura provided by Crowley. Part of the authorial subterfuge was to “answer and adequately” the issues of Crowley’s spiritual authority raised by Jones and Mudd: The study of this Book is forbidden. It is wise to destroy this copy after the first reading. Whosoever disregards this does so at his own risk and peril. These are most dire. Those who discuss the contents of this Book are to be shunned by all, as centres of pestilence. All questions of the Law are to be decided only by appeal to my writings, each for himself. There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt.1

Mudd forthwith withdrew from the A∴A∴, citing his disagreement with the honesty of Crowley’s statement in “One Star in Sight,” that the order “ ‘is not committed to any doctrine.’ ”2 He repudiated his part in the publication of Ein Zeugnis der Suchenden (1925), “The Witness of the Seekers,” a German manifesto of Thelema targeted at Theosophists, declaring the Master Therion the World Teacher. Mudd felt that he could no longer maintain the belief that Therion was the World Teacher and deplored the treatment of his fellow signatories of the Zeugnis, Heinrich and Helene Tränker, who he felt had not been properly informed that it was intended for immediate circulation in Theosophical bodies. Crowley later dispatched to Smith a typed copy of the Comment with an admonition: “Please note this carefully. There has been already one disaster through disobeying ¶4.”3 Crowley considered Mudd to be the Judas of the thelemic movement and believed his later suicide was just punishment. Like Jones before them, the apostates Mudd and Tränker were shunned, another echo of Crowley’s Plymouth Brethren upbringing. The reasons offered for the necessity of their excommunication differed. Crowley considered Tränker to have failed in crossing the Abyss, and therefore he must be left

150  The Unknown God alone since no one could be of any help to him in this ordeal. Mudd was simply a lunatic and thief whose outbursts should be ignored. Germer’s view of the need to cut contact straightaway with “fallen” Brethren set a paranoid tone. To his way of thinking, Tränker was a “dangerous occult criminal” who was fighting the Great Work in Germany with all manner of lies. He stressed the need for an absolute break with Mudd, warning that should one maintain “even the slightest, magical subtle connection with Mudd, or he with you on the magical plane, you might wake up one day with an unpleasant surprise.”4 The connection to the truth was fragile, and the faithful must be protected from the insidious snares of the fallen. Germer’s fear of spiritual contagion worsened over time. Crowley set the pattern of isolating members for perceived violations of his self-​defined doctrines, which parallels Crowley’s childhood experience described in his Confessions of having been “put in Coventry” at the Plymouth Brethren school run by Henry D’Arcy Champney for the otherwise undefined “sin against the Holy Ghost.” The employment of increasing degrees of social ostracism by both Crowley and Germer as a solution to spiritual crises would have an overwhelming impact on Smith’s later life. Schneider updated Smith that a campaign against the “Krishnamurti-​ Messiah fraud” was in full swing and enclosed copies of its latest manifestations. The first shot across the bow was a pseudonymous broadsheet, The Avenger to the Theosophical Society, wherein Crowley repeats his litany of libels against the neo-​Theosophy of Besant and Leadbeater: The Avenger sayeth: You have done well to protest against the grotesque mummeries of the bottle-​fed Messiah; you will still do wisely to beware of its Jesuitical wire-​ pullers. The attempted usurpation is the most sinister Black Magic of the Brothe[r]‌s of the Left-​Hand Path. I need not remind you of the shameless and nauseating fraud by which the Grand Old Procuress worked herself into the presidency of your Society, of her blatant attempts to capture various rites of Freemasonry, of her imbecile parodies of the Romish heresy, of the obscene manustuprations [sic] practiced by Leadbeater on the wretched Krishnamurti, with a view to making him a docile imbecile, in imitation of the traditions of the Dalai Lama, or of a thousand other duplicities, tergiversations, and crimes. It is your daily shame to remember. Nor need I indicate your only proper course.5

Jane, Kath, and Leota  151 The clear solution to the problem facing the TS was the acceptance of the Law of Thelema and the endorsement of the Master Therion as the World Teacher. Worried by Tunisian newspaper accounts in January 1926 of the TS Jubilee Convention in Adyar, where a formal declaration of Krishnamurti as “le nouveau Messie” was announced to the world, Crowley redoubled his pamphleteering. Over the month, Crowley published pseudonymously two more denunciations: The World Teacher to the Theosophical Society and an untitled message from “Fra∴ H.I.” of Edinburgh, which opens, “Madame Tussaud-​ Besant has produced yet again a waxwork World-​ Teacher.” Although Crowley disdained a leadership position or even ordinary membership in the TS, he wanted to assure sincere Theosophists that the Master Therion with His Law of Thelema was in harmony with the original objects of the Society: “His Law is really a simplification of the just those very principles of the Society, with regard to the equivalent right of all beings to their own virtue: the independence and equal value of all points of view which form the backbone of the original statutes.”6 Crowley’s expressed desire for spiritual reconciliation with the founding principles of the TS, characterized by its advocacy of a racially inclusive universal brotherhood, did not leave room for his taking a high-​minded approach to what he saw as its adversaries. Writing under the name of a Tunisian disciple, Gérard Aumont, Crowley deepened his propaganda war against Krishnamurti, this time setting forth the battle in racist terms, which would most definitely not have swayed Theosophists. A thoroughly regrettable example is his essay, “The Black ‘Messiah,’ ” where the Master Therion is touted as the white race’s savior, in contrast to Besant’s “marionette Messiah, a kala admi—​a nigger!”7 It was a new low in self-​promotional propaganda and hate speech. The attacks had no demonstrable effect, with only slight response being given to them. It became evident to the Theosophical leadership that the “Coming” of the World Teacher had gone askew, culminating in Krishnamurti’s rejection in May 1929 of the part into which he had been cast. There remained some interest in him among the Thelemites. In the fall of 1929, Yorke approached Krishnamurti for an interview through members of the now-​disbanded Order of the Star in the East; he was rejected for membership by the Co-​Masons owing to his connection with Crowley, of whom they were afraid. Yorke suggested that Smith have sections of Crowley’s Little Essays Toward Truth, a typescript of which Smith received from its

152  The Unknown God author in December 1929, published anonymously in TS publications, as a means to: insert the thin edge of the Thelema wedge somehow. The inherent quality of the doctrines will do the rest. . . . I am seeing Krishnamurti myself in February [1930], and shall approach him purely on Thelemic lines. For Thelema is outside all organization. The whole essence of the thing lies in its stressing of the individual: one cannot organise stars except superficially.8

His later letters to Smith are silent on whether this interview occurred. The obsession with the TS gradually faded out of Crowley’s consciousness. It recurs in a later note to “The Three Schools of Magick” (also attributed to Aumont) where, recalling the specter of the “negroid Messiah” Krishnamurti, he remarked: “The Master Therion arose and smote him. What seemed a menace is now hardly even a memory.”9 He had achieved his victory and in yet another sphere ruled sole and supreme. The change marked a major shift of focus inward in the worldview of himself and his followers. All the battles for occult hegemony had been won. Crowley’s disciples now had no potential rivals for their attention. With the departure of Jones, there were no intermediaries or colleagues of stature even remotely on a level with the Master Therion. Henceforth Smith and the Thelemites concentrated their attention on Crowley as the fons et origo of all wisdom; if one was working with Crowley, one certainly would not have time for other teachers. The emphasis on Crowley’s absolute position hastened the development of insularity among the Thelemites and fostered an uncritical reverence for his opinions. Their religion had a single, living source, and those outside the Thelemite fellowship or in conflict with the leader were in error. Their desire for doctrinal purity in the context of Crowley’s understanding of Thelema increased their alienation from the mass of their uninitiated contemporaries, whom they privately termed the “troglodytes.” His genius did not pay the bills. Despite his tremendous literary and spiritual gifts, Crowley after 1914 was almost perpetually short of funds. He lived, as Louis Wilkinson said, on involuntary contributions from his friends. The Master’s need for money would become a constant concern for Smith as he grew closer in the chain to Crowley. Schneider’s primary reason for keeping in touch with Smith was to gain his aid in selling Crowley’s books, the issues over which had been a principal cause in the break with Jones. In September 1925, Jones had moved the stock stored in Chicago to another warehouse, with the contract for storage taken out in the name of Prudence R. Jones.

Jane, Kath, and Leota  153 Through his attorney, Schneider had threatened Jones to prosecute him for criminal embezzlement; in addition, he personally covered Chicago with a handbill promising a $50 reward for information on the present whereabouts of the book stock.10 The pressure worked. Acting under Crowley’s power of attorney, Schneider entered into a “memorandum of agreement and mutual release” with Jones on June 4, 1926.11 In settlement of all their business issues, Jones paid $500 for Schneider’s legal expenses and turned over the balance of the stock in his care, some 34 cases of books from the 45 originally received in Detroit. Despite this mutual release, Crowley still had valuable property in the care of Jones, the collection of bound proofs, manuscripts, and vellum copies of Crowley’s books. With the break in the relations between Crowley and Jones in August 1925, Jones promptly wrote Leonard Warehouses in Detroit with an order that the two boxes were to be shipped to Crowley c/​o Herr Tränker. After a search of the warehouse, it was determined that one of the two cases was missing. As part of their mutual release, Jones furnished copies of his correspondence with the warehouse regarding the disappearance of the second case, which contained all the valuable books. It was a total loss: Jones had insured both boxes for $50. The mutual release stipulated that “all money or property differences between the parties of whatever nature or character from the beginning of the world to the present time are hereby released, cancelled and annulled by each party to the other.” Yet despite all proffered evidence to the contrary exonerating Jones, confirmed by a personal visit to the Leonard Warehouses by Germer in July 1926, the suspicion remained in Crowley’s mind that Jones had simply absconded with the lost box. The issue was not settled, it was merely at rest, and it would come back again. The rest of 1926 passed quietly. The silence was not broken until the spring of 1927, when out of the blue Smith received letters from Crowley’s occult compatriots Leah Hirsig (Soror Alostrael) and Jane Wolfe (Soror Estai), respectively, delivering unto him the Word of the Equinox and asking him for an account of his activities. With the Master Therion’s current address in hand, Smith once again took up the task of corresponding with the Beast. Since the severing of relations with Frater Achad and for some time prior, Smith had heard little of the A∴A∴, and he freely admitted he had accomplished little himself in the order. The OTO was much more to his liking as a system of initiation, but without the proper people to lead a group (certainly not himself) and a source of funding, efforts to establish it were bound to fail. His real problems were quite mundane: regardless of their distance,

154  The Unknown God he was still in love with Kath and no other woman could take her place. He confessed his situation to Crowley: My interest in “Liber Stellae Rubeae” and the like no doubt had turned me from the dryness of Yoga but the finding of a suitable O [i.e., woman] had deterred me from a proper attempt, as far as I understand them, at rituals of that nature. . . . In addition, the attachment of my mind to one particular manifestation of Nuite [sic] has perhaps created an illusion that none other is so suitable. From some trite remarks you once made in a shocking diary12 you may remember that conjunction was found to be very difficult in that direction at that time; five years and three thousand miles of space make the attempt more difficult. I have now been by myself in Los Angeles five years, having spent one in year in Vancouver after I left Frater A in Chicago.13

One bright light on the horizon was his A∴A∴ student Oliver Jacobi,14 a fellow employee of the Southern California Gas Company who lived in San Bernadino. “Jake,” as he was known in the mundane world, had worked his way through the Student reading curriculum and he was now ready to be examined. Smith asked Crowley to provide a fresh examination paper, as his was more than a decade old. Like Smith, Jacobi also began to make monetary contributions to Crowley; they sent the funds directly with their letters, which at once provoked the jealous ire of Germer, at the time resident in the United States. Germer felt it was his spiritual duty to act as an intermediary in collecting regular monthly sums from the American disciples, a task which had been enjoined upon him by Crowley in 1926 and which he was to follow faithfully for more than two decades. Germer had already come to harsh words with his fellow Prussian Max Schneider over the irregularity of the latter’s contributions to Crowley. Schneider had constant money woes. Since his victory over Jones in reclaiming Crowley’s books, Schneider had been left to market the stock and pay the monthly storage charges; he had no experience in bookselling and the sales were few. Schneider blamed Jones and the UB for creating “opposition” to Crowley’s books. Schneider’s work as a jeweler was irregular, forcing him to move several times just to find work to support himself and his family. Germer was at first supportive and loaned Schneider money repeatedly. His patience with Schneider’s broken promises to pay eventually wore thin. In April 1929, Germer declared Schneider’s slow repayment of monies owed to him as a de facto resignation from the A∴A∴. This purely material affair was settled by Crowley, who made it clear to both

Jane, Kath, and Leota  155 parties that their personal financial dealings had nothing to do with the work of the order. Although Smith and Crowley were destined never to meet in the flesh again, a representative filled the gap. A later letter to Crowley announced the dispatch of Smith’s Polish mistress, Mrs. Kasimira Bass, who was setting sail to meet the Beast in Paris. It is unknown how Smith and Bass met, but she was grateful for the introduction to Crowley. This turn of events was destined to make Crowley happy, for a while; the “galleon of Treasure”—​she was believed to have money—​came into port in September 1927. Smith expressed his willingness to pass her on to a greater captain of her destiny than he could hope to be, and Crowley was fulsome in his praise of his new love, to whom he promptly proposed marriage three times. Smith still had the nagging issue of his own domestic happiness on his mind. Throughout all the trials of the past five years, his correspondence with Kath was a near-​constant; she did back off for a time, to see if he would find another partner, but he truly loved her more than any other woman. They argued back and forth over their respective hopes for a life together. Their aims were compatible about their son and a desire for him to have both a mother and a father under one roof. This arrangement, according to Smith, did not include Kath’s mother, and Kath could not forgive him for his lack of concern for Nem. Never having known a mother, she reasoned, he could not understand her feelings for Nem. Kath knew full well Smith’s arguments against the institution of marriage, but legally they thought it was the only way they could someday be together in the United States. After so many years of correspondence, it was now time to put their relationship to the test. Smith sent Kath money in installments for a round-​trip train ticket from Montreal; she was due to arrive in Los Angeles on August 11. Her visit was limited, and her return was a certainty, as all she could obtain was a two-​week visa. Despite her residency in Canada, Kath had remained a British citizen, as was Smith. They enjoyed their holiday together, and they had reached enough unanimity of purpose that they decided to make their relations proper before the law. On August 24, 1927, the day before her departure, Smith and Kath were wedded by the Rev. Philip K. Kemp of St. Mark’s Church at the nonsectarian Little Church of the Flowers in Forest Lawn Memorial-​Park, Glendale, the cemetery mercilessly parodied as “Whispering Glades” in Evelyn Waugh’s novella The Loved One. The Little Church of the Flowers, a replica of the church mentioned in Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” was noted for the cages of canaries which warbled in accompaniment to the

156  The Unknown God organist. A similarly ill-​fated marriage would take place there in 1935.15 Kath separated from Smith the next day and took the train back to mother and son in Montreal. Her subsequent letters for the next few months are filled with plans for her return as Mrs. Smith. Another lady, much different from Kath, was about to appear in Smith’s life. In the fall of 1927, Jane Wolfe left behind a life of poverty and ill health in Europe and returned to the safety of her mother and sister Mary K.16 in Los Angeles. Mary K. had written Jane that she could die in Europe for all she cared, but if she came back to Los Angeles, she would provide for her and nurse her back to health, setting the pattern for the rest of their lives. Jane was born in Pennsylvania as Sarah Jane Wolff (1875–​1958), the last of the four children of the Rev. David W. Wolff, a minister in the German Reformed Church. Her mother, Avilla Matilda Mickley, was a lineal descendant of the Revolutionary War soldier John Martin Mickley, whose brother John Jacob Mickley concealed the Liberty Bell from the British. Jane was known by her Neophyte motto of Εσται (“Estai,” Greek for “it shall be”) or its numeration 516; she interpreted her motto to mean “The Manifestation of Horus as Genius and Light in the realms of the World of Matter.” She was a successful American character actress, best known for playing “Mrs. Randall,” the mother to Mary Pickford in the title role of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917). Occultism had long held her attention and she hoped to find a master. Jane was a member of the Krotona TS group in Hollywood and studied spiritualism under the film scenario writer Louis Victor Jefferson (1873–​1959). While working in the Hollywood studios in 1917, she was introduced to Crowley’s works by Horace Algernon Sheridan-​ Bickers (1883–​1957), a British Columbia initiate of the OTO and screenplay author. Jane became a longtime correspondent of Crowley and a central figure in Smith’s life after 1927.17 Jane had weathered her share of ordeals since she left California to sojourn with Crowley at the “Abbey of Thelema” in Sicily; he gave witness to her strength of character in his marvelous prose portrait of her as “Sister Athena” in his novel The Diary of a Drug Fiend: She had a curious mouth, with square-​cut lips like one sees in some old Egyptian statues, and a twist at the corners in which lurked incalculable possibilities of self-​expression. Her eyes were deep-​set and calm. It was a square face with a very peculiar jaw expressing terrific determination. I have never seen a face in which courage was so strongly marked.18

Jane, Kath, and Leota  157 Smith was delighted to share her company; after what felt like so many years apart from another Thelemite, her presence gave him renewed hope for the potential of occult activities in the Valley of Los Angeles. They spent their weekends driving all over Los Angeles in Smith’s Packard, the sole car he ever owned, talking over every detail of Thelema and the Path, Smith often exhausting Jane with his tireless conversation. For Smith it was a much-​needed stimulant that helped him get over his preoccupation with Jones, gone from his life but hardly forgotten. (Jones had returned to England in the fall of 1927 to look after his ailing mother.) Jane also provided inspiration for Smith to push forward in the Great Work. While at the Abbey of Thelema in February 1922, Jane had contemplated taking the Oath of the Abyss, the final clause of which is “I will interpret every phenomenon as a particular dealing of God with my soul.”19 Now, buoyed by Crowley’s suggestion that he should “take all the Oaths you can think of, +​plunge into the Work head first,”20 Smith finally followed suit: In the evening I got the idea from your remarks re Oaths, that the Oath of the Abyss was suggested. At some early hour this morning I awoke with that conviction. This no doubt is no light matter, more than I realize, but what odds. All the steps one takes in the dark. Better be another corps[e]‌among those that strew the Path than as of little use as I have been. . . . So then:—​I will interperate [sic] every phenomena [sic] as a particular dealing of God with my soul; and may this one not loose [sic] his head +​ prove a failure. Yes I hope I shall not be another disappointment. Lord you must have had a rough time. By the way it was reported to you when I was in Chicago that I had taken the O[ath] of the A[byss], but that was purely an idea of J[ones]’s on the strength of a chance remark I made when he was seeing everything as symbolical.21

Jane was pleased with Smith’s determination and dutifully reported it to Crowley. Germer, who had not taken this Oath, judged his brave step into the unknown as merely a manifestation of Smith’s evil genius. His summary judgment at a distance was questioned by Jane; he freely admitted to her he had no idea what was meant by the Oath of the Abyss, but if Smith took it, the cause must be his inflated ego. Jane attempted to set Germer straight, but the seeds of jealousy were already in full flower. As would become increasingly

158  The Unknown God apparent in time, Germer was in love with Crowley and he did not tolerate rivals, male or female, real or imagined, for the Master’s attention. For his part, Crowley appreciated Germer’s abilities to raise money. The former was free from debt and want for the year owing to “the miraculous efforts of one man—​who has been sending over $100 a month out of a salary of $45 a week!”22 Crowley wrote Smith and Jane to ask everyone interested in his work to send $10 a month. What was needed was a minimum of $200 monthly from California; larger sums would be set aside to build a proper headquarters. In return for their monthly payments, courses of instruction would be printed as soon as money was in hand. A new English aspirant, Gerald J. Yorke, had promised to have Crowley’s long-​awaited textbook on Magick, Book Four, Part III, also known as Magick in Theory and Practice, published before the end of 1928. Smith and Jane were encouraged to collect $10 for advance subscriptions to Crowley’s magnum opus. Yorke unsuccessfully tried to interest a commercial publisher in the work. The promise of Kasimira to contribute $10,000 to the Crowley publication fund proved a bust—​her $1,000 check had not been honored by the bank. Smith defended Kasimira’s honesty and was asked to insinuate himself with her California confidante Rosa Reynolds to determine whether she was at the back of the financial problems. By the close of 1928, Crowley was doubting the sanity of Kasimira. He confided to Smith: “Why women should makes [sic] asses of themselves, I cannot tell. But they are all the same, and if it were not for the assassination of Mr. Herman Goldschmidt, I should say it would be much better to make one’s Bible of the Bagh-​i-​Muattar.”23 Smith took Crowley’s advice literally, and not long after the word was made flesh. Neither Smith’s renewed devotion to the A∴A∴ nor his direct contact with Crowley pleased his wife. The tone of her letters, once these changes were communicated to her, worsened considerably. Her plea to be the center of his life was honest, but despite his love for his son, she had entirely overestimated the influence she wielded over her husband’s life. It was, in Crowleyan terms, a classic case of the “Ordeal of the Neophyte,” which is to abandon the Great Work for the sake of a woman.24 She made one final attempt to state her demands, no longer negotiable: Kit dearest please, please don’t have anything more to do with Aleister Crowley, don’t lets live anything but an ordinary every-​day-​life. What do you need occultism for? We can be so happy together. But I am so afraid and suspicious of those old practices. They always remind me of those

Jane, Kath, and Leota  159 awful days when you cut that cross on your chest and that other dreadful day when I found you soaked in ether. Please promise me that you will give it all up, just give it all up for me. I hate and detest A.C., the very thought of him makes me see red and say all kinds of things I would not say. That is what I really wanted to say. . . . I just want you to feel absolutely free to carry on The Great Work, which would never be the case if I were down there, because it antagonises me so. There again, it isn’t what I mean at all. I don’t want you to be free to do that at all. I only want you to be free to devote all your time and attention to me. What one says and what one feels are so often entirely different. Only I can’t pretend or even fool myself that I could put up with certain conditions.25

Frater 132 was not so easily swayed, and his response came quickly. He was not about to abandon the Path of the Wise to accommodate her desires for a quiet family life: First and foremost then let me say, I have no intention of giving up my connection with the A∴A∴, A.C. or occultism in general. It is my intention to go as far as I can, +​it can’t help but have first consideration over everything else in life. That is how it appears to me now. What it may lead me into I, of course, can not say but I shall endeavour to follow it to the end through thick and thin. But also in the more mundane things of life I feel that I have an unbounded right to follow out what I consider proper for me to do and do not think anyone has the right to dictate my course of action. I shall have to pay for the mistakes I make, and I am pretty well bound to make some, for every one does, but I have always tried to do what I thought right and so far if I have been the cause of another’s pain it was certainly not intentional. . . . There is no reason why we could not have a happy home but you would have to change your point of view at several angels [sic], and get rid of your pronounced hatred of A.C. which is all fancy for you practically know nothing about him at all. . . . Yes I feel we could be perfectly wonderful friends. But just now knowing me as you do, unless you make a change in yourself, I can’t see you joining me prepared to take me just as you find me. It is not worth while going through another N[orth] Van[couver] experiences. Don’t by the way imagin [sic] I have some interest in some other female. Not whatever at all, truly. But I am not prepared to promis [sic] I never will

160  The Unknown God have. I might have an interest that in no way would suplant [sic] you +​wish to spend an evening in her company but you would not see that such might be perfectly impersonal. Right now with J. Wolfe there is no personal attraction but I can spend many hours in conversation as I would with a man +​such conversations are impossible with a 3rd party. Already I suppose you have made up your mind that you dislike her even as A.C. Well I have written much more than I intended and perhaps it would have been better first to have said I am just going to keep on keeping on and left you to make your own mind up as to whether you would stand the racket if you joined me.26

With this exchange, Smith knew the chance that their marriage had a future was dim, yet Kath wrote him a series of love letters which left him puzzled, if not convinced of her change of heart. In any case, it was definite that she would not be allowed entrance for permanent residency in the United States before the end of 1929, when she expected to receive a British quota visa. Kath planned a reunion in Los Angeles in September 1928, but Smith told her not to come. The enduring problem was that Kath’s loathing of the occult was a permanent state of mind. She could overcome her resentment at his womanizing in her absence, since this was a physical relief for his high libido and done out of necessity rather than love, but to have the same events described as “magical” aroused her ire. Smith tried to explain to her that Magick is life: “If I tell you I have found that the doing of physical stunts keeps me in good health its alright. But if I tell you I am doing a magical ceremony the fats in the fire. But they are one and the same thing.”27 He upbraided her for believing the tabloid stories about Jane Wolfe (falsely alleged to have been Crowley’s mistress, when the latter took haste to affirm when questioned that he never so much as kissed her). He attributed Kath’s present happiness to the fact that, after years of indecision, she had finally decided against a life with Smith, whether or not she would admit the truth to herself. Kath sent a telegram in advance of their first wedding anniversary, asking him to turn back the clock a year and “REMEMBER GLENDALE.”28 In the inconsistent and confusing trail of emotions she had displayed earlier in the year’s correspondence, she had bid him goodbye, and he accepted. His reply to her anniversary telegram was to reaffirm his acceptance of their final parting, adding that there was no bond between them “to prevent you from just what you Will.”29

Jane, Kath, and Leota  161 Although she would file for divorce in May 1930, it was an act as nearly meaningless as their marriage. Smith had not hesitated to sleep with whomever he willed, and he seemed to enjoy relating the details of his ongoing “hobby” to Kath. In her complaint for divorce, she accurately claimed that they separated one day after their marriage. Since that time Smith had failed to support Kath and Noel, forcing her to work even though she could not earn enough to keep herself and her son. Their separation had become permanent in August 1928 despite her pleas for reconciliation.30 The divorce was granted on her terms. Kath and their son Noel would pass out of Smith’s life entirely, even though she settled in the Los Angeles area. By agreement he paid her attorney and court costs, and she did not seek alimony or child support. Kath was granted sole custody of their son. The divorce became final in a year’s time. The loss of his son was a wound in his heart that never healed, and he knew his only cure was avoidance, which she too enjoined upon him. He knew their address in Glendale, where Kath was to reside for the rest of Smith’s life, but they never met again. Perhaps Crowley had a point, with his suggestion that homosexual love was preferable to putting up with the problems he saw as inherent in heterosexual relationships? Smith was game enough to try. He had met a dancer, Jack Marchon, whose brother was a professional female impersonator. Smith thought Marchon might make a good seer under Crowley’s tuition, as he ascended the astral plane with ease even though his experiences tended to be unpleasant and involuntary. Jane thought Marchon had a deep-​seated desire to experience the diabolical. Marchon was to initiate Smith in another form of love. Smith confided in Crowley the nature of his experience: I played the part of a maiden +​lost my maidenhead so to speak Saturday. I dont think however there is any danger of me becoming a mother. It was a very novel experience for me but as far as I can judge I carried off the part fairly well of course Jack Marchon might really be thinking otherwise. I suppose I acted very green after all. I positively got no sexual reaction myself at all. At the actual time the pain experienced may have been the cause of that, but in the preliminaries to it was just the will to go through with it with out any feelings [of] sexual desire on my part.31

162  The Unknown God Crowley responded to Smith’s confession of passive sodomy in humorously oblique Victorian fashion: By a deplorable mistake, your letter was totally destroyed by fire only 3 minutes after its receipt. I quite forget its contents, except for a vague idea that I ought to convey compliments to Mrs. M. The pain of which you complain during your reducing exercises is due to lack of practice—​and skill. Avoid writers’ cramp.32

Closer to his preference, Smith had, if not “stores of women” promised in The Book of the Law, at least a singular object of desire to help him lose the last vestiges of Kath’s influence. Leota Schneider left her husband Max in New York and took up with Smith in Los Angeles in July 1929; Smith had been sending her money to come to Los Angeles. She first came for a few days’ visit, then returned August 3 to him, where they took up residence together for six weeks. For the duration she lived under the name of “Mrs. W. T. Smith.” It was a trial separation for her and in essence a trial marriage for Smith. Leota was still a girl at heart despite her 13 years of marriage to Schneider, whose plodding dullness of routine witnessed in his diaries occasioned comment from Crowley. Smith was entirely taken with the charms of Leota. She was the magical partner he had sought. Almost every day Smith recorded in his diary another magical opus, with the number of “Eagles” let loose greatly exceeding the number of “Lions” that were slain—​ their alchemical code words for the female and male orgasms, respectively. Their work together strengthened his resolve to continue in the Great Work, and he felt that the two of them taught themselves Magick thereby. All the while Max was writing and wiring his absent wife, and she decided she had to return, despite the protests of both Smith and her own family. Leota and Roland (who had been sent to Los Angeles once she told her relatives in Arizona that she was going back to Max) parted from Smith and boarded a train to be reunited with Max on September 16. He had accepted her dalliance with Smith just as he had allowed her to plan a similar affair with Jones; in the interim Max had enjoyed an affair of his own. But she had a taste of the good life with the Thelemites in Southern California and wanted above all to be reunited with Smith. She wrote to Smith as her Neophyte in the A∴A∴—​technically that position was held by Max—​at the winter solstice of 1930. He made the practical suggestion that she leave for

Jane, Kath, and Leota  163 Buffalo or Pittsburgh on January 15, 1931, work for a month, and save all she could. Each month she should move further west, “so that you arrive to greet your Guru in Los Angeles July 15, 1931.”33 She did not come to Los Angeles alone; when she finally arrived in February 1933, it was with her husband Max in tow. But Smith never forgot her; he telephoned her in January 1930, and he confided to his diary that his heart still burned for her and her alone. Another friend from the past did make it to Los Angeles. Jones, Ruby, and their adopted daughter Deirdre called on Smith and Jane when they passed through Los Angeles in 1930. Much had changed since the time of their last meeting. Jones had converted to Roman Catholicism in 1928 and became the Mahaguru or head of the UB in North America around the same time. From the surviving letters it is doubtful that he was as plainspoken to them about his evolved philosophical point of view as he was to his former disciple in the UB, Bhratri Tadbuddhi, Stationary Caraka, better known as Israel Regardie, who on his own initiative wrote to see if Jones would re-​enlist in the cause of promulgating Thelema. His response was definitive: I found in the philosophical system of the A∴A∴ many true ideas which have been of great value in my life and one is not inclined to realize the extent of the negations and anti-​ideas until or unless one is fortunate enough to meet with a System more all-​inclusive and trustworthy and satisfying. So long as I felt that the A∴A∴ held a particle of truth which could not find its place in a larger sphere and there show up to greater advantage I made the promulgation of the A∴A∴ teachings the main issue of my life, but I could not now use the same formulae with equal confidence because I now see more clearly how very deceiving some of the main watchwords and statements may be if used without such qualifications as would tend to almost completely nullify them. For example take “Thelema” itself. You write: “But it will be evident that regardless of the efforts of either of us the Law of ‘Do what thou wilt’ will ultimately be established.” Then you call upon me to help in its establishment with “force and fire” and whatnot so that neither “heaven or hell can withstand our onslaughts.” All this is very fine talk if “Do what thou wilt” were anything new or needed to be established as the law of man’s being. But it is not a new law. Freedom of will along with intelligence was given to the very first spiritual being brought into existence; it made the first man distinguishable from an

164  The Unknown God animal. “Do what thou wilt” was established at the dawn of time. God gave us this gift not 666.34

From the surviving correspondence we know that Smith again quizzed Jones on the disappearance of the Crowley rare editions and manuscripts in Detroit, and he again affirmed his innocence in the matter. In search of a magical partner, Smith looked around and found Jane at his side. She had sexually desired Crowley before they met in the flesh, but they were mutually repulsed by each other. In like manner, Smith had no real physical attraction to Jane, nor she to him, yet she was willing and compatible and informed on the theory of sexual magic. Smith opined that the ­chapter 69 of Crowley’s cryptic masterpiece, The Book of Lies, was not the exposition of the central secret; rather that “after the Lion and the Eagle had gored one another to death, the consummation of the composite materia can take place in the matter prescribed.”35 They set out to practice, “in cold blood” as Smith termed it, the Magick of the Sanctuary of the Gnosis. They worked together regularly from July to December 1930, keeping a joint record of each opus. Smith balanced his practice with theory derived from Mary Anne Atwood’s A Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery and the newly published Magick in Theory and Practice. They started out auspiciously, combining the invocations from Crowley’s poems and rituals with their own understanding of the practice. The high point was reached with a “A big big Magick!”36 Whatever this may have consisted of, they confided no details to their record. Bravely they sent Crowley their magical diary, who pronounced it hard to interpret; Jane’s accursèd kittenishness interjects remarks which I find obscure. But original cold-​bloodedness is all wrong. What is needed is violent attraction while doing the formalities, then letting it loose as the dam breaks. The Latin Grimoire printed in “Magick” is the best ritual. Lord! I wish we could talk it out; I’d fix you right in an hour. Atwood is no good for you folks; she’s on a quite different stunt—​I think v. black magic.37

The work had noticeable effects on both. Jane felt herself becoming free of the burden of her loving but oppressive home life with her mother Avilla and sister Mary K. and at the same time she believed she was acquiring Smith’s practical nature. Smith, after a period of darkness, felt he was at last achieving

Jane, Kath, and Leota  165 what Crowley had urged upon him, to start his life over again, forget about the people in his past, and seek to ingratiate himself with persons of substance. The changes included moving from a small sleeping room to an apartment. The new residence was a strain on his budget, but it helped raise his standard of living. More pleasing quarters were a step in the general direction of raising his social stature, perhaps not to the level of a “Banker who came over on the Mayflower” as Crowley had suggested, but sufficient to bolster his sense of self-​esteem. It cured him out of the hangover of Jones and Kath and Leota, attachments that proved to be nonproductive employments of his energies. He was mixing socially as he had not done in 10 years. The work with Jane had emancipated him of the need to be “in love” with any one woman. He could have any woman he wanted, and Jane noted that he could do so with great impartiality, as an impersonal force of nature driving him to fulfillment as he will. What he needed was a dedicated magical partner who would help materialize his dream of Thelema. Her name was Regina.

14 Salve Regina Late in 1930 Smith met the woman who would dramatically reshape the course of his life. His widow Helen remembers Smith saying he first encountered Regina1 in the lobby of a Los Angeles hotel, where he was immediately struck by her radiant appearance. As the sun is to an arc light, so was Regina in comparison to any other woman he had met. She became the queen of his heart, and her commanding personality made a vivid impression wherever she went. Regina was 39 years old, a mezzo soprano trained in New York, who had made a living for the past two years as a voice teacher in Los Angeles; she had prior stints in the Pittsburgh and New York public schools. As befitting an opera singer, she was short and full figured, with hair dyed jet black and dark eyes to match. Thoroughly bisexual, she was described as “60% male” by some contemporaries. The gay radical Harry Hay (1912–​2002) typed her as “the biggest lez you ever saw.”2 Regina had a magnetic countenance as her photographic portraits depict—​she sat repeatedly for “the official photographer of Greenwich Village” and the world’s first female photojournalist, Jessie Tarbox Beals (1870–​1940). Smith took Jane to meet Regina and her younger married sister, Mrs. Leona (Lee) Kahl Watson (1898–​1968), at the Los Angeles home they shared, 5612 Carlton Way, on December 29, 1930. Lee had been Regina’s concert manager and was a literary associate of Frank Harris, one of Crowley’s longtime literary friends. At Carlton Way, Smith and Jane attended the regular Monday meeting of a literary salon the sisters Kahl grandly named the “Quatres Artes Club,” which attracted a steady crowd of some 40–​60 people. From the first, Jane knew this was more than a casual encounter; it bore all the signs of a significant conjunction of magical partners. Perhaps there were even the makings of a second “Abbey of Thelema”? Jane knew that Smith had no sexual restrictions and was willing to go the distance to live the thelemic philosophy of “free love”—​a phrase despised by Crowley but practiced all the same—​in the same way as she had witnessed Crowley live it in Sicily. Even so, she sagely remarked that Los Angeles was not Cefalù. Smith confided to her that he was certain that he was destined to be Crowley’s successor as 666. But The Unknown God. Martin P. Starr, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2024. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197744512.003.0014

Salve Regina  167 the Beast-​in-​training needed an apprentice Woman of Whoredom to complete the picture. Jane had always hoped to be Crowley’s Scarlet Woman, but that prospect was dashed by mutual agreement when they first met. She now began to perceive she was not destined for this station in Smith’s magical career as well. Jane’s disinterestedness allowed her to accept that the movement was more important than her personal ambitions. With her unblinking optimism, Jane enthusiastically wrote of the new prospects to Crowley: Regina, 39 I think. Robust, singer, black black hair (dyed), dark eyes—​a woman of strong emotions. Teaching vocal also, and doing a splendid work in educating the young girls who come to her, education along every day living and especially correcting their sexual out-​look on life. Not only the girls, but their mothers as well! As I told you, she devours your writings greedily. January she and Smith attended a costume party, which they left about 3 a m Sunday morning the 4th. Smith read to her till day-​light, among other things; the two slept for a short time and at about 11 a m he read the Wake World3 to her. She sobbed and sobbed. This sounds quite inadequate, but Smith thinks Regina had some sort of an initiation that morning. . . . Just about a week ago, he remembered that Mrs. Reynolds4 told him that his great, magnificent, wonder world would open up with the advent of a black haired woman. So!??? Now for Leona Kahl Watson, her sister. Lee, as she is called by her friends, is 33. Her hair is the color of Dorothy’s,5 but she puts on a beautiful dull henna. Her eyes are almost green, a queer blue. Her face is delicate, soft, chin slightly pointed.6 Her hair, like Regina’s is strong and heavy, and they both comb it back but it falls in a frame about their faces. Lee wears fascinating East Indian earrings, great fan-​shaped things they are, with little balls dangling from them. She wears mostly a black and blue satin Japanese kimono. She is infinitely more fascinating to me than Regina, yet it is Regina that every one hales at the Monday evening at-​homes. Regina is all emotion, and flows out to every one, you bathe in her warmth. Lee is more intellectual, writes a bit, has had something on Broadway, feels that heretofore she has been blown hither and thither and that now her forces are becoming focussed and that she is just coming into her true field of activities.7

168  The Unknown God The Beast’s reaction was twofold. Crowley marked this letter “All utter balls” and included on the back of the letter his raw annotation to Jane’s description of the “marvelous team” of the two sisters: “Regina is probably a good fat old whore, with a well-​oiled cunt; ‘Lee’ I am pretty sure will make me vomit.” But that was for his inner dialogue which he did not hesitate to share with Smith. Without question he thought Smith had found him another mistress in America. He replied at once to Jane’s “delightful +​cheering letter” with the hope that “you’ll ship Regina Kahl to me by the very first boat. She sounds perfectly scrumptious.”8 Thereafter his letters to Jane and Smith are peppered with greetings to “Vagina,” as he chose to call her, hoping that they might one day meet in Europe. Smith was quick to tell him that she was fixated on him and him alone—​along with her married sister Lee, who had tired of her childlike husband Clarence. Smith, however, was free to circulate among the ladies as he chose, with Regina’s approval. The serious side of their involvement with Smith did not take long to manifest. The sisters both signed preliminary pledges to the OTO. Regina took the Oath of a Probationer in the A∴A∴ on January 23, 1931, with Smith acting as her Neophyte; he also initiated her into the OTO the same day. Smith duly reported to Crowley that he had staged the Minerval degree in his small apartment for Regina and Jacobi, the latter conferral taking place on February 20 with assistance from Jane. Soror Estai had already received the degree at Cefalù in August 1921 along with the novelist Mary Butts and her boyfriend Cecil Maitland. Not to be left behind, Lee followed suit and took up the Probationer Task on February 21, enraging her husband.9 With the two sisters, each wanting what the other thought she had within her grasp, it was increasingly clear to Jane that she was now just one of three objects of Smith’s attention, with more on the horizon. There was a bit of rivalry for his love which Smith quietly enjoyed; Jane felt certain that she was being slowly pushed out of the picture by the “marvellous team.” Despite his obvious delights in the multiple partners he now enjoyed—​he viewed himself as a Magister Templi tending the garden of his disciples—​his chief concerns were not with the women as such, but what they could contribute to his developing plans for a profess house and a lodge of the OTO. Crowley warned him that the profess house was a dangerous idea, but he praised Smith’s powers of attraction, an essential to the successful initiation of OTO work. To start a movement, you needed someone to draw in your audience, and he viewed himself and Smith as far too rational to be turned into the “Whirlwind of Fiery Flying Serpents” required to pull in the faithful.

Salve Regina  169 What was required was a woman of great magical power and presence; her magnetism would draw the faithful unto her. In this context, Crowley looked to the example of the evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson (1890–​1944). Her highly developed and theatrical presentation of Pentecostalism, along with her public demonstrations of faith healing and laudable charitable work, were widely publicized in the press and radio. Sister Aimee served as the model for the lady revivalist in a favorite American novel of Crowley’s, Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis (1927). In Crowley’s view, her International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, whose Angelus Temple megachurch was in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, had grown at a terrific rate because Sister Aimee was “the Cunt behind all the theatricals.”10 There were others whose gospel was just as foursquare, but Sister Aimee had the magnetic attraction which drew crowds. Crowley accepted the fact that he lacked charisma. He knew his power was that of magnetic repulsion, particularly where the masses were concerned. Magick was in the air and the time was ripe to bring the message of The Book of the Law directly to the people. Regina had tried to supplement her income by starting “Thelema Culture” classes, featuring instruction for ladies in music appreciation, singing, drama, and dance, at the cost of 50¢ a lesson; Jane acted as her assistant. All these indirect efforts to spread the Law of Thelema were worse than useless, in Crowley’s view. He instead urged Jane to become a fanatic, and not to be sidetracked by art, literature, or music. The message had to be simple and straightforward. It was imperative that Smith and Crowley meet, not only for the proper transmission of the word of the III˚, but also to be certain that the full knowledge of the IX˚ was in Smith’s hands. At the time of their sole meeting in 1915, Crowley had no reason to tell Smith, merely a III˚, anything of the central secret of the OTO, and he admitted that he had not been forthright on this vital point with his former magical son and member of the Sanctuary of the Gnosis, Frater Achad: There is a very great deal in the O.T.O. about which I was particularly careful to keep Achad in the dark. I always thought he was crazy over that 8˚ =​3□ adventure and I did not let him into the really important secrets of sex-​magic. It’s useful, when you are 55 1/​2 to have them still crazy about you, and to be able to supply the goods.11

Smith doubted Jones’s abilities to practice sexual magic. He vouchsafed to Crowley the evidence he possessed on this score: “I for some time passed

170  The Unknown God felt that Achad lacked magic qualifications. I have it from two sources at first hand that his magick wand lacked rigidity +​endurance. I was surprised when Leota told me that in all there [sic] time together he never managed to put it there.”12 Crowley momentarily lacked a proper Virgin Guardian of the Sangraal where the Sacred Lance might be properly deposited, but Smith had found his match in Regina. Leona was but a passing fancy; he slept with her only once, and his attentions earned him a black eye and split lip from her husband Clarence after a play rehearsal at Carlton Way on April 7, 1931, dutifully recorded in Jane’s diary. They had no use for Leona, who in time rejected the Thelema teachings and became a drag on their affairs. Another mistress named Elizabeth (her surname is never mentioned) passed through his arms and left almost no trace behind. Regina was now wholly devoted to Smith, and on Crowley’s advice ceased her former liberality with her person. Their sexual activity was to be used to bring more members into the OTO, not to be scattered to the vagaries of mortal passion or wasted on “pewter mugs.” Regina edged her last lesbian girlfriend out of her life to devote her energies to the Great Work in general and Smith in particular. Smith’s male rival was another man of the cloth and attendee at the Quatres Artes Club. Shortly after she met Smith, Regina refused the advances of the Syrian Bishop Sophronios Bishara (1888–​1940), Bishop of Los Angeles and the West for the American Orthodox Church, the first attempt to organize a unified Orthodox church in the United States.13 The Bishop was so overcome by her charisma that he was willing to revert to priestly status if she would marry him; Orthodox tradition did not allow for married bishops. When these entreaties failed, he asked her to become a nun or his private secretary. Sophronios had access to money, and he was willing to lavish it on her if she would consent. Crowley was intrigued and queried Jane if Sophronios was one of Leadbeater’s bishops; he hoped that he might fund a European missionary trip that would bring Regina unto him. Crowley would get no closer physically to Regina than would Sophronios, but her religious intentions were at least consonant with his. Her will was to serve Thelema, not the Theotokos. Regina had always taken a dominant part in her prior sexual relations, but she chose to be submissive to Smith. It had been her regular practice to whip her lovers, but now the tables were turned. Smith flagellated Regina at her request with a homemade cat-​o’-​nine tails, a form of spiritual purgation which completed his domination of her. Smith felt that his powers of sexual attraction were growing by leaps and bounds, so much so that he fantasized

Salve Regina  171 to Crowley that he wanted to have sex with 10 women seriatim, should his harem grow to that number, exceeding Catullus’s goal of nine. He admitted the current limit of women he could pleasure in one session was a more reasonable two, without having to resort to what he discreetly referred to as “lesbian technique.”14 The air of liberation was even affecting the formerly prudish Jane; she participated in a spintrian opus with Smith and Regina. The result of the magical operation was a long-​awaited call from a rental agent—​a proper home was needed for the proposed profess house.15 The fall of 1931 found Smith busy engaging a carpenter to help build the altar, upright coffin, pillars, and other properties for the Gnostic Catholic Mass and the OTO degrees. Crowley had sent a poor typescript of the rewritten rituals for the first three degrees which Smith lacked (though he had the scripts of the old quasi-​masonic degrees used in British Columbia and knew them by heart). He questioned Crowley on some of the technical details of the Gnostic Catholic Mass. The text in Magick in Theory and Practice (1930) was accurate as far as its author was concerned; Smith’s more careful reading caught several omissions from the original publication in The International. Crowley advocated making do with the best of what they had; no children were available to fill the parts, so they were omitted. Over the next year Smith continued to pepper his letters to Crowley with his notes and queries on the Gnostic Catholic Mass. He was concerned if this ceremony could be shown to outsiders, given that the OTO degree signs and steps were employed in it; Smith thought the Mass would be a productive means to draw in the public and he did not want to restrict its audience to initiates. Crowley’s sensible reply was that the signs and steps could be used without further reference to their source. To gather ideas for his own performance, Smith attended Mass at local Liberal Catholic and Roman Catholic churches; he liked the trappings of the latter but thought their delivery was poor. With Regina and Jane as his coaches, he surely could do better. Crowley’s need for money had become increasingly desperate. His prior sources of support, Gerald Yorke and Karl Germer, had each parted from him for varying reasons and had refused to contribute further to his maintenance. Crowley in turn denounced Germer to Smith in an open letter of October 1931 entitled “Early History of Karl Germer,” detailing the most embarrassing alleged facts of Germer’s personal life, culled from the latter’s magical diaries and their personal contact and correspondence. According to Crowley, Germer had gambled away all his money in the stock market on the advice of a bad astrologer and was close to committing suicide. He

172  The Unknown God concluded with the observation that “he is now well over the border line of legal insanity; Doctor [Alfred] Adler has advised me that it is my duty to communicate these facts to the family physician” (WTS Papers). There was some truth to this: Germer had been Adler’s patient. Crowley had great regard for Adler, claiming he was the only psychologist with common sense.16 Once again, another disciple had been tried and found wanting. Although he sympathized with his financial plight, Smith firmly replied to Crowley’s entreaties for money that the little amount he had was devoted to the establishment of the Gnostic Catholic Mass and the OTO. Jane and Regina were engaged in fashioning the proper robes from what their small funds could buy. The advent of the talkies (an improvement, to her mind) marked the near-​end of Jane’s career in film.17 But there were other forces at work. Jane believed she had been blacklisted by the movie studios; despite repeated calls and interviews, the best job she could find in the pictures was day work as an RKO extra. For Regina, work in her profession was also hard to come by. Regina, “dramatic soprano of opera, concert, and radio fame” was favorably written up in the Los Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Examiner when she was featured as the soloist for the 160th anniversary celebration of the Old San Gabriel Mission.18 Not all were pleased with her performances. Regina opened on December 27, 1931, at the Carthay Circle Theater in a production of the Gilbert Seldes adaptation of Aristophanes’s Lysistrata. She was cast in the role of “Lampito,” a burly Spartan female character. On January 7 the theater was raided by Captain Deighton McDonald Jones of the Los Angeles Vice Squad and the company of 54 players spent the night in jail. The ignorance of the police action—​Captain Jones called loudly for the playwright when arresting the cast—​only helped draw curious crowds to the theater for its brief run. Captain Jones closed the production a second time, in contempt of court (of which offense he was later convicted). Some of the actors he arrested were acquitted and the rest had the charges against them dismissed; they in turn sued Jones for false arrest and malicious prosecution. Crowley delighted that Aristophanes could still shock the prudish. For Regina it was one bright spot of work after long spells of joblessness; Smith, the only one who maintained continual employment, took care of her living expenses all the while. It was a continual struggle to make ends meet. A communal living arrangement would help economize on their necessities. One request for money met with an immediate positive response. Smith received a telegram from Germany dated January 8, 1932, sent by the current

Salve Regina  173 holder of the office of Scarlet Woman, Bertha Busch, announcing the extreme illness and poverty of the Beast; $100 was needed urgently to avert disaster. Smith cabled the funds to Berlin without delay. Crowley honestly believed his end was imminent, having hinted about the possibility of his sudden demise in his letters of the last year. He made plans to handle his transition and sent Smith a testament leaving to him the headship of the nearly dormant OTO. He would not fail of an heir, a duty insisted upon in “Agape vel Liber C,” the central instruction of the IX˚: “In the event of my death I appoint you to be my successor in the O.T.O. as Frater Superior and O.H.O. conferring upon you officially the IX˚ of which secrets you already possess the essential knowledge, and the X˚ Supreme and Holy King.”19 What papers he might require would be furnished by his executor, Gerald Yorke. Smith replied to this unexpected burden laid upon him with a typical honest expression of humility; he hoped that the time when this position might be laid upon him was many years in the future, as he had so much yet to learn from Baphomet.20 The latter did not mention to Smith his plan for a successor in the Great Order. The work of the A∴A∴ was left to Frater NIA, a Neophyte of the order, also known as Gerald Yorke, who was tasked with making a magical link with the Secret Chiefs for further instruction on his part in the Great Work.21 Yorke was also appointed to serve as the executor of Crowley’s estate. In both functions he declined to serve. After giving as much as he could of his own money, Yorke would not ask the support of friends or family for Crowley’s cause, and the moneylenders to whom he applied refused him. After the ceaseless rows of the past five years, Yorke wanted no more to do with Crowley’s mundane affairs. A further stumbling block was Thelema. Yorke could not accept The Book of the Law and realized that he could not continue in the A∴A∴ being dubious about its revelations; he viewed Crowley as a pseudo-​messiah. In an undated letter of early January 1932 to his unwilling spiritual heir, Crowley lamented the fact that his work would not produce a successor who was both willing and qualified to take the responsibility of leading the A∴A∴. Germer had the ambition and the desire, but in Crowley’s view, Yorke was the only suitable candidate for leadership of the A∴A∴. To Yorke he reaffirmed Smith’s successorship in the OTO. The rebound from his near-​death state was quick; within a month of his testament to Smith, Crowley was back to his old form. With Krishnamurti “having definitely turned tail” and Annie Besant “being in dementia, +​ dying,” Crowley announced that now was the moment that he must “be

174  The Unknown God proclaimed H.P.B.’s legitimate successor.”22 He made the same plea to Yorke and received the same silent response. The new year brought changes of a less weighty sort for Frater 132. In January 1932, Leona and Clarence Watson left 5612 Carlton Way to Regina’s care; Clarence had taken a job with an oil company which drew him away from Los Angeles. Smith immediately took up residence in the house, where he had been a regular visitor for the past year; Jane stayed over on weekends. The arrangement was to be short-​lived. Within a few months of his arrival the rental house was sold out from under them, and Smith and Regina were forced to move. After a wearying search they found a two-​story house to rent and took up residence on May 3 of that year. The address was 1746 Winona Boulevard in Hollywood. Although the rent stretched Smith’s salary and required them to take in lodgers, the ample space gave their profess house a home for the next decade. The house was admirably suited in every respect for entertaining and housing the flock. On the ground floor was a living room, music room, kitchen, and dining room, and a bedroom that was used by Smith. This bedroom had a porch facing the backyard where Smith tended a garden and a bed of roses. In keeping with the doctrine established by Crowley in an OTO instruction, “Of Eden and the Sacred Oak,”23 where the symbol of the profess house is a great oak “from which flow streams of water to every quarter, fertilizing indeed the ground about the hill,” the backyard of 1746 was shaded by a magnificent large sapota tree. The second floor of the house had five bedrooms: Regina occupied one, which also had its own porch. A large unfinished attic, measuring 36 feet by 18 feet, was accessible by means of a ladder pulled down from the ceiling—​Crowley remarked that he “started O.T.O. with candles in saucers in an office about 10 x 6. When you start things, ingenuity soon solves all problems as they arise. . . . Trust to the beauty +​the magical power of the ritual itself to interest people. Ask Jane—​ why doesn’t she write any more?—​how well it worked in Cefalù, only doing bits of it.”24 Smith went on fixing up the house, and his manner of pushing to get the task completed wore out the nerves of all but Regina, who complained of her housekeeping duties but carried on all the same. Jane could not join them at once as her mother had started to have a series of strokes and Jane was needed to care for her while Mary K. was at work. As soon as they took possession of the house, Regina began entertaining at 1746. She started a guest register for the occupants of the profess house and attendees at their social gatherings. The parties were held for a variety

Salve Regina  175 of purposes, from commemorating Walt Whitman’s birthday to celebrating the Equinoxes and the reception of The Book of the Law. Over the next year these events were held for fundraising purposes—​“Crowley Nights,” as they were called—​and in time they would become official functions of the OTO lodge. But their beginnings were purely social and Regina was able to attract a crowd, some of whom eventually were drawn into the OTO. Smith was alerted to the presence of a sojourning OTO Brother, Count Louis Hamon IV˚ (1866–​1936), better known under his pen name of “Cheiro.” He was a professional palmist (author of several popular works on the subject) and he had taken up residence in Hollywood in 1930. Crowley suggested that Smith seek Brother Hamon’s aid in their organizing efforts. Smith telephoned Hamon twice, and the results were discouraging. He reported to Crowley that Brother Hamon, far too busy with his $100 palm readings to see him in person, seemed to have forgotten his III˚ obligations in respect of the good name of a Brother of the order—​he had attacked Crowley openly—​and Smith’s defense of Crowley did not further endear him to Cheiro. Despite his lack of regard for its head, Cheiro thought highly of the OTO but remarked that his Brethren in the Scottish Rite were antagonistic to the commencement of OTO activities in the Valley of Los Angeles. Smith was convinced that coming out in the open with the OTO would only attract the Hearst papers, who would in turn manufacture a scandal. Another besetting problem was finding interested parties who had the ability to pay the fees; given the burden he was carrying with the rent, Smith could not pay them for the candidates as he and Jones had done in Vancouver. The pace of change over the summer of 1932 at 1746 did not meet Jane’s expectation. To get the ball rolling, ritually speaking, in September she started using the attic for her own ritual of the “Bornless One” drawn from Crowley’s “Liber Samekh.” Not to be outdone, Regina began her own ritual following Crowley’s “Liber Astarté vel Berylli,”25 an instruction in the yoga of devotion to God. The upshot was that Regina became convinced that the OTO must be started as soon as possible. Regina thus became a tireless goad to Smith for the completion of the attic temple. Jane described the progress in a letter to Max and Leota Schneider, who were making their way west to California from Missouri: Meanwhile, Wilfred’s place is coming on. It is interesting to see what each week contributes. It can only move on as he gets a bit from his bi-​monthly salary to purchase the wherewithall. Jacobi gave 10 dollars, and that helped!

176  The Unknown God In November [1932] it was started. First the floor had to be laid, then the sides boarded up to the rafters; these stained brown, the rafters stained grey. Then one week the main altar, again the dais on which it rests, then the veil to draw across the altar, the tiny altar and the font, the tomb in the West; last week 6 candlesticks, making 14 in all (There must be 22). The next step is the corners on each side of the dais. We are like kids when each addition takes it’s [sic] destined place in the Temple, and gamble and gurgle with glee. Each Sunday we give the ritual twice, Wilfred Priest, Jacobi and Bamber alternating as deacon, Regina and I alternating as priestess. After Bamber and Jacobi have learned the deacon thoroughly Smith will have them learn the priest also. We want to give the Mass publicly as soon as possible.26

Max and Leota moved into 1746 on February 3, 1933, along with their son Roland; their signatures in the guest register appear just below an entry for “Mildred Smith, ‘Carlotta,’ ” clearly intended to be humorous. Leota was a welcome addition and pitched in to help Regina with the domestic chores. Her husband was another matter, and there was trouble from the start. Within the month Regina invited Max to her bedroom for what Max described as a “Magickal act of Love”; the opus was interrupted by someone “knocking at the door +​asking questions,” causing Max to lose his erection.27 One reason for the establishment of the profess house was to lower living expenses by pooling them, but Max never found his way to contribute his fair share. Smith had given him due notice before he moved that he had no influence in getting Max a job; the real promise was the prospect of starting the OTO. During his time of residence in 1746, Max survived on an allowance from his brother. He worked sporadically as a jeweler and ceaselessly indulged Roland, who Smith mildly described as “ill-​trained.” Max had his uses, though; he crafted for Smith the finely made silver-​gilt serpent crown required for the Priest in the Gnostic Catholic Mass. Smith would have preferred to have the crown made of solid gold, but it was all he could afford. The serpent’s eyes in the crown were made of rubies. Max also fashioned the magical ring of Frater 132, set with a cartouche of the eye of Ra which Smith had purchased some 12 years earlier. Just prior to the arrival of the Schneiders, Smith had encountered a new aspirant of promise. His name was John Bamber;28 he too worked for the Southern California Gas Company and his primary occult interest was in the A∴A∴. Crowley bluntly suggested that Smith first put him to a test of making a monthly contribution; he had grown weary of people taking up his time and

Salve Regina  177 letting him down. Whether the amount was meant seriously or not, Crowley wrote that “[a]‌ny new people who want training must pay $100 on the 1st of every month to Headquarters. You get 50%—​and get more work done!”29 None of the Angeleno aspirants had anything like that sort of disposable income. Bamber moved into 1746 on April 1, along with his mother, who had offered to make a girdle for the Priestess. Mother soon proved to be a problem and she was asked by Smith to leave after a short residence at the profess house. The first public performance of the Gnostic Catholic Mass was preceded by the Long Beach Earthquake of March 10, 1933, which struck at exactly 5:55 p.m. and registered 6.4 on the Richter scale. Smith was home at 1746 with Leota when the quake hit; although the house felt like it was going to come down, there was no serious damage. The plans for the premiere went on uninterrupted. The date was set for Sunday, March 19, 1933. The first performance is recorded in the second half of the guest register, which has details of the Masses said through September 1934. Their beginnings were small but full of good auspices. On this Day, at Noon, the Gnostic Catholic Mass was for the first time celebrated before a small group of invited friends. Those officiating were: The Priest Wilfred Smith The Priestess Regina Kahl The Deacon Oliver Jacobi At the organ was Jack Ross. The Congregation consisted of: Max Schneider Dr. [George] Liebling John Bamber Leota Schneider Mrs. [Alice] Liebling Jane Wolfe Roland Schneider Olita [Lunt] Draper Mary K. Wolfe Viola Morgan30

Jane recorded in her diary that after they went down from the attic temple, Jacobi and Jack Ross,31 a theater organist, also took communion. Miss Viola Mae Morgan (1910–​1983) was the girlfriend of the Deacon, Oliver Jacobi, and she became a regular communicant in the Mass. Of the non-​ communicants, Mrs. Olita Lunt Draper (1876–​ 1945) was a social

178  The Unknown God acquaintance. Dr. George Liebling (1865–​1946), piano protégé of Liszt and composer, was so impressed with the ritual that he telephoned the profess house immediately after the ceremony and offered to write a musical score for it. The devotees followed up with a feast and a ceremony the next day to celebrate the equinox; at 5:43 p.m., the precise moment the sun entered Aries, Frater V.O.V.N. banged on their new Zildjian gong and he proposed a toast to To Mega Therion. Smith reported their beginnings to Crowley and promptly sent him photographs of the temple and officers in their ceremonial attire. They met with great appreciation; Crowley replied that he was “pleased beyond measure by the photographs. Your work has been splendid; it is all far better than I had dared to hope.”32 He encouraged Smith to leave the OTO on the side for the moment, stick to the task at hand, and hope that the Gnostic Catholic Mass would bring the proper patron: I should not bother with the O.T.O. stuff: You ought to concentrate absolutely on the Mass until we get enough money for a decent G.H.Q. Remember that even one man or woman may be enough to work the whole show. You can argue—​see what we can do in public: that’s nothing! Start us an Initiation Scheme +​c +​c.33

Independently Smith had come to the same conclusion about letting the OTO degree work wait for another day. He had found some unexpected benefits in his weekly performance of the Gnostic Catholic Mass. The Magick of the Mass had raised his personal stock in the eyes of the women; man-​to-​ man he confided in Crowley: “One feels that the dear ladies would not mind being fucked by the Priest but they might object to Smith. All this is conveyed in the handshake afterwards.”34 Smith qua Priest partook of the communion in more than one kind, as often as possible. Smith’s efforts raised his stature in Crowley’s eyes, for the time being. But he misread Smith’s accounts and thought that the numbers of attendees he reported present at their social affairs (as many as one hundred) represented the congregation at the Mass. Perhaps these new devotees could fund a trip to Los Angeles in the fall of 1933? Bringing him back down to earth, Smith had to remind his overeager correspondent that the attic temple could not hold more than 30 people, provided that the floor would bear the load. Crowley made the case for his trip no easier by suggesting that he needed an advance at least four times the amount of his ticket, which was beyond

Salve Regina  179 Smith’s ability to contribute. There had to be some priorities and in the face of being asked to (1) keep the Mass going, (2) save for Crowley’s trip to Los Angeles, and (3) make a direct monthly contribution to his upkeep, Smith chose to abandon the planned trip, send a monthly donation of $25.00, and above all concentrate on keeping up a steady celebration of the Mass. The hard, practical work of running the profess house and the regular performance of the Mass were maintained by Smith, Regina, and Leota. The Priestess was reaching her limit and she boiled over when she saw Crowley’s letter to Jacobi of July 31, appointing him Grand Treasurer General “pending my arrival,” as he thought that Smith had left the burden of contributions entirely on Jake’s shoulders. Jacobi replied that this was not so, and the records support his denial. Regina protested directly; it seemed that Crowley judged devotion to the cause “on a dollar and cent basis.” She refused to engage in “ballyhooing,” leaving that to Aimee Semple McPherson and her kin, for “being born in this country of hot air and big noise, bluff and bull shit I prefer to have no part in that sort of propaganda.” In her view, Thelema would not be spread by the methods of “Fightin’ Bob” Shuler.35 She looked forward to Crowley’s visit so that she could “beat the hell out of you and may use a horse whip when I see you.”36 Frankness of this sort was not typical in the letters received by the Beast, but he had a ready response. Crowley put on his English gentleman’s mask and wrote Smith that Regina had written a misspelled letter “overloaded with filthy words. I cannot take any notice of such things.”37 Once again, he slammed shut the door in the face of a passionate supporter. Crowley and Regina would not exchange another letter for a decade. The Priest had his share of complaints as well. Smith suggested that Crowley tell Jane: “to forget her mystical development and do some work and Max to quit writing poetry and work. Crowley wrote enough good poetry for the time being and successfully conquered the mystical Path.”38 Jane’s contribution to the profess house was never considered sufficient by either Smith or Regina, but in truth she had her own burden; after a series of strokes her mother Avilla died on July 23. At Jane and Mary K.’s request, Smith held a thelemic service for her that day at Bagley’s Mortuary. With their mother gone, in September the Wolfe sisters were free to move into 1746; their financial contributions helped Smith keep the profess house afloat. Smith had come up with another plan to put the Mass on a permanent basis. He consulted with Oliver Jacobi on the incorporation of a “Church of Thelema.” The primary reason for the incorporation was to encourage donations, especially of real estate, which would be tax-​deductible, without

180  The Unknown God which benefit few could afford to contribute. He first mentioned the plan to Crowley in his letter of October 2, 1933; although he closely modeled the Church of Thelema’s bylaws on the OTO governing documents in the Blue Equinox (e.g., he replaced “Order” with “Church”), from the start the idea was to create a legally recognized religious body for the perpetuation of the public performance of the Gnostic Catholic Mass. The OTO was no part of this scheme from the beginning; as a secret society, its appeal was limited. The idea was a clever one, although the ingenuity of its design was lost on some. Despite the borrowings, it was not an attempted incorporation of the OTO. Smith’s intent was misread by Crowley after the fact—​he only bothered to comment on the plan after the incorporation in April 1934. At the time Crowley was too busy with his disastrous libel suit against Nina Hamnett and her publisher Constable & Co. to have the time to read, let alone respond, to Smith’s letters, three of which carried a draft of the proposed articles of incorporation. On advice of counsel, Smith chose to incorporate in California as a corporation sole, a well-​established and relatively rare corporate form created to vest all the real estate of a church in its leader and his successors. Unlike an individual, a corporation sole has perpetual existence. All the property rights in the corporation sole are conveyed to the next successor in office; even a temporary vacancy in the incumbency to the office did not invalidate the corporation. As the “Rex Summus Sanctissimus of the Church of Thelema,” its proper corporate name, Smith legally was the church in his own person. There was another pressing reason for adopting this form of corporate structure. After the fights he had witnessed over the successorship in both the TS and the OTO, Smith felt sure that the title to his corporation sole would remain unclouded—​he would name a successor in his will and enjoin the same upon all those who followed him. Crowley had long ago stated to Jones that he had been seeking his own St. Paul,39 but in Smith he had unknowingly found his St. Peter, a rock on which he could have built his church, if he had the will to do so. Jones admirably filled the part of Andrew, who led Peter to Christ. Instead, Crowley put his faith in another body, the OTO, which for Crowley would prove to be, in the words of Gerald J. Yorke, “a broken reed.”40 The OTO in the United States would remain an unincorporated association for another four decades. Union among the Brothers and Sisters was not easily maintained, even in marriage. There was a continued lack of harmony among Max and Leota. They had been drifting apart and by the summer of 1933 they were living

Salve Regina  181 together platonically. Leota began to sign the guest register as “Leota Harris,” but still, she felt sad for Max, even as she enjoyed the regular sex magic rituals she termed “Unto thee Nuit” with Smith. She found him “adorable, charming in his simplicity.”41 But his character was not without its flaws. She reacted negatively to Smith’s extensive and frequent verbal lashings of Max and John Bamber for their lack of productive work. She found his criticism of them excessive and observed that both Smith and Regina lacked a sense of their own weakness and fallibility. Max and Crowley had been in direct correspondence for some time. Crowley used his communication with Max to complain about Smith, at one point deriding their celebration of the Gnostic Catholic Mass as “amateur theatricals.” Although they had never met, he believed that Max had skills that Smith lacked; Max had boasted of having movie studio connections. Since Smith had declined to raise the funds Crowley required for a visit to Los Angeles, he turned to Max to make the trip possible for the fall of 1933. His dream was to have the Gnostic Catholic Mass produced as a talkie film, with himself starring as the High Priest; the Priestess “would have to be a regular star—​Benita Hume or—​well, your man will know at once. Some one with lots of S.A.”42 Max reported this idea to the inmates of the profess house; Leota wrote in her diary “VOVN of course thinks this stupid, +​he is right.”43 Crowley authorized Max to act as his literary agent, a position which led to much correspondence but no studio or publishing contract; Leota was engaged in typing up various dramatic works of Crowley’s for submission. The only contact that Max could interest was Mrs. Carrie May Dinsmore (1889–​1972), a divorced lady of New Thought persuasion who was the inventor and owner of patent no. 1,805,573 for a “slip-​knot garment hanger” useful to dry cleaners. She generously gave a total of 30 percent of the expected royalties from its sale as a “love offering” to Crowley and 3 percent to Schneider for referring her to Crowley. Her devotion she willingly expressed in monetary terms, up to mortgaging her household furniture to raise money to publish the books of the Beast and bring him to America. She too joined the A∴A∴ under Smith’s spiritual direction.44 Crowley’s correspondence with Max posed an immediate problem. Despite their obligations of frankness as Brothers of the III˚ of the OTO, the prime violator of their mutual duties was Crowley himself. His endless ex parte communications with Schneider left Smith and those close to him with a growing sense of distrust for Max, and an unwillingness to tell Crowley more than was thought necessary for him to know. Crowley began

182  The Unknown God to undermine Smith through his lack of confidence. He felt that Smith was not reporting in full enough detail on the work in the Valley of Los Angeles; Crowley’s attempts to stimulate a greater flow of information using Max as an intermediary hastened the development of the mutual enmity between Smith and Schneider. Within a few months of starting the regular celebration of the Gnostic Catholic Mass, Crowley was already taking aim at their work, employing Max as his go-​between. The first sign of the Master’s distrust was brief: “132 +​Regina seem to have a very curious attitude. Almost as if they fear that success to the Work would upset their position! It is really strange that he does not report fully +​regularly. Please ask him, very tactfully, to do so.”45 Smith’s reticence was understandable. He had already been blasted by Crowley for his poor spelling. He repeatedly drafted letters before they were sent, fearing lest they bore or annoy the Beast. Little did he perceive that his restraint was being misunderstood, and being used against him by Max, who asked Crowley immediately prior to Smith’s first letter mentioning the proposed incorporation if he approved of “the Gnostic Mass to be incorporated under the laws of the state of California as the ‘Church of Thelema?’ ”46 Like Smith’s inquiries to Crowley, this one too received no reply. Max had outworn his welcome with Smith and the four women. After his separation from Leota, Max attempted to befriend several young women who visited the profess house. He envisioned himself a lady’s man, but there were few takers. His repeated rejections made him sulk around the house for days on end, to the displeasure of the other residents. His wife had found her own source of comfort. Leota had gone to Mexico to get a divorce from Max and then and there married John Bamber. Bamber’s mother offered to pay for a legally recognized American divorce. The two of them were not long for the profess house; in September 1934, Bamber moved out, renouncing Thelema and returning to Roman Catholicism, and Leota soon followed him. Despite her usefulness, to Smith their exit was a relief. Max complained to his diary that he needed to get out of the profess house for good. In a line reminiscent of Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, the atmosphere of “everlasting talk, talk and more talk”47 was making any professional or magical progress impossible; he moaned that all his attempts to find a suitable woman as a magical partner had been frustrated. His circulation of Crowley’s manuscripts among such Hollywood contacts as he could make bore no profit. Roland felt bullied. In early November 1933, Max and Roland packed up their belongings, leaving 1746 on the 6th of the month.

Salve Regina  183 As Smith noted, their timing was excellent as their presence was no longer tolerable. Their departure was a relief to everyone. Once he was out the door, Max railed against the profess house, its activities and occupants. Word of his backbiting reached Smith; his open antagonism was considered contrary to their work in support of To Mega Therion. Smith’s response was to send him a formal letter, putting him on notice that he “would no longer be permitted to participate in the Mass or any other activities of the household.”48 Max lost no time in telling Crowley of his exclusion. The profess house continued to thrive after Max’s departure. To celebrate the reception of The Book of the Law, a “Crowley Night” was planned by Smith and Regina for April 11, 1934. It included a program of recitation of Crowley’s poetry, rituals and sacred texts by a variety of performers, along with a voice recital by Regina, accompanied by Jack Ross and several of her students.49 By Smith’s tally, over 150 people were present and 137 signed the profess house guest register. One surprising name was among the participants: the stage and motion picture actor John Carradine (1906–​1988), who read the Crowley poem, “O Madonna of the Golden Eyes.” He signed the guest register as “John Carradine (John Peter Richmond),” the latter being an earlier version of his stage name. Carradine returned to the profess house on August 13 for a party and then passed out of the picture. Smith never forgot him. Smith’s papers do not reveal how Carradine met the Thelemites. He may have sought them out in preparation for his role as an organist in a Satanic cult in The Black Cat (1934), which teamed up Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi for the first time in the starring roles. The Universal picture premiered only a month after “Crowley Night,” and the character played by Karloff was based on Crowley, whose libel suit against Nina Hamnett and her publisher, Crowley v. Constable and Co. Limited and Others, had been tried and found in favor of the defendants on April 13, 1934, in London.50 The allegations made by Betty May, widow of Raoul Loveday, a disciple of the Beast who died in 1923 at Cefalù, that Crowley had ritually killed at cat while resident at the Abbey of Thelema, were aired in court. Crowley’s wholesale denial was not believed, even by his disciples. He had a problem with the evidence he supplied; at a subsequent criminal trial in July, Crowley was found guilty of having feloniously received letters stolen from Betty May which had been introduced in court. It was a humiliation he wanted to see redressed, and he cried out to his disciples to aid in his “vindication.” In his search for support, he would look to an old acquaintance, H. Spencer Lewis, for whom Crowley had once offered to go to bail.

184  The Unknown God Determined as ever to have a larger, more fitting temple than the attic of the profess house, Smith pressed on with his plans to incorporate the Church of Thelema. Assisted by Jacobi, Smith filed the articles of incorporation with the Secretary of State of California on April 19, 1934, and received his certified copy of them on the 21st. Their arrival was greeted with a toast to the Church’s legal foundation. Smith promptly sent a copy of the articles of incorporation to Crowley. Although the Beast had worries of his own—​he was veering rapidly toward bankruptcy—​he felt something had gone terribly wrong with Smith’s filing: “But you must correct that Registration. How can you describe an Order as ‘Rex S.S.’? Supreme Most Holy King!!! The name of the Order is O.T.O. Ordo Templi Orientis. All matters of this sort should be submitted to me before committing yourself.”51 Despite Smith’s best efforts at full disclosure, his actions had been misunderstood, and he quickly tried to make the picture clear: To form a corporation sole, and not to be dependent upon a vote to select its head, we had to draw the papers up in that manner in this State. It is practically the same as that drawn up for the Catholics who hold property, etc., for the church. It is not intended to be incorporation of the O.T.O. but the Church of Thelema, to give us some protection and enable us to collect moneys, etc. You really are the limit. You say I should have submitted the plan to you first. Damn it, I wrote you three separate times about it before going ahead. You answered none of my letters though each held a draft. After about a year, just as the notion was fading out, I pushed the thing through in desperation. I could not then, or now, do much with the O.T.O., a secret society, and you had advised keeping on with the Mass and leaving the O.T.O. out of it for the time. When we start that, the Church idea can fade out of the picture, if advisable.52

More facts did not change Baphomet’s mind that his Brother had erred, and he persisted in believing what he had already been told was incorrect: “About the registration. Your form is all right: but why didn’t you send me the papers for approval? As it is, you have called the Order ‘Supreme Most Holy King’! Absurd: enough to send any educated man to the next planet but six in horror! My own private title, too!”53 The charge, once made, was never dropped, and Smith’s registration of the corporation sole would be

Salve Regina  185 repeatedly cited in Crowley’s correspondence as evidence of his sweeping ignorance. Smith knew what he was doing, even if Crowley failed to understand or even read what he had been sent. After this abortive exchange, Smith and Crowley ceased their correspondence for a time; Smith broke the silence in May 1935. He had been at a low, spiritually, mentally, and financially, and could not bring himself to write. He plainly told Crowley that he knew his letters “mean little or nothing to you unless there is a monetary enclosure.”54 The Beast found near-​constant fault with Smith. Jacobi had tired of making a weekly 120-​mile drive from San Bernardino to Los Angeles to serve as Deacon in the Gnostic Catholic Mass. Crowley concluded, on no evidence whatsoever, that Smith must have alienated him by interfering in his affairs, and that Regina’s “loud and adulterous” personality would repel him as well. Yet he tried to cover over his criticism by claiming to Frater 132 that he appreciated Smith’s virtues of “great loyalty, will-​power, courage and perseverance” (May 26, 1935). Although Crowley occasionally struck a balance in his criticism of Smith, over time the scales tip to the negative side more and more consistently. Smith freely admitted that he associated with Schneider only to appease Crowley, but the outcome was rarely to Smith’s favor. During the hiatus in his correspondence with Smith, Crowley had written H. Spencer Lewis, Imperator of AMORC, seeking financial aid for his full vindication. When there was no return of Rosicrucian amity, his mind turned to thoughts of taking over Lewis’s organization, and he drafted Smith and Schneider as his foot soldiers in the legal battle he wished to initiate. And there was furthermore a former disciple who was cashing in on their reputation, and the Beast intended to put a stop to it, forthwith and all.

15 Rosicrucian Amity Since the cessation in 1923 of their steady correspondence, C. F. Russell and Smith had maintained a polite distance from each other. What was there left to say? The contact between the American Thelemites and Russell solely concerned the sales of Crowley’s books by the latter. Occasional letters from Russell, now living in Chicago, came to Crowley; he reported to the Beast that he had “one hundred and fifty two members in my club working to establish the Law.”1 The “club” in question was the Choronzon Club, which claimed to be occultly headquartered in the “false Sephirah” Daath (Knowledge) but was in fact mundanely run from Chicago. Russell had founded it in 1922, but it began to attract students in the spring of 1930, advertising it as “The Short Cut to Initiation” in the pages of popular occult magazines of the day, including The Occult Digest. Despite Crowley’s prior denunciation of Russell as a man capable of murder in the name of Choronzon, worthy of being shunned by Brothers of the order, with the passage of time he wrote to Russell from the safety of Berlin concerning another aspirant who Crowley thought had lost his mind. This time, it was Karl Germer, who in the view of Crowley “was definitely insane in the legal sense.”2 The solution to the problem was isolation: he urged Russell to have no further contact with Germer. On Russell’s suggestion for a republication of Crowley’s exceedingly rare parody of erotica, Snowdrops from a Curate’s Garden (1904),3 the Beast took the time in the letter quoted above to ask Russell to report on the work of the order in Chicago. Whatever he thought of Russell’s past behavior, he obviously still viewed him as a colleague in the Great Work. When Crowley learned more about how Russell operated the Choronzon Club, his past aspersions were mild compared with the blasting that was to follow. The first person to get the full picture of Russell’s methods was Smith. Although he could see points for criticism, he also saw some positive features in Russell’s activities: he was actively promoting and selling Crowley’s books as part of the curriculum of the Choronzon Club, whose secret inner name Smith learned was the “Gnostic Body of God” (GBG).4 Like all good occult endeavors, the Choronzon Club did not fail from promising too little: The Unknown God. Martin P. Starr, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2024. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197744512.003.0015

Rosicrucian Amity  187 The work of the Outer College is therefore specific, devoted to one purpose; its system is logical, scientific, artistic & ethical. The Candidate is taken by the SHORT CUT, a system from which every non-​essential is rigidly eliminated, straight to the Threshold. He travels the ANCIENT WAY, his body & mind are disciplined & fortified by a regime which enables him to endure the ORDEAL, penetrate the VEIL & pass-​by the DWELLER. Over one hundred pages of manuscript instructions are given in the five Grades of the Outer College. These documents are compiled so that we can deal with Candidates by mail, but this is no ordinary “correspondence-​course.” The majority of Members are attached to local Hierarchies, so once you have established the LINK you have the benefit of personal contact with your IMMEDIATE SUPERIOR who is more advanced than yourself & will be your patient teacher, efficient guard & guide you surely & safely until you attain ADEPTSHIP & need very little more help or advice from external sources. Your ULTIMATE ATTAINMENT is limited only by your own wishes & desires.5

Its degree structure was borrowed from the A∴A∴, with the addition of a grade of 11˚ =​0□, whose possessor is “sworn to frequent practice of the Trance of LAUGHTER which makes a Mockery of both the Wisdom & Folly of all Prophets both false & true!”6 The fees were small: $1 as an enrollment fee and $6 payable after taking the third grade. In addition to the various forms of ritual magic advocated by Crowley, Russell taught his own version of sex magic, the “Formula of Jack & Jill,” which was significantly influenced by the writings of the American spiritualist and pioneering sex teacher, Ida C. Craddock (1857–​1902), whose form of sexual esotericism was favorably reviewed by Crowley in the Blue Equinox.7 He freely adapted the unpublished portions of Crowley’s work—​one of his jobs at the Abbey was typist for the Beast—​to the uses of his organization. Like his mentor, Russell also advocated the use of drugs in conjunction with Magick. And like Jones before him, Russell identified what he considered to be serious metaphysical errors in Crowley’s work, erroneous conceptions which the Choronzon Club aimed to correct through its dialectic: In our work we are compelled to cooperate with Therion and the A∴A∴ by supporting & establishing the Law of Thelema & the new aeon, but we are not obliged to propagate any of the mistakes or errors of those who work to this same end. I suggest that you disassociate from the word “Choronzon”

188  The Unknown God all the meaning that has collected in your mind about it & bear in mind, until you receive further enlightenment that it is connected with the same root as the word “Earth,” heart, hart, quern, corn, horn, star, strew & that the dispersion referred to concerns the cosmic mystery of creation & incarnation. It is through the devices of the DEVIL that illusions have arisen in regard to this matter. The DEVIL of the G∴B∴G∴ is not Crowley’s Devil. C’s Devil is really God. C has no conception whatever of the real DEVIL, and denies His existence, thus laying himself open to many errors. He was brought up among the Plymouth Brethren and formed an undying hatred for Christianity, which colors much of his teaching. All this is part of his work, but yet there remains the mystical fact of Christianity which cannot be disregarded. We are not Devil-​worshippers, & neither is Crowley, although he is proud of being called such. Lucifer, or the Solar Logos is the Saviour or Redeemer, & were it not for his work the human race would have been doomed. The turning-​point or crisis in this respect occurred about the year 333 A.D. The real Black Brothers have so confused the symbols that it is practically impossible to discuss such questions as that of evil, the Dweller on the Threshold, the Devil, Hell, etc. with any degree of clarity using the terms of ordinary language.8

Smith noted that the Choronzon Club also found its inspiration in the UB, whose senseless procedures pale in comparison to some of Russell’s risible instructions to the faithful. There were rules in the Choronzon Club designed to preserve the secrecy of the members in the “Hierarchy” of each “Immediate Superior” from those under the spiritual direction of other representatives of the order. Yet, one cannot imagine the instruction for the following sign of recognition being given, or received, seriously: In personal contact with a stranger whom you may have reason to suppose is a Member; while shaking hands look at the ears. If the other person then shakes the head, ask, “Why do you shake your head?” The proper reply is “Because I am not a Troglodyte.” Then you may test with the word which is the greeting. (This procedure refers to the asininity and general stupidity of Troglodytes per se.)9

Smith alerted Crowley to the nature of Russell’s esoteric enterprise. Out of the blue, several ladies had attended the Gnostic Catholic Mass in May

Rosicrucian Amity  189 1935, all quite keen on the works of Crowley and especially The Book of the Law. During later conversation, they revealed they were members of the Choronzon Club. A leading lady of Russell’s order, a professional astrologer named Mary Ellen Green (1884–​1946), also came to visit Smith that month and provided documents and further details of Russell’s operation. They had been told that the Choronzon Club was going into a five-​year period of silence; no more instruction would be forthcoming, and all the papers of the open period were to be returned to headquarters. The movement had been quite successful in attracting candidates; there were several hundred members locally and the Denver group was said to have over 500, which Smith thought might be exaggerated. Still, the net income to Russell, who received half of all fees collected, was believed to be considerable, and the attainment of its high grades was a mere matter of weeks, a true shortcut path to initiation. The main details of Mary Green’s story were corroborated by Rudolf Frithiof Hugo Holm (1869–​1957), a Swedish-​born Chicago Mason and retired bank clerk who had contacted the Choronzon Club in 1931. To advance in the order, he was commanded in 1935 to visit its head, C. F. Russell; the latter made such a bad impression on Holm that he resigned the same day. Holm visited with Smith, Jane, and Max Schneider in Los Angeles; he signed the guest register for the profess house on May 26, 1935, and hoped he might return to take the OTO degrees if permission was granted. Holm asked Max to admit him as a Probationer. Even though Holm did not find the Law of Thelema to his liking, over the next year he assisted the Beast and Smith in recovering a large collection of Crowley’s manuscripts left in the care of the latter’s former mistress, now resident in Chicago, Astrid Dorothy Olsen (1892–​1963), including the sole surviving copy of Crowley’s magical fantasy novel, Atlantis. To Smith, the moment seemed ideal to start the OTO, for the third time. Dedicated as he was to the Great Order, he still felt that the A∴A∴ was more work than most people were willing to assume. By mid-​June he had 15 people, many of them former members of the Choronzon Club, who agreed to join the OTO when it was started.10 The Beast believed that Smith should attempt to get the District Attorney to prosecute Russell for receiving money under false pretenses, as “[h]‌e was expelled many years ago, +​has no right even to speak for the A∴A∴.”11 It was acceptable in Crowley’s view to ask for money for a cause, but any promise of a “magical” reward or occult rank in return constituted fraud. Spiritual honors were not for sale. Smith learned

190  The Unknown God that Russell was circulating Crowley’s then-​unpublished rhymed version of the Yi King under the title of “Book Chameleon,” claiming it was a secret manuscript of the Choronzon Club.12 Incensed, Crowley recommended reprinting the manifesto of the A∴A∴, “One Star in Sight,” for circularization in their campaign against Russell. Mary Green was quick to donate the money for the July reprint. A thousand copies were printed in a pamphlet with black covers lettered in silver; it met with Crowley’s enthusiastic approval and his thanks to Green. A message targeted at Russell and the members of the Choronzon Club was included on the title page: “Reprinted from MAGICK by To Mega Therion for general circulation and the special attention of those who have been led to join pseudo-​ occult orders which have used the Publications of the A∴A∴ as text books etc., but that have no connection with The Great White Brotherhood known as A∴A∴.” For Crowley, propriety connoted proprietary; no borrowings of his teachings were welcomed, especially by ex-​disciples who contributed no money to his support. In anticipation of the inauguration of a new lodge, a notice of the OTO was added to the final page. Crowley was delighted with the pamphlet and via a telegram of July 30 authorized Smith to start OTO degree work: THANKS CONTRIBUTION PLEASE MAINTAIN INCREASE IF POSSIBLE VERY URGENT AUTHORISE WORKING OTO UP TO SECOND DEGREE WRITING BAPHOMET.13

Since he had a desert nearby, he urged Smith to confer the Minerval there. The Beast thought it was valuable to hold off on the III˚ until he could be present to communicate the word of the degree. With the right money, he would be on the next boat to Los Angeles. He promised Smith to be reasonable in his demands for the financial proceeds of their degree work, should the new lodge prove to be a success. Yet, once Crowley began publishing books again, he looked for funds on every occasion from Agape Lodge and its members to underwrite expenses. In exchange, Crowley sent bound books or books in sheets (to save on customs duty). The financial model of the OTO, as he explained to Smith, was that in theory, all monies collected should be sent to the Grand Treasurer, who would dole it out as needed to the various branches.14 In practice, Crowley treated the sole OTO lodge under his direction as his personal fundraising agency and he never returned any money to the Agape Lodge treasury. This practice was continued by Germer when he

Rosicrucian Amity  191 was elevated to Grand Treasurer General after his return to the United States in 1941. Finances remained an overriding concern, and one that would be a source of continual complaint by Crowley. The propaganda campaign worked. It did not take long for Russell to learn that the thinning of the ranks of the Choronzon Club was due to the efforts of Crowley and Smith. He shot back with a circular of his own, damning his former disciple Holm to be “reincarnated as a blind rat,” disputing Crowley’s claims to headship of the A∴A∴ and the OTO and repudiating Smith as an initiate.15 A copy of this Choronzon Club circular was sent to Mary Green, who passed it on to Smith and he to Crowley in turn. The Beast wittily replied that it was now clear why Russell in his present incarnation was a blind rat, adding that he had “rarely read such a farrago of bluster and blackmail. . . . The enclosed warning might be printed or multigraphed, and circulated as widely as you see fit.”16 It was now time for the Master Therion to close the door forever on his former Brother and partner in sex Magick: The Master Therion warns all Aspirants to the Sacred Wisdom and the Magick of Light that Initiation cannot be bought, or even conferred; it must be won by personal endeavor. Members of the true Order of A∴A∴ are pledged to zeal in service to those whom they supervise, and to accept no reward of any kind for such service. Nor does the Order receive any fees whatsoever when degrees of Initiation are confirmed by its authority. He especially warns all persons against C. F. Russell of Chicago Ill and his agents. He is a thief, swindler, and blackmailer; he has stolen the property of the Order and used it to enable him to pose as its representative, and so to carry on his swindles upon would-​be Initiates. Russell is a man of no education, he cannot even spell correctly. Steps have been taken to prosecute him for his frauds.17

Schneider, who had found his way clear to cooperate with Smith for the time being, had the denunciation mimeographed and copies were sent to anyone they knew who might have an interest. Smith encouraged the retiring Holm to send them to all the Choronzon Club members he knew, adding “to acquiesce by inaction when one decides an institution is fraudulent is perilously near to being a partner in the crime.”18 Leaving Russell’s order did not end Holm’s spiritual conflicts. He refused to accept The Book of the Law as a completely divine statement, believing that it required purging of the

192  The Unknown God author’s “Kamic impressions” before it should be published; he severed his connection with the A∴A∴ over this issue. Over the next few years, as Russell began to shut down the Choronzon Club and virtually limit its membership to his own family, the former members became an immediate source of strength for the OTO in the Valley of Los Angeles. Smith went to work to get all the necessary stage properties for the Minerval degree, planned for the autumnal equinox, September 21, 1935. In preparation, Regina and Smith obligated Max on August 8, giving him the Minerval, I˚, and II˚ in rough form. Smith had aimed for 12 candidates but settled for seven; they were received into the Minerval degree at a spot in the desert near Playa del Rey, a reasonable round trip from the profess house. Smith, in the part of Saladin, was assisted in the initiation by Max in his fitting role as Black Guard; Jane, Recording Secretary; and Jacobi and Regina, witnesses. The first group of the new cycle of OTO initiates comprised: Mary Green; Irving Hendler; Frances Elizabeth Leslie; Viola Morgan; Maria R. Prescott19; Ruth M. Schoenberg (1901–​1983); and James Thomas Young. After the initiation they repaired to the profess house for a banquet prepared by Sisters Kahl and Wolfe. The Sisters Green and Prescott would retain an interest in Thelema for the remainder of their lives, but the others would prove to be spiritual transients, like many after them. Smith, writing for the first time as “Ramaka X˚”20 submitted an enthusiastic report to His Most Sacred Majesty Baphomet on their first group initiation in “Agape Lodge No. 1” (as before, occasionally styled “Agapae” to avoid mispronunciation). Surely this time and in this country the movement would take root and flourish. A boost was given to the new Agape Lodge by the publication of Smith’s letter of July 14, 1935, to the editor of American Astrology, Paul G. Clancy, which appeared in the November 1935 issue. As it was written slightly in advance of the first initiations, he mentioned that the Gnostic Catholic Mass was celebrated every Sunday evening, but that the OTO degrees might well be offered in the future when conditions were opportune. Smith also gave Clancy an option on the first publication of Crowley’s Little Essays Towards Truth, which had been ready for the printer for several years. Crowley castigated Smith for not acting more quickly, even though his only reason for his restraint was that he had been told, correctly, that Crowley had previously given Max the exclusive American rights. Clancy was interested and published the first of these essays, “Man,” in the January 1936 issue. Smith

Rosicrucian Amity  193 filed with the Library of Congress and copyrighted the 16 chapters individually as lectures under his own name. Additionally, Smith printed a one-​page pamphlet on the OTO, since he found it difficult to get inquirers to read the lengthy documents in the Blue Equinox.21 Smith’s letter to the editor produced a flurry of membership inquiries from across the country, including several letters from self-​described Rosicrucians with varying affiliations. They ranged from Albert H. Friedel, an AMORC member who had been reprimanded for studying Crowley after opening up correspondence with him, to Floyd M. Spann, whose real motives for correspondence were less clear from the outset. Spann presented Smith with an interlocking set of concerns: he wanted to be sure that the OTO did not claim any Rosicrucian authority, and he wished to ascertain the relationship between Dr. H. Spencer Lewis, Imperator of the AMORC, and the present-​ day OTO. What he did not openly state to Smith was that he was a representative of Dr. Reuben Swinburne Clymer (1878–​1966), Grand Master of the Fraternitas Rosae Crucis of Quakertown, Pennsylvania, and a long-​time enemy of Lewis in their battle for Rosicrucian hegemony in the United States. Their war of words was being spread through a series of pamphlets attacking each other; in the summer of 1935, Crowley was anonymously sent a copy of Clymer’s tract, Not under the Rosy Cross (ca. 1935), which prompted him to investigate the situation further by writing to Lewis on August 19. Although thousands of pages were devoted to the disputations between Lewis and Clymer, their main points of contention were relatively simple. Lewis maintained that Clymer had no Rosicrucian authority whatever. Clymer claimed that the only authority Lewis held originated from the notorious black magician Aleister Crowley for his “Despised Black Cult” of the OTO, which in no sense was a Rosicrucian order. None of these assertions was fair or correct. Clymer had a Rosicrucian connection through the American Edward H. Brown, who was the heir to the tripartite “Rose Cross Order,” “Temple of the Rosy Cross,” and “Hierarchy of Eulis,” all founded by P. B. Randolph. Clymer had received the first two of the nine degrees in Randolph’s Rosicrucian system before his literary piracy of the Randolph corpus aroused Brown’s ire. Frater Eulis, as Brown was known, alleged that Clymer merely bought the books of Randolph from his widow and reprinted them to give credence to his claim to being a Rosicrucian Grand Master.22 Brown and George Winslow Plummer mutually recognized each other’s Rosicrucian work as legitimate and formed an alliance in 1918 to allow cross-​membership and to close the door on Clymer, who was

194  The Unknown God not so easily bested. He used the power of his own press to strengthen his Rosicrucian claims while ceaselessly denigrating his rivals. Lewis stated that his Rosicrucian credentials came through a French source. The charter he had received from the “French Rosicrucians in Toulouse” was written in such poor French that Crowley sarcastically suggested to Lewis that “if they had mastered all the secrets of Nature, those of the elementary rules of French grammar still baffled them.”23 There was, however, another claimed source of Rosicrucian authority, over which Crowley ultimately claimed control. Theodor Reuss in 1921 gave Lewis an honorary VII˚ membership in the OTO as a “Gage of Amity” to AMORC.24 This honorary membership was granted to Lewis without Crowley’s knowledge. It is not clear if Reuss knew that in 1918 Crowley had offered Lewis the actual degree in the OTO; he would make Lewis a member of its Supreme Council if he would go through the ritual of the VII˚. Crowley was prepared to go further: he would accept Lewis as a Magister Templi of the A∴ A∴ if the latter would swear the oath of the grade and accept Crowley as the Magus of the Order, the Logos of the Aeon, and supreme visible authority in the A∴A∴. Crowley explained to Lewis that, as a Secret Chief or member of the Third Order (A∴A∴), if Lewis wished to work openly, he could do so in the Second Order (Ordo Rosae Rubeae et Aureae Crucis) in which he would have independent authority; he strongly discouraged any use of the name “Rosicrucian” except within the bounds of the College of the Holy Ghost. Crowley was also prepared to admit Lewis to the Order of Illuminati, as “the Supreme Authority of the Order of the Illuminati for the United States of America, as derived by uninterrupted tradition from Adam Weishaupt, is vested by Patents, which we are ready to produce, in Brother Aleister Crowley.”25 It is an extraordinary overture, of a kind Crowley never made to anyone else, before or after that date, with a prerequisite that Lewis accept the Law of Thelema. Despite the less than praiseworthy views he subsequently expressed, at the time of their initial encounter in 1917/​1918, Crowley thought highly enough of Lewis to be willing to grant him rights in every principality in his occult kingdom. Crowley and Lewis’s correspondence from this period reveals that Clymer (an “ignorant swindler” in Crowley’s words) had called on Crowley circa 1914–​1915 and he had been shown the door after a few minutes. One need not speculate why the two of them would have been at odds immediately; Clymer’s covert belief that he was the second coming of Christ under the name of “Manisis” would not have mixed well with Crowley, the Beast 666.26

Rosicrucian Amity  195 Although Clymer does not mention having met Crowley in the two volumes of The Rosicrucian Fraternity in America (n.d., ca. 1935–​1937), his deathless prose was, in Crowley’s view: filled with nothing whatever but hatred. It is to me an extraordinary circumstance that a man should be so eaten up with passion that he can put hours of time and quite large sums of money into such a monument of abuse. Even in the Middle Ages I don’t recall any controversy so prodigiously documented. An interesting point is that Clymer seems to have acquired almost magical powers through his fervour. He has obtained possession of documents which even I, who have had my nose to the business since 1912, have never heard.27

Lewis was a “rascally Rosicrucian” with whom Crowley took greater pains to establish a relationship. Lewis had been arrested in New York City on June 17, 1918, on the charge of larceny of money through the sale of bonds which represented AMORC as a recognized branch of an international organization. Seized during his arrest was a French charter purporting to be issued to Lewis by the Rosicrucians of Toulouse. After having been charged, Lewis denied that AMORC held any authority from a foreign country. Crowley repeatedly stated that, even though he disapproved of Lewis (an “ignorant charlatan,” in Crowley’s words) and his methods, at the time of his arrest he offered to go to bail for him, believing him to have been framed.28 The charges against Lewis were subsequently dropped. Lewis did not allow Crowley’s good deed to go unpunished. Jones later reported to Reuss on attending a lecture in Ruby’s company given by Lewis in Chicago on August 28, 1922. In the year prior Reuss had informed Jones of the former’s contact with Lewis and welcomed him to open relations between them. This suggestion was declined, since Jones had met Lewis in company with Crowley at the time of his arrest, and he did not believe any good could come from his association with the OTO. Following the Chicago lecture was a question-​and-​answer period; Lewis was asked, in the wake of the extensive sensational publicity in the Hearst papers, if the AMORC had any relation to the OTO. Jones believed that the question unnerved Lewis: He said: If you mean that filthy, immoral outfit run by Crowley and Jones etc., etc. . . . But I do hold Honorary High Degrees from the Head of the Order from which C. and J. never have had and never will have any authority

196  The Unknown God etc., etc. My wife who is well-​known here, objected to this filthy attack and told Mr. Lewis in no uncertain words, saying that she was a member of the Order and proud to be such, that Mr. Lewis had no right whatever to throw dirt at a perfectly clean Order to which he himself professed to belong. When he implied that she did not know what she was talking about I felt called upon to tell Mr. Lewis just where he belonged, that I represented your interests here and that he had no right to make false statements in public against his brethren. He then subsided.29

Jones knew that Crowley had his faults, but they were nothing compared to the folly displayed by Lewis when a simple question was put to him, to say nothing of the insults leveled at his Brethren. Even though his own relations with Crowley had deteriorated, Jones still felt bound to defend the Beast; however, he did not communicate Lewis’s calumnies to Crowley. For Crowley, it was now time to ask Lewis for the return of a favor: his criminal conviction in July 1934 (upheld on appeal in November 1934) and his February 1935 bankruptcy both needed funds to be resolved. He had once helped Lewis out of a frame-​up; now it was the latter’s turn to aid a Brother in similar distress. Lewis was pleased with Crowley’s offer of assistance in rebutting the libels of Clymer, but it was unnecessary, as the AMORC already possessed sufficient evidence to refute any Crowleyan connection or influence on their work and they knew that Clymer could not substantiate his claims. In his reply of November 6, 1935, Lewis made it abundantly clear that he had no fraternal relationship whatever with Crowley, whose OTO was a “spurious organization,” unapproved of and deplored by the late Theodor Reuss, the true successor of John Yarker in the Antient & Primitive Rite of Freemasonry, as well as a leader in European Rosicrucianism. At best, Crowley was a usurper of the good works of the late Frater Peregrinus. Much of what Crowley considered presented as relevant evidence to his position, including his own claim to the 97˚ of Imperial Hierophant of the Rite of Memphis (with which degree Lewis signed his letter of September 13, 1935), he dismissed out of hand. The Imperator did not deign to discuss “the European Rites of Memphis and Mizraim” with Crowley, since he did not employ any part of them in the United States, knowing full well the opprobrium their clandestine status in American Masonry would bring upon him. Lewis maintained that he had repudiated clandestine Masonry in America with the same vigor as he protested clandestine Rosicrucianism. Further, Masonry and

Rosicrucian Amity  197 Rosicrucianism were separate and distinct movements, and they were not combined in the AMORC. Crowley’s suggestion that Lewis should support his legal vindication as a means of strengthening his own position was rejected; he was in no sense subordinate to Crowley, who had asserted to him that “there seems no doubt that you possess a Charter from Reuss, and this is automatically continued by me as his successor.”30 It was exactly the sort of occult linkage Lewis strenuously denied. Crowley took pains with his response to Lewis’s polite but total rejection of his esoteric authority. In equally civil terms, Crowley presented the transition from the purely masonic activities of Yarker to Reuss’s amalgam of Masonry and Rosicrucianism to his own work as a justification of the original ideals of the Rosicrucians, without his ever openly naming them as his source—​to claim one was a Rosicrucian was a violation of the tradition. The OTO was the fulfillment of the plans of the ancient Brethren, now put forth by Crowley on a scientific basis, and its central secret of the IX˚ was the reason for its existence. Its predecessor organizations, like the extinct Antient & Primitive Rite, he was content to allow to fade into the past: My point is that it does not matter who claims to be the Head of an Order which has no existence in fact. The only Rituals workable under modern conditions are those of the O.T.O., written by me at the instigation, and under the supervision, of Reuss. The only thing that matters is the ultimate secret of the O.T.O., which is not disclosed below IX˚. That secret is important because its possession confers real powers. I do not know whether you yourself are in possession of it, as you have not claimed any degree beyond the VII˚. . . . [Y]‌ou deny very emphatically that the Scottish Rite and the Rites of Memphis and Mizraim are any factor in your claim. Yet the only document on which you base your claim is devoted to these Rites, as concentrated in the O.T.O. (which is printed in big type right across the Diploma) and nothing whatever is said about Rosicrucians. Furthermore, my own private Seal is at the foot of the document.31

Crowley urged Smith to help in his campaign to gain Lewis’s support, and he put Schneider on the same job; their cooperation was essential to a successful outcome. The Beast had tired of hearing of their endless personality conflicts, even though he contributed his share to their perpetuation. If an English representative of Clymer’s could be found who was circulating his literature,

198  The Unknown God Crowley hoped to sue him for libel. Lewis would no doubt be happy to provide the funds for this suit. He suggested that Smith and Schneider try to get information from both the Lewis and the Clymer camps, and on this basis of Rosicrucian amity use one against the other. Schneider wrote to Lewis on September 5, 1935, denouncing Clymer, praising Crowley, and seeking an interview with the Imperator. Lewis’s reply of September 9, 1935 (WTS Papers), suggested that Schneider first meet with their Los Angeles chairman of the AMORC’s “welfare and grievance committee.” Schneider ultimately made no headway with Lewis via the mail; Louis T. Culling reported that he subsequently called on Lewis in person circa 1938 and was told by the latter, “I do not trust Aleister Crowley” and shown the door. Smith was not in favor of this latest battle plan of the Beast. In response to his letter to Clymer of December 25, 1935, Smith received a selection of Clymer’s pamphlets, which only induced nausea; Spann was clearly an agent of Clymer. He wrote to Spann that he declined to ally himself to Clymer in his malign ignorance of the spiritual path; he could hardly believe Lewis was any worse. Historical claims of Rosicrucian authority were not important to Smith. A practical man, Smith’s interests were in the realities of the here-​and-​now, and Crowley had more than adequately demonstrated to him that the secret the OTO possessed was a vital and transformative one: No stress on any Rosicrucian authority has been made by us at any time: the O.T.O. sails purely under its own banner. Nor will it ever be made, if for no other reason than that the Rosicrucian order is entirely defunct in respect to that which alone gives any vitality, namely, the knowledge of the secret of the Gnosis, which at this date reposes in the sanctuary of the O.T.O. and none other. Mr. Lewis’s Honorary 7˚ certificate is in no sense of the word a charter or authority for operating the O.T.O. degrees, which however he does not claim to be doing. I feel that I should make my personal stand clear to you on the matter of authority. . . . I have never seen the documentary evidence in Mr. Crowley’s possession. Nor do I feel it necessary that I should. My long dealings with him, and close study of his writings, have revealed certain matters non-​ existent in any other modern literature, and only darkly hinted at in some of the old classical writings.32

Rosicrucian Amity  199 Once again, Smith’s approach was all wrong, in Crowley’s view. He proposed that the next logical step was for Smith to file a claim on Crowley’s behalf to ownership of the property of the AMORC. Clymer had published adequate proof, in the eyes of the Beast, to show that Lewis had been claiming to operate under the jurisdiction of the OTO, whose assets were vested in its Sovereign Sanctuary. Lewis had produced no other authority, and Crowley wanted to take quick action after he had received reports of Lewis suffering a stroke. To see this action started, Crowley circulated a memorandum to raise funds for the proposed lawsuit; presuming a favorable outcome of his suit against Lewis, he would propose to set aside $125,000 for the satisfaction of any possible claims against the estate, either by the Government or previous members of the Order [AMORC] who are found to have legitimate grievance against Mr. Lewis. His ultimate aim is to establish the Order on a large scale in the United States and elsewhere, on a basis of the most scrupulous honesty.33

He was prepared to offer investors a return on their money; had he succeeded, he could have been charged with the crime of champerty. In this, the latest battle for occult hegemony, he enlisted the services of a Chicago attorney, Elmer Gertz,34 with whom he shared an appreciation for Frank Harris. Proving his authority in the OTO to the satisfaction of a court presented some problems. During Crowley’s bankruptcy, many of his papers had been left with his attorney Isidore Kerman. Crowley could not locate his OTO charters from Reuss, but he still had in his possession his honorary 33˚ certificate from the Antient & Primitive Rite, as well as his dispensation from Yarker. Crowley’s pretense to ownership of the AMORC had as much chance of being taken seriously in a court of law as his prior attempts to be proclaimed the head of the TS when he was not so much as a member. There was no question of a legitimate claim, which did not prevent Crowley from asserting the existence of one to anyone who would listen. Even though Crowley persisted through Spencer Lewis’s death in 1939 in trying to gather support, it was a one-​sided dispute going nowhere. Smith prudently devoted no more time to this fundraising campaign. Instead, Smith busied himself with cultivating local prospects, which undertaking seemed to hold out more promise than lawsuits against Lewis or Clymer. Dr. Vernon Bernard Herbst (1885–​1950) had been introduced to Max by Crowley, whom he had met in London. Max took him to meet Smith

200  The Unknown God on January 20. Herbst made it plain to Smith that he knew the secret of the IX˚. He wanted Smith to read all the OTO degrees to him, which seemed far too rushed a process; instead, he read him through the Minerval degree and obligated him thereon. Herbst wanted more details on the IX˚, which Smith properly refused him; Crowley had interested the doctor in his experiments in magical rejuvenation.35 Although they could tell Herbst had money, it was clear he did not want to commit himself further to the OTO. Herbst put Jane under a vow of silence, highly approved of by Crowley, but to no apparent end! Without prior notice, Herbst left Los Angeles for China in May, taking with him a copy of the Blue Equinox loaned to him by Smith, and was never heard from again. Carrie Dinsmore introduced the Thelemites to the Rev. Wayne Walker, a New Thought lecturer and metaphysician.36 Walker, the founder of “The Voice of Healing” in Huntington Beach, claimed to be one of the seven priests of the Order of Melchizedek, and had been recently promoted to the office of “Prince Iole Eloi Sun, Kulkuthma Ray.” His occult mission was to take charge of all inner activity destined to bring about world peace. With this grand aim in view, Mrs. Dinsmore thought he would be an asset to the Thelemites. Smith tried his best to interest Walker in Agape Lodge and the teachings of the OTO, which would perhaps have held some parallels to Walker’s thought. He held a special celebration of the Gnostic Catholic Mass on February 15, 1936, for Walker, his disciples, and other friends, including the popular Hawaiian novelist Ethel Armine von Tempski Ball (1892–​1943) and the artist and Theosophist Frederick John de St. Vrain Schwankovsky (1885–​1974), the high school art teacher of Jackson Pollock.37 Smith, Regina, Max, Jane, and Jacobi were curious enough to drive down to Long Beach on February 21 to witness one of Walker’s initiation ceremonies. His ritual work left Smith duly unimpressed; even so, he felt that Walker was the type of man they needed to lead the “Men of Earth” of the OTO. Smith believed that he had also taken a fancy to Regina, whose ministrations Smith was ready to employ to draw in the Rev. Walker. Crowley urged Max to bring Walker into the fold posthaste: I think you ought to harpoon Wayne Walker without delay. Go and tackle his beastly secretaries and people. Give my warmest greetings to Irene Love [Walker’s secretary] and tell her that I will show her what love means. Make her tackle Walker properly. Put the facts before him, and get him to assist us in corralling the AMORC. She must cable him, she must call him up on

Rosicrucian Amity  201 long distance, she must perform the IX˚ to bring him back. But he has got to help us to put a cinch on Rosicrucian Park, which we shall turn into a Country Club, so as to be able to live in nice little tents in the desert and look at our noses. Less enthusiastically, Wayne Walker must be made to see that this is the great opportunity of his life to pick up the crop of tares sown by Lewis, and Burbank them into the high great wheat of the O.T.O.38

Max had a long private interview with Walker; he made him privy to all the details of the AMORC situation, including showing him Crowley’s correspondence with H. Spencer Lewis, all in the hopes that there was a capitalist among his numerous followers. With the approval of Smith, he suggested to Walker that he had a natural right to the V˚ of OTO. Walker did not regard Lewis as a true Rosicrucian—​it was he who suggested that Lewis had recently suffered a stroke—​and he seemed favorably inclined to accept To Mega Therion as the head of the Great White Brotherhood. It was all for naught. Within the month, Walker refused to have anything to do with the proposed lawsuit and the contact with him ceased forthwith. Walker’s unique theological amalgam—​everything from Christian Science to Theosophy to its degeneration in the American Fascist movement of the “Mighty ‘I AM’ Presence” of Guy and Edna Ballard—​did not bond to Thelema as practiced by the members of the OTO in the Valley of Los Angeles (in particular, Carrie Dinsmore thought he reacted badly to the atmosphere of sexual freedom they espoused). Crowley exercised the art of getting in the last word on the Rev. Walker, who went from ally to enemy in rapid succession: I am not surprised at all about Wayne Walker. At the same time, anything he says means nothing. If anything should happen to make him feel the draught he will come running back, and then you can jump with both feet and make him do whatever you want, taking care that he has no loop-​hole of escape. These people are all the same, even when they are hardened by long years of successful crime. What they cannot overcome is the consciousness of guilt. Even when they have everyone else completely buffaloed, there is that sinking feeling in the small hours of the morning, and they are likely to collapse before any one, however humble, who sees through them. They employ all the tactics of a hunted animal, even when there is no one on their trail.39

202  The Unknown God Agape Lodge No. 1—​the only functioning OTO lodge in the world under Crowley’s direction—​had worked steadily. Since its inception in September 1935, they had held regular meetings for degrees, study classes and lectures for the members, as well as open social events, now termed “O.T.O. Parties” and the weekly celebration of the Gnostic Catholic Mass. By April 1936 they staged for the first time Crowley’s rewritten I˚, with Jane and Mary Green as the candidates, each given the degree separately. The guest register shows how successful they were at attracting people to the profess house. They greeted Paul Foster Case as a welcome visitor to their weekly Mass on May 17. The event was sufficiently newsworthy that Smith wrote to Crowley: Paul Case, of the old time Golden Dawn, was here for the first time last night. I mentioned him to you a long time ago as the fellow who had the Equinox and other works which he used for his source of supply for lecturing and classes, but that he kept them and you as the author very much under cover. In fact, I recently met a lady who had catalogued his library and had been asked not to reveal the fact of these books being in his possession. However, I introduced him as one who was a keen student of your works, possessing a well worn set of the Equinox, etc. I think he is all right as far as he goes, but I don’t think that is very far. He has apparently started some organization of his own in Pasadena.40

Crowley noted in return: “I met Paul Case. Not too bad, if he has settled down and doesn’t try to be too clever.”41 Although Max and Smith were cooperating, their mutual antagonism never more than receded temporarily from public view. Jealousy was its root: Max coveted what Smith worked to achieve. High on the list of problems was that Max was sexually frustrated: he bemoaned the lack of a constant female partner for Magick. Through no efforts of his own, there was a new lover on the line. She was Georgia Haitz,42 a petite divorced mother of one, who soon became a Probationer of the A∴A∴ and an initiate of the OTO. Smith had an affair with Georgia when she first started attending the Gnostic Catholic Mass in February at Regina’s invitation. Smith admired Georgia’s lack of inhibitions and thought she had potential. His Priestess Regina, who mistakenly believed she was pregnant, was not pleased that the Priest was sharing his love with Georgia during her period of ill health. During one of his operations with Georgia, Regina stormed in and broke the spell. Smith made love to Regina to restore peace in the profess house.43 As a permanent

Rosicrucian Amity  203 solution, Smith suggested that Max take Georgia off his hands, which he did gladly, beginning the night of her Minerval initiation at the Spring Equinox. The new affair came with some strings attached. Georgia was burdened with an angry former lover, George Daly, who took pleasure in stalking and harassing her for her occult beliefs. Daly, who boasted of having burned down Voudon temples in Haiti while in the U.S. military, also threatened Max by calls to his employer and Mary K. Wolfe, resulting in a hearing before the Los Angeles City Attorney. Smith asked Max to keep the OTO out of this mess, and only refer to the Church of Thelema, but Daly, who had a copy of Magick in Theory and Practice, did all he could to drag down the reputations of the Thelemites—​Daly had suggested it was the practice of the OTO to “outrage” its female candidates upon initiation. During the hearing, Daly was legally restrained and no public scandal erupted, to Smith’s relief. The ordeal of Daly only brought Max and Georgia closer together; they found in each other a magical partnership that was to continue for the next seven years. It put a stopper to Crowley’s complaint that, aside from Regina, Max and Smith wasted too much energy chasing every loose woman that wandered into their midst. Georgia seriously studied Magick with Max and began writing directly to Crowley. It grew into an exchange unique in Crowley’s correspondence where he explicated his ideas on the role of women in the sex magic of the OTO. With the coming of summer in 1936, the Beast had decided the time had come for a proper ceremonial publication as instructed in the text of The Book of the Law. This issue, ostensibly a new number of The Equinox, was entitled The Equinox of the Gods. It was initially published in a privately subscribed edition of 250 copies.44 Smith and the members of Agape Lodge were only too happy to subscribe to the limits of their checkbooks, and a bit beyond. Smith and Regina immediately donated $100 to the cause, as did Mary Green; Max, Jane, Georgia, and Jacobi pledged their utmost, for a total of $351, in which number the Thelemites saw qabalistic significance. Crowley was delighted with their prompt and generous response, and once again held out the prospects that he would be with them in Los Angeles, to arrive at the autumnal equinox. He planned a superior edition of The Equinox of the Gods, priced at one guinea, and sought pre-​press subscriptions from the Californian Thelemites. There was trouble brewing among the Thelemites, and it was being fed from afar by Crowley. The Beast thrived on Max’s negativity and reflected it back to him many times over. His letters to Max are full of pointed criticisms

204  The Unknown God of Smith, derived from Max’s slanted reports; Crowley’s remarks were then used by Max to undermine Smith’s every move. Even the most innocent of activities—​Smith used lodge funds to buy a bolt of black cloth to make robes for the members—​was turned into an occasion for fault-​finding, from which even Germer was not exempt: Of course each member should buy his or her own robes. It’s awful black magic to have communal uniforms. 132 does seems to have a small mind. Selfish. Afraid of letting any one else have a say in his show. Like Cecil B. de Mille, he finds it “terribly lonely at the top.” These people need smacking, and I’m the boy for the job. It’s so short-​sighted. . . . Frightfully busy. Deserted in the crisis by Germer, as expected. It’s the only thing one can rely on him to do. Curse all his egoism and vanity!45

Max called on Jacobi at his residence in Glendale where he had moved the year prior, asking for further financial assistance, but before he could get a word out, Jacobi shot back, “I am broke. I haven’t any money.” Then a bomb was dropped: Smith called for an impromptu meeting on August 14 to announce the resignation of Jacobi from the Church of Thelema and Agapae Lodge No. 1, OTO. The evening prior, Smith had received an anonymous telephone call that their employer, the Southern California Gas Company, had investigated the OTO. His bosses were planning to fire Jacobi for his involvement with such an “immoral Order,” where the candidate was stripped naked in the third degree (they did strip the candidate in the I˚, but they had yet to perform the III˚). The caller claimed they also knew that Jacobi was living with a lady of the order, Mlle. Marguerite De Dormont, which was true. Smith telephoned Jacobi with the sorry report. Jake’s response was to send a letter severing relations with the OTO. Smith advised him to go to the head of the gas company and demand an interview. Jacobi did, and it only redoubled his desire to cease any contact with Smith and the Thelemites. Smith for his trouble had his small salary docked and his position reduced to bookkeeper. Smith laid the trouble at Marguerite’s door, that she was pressuring Jacobi to quit, even though she, too, was a member. The books and records he held as treasurer of the lodge were allegedly turned over to Max, who was playing a game with them, to Smith’s detriment.

Rosicrucian Amity  205 Max had his own view of these events, highly prejudicial to Smith and communicated by letter and cable to Crowley. The gas company, Jacobi allegedly told Max, had spent a lot of money on the investigation; their real targets were Smith and Regina, whom they suspected of “illegal activities.” They were previously unaware of his living with Marguerite and they did not particularly care, so long as some measure of decency was maintained. In Max’s version, Jacobi left because he felt Smith was making him the “goat” of this investigation, and he would not suffer his domination any longer. Max point-​ blank claimed that Jacobi refused to juggle the account books of the lodge to suit Smith, whom the former accused behind his back of misappropriating funds, yet the records were nowhere in evidence—​Jacobi told Smith the treasurer’s files could be found at the bottom of the Pacific. His girlfriend Marguerite’s dissatisfaction was due to Regina’s manipulations; according to Max, Regina had propositioned Marguerite to meet a man, with the phrase, “There is $20—​and a bottle of perfume waiting for you.”46 By early September, Jacobi had married Marguerite and promised his employers that he would have no further dealing with Smith and Regina; he never communicated his side of the story to Crowley. The conflicting reports alternately confused and bored the Phoenix, the Frater Superior of the OTO. He demanded clarification: his letter was sent to Max to be handed to Smith: There appears to be dissatisfaction in some quarters about the administration of the finances. There have been some suggestions that commercial considerations have entered into the sexual relations of people either inside or outside of the Lodge: it doesn’t matter which. You know perfectly well that you can’t run the O.T.O. as a racket: and that traffic in sex is an abomination. You knew all this had been reported to me, but I get no explanation beyond a quite unintelligible letter from Sor∴ 516 [Jane Wolfe]. I am afraid that 1746 N. Winona Boulevard will be “out of bounds” until this matter is cleared up to my absolute satisfaction. If you have a defense, you had better cable me; otherwise I shall be obliged to make your suspension public, and withhold supplies.47

To be so misunderstood floored Smith. He cabled back a lengthy reply to these outrageous accusations.

206  The Unknown God ASTOUNDED BEYOND MEASURE UTTERLY AND COMPLETELY FALSE ENTIRELY IGNORANT OF TRAFFIC EXCEPT MATRIMONIAL NO KNOWLEDGE OF REPORT YOU RECEIVED MY PERCEPTION OF NINTH ELEVENTH AND TRIGRAMMATON SHOULD BE EVIDENCE OF REVEREND ATTITUDE OUR YEARS OF CORRESPONDENCE OUGHT TO HAVE ESTABLISHED HONESTY LOYALTY INTEGRITY AND SINCERITY STOP THROUGH SELF DENIAL RS SALARY AND MINE HAVE KEP THINGS GOING TRUST CASH TO LONDON NO FUNDS TO MANIPULATE EXCEPT SALARIES WRITING.48

Smith followed his telegram with a detailed letter, supported by one of Jane’s. She upheld Smith’s version of events; she knew of no reports to Crowley, and she unhesitatingly branded the allegations of prostitution a malicious lie. Faithful to the truth as she perceived it, she prophetically opined that neither the order nor the Mass could survive the withdrawal of Smith. The Mass continued, but in view of the attacks on their work by Max and Crowley, Smith ceased all lodge activities with the meeting of August 27, 1936. They would not resume for another three years. In the face of this spirited defense, Crowley dropped the matter, for the moment. The charges were never dismissed; the sentence was rather temporarily withheld, as time would show. The correspondence with Smith resumed as if nothing had occurred. Crowley promised Max he would get to the bottom of this when he visited California, but “Re-​or Va-​gina” made him wonder. He could not correlate Max’s seemingly accurate and detailed reports of Jacobi’s departure with Smith’s view that it was an upset with no serious basis. None of them lost their jobs in the affair; Crowley opined that Jacobi was frightened, and blamed Smith for his panic reaction. Amid these multiple exchanges, Crowley sought further opinions on the merits of Frater 132. Even though he doubted that the matter could be cleared up by correspondence—​he again urged Max to send money for his trip to Los Angeles where he would “make the fur fly”—​in a letter of September 16, 1936, he suggested that Max write to his former mentor, C. Stansfeld Jones, to gain his insights into the troubles he had had with Smith. It contradicted what Crowley wrote to Jones only a few weeks earlier: “I had it in my mind that Smith was your most intimate co-​worker, and if I ever heard that you had quarrelled with him, it has certainly made no impression on my mind.”49 Jones had occasionally written to Crowley since their break in 1925, but he failed to get a single reply. Their long separation, Crowley explained, was

Rosicrucian Amity  207 no doubt due to the plans of the Gods, who had striven to keep his principal colleagues separated from the Beast’s influence for varying periods of time. Crowley had reopened their correspondence during the summer of 1936. Jones shared Crowley’s concerns regarding H. Spencer Lewis; Crowley could not recall precisely who introduced him to Lewis. It could have been Jones; he was certain, however, that he had no prior connection with Lewis prior to their few meetings in 1918. Although Crowley admitted Lewis held only an honorary diploma from the late OHO, he still felt that he could be forced by law to hand over the property of the AMORC to the OTO. Crowley’s chief reason for resuming their connection concerned the publication of The Equinox of the Gods, in which Jones once again appeared in the imprimatur of the A∴A∴ as its Cancellarius (Chancellor). It was puzzling: hadn’t Jones been removed from this office in 1925, to say nothing of membership in the order itself? The question of titles was strictly a functional one, in Crowley’s view. The moving hand had written and moved on: I do not think you understand my attitude about persons and their offices. I cannot be bored with any of it. When playing chess, one does not argue about the respective functions of the pieces. They perform those functions, and there is no further trouble. I have done all that is necessary in suggesting that the publication of the book initiates a new current, and having done this, I have no more to say.50

Where Smith was concerned, Jones had nothing more to say to Schneider. True to his obligations in the OTO, he readily perceived that the same methods were now being used against Smith in Los Angeles as had been previously employed against him in Chicago, and by the same persons. After the break in 1925, Jones had a lasting distrust of Crowley and Schneider. It is hard to imagine that Max was guileless in the present exchange, but nonetheless he mailed his letter of inquiry to Jones, who in turn immediately forwarded Schneider’s letter to Smith. The only reply Schneider would receive was a copy of Jones’s cover letter to Smith, stating that “there has never been any trouble between you and myself, in early Vancouver days or at any other time,” adding that his Brother “may now possibly understand the sort of thing I had to put up with in Chicago after having done my best to work up a decent movement.”51 Jones reiterated the good nature of his relations with Smith to Crowley; there had been only sparse communications between them as they had little in common for many years.

208  The Unknown God Thinking Jones had left Thelema behind him, Smith had not seen fit to correspond with Jones since the break. The latter was previously unaware of the revival of OTO activities in the Valley of Los Angeles; he was formally notified by the Phoenix, who asked to hear officially from Tantalus Leucocephalus X˚. Matters of the OTO had gone unattended in their decade of silence; it was time for a cleanup. Jones seized the moment to assert what he believed was his authority from Reuss over the OTO in all North America, choosing to ignore the overriding and supreme authority given to the OHO. In his boldness he informed the Phoenix that any OTO work in Los Angeles was clandestine, being done “without the knowledge, consent or cognizance of the authorized Grand Master for the United States of North America who has given no permission whatever for any such working within the State of California.”52 This declaration was not an attack on Smith, but rather Jones’s condemnation of the furtive interpersonal dealings of Crowley and Schneider to the harm of a Brother. He did not want a repeat of what had been done in the past in the name of the OTO; in his view, Crowley had put Smith in a false position and was now attacking him prior to removing him from it. Jones told Crowley bluntly that he now knew of the “rotten treatment being accorded to Smith by the same parties and will neither countenance nor be drawn into such things.”53 He suggested a return to the silence they had maintained for the prior 10 years. Attempting to get in the last word, Crowley responded with a letter signed “O.S.V. 6˚ =​5□”: I am afraid that I never had any doubt, since you went in to the U.B. swindle, that the box of books was being held in anticipation of my death. I have looked up the affair; everything confirms this. You had certainly embezzled the proceeds of sales of stock for years: so why try to find fantastic explanations of the obvious?54

Jones repudiated Crowley’s conclusions as “utterly false” (as indeed they were later proven to be) and maintained that by persisting in this error of judgment, Crowley had not only harmed Jones but “from the higher, wider or more occult standpoint, have in all probability brought upon yourself and the work you represent a degree of failure which would not have manifested had your mind and thoughts been truly directed in this connection.”55 His call for Frater O.S.V. to purify his consciousness and make

Rosicrucian Amity  209 amends for the wrongs done in thought to a Brother met with a precisely contrary response. Crowley wrote a letter of expulsion, finding Jones guilty of larceny, fraud, and embezzlement, and forwarded the original to Smith for transmission to Jones, who was thereby removed from the OTO, forthwith and all: We hereby degrade him from all dignities in the Order and We expel him from the Order and We sentence him to undergo the full penalties prescribed by the Statutes of the Order and furthermore to suffer the penalties incurred by him in breaking his Obligation to Us and to the Order. And we hereby charge our Acting Deputy Grand Master General in California the Thrice Illustrious Thrice Holy and Thrice Illuminated Frater Wilfred Smith Hon X˚ with the promulgation of this judgment and sentence in all proper quarters.56

Smith followed his orders; in his cover letter to Jones, he expressed his regrets for having to send him the enclosure. He had vainly hoped that their renewed correspondence meant Jones was returning to Thelema. Paul Foster Case confirmed to Jane that it was not so, and that Jones was running some sort of a church. It is not clear to what this might refer. At the time, Jones was a Canadian representative of the Universal Pansophic Society for North America and Mexico, a mystical society of claimed Rosicrucian origins. The letter of expulsion had slight effect on Jones, who wrote Smith that he took no notice of it, as it was not signed by any authority he recognized. Baphomet (not the proper name of the current OHO, but that of a Past Grand Master)—​never had any right to make appointments in the United States, including Smith’s. He again repudiated the “purely fictitious” charges of theft.57 Their mutual release had settled all business claims for eternity. Jones had been falsely accused, but the proof would not be found until after his and Crowley’s death. The successor firm to the Leonard Warehouses located the long-​lost case in 1958, containing over 125 finely bound books and manuscripts, including the manuscripts of The Vision and the Voice and The Book of Lies. The case was purchased by the stage magic historian Robert J. Lund (1925–​1995), who in turn sold most of the contents to a New York collector, Philip Kaplan.58 Unlike the denunciation of Russell, Smith saw no reason to circulate Crowley’s latest expulsion of a former colleague to anyone other than its subject. It brought finality to their occult relations. Although Smith reiterated

210  The Unknown God to Jones that it was obvious the latter had dropped his connection with the A∴A∴ years ago in favor of the UB, Jones still held on to his authority in the OTO over which Crowley ruled as the OHO by Jones’s prior acceptance. He had no choice other than, as in the masonic phrase, to take due notice and govern himself accordingly. It was an unwelcome denouement, but Smith now knew with certainty that he alone represented the OTO in North America. Even so, it was time to lie low.

16 Chants before Battle There followed a fallow period. Smith continued the weekly celebration of the Gnostic Catholic Mass, but Max and his venomous attacks, strengthened by his frequent quotation of the “septic” criticisms of Crowley, had their effect and attendance plummeted. In his hatred for Smith, Max even went so far as to lie to people and tell them that Smith had moved away and that the celebrations of the Mass had ceased. The year 1937 thankfully passed without incident, real or manufactured for the benefit of others. Both Smith and Jane were concerned about how their letters and the one-​sided tales of Max had only created problems with Crowley. The correspondence was kept to an absolute minimum. Their discretion, which had replaced their willingness to trust all to the Beast, would never meet with his satisfaction; he viewed it as evasion. There was no pleasing Crowley; even Jane commented that any amount of money sent to Crowley only increased the demands in the following letter. The atmosphere around the profess house had been spoiled. It was time to start afresh. Once again, Regina’s social skills helped strengthen the work to which both Kahl and Smith were dedicated. For several years, Regina taught drama classes at the adult night program of the Los Angeles City College. Little did the students know that their class materials were largely composed of the plays and verse of Aleister Crowley! She gradually befriended several of her promising students, all young people who seemed ripe for Thelema: Phyllis Pratt,1 Luther Livingston Carroll (1914–​1944), known as “Lew,” and his wife Antoinette, known as Toni. Phyllis, Lew, and Toni all moved into the profess house on November 11, 1937. Phyllis, who was working as a bank clerk, was attracted to the atmosphere of cultural and intellectual stimulation that swirled around Regina and Smith. Lew, a Baptist preacher’s son, had been involved in the Hollywood homosexual underground. He rejected the faith of his father in preference to Thelema and was groomed for the part of Deacon in the Church of Thelema. Toni’s stay was of short duration. To Lew’s relief, the following January she went off in search of another man. At the same time, Phyllis also moved out of the profess house, The Unknown God. Martin P. Starr, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2024. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197744512.003.0016

212  The Unknown God replaced by her future husband and father of her daughters, Paul Hamacher Seckler, Jr. (1916–​1992); he also practiced the Deacon’s part. Lew and Paul became Probationers under Smith.2 He liked these young people and appreciated their rejection of Christianity; none of them were, in his words, “would-​be occultists.” Too many of the former OTO crowd had started out in the Choronzon Club and they had their outlook ruined by Russell. He hoped that this fresh crop of open minds, nurtured by Regina, would serve as the nucleus for Thelema in the Valley of Los Angeles. The collapse of the Choronzon Club and Russell’s rejection of Thelema led another former member to the order. While working in a San Diego bookstore in the summer of 1937, Louis T. Culling3 wrote to Crowley via the English publisher, William Rider, with a request to be accepted as a Probationer of the A∴A∴. “Louie,” as he was known, was born in St. Louis to a prosperous family (owners of the Carondelet Foundry) and was educated at the Missouri Botanical Gardens. He was a veteran of World War I who had survived the conflict with serious injuries to his chest. On return to civilian life, he worked as a theater organist until the arrival of the talkies; for lack of anything better to do, he had become a homesteader in Rainbow Valley near Fallbrook, California, a beautiful but sparsely populated place in the foothills of the Palomar Mountains. Louie was a Regular Freemason with a longtime interest in astrology and the occult.4 He had joined the Choronzon Club in 1931 and had risen to the rank of “Neighborhood Primate” for the San Diego lodge; they, like the San Francisco lodge, worked the system precisely as Russell had ordained it. He held Russell in the highest esteem as a teacher: his lessons and rituals were voluminous, time-​consuming, and effective—​so much so that Culling felt their power was Russell’s undoing. Reflecting on the comparison, Culling opined that the OTO could not legitimately claim to be a school of Magick: The G.B.G. was a serious Magick Work School. On the other hand the O.T.O. is merely a quasi-​fraternal group, giving three degrees of ritual in rather poor comparison to the three degrees of Freemasonry. In this country, after taking the money from the candidate for the first three degrees, he was then regarded as a likely source to donate money for some person and his work, of which the new members knew nothing. He did not even know for what reason he had spent money for the three degrees—​he got nothing of substantial value for his money. If he or she was not a blindly following nonentity, who freely donated more money for an unknown

Chants before Battle  213 cause, then he or she was treated as a piker—​said pikers dropped out, sadder and no wiser.5

Culling finally broke with Russell over the latter’s attempt to “abrogate” The Book of the Law by magical operations.6 Crowley gave Culling the addresses of Smith and Schneider; he wrote to the latter at once, who accepted him as a Probationer of the A∴A∴ on September 12, 1937. Their personalities immediately clashed. Max did not approve of Culling using the same magical name in the A∴A∴ as he had in the Choronzon Club; his advice was rejected by Culling, who had admitted to an extreme dislike of autocratic authority, which had been heightened by his military service. From the beginning, Culling made it clear he would not be dominated by what he termed the “seniority system” in force among the California Thelemites. After all, he had a direct line to Crowley, too. Culling was a keen observer with a sharp tongue and was unafraid to express himself, all of which made him unpopular with some of the followers who took a more complacent role. Max was denying himself food to send more money to Crowley, which only earned him Culling’s scorn. Louie was a witness to Max and Georgia’s one-​sided hatred of Smith and all his works when they first took him to see the Gnostic Catholic Mass at the profess house; Culling pronounced their performance letter-​perfect. Out of his original 600-​acre homestead grant in Rainbow Valley, Culling had succeeded in retaining 200 acres. There he maintained what he called his shack, a roughly elegant cabin he had built himself. Culling took Max and Georgia for a visit and they were delighted. Louie offered that, should Crowley visit the United States—​a visit was again said to be in the offing—​ he would give him the shack. Max misunderstood this to mean that Culling was making over his entire property as a gift and duly informed Crowley. The excitement in Crowley’s response is palpable. Max was asked to ascertain the details of foreign ownership of real estate, and to be certain that this transfer would not be mixed up with Smith’s Church of Thelema, which was a wound that never healed: “Some years ago Smith registered something or other in the State of California, but he called it, I think, Rex Summus Sanctissimus, under the impression that it was the name of an organization instead of my own private title. It annoyed me very much at the time.”7 When it became clear that Max had misconstrued Culling’s offer, the latter was viewed as an irresponsible welsher. Under pressure from Max, in April 1939 Culling deeded to him 20 acres of his homestead, which Max held in trust

214  The Unknown God for Crowley. To raise funds to help develop the property, Crowley wanted Max to send him photographs of random movie stars’ summer residences. Although he admitted these photographs would not be accurate, the best he could do regarding the property would be to “dangle it as bait in connection with the Lewis business,”8 as he still hoped to find backers for his suit to take over the AMORC. Neither the prospects of real estate development nor the lawsuit had a future; they were more dreams that went unfulfilled. Culling’s generosity extended to Smith as well: he deeded 40 acres of his homestead to the Church of Thelema in 1942. He retained the portion with “Louie’s Shack,” which he would later offer as a place of retirement. There was another opportunity for thelemic development in Rainbow Valley. Culling introduced Smith to a neighboring landowner in Rainbow Valley and former member of his Choronzon Club lodge, Floyd E. Wade, who had a raw 640-​acre parcel which he had tried to develop over the last decade. Wade was inspired by the fantasy of the Abbey of Thelema described in Crowley’s The Diary of a Drug Fiend (1922) and he wished to make it a reality. Other esoteric orders had been offered the land; now it was the OTO’s turn to make good on his vision. A primary condition of his offer was that he wanted the land developed as a working farm to serve as a retreat from the materialist world and a center of spiritual harmony. Smith considered the location to be ideal, and all indications were positive. Smith and Regina, along with Roy and Reea Leffingwell,9 called on Wade at his ranch on August 28, 1939. There they celebrated the Gnostic Catholic Mass in the rough. Smith offered an impromptu dedication of what he christened “Agapae Valley”: “Be this Valley and the hills, the earth thereof and the water, the air and the fire, consecrated to the Great Work and the establishment of the Law of Thelema.”10 Wade was then given the Minerval and I˚, all of which seemed to bode well for his devotion to the order. Adjoining property was available, which if acquired would give them almost the entire valley. It remained to be seen with what resources he might accomplish this, as Smith wanted to acquire Wade’s portion as a gift, and he had no cash on hand to buy the rest. There were also no funds to develop Wade’s property as a farm, which he impatiently desired to see accomplished immediately. Among the circle of their “Crowley Night” attendees, Smith had befriended two brothers, Carl and Harry Pastor,11 who were game to help with the farm labor. It was an offer that seemed too good to be true, and it did not take very long for the unpleasant facts to emerge. Wade suffered from fears of conspiracy

Chants before Battle  215 and intrigue against him, and within days of their visit he was convinced that it was Smith’s entire plan to separate him from his land without bothering to develop it. Even Wade’s attraction to Regina, strengthened by a later private visit, did not mollify his irrational worries, and according to Culling only made him jealous of Smith. His interminable ranting letters to Smith were met with short, polite responses attempting to keep his mind off his delusions that a variety of persons, from the Masons to the Choronzon Club to the local sheriff, were trying to have him declared mentally incompetent so that they might steal his land. It was yet another dead end; even Smith’s offer of his longtime friend Jonas Erickson12 to help Wade around the ranch was met with still more accusations and threats. Smith let Wade’s offer drop, though he briefly followed up the matter with the county tax assessor. And after all the trouble for Smith, Wade’s land was sold by the State of California in June 1940 for delinquent taxes. Another newcomer to Thelema was Roy Leffingwell,13 a pianist and composer with many years of exposure to a variety of esoteric systems. He was known as the “musical philosopher of the air” and “Pasadena’s greatest booster” as the official announcer of the city’s annual Tournament of Roses. He later hosted a children’s radio program on Radio KHJ-​AM Los Angeles, but his career was cut short when an off-​color remark of his was broadcast, to his chagrin. Having found Smith’s address in a set of Magick in Theory and Practice, he wrote to him in February 1938, requesting a personal interview. Leffingwell had married early in life; his wife Reea, mother of his four children, was the dominant personality in the family. He owned a home in Baldwin Park, but he felt that he was ready for the Abyss, having been stripped of most of his other worldly possessions to the point that only with a mortgage could he raise the small initiation fees for the OTO. He must have found a way, as “Agapae Camp” reconvened on February 24, 1938, for the exclusive purpose of initiating Roy in the Minerval and I˚. The Camp went dark again until August 1939; on its reopening the Leffingwells were frequent and enthusiastic participants. By the close of 1939, Leffingwell had persuaded most of his immediate family to become members of Agapae Camp: his wife Reea; his daughter Ruth Marie Soulé and her husband Harold S. Soulé; and his daughter Flory Reid and her husband Raymond W. Reid. He also recruited his friends John Arthur Eller (1899–​1986) and his wife Thelma A. Eller (1904–​1969). Roy considered the prospects of selling his Baldwin Park home and taking up residence in Rainbow Valley—​he and Reea had attended Wade’s on-​site

216  The Unknown God initiation—​but he instead chose to look for property in the Mojave Desert near Barstow. His clan did not stay happy members for long. In March 1940, offended by the sexual atmosphere at the profess house, they withdrew from the Camp while reaffirming their loyalty to the order. Reea had taken offense at a Halloween skit that was filled with harmless double entendres. She also took offense that Smith had allegedly made advances to Leffingwell’s daughter Ruth prior to her marriage; Roy was not bothered by what he considered Thelemic behavior. Thelma Eller, who had left her husband before for years at a time, freely offered herself to Smith, evoking John’s blind rage. The Ellers withdrew. And there were issues of social dominance. Reea, the boss of her family, could not abide Regina’s control of the group, which was a sore spot for Jane as well. In the breach, Roy felt it essential to assert his patria potestas; as he put it, “I dragged them in, I will drag them out.”14 Their departure caused another gap in the minutes; Agapae Camp did not reconvene until March 1941, for the initiation of Jack and Helen Parsons. In the period before the war, the entrance of the Parsons couple marked a definite transition in Smith’s life. Theirs was a seemingly happy and conventional marriage of two young Pasadenans, but there was much more “brooding and breeding” beneath the tranquil surface of their lives. This pair of Shakespearean “starre-​crost lovers” set the stage for the events which shaped the remainder of Smith’s life. None of the three anticipated where their association would lead them. Jack, whose birth name of Marvel Whiteside Parsons was later styled John Whiteside Parsons (1914–​1952), was the only surviving child of parents who separated in his first year of life. Jack’s father, Marvel Harold Parsons (1889–​ 1947), moved back in with his well-​to-​do parents Charles H. and Addie (née Marvel) Parsons in his hometown of Springfield, Massachusetts, and enlisted in the Army. After their divorce, Marvel remarried and fathered another son, maintaining limited contact with his first son. Jack’s mother, Ruth Virginia (née Whiteside) Parsons (1891–​1952), never remarried. She took refuge in Pasadena with her prosperous and socially prominent parents, Walter and Carrie Whiteside. Although their wealth was lost in the Crash of 1929, they lived on as a part of what Helen termed the “high hat” society of Pasadena, acting as if little had changed, with summers on Catalina Island and trips to Europe. Jack was raised in the lavishly decorated mansion of his maternal grandparents in the “Millionaire Mile” district of Pasadena, filled with artifacts of their world travels. Master Jack was waited upon by doting nurses

Chants before Battle  217 and governesses who smartly dressed him for the part of the heir apparent of a privileged family. Jack matured into a tall, intelligent, rebellious, and handsome man, resembling a stockier version of Errol Flynn. He was strongly bonded to his mother, and she to him. As Jack later wrote about himself, “The Oedipus complex was needed to formulate the love of witchcraft which would lead you into magick, with the influence of your grandfather active to prevent too complete an identification with your mother.”15 Jack does not appear to have been raised with any strong religious training beyond the conventional Protestantism of the day. He thought that his disdain for his peers, combined with his love of what he called “the witchcraft,”16 had fostered a hatred of Christianity (without implanting a Christian sense of guilt) and thus formed a fertile substratum for the creed of the OTO. Jack’s defective spelling and scrawled handwriting—​he usually printed rather than wrote in cursive—​points to dyslexia, which may be a contributing factor to his limited education beyond high school. It is a testament to his technical genius that he was able to collaborate with other solid-​fuel rocket pioneers, most of whom had advanced degrees, with little more than a year of night classes at the University of Southern California and Pasadena Junior College. What was burning in him was a love of rockets, or what the scientists preferred to call “jets.” He went to work in the explosives industry direct from high school in 1932; from there he graduated in 1935 to an unpaid position as a Research Fellow in the Aeronautical Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), the foundation for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. His wife Helen supported the couple while Jack pursued his research and consulted on bomb cases. His innate brilliance and hard work resulted in a paid post at Caltech in 1939. The story of his scientific career is an important chapter in the development of the American rocket program, but it does not intersect with his occult life.17 Jack’s scientific colleagues knew vaguely of his bizarre interests and a few, Ed Forman and Dick Canright,18 took up the OTO on his example. None of his esoteric associates followed—​or could have followed—​Jack into rocket science. None of them was a scientist, and few of them had any formal education beyond high school. Jack tried as best he could to keep the hemispheres of his life, science and Magick, separate from each other, but given the scrutiny under which a defense researcher with high-​level security clearance lived during wartime, it would prove an impossibility.

218  The Unknown God Helen’s Junoesque personality was a pleasant contrast to Jack’s Saturnine solitude. She was born in Chicago in 1910 as Mary Helen Cowley, the eldest of three daughters. Helen was a sickly and shy child who had been devastated by the death of her father, Thomas Philip Cowley, in January 1920 in the last phase of the Spanish flu epidemic. Her mother, Olga Helena Cowley, née Nelson (1885–​1949), remarried in July 1922 a seemingly respectable man, a Freemason who had served as Worthy Patron in the Order of the Eastern Star. His name was Burton Ashley Northrup,19 and shortly after their marriage he moved his family from Chicago to Southern California. Their new home was in Pasadena, chosen by Olga through her consultation of the Ouija Board. Northrup fathered two daughters by Olga, Helen’s half-​sisters Sara, also known as Sara Betty or Betty,20 and Nancy. Although Sara remembered her childhood with great warmth, their family life was marred by sexual abuse by their stepfather. His criminal conviction in August 1928, for writing bad checks, earned him a prison sentence in San Quentin. There were also suspicions that Northrup’s marriage to Olga was bigamous—​he had been married previously—​or that he had fathered other children which he had left behind in Chicago. Helen, who had successfully resisted her stepfather’s advances while witnessing Sara submit to him, was forced by Northrup’s incarceration to drop out of high school and go to work full-​time to support the family. Helen’s family religious background was generically Protestant; the Northrups went to the church that was nearest to their home. From an early age, Helen had adamantly rejected the piousness of her mother and her maiden aunt Mary Alma Cowley (1875–​1957), who urged Helen to repent for her childish sins. Religion ran in the family. Helen’s other maiden aunt, Nellie Jane Cowley (1877–​1950), had been educated as an evangelist in Aimee Semple McPherson’s Church of the Foursquare Gospel. Helen greatly disappointed Aunt Nellie on their visit to the Angelus Temple when her teenaged niece refused Sister Aimee’s call to “stand up for Jesus.” One church event would change the course of her existence. Helen chaired a Christmas dance in 1933 at a Pasadena Congregational church. The night was a huge success: Helen, wearing a borrowed pink dress studded with rhinestones and slit to the knee, felt she could dance all night. The Great Depression was a reality; Helen remembered that the prizes for the dance were inexpensive candles, but she enjoyed it nonetheless. The outing was a welcome relief to the frustration of her night school classes on business law at Pasadena Junior College. At the dance she met Ed Forman, Jack’s inseparable

Chants before Battle  219 friend, and he introduced Helen to his buddy. Jack drove her home that heavy foggy night, but she wouldn’t give him her home address nor agree to a date for New Year’s. Jack persisted. They began courting and the young scientist, who was working on-​site as a chemist for the Hercules Power Company in Hercules, California, shared with Helen his visions of the future, including travel to the Moon. Their goal was in the heavens: If the night is clear when you get this letter go out and look at the pole star—​ the pointer in the handle of the dipper. Let us make that our star. It is the star of abiding—​abiding as our love is steadfast—​pointing us the path to the skys [sic]. Nights may be long and skys cloudy but shining above all clouds and parting our star remains, shining clear and bright above, undimed [sic] by time or any other of the little things of earth. Let it simbolize [sic] our love—​“Ad Astra Per Aspera”—​the stars are our goal and nothing in or outside of the galaxy will keep us from it.21

They were engaged to be married by July 1934. Helen was a tall, slim beauty and unafraid of hard work of any sort; she was employed as a legal secretary in her stepfather’s office. Their marriage on April 26, 1935, was thoroughly conventional for Los Angeles. The wedding was held at the Little Church of the Flowers in Forest Lawn Memorial-​Park in Glendale, by a strange coincidence the same place where Smith had married Kath in 1927.22 Jack had been instructed not to kiss the bride—​they were not given to public displays of affection—​but instead they dashed out of the church down the hill together to the reception. The happy couple honeymooned at San Diego’s Hotel del Coronado, where they danced the night away at a Naval ball.23 Within a few years the moral shortcomings of the man she married came to the foreground, from the start more of a Don Juan than a chaste Knight of the Graal. Helen came home more than once to find a woman running out the back door of their house on Terrace Drive in Pasadena as she came in the front. To add to the domestic stress, Sara started an adulterous affair with Jack. As Helen recalled it to me: “Think of it: my own sister in my own house with my own husband.” Like many other wives confronted with indisputable evidence of infidelity, Helen accepted what she felt she could not change; to raise a fuss, she felt, would have shut the door permanently between them. He had left the marriage and there was nothing she could do to bring him back. To argue would only drive him away. Jack didn’t hesitate to tell Helen

220  The Unknown God the details of this and other affairs as if she were simply another male friend. Sara to him was nothing more than a lark, but she would in time become a key player in the misadventure that was his life. Helen was both hurt and unfulfilled on all levels; Jack had made it clear he had no wish to be a father and practiced coitus interruptus to prevent pregnancy. His desire for freedom, for living in the moment while dreaming of the future, was at odds with the patient and practical point-​of-​view of Helen, who saw no hope for a life with Jack—​she described him to me as simultaneously “selfish, amoral, and a scientific genius.” She enjoyed the good times, including their frequent Saturday-​night parties where Jack would concoct his “Parsons Poison Punch.” Even at its best, she characterized life with Jack as “happy but haphazard,” with no schedules and no commitments. In Helen’s view, Smith gave them a passport to the grown-​up world of goals, encouraging them to discipline themselves and pursue their wills in an orderly fashion. Who led Jack to Smith? Helen remembers that their initial contact was made through two Pasadena friends of Jack, John R. Baxter, a homosexual who had his eye on Jack, and his lesbian sister Frances, who offered to “marry” the naive Helen; she consented without comprehending what was being suggested! The profess house had always been open to bohemians and sexual outsiders; they proudly held an annual Walt Whitman birthday party. Max and Roy had complained that the house on Winona Boulevard was a haven for homosexuals, many of them friends of Regina and known to her through her connections to the arts community. Jack’s name first appears in the guest register on January 13, 1938; the year appears to be an error for 1939, as the page is out of chronological sequence. It did not take long for the residents of the profess house to notice the newcomer and his many strengths. Mary K. envisioned Jack as the new Priest; Smith noted the sanity of his occult interests. Jane saw him as a potential bisexual at the least, describing him as “Crowleyesque in attainment.” She had a vision of Jack as a lama seated on a golden silken pillow. Jane claimed that six years prior to encountering Crowley’s work, Jack had wanted to broadcast on the radio a “Word of the Aeon” he had discovered. His entrance into their lives was destined to change all of them radically. Jack was a lover of extremist movements. He was simultaneously investigating the esoteric world of Crowley and his followers and participating in a Communist Party cell composed of Caltech scientists. Although he later denied any Communist sympathies, in addition to taking

Chants before Battle  221 an active part in the “discussion group,” Jack rented a post office box and subscribed to the Daily People’s World, a West Coast Communist Party paper. Being a Communist in name or in sympathy in affluent Pasadena was a total break with Jack’s past, no less so than taking up the banner of “Do what thou wilt.” Although he abandoned the atheistic materialism of Communism, Parsons never lost his interest in the reordering of society, which was part of the idealist worldview of the OTO. Helen’s recollection is that, for the first year of his involvement, Parsons referred to the Church of Thelema members as “the sun worshippers,” from their performance of the Crowleyan adorations of the sun in “Liber Resh.”24 At first only Jack attended the Gnostic Catholic Mass and the social activities. Smith would lend Jack one precious Crowley volume at a time, but according to Helen, Jack, as was his habit, only read them superficially—​Helen studied them in his place. Passages in the books—​especially Konx Om Pax—​ and Crowley’s attitudes toward women gave her great offense, but she was gradually attracted to what she read. But Thelema was her husband’s growing concern, and on advice of Smith he held off his initiation into the OTO until his wife was ready to join as well. Despite the numerous events held in 1939 at Winona Boulevard, Jack only once signed the profess house guest register, for Smith’s belated birthday party held on June 17; although Jack was not yet an initiate of the OTO, he took part in a group meeting that evening to discuss methods of advertising the order and its principles. Another issue may have kept Jack at bay for a time. A student from Regina’s evening drama class at the City College, Nina Tullock, née Susoff, dancing professionally as Anya Sosoyeva, was attacked near the campus by a serial assailant later labeled by the press as “Sam-​the-​Slugger.” She died from her injuries on February 25, 1939. Regina had been a drama teacher at the City College for the previous five years. Her dramatic troupe, known as the “Kahl Players” (which she planned to rename the “O.T.O. Players”), performed at several local theaters; many of Smith’s letter copies are typed on the reverse of mimeographed advertisements for their plays. But there was no connection between this murder, Regina’s drama students, and the Thelema devotees. A few of Regina’s students had attended the Gnostic Catholic Mass and one of them, Lew Carroll, was a celebrant. But this was Hollywood, the school for scandal. The newspapers, looking for a lurid angle, exploited the tragedy by falsely linking it to the “Purple Cult,” as they termed Smith’s Church of Thelema, the sobriquet being drawn from a phrase in The Book of the Law quoted in the Gnostic Catholic Mass. Within a day, Winona Boulevard was

222  The Unknown God swarmed by the chief of police, detectives, and several newspaper reporters. The performance of the Mass held the following Sunday, February 28, was attended by a Herald-​Express reporter, who photographed the officers in their vestments. Regina, no stranger to publicity, obtained a handwritten release from the reporter: the photograph of Miss Regina Kahl is to be used in connection with a story denying that the Thelema Church is a cult and for use with her statement that: “The church of Thelema is an incorporated church in the state of California. It is not a cult. It has been functioning for several years. It is not secret in any way +​the public has never been denied.”25

There was a connection. Anya Sosoyeva and her friend Beulah Ann Stanley were both students at the City College and knew Regina as a friend; they had both been to 1746 Winona Boulevard for the profess house’s entirely secular 1939 New Year’s party. But that was the extent of their involvement with the “Purple Cult.” Surprisingly, the newspapers made no mention of the OTO or of Aleister Crowley, which was a relief to Smith, who had survived the prior Hearst exposés of Ryerson and Crowley. These articles were within the reach of the newspaper’s morgue, but luckily the negative tabloid coverage about the OTO stayed buried this time. Crowley wrote Max in his characteristic caustic style when confronted with yet another perceived failing of Smith: I have a letter with newspaper cuttings from Smith in which he seems to have got himself beautifully mixed up with a Campus Murder. The only thing that puzzles him is why I am not personally held responsible. God seems to have been very short of brains when he was distributing them in Smith’s direction.26

The Thelemites were determined to strike back. A radio reporter, Michael Blair, looking for “another sensational scoop,” worked with Smith, Regina, and Lew to write and record an impartial program rebutting the yellow journalism regarding the “Purple Cult.” It is a straightforward account of how the participants in the Gnostic Catholic Mass saw themselves and their efforts, along with providing more detail on the furnishing of the attic temple. Smith takes great pains to explain away the notion that there is anything called the “Purple Cult”:

Chants before Battle  223 As nearly as I can gather, some one of the students at City College applied the name to our church in the manner of a joke. The name appears to have been bandied about among many who have never seen a service. We first became familiar with the term at approximately 8:30 p.m. on the Saturday after the murder of Anya Sosoyeva, when the police asked us if we had heard of a “Purple Cult.” We were telling the truth when we replied in the negative. Other names have been applied to us as well. We accidentally learned that one group of casual on-​lookers nick-​named us “The Circus.”27

In the scripted interview, Smith reeled off a list of newspaper story captions that had appeared: “Exotic ritual of Purple Cult held in Attic,” “Coffin-​like box, sword, lie on altar,” “Cult background of campus slaying,” “Purple Cult bared in dancer murder probe.” He took great pains to disabuse the reporter that sex is in any way involved in their ceremonies, and stated flatly that, although the liturgy calls for the Priestess to disrobe behind a veil, in fact she remained “fully dressed at all times.”28 Leffingwell, who admired Smith’s voice, had previously made recordings of the Gnostic Catholic Mass; this time his son-​in-​law Harold Soulé ran the recording equipment. For the radio program, Smith’s remarks were followed by a condensed version of the Mass, with Smith as Priest, Regina as Priestess, and Lew as Deacon. The chorus was provided by the regular attendees of the Church of Thelema, including Jane Wolfe and Phyllis Seckler. Louis Culling accompanied on the organ, playing pieces from Wagner’s Parsifal and closing with Mendelssohn’s “March of the Priests.” The tenor of Smith’s English accent, trained by Regina, is reminiscent of Edward van Sloan in the role of Professor Abraham Van Helsing in Dracula (1931). Their performance, the first recording of its kind, is inspiring. One wonders if Crowley, who responded at times so negatively to the photographs of the celebrants, would have approved of their rendition, had he ever heard it.29 Regina was quick to make an analogy between the religious persecution they were enduring and the suppression of individual rights under Fascism: Hitler is suppressing the Jews and Catholics, and has even driven the Masonic Order out of existence in Germany, in fact, I have a manuscript here from a friend who escaped from Germany, recounting the experience of the atrocities committed in the concentration camps.30 If the Christians—​Protestant or Catholic—​or the Jew or any other denomination, have a right to worship in this country as they please, who shall

224  The Unknown God dare say that we who have our religion, may not worship in any manner which we see fit.31

They worked from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. one night on the recordings. Their counteroffensive was for naught. Smith reported to Crowley that their recorded “come-​back” was scheduled to air on Friday, March 3, 1939, but that a representative of the Los Angeles Board of Education had called on Regina the night before and pleaded with her not to air their rebuttal.32 The scandal was dying down and the school had no interest in reviving it. The College representative also informed Regina that the Hearst newspapers knew of their attempts to give their side of the story and they were ready to go to press in the Saturday morning edition with faked nude photographs and additional invented details of the “love cult” and the “immoral household—​no married person to chaperone (Ages 47, 53, 63, 63).” The paper proposed a simple quid pro quo: no radio broadcast, no additional “coverage.” Smith relented and bought back the radio transcription disks for $20.33 In response to all this unhappy news, Crowley cabled Smith a reply that tried the operator’s skills and found them wanting: CABLE INVENTED CHAPTER 22 JURGENT FROM ENOSTIC MASS WRITTEN MOSCOW 1913 PUBLISHED INTERNATIONAL 1918 STOP HORSE PRECEDES CART STOP GUILTLESS CAMPUS MURDER THERION.34

The intent of this communication was far from clear. James Branch Cabell in his novel Jurgen (1919) used as the basis of c­ hapter 22, “As to a Veil They Broke,” the text of Crowley’s Gnostic Catholic Mass, written in Moscow in 1913 and published in The International in 1918. Surely Smith knew Crowley had no part in the murder. Crowley replied peevishly that he could not make sense of the situation, nor could he fathom their connection with the campus murder—​he knew he had none himself.35 Rather than dampening enthusiasm, the latest scandal, although isolating Smith and Regina from their neighbors and work colleagues, bound them more tightly to their friends who knew the falsity of the red herrings dragged across their trail by the yellow journalists. The year 1940 brought a new participant to the profess house. He was Frederic Mellinger,36 a German Jewish refugee who was now seeking to reside permanently in the United States. Mellinger, a successful Berlin actor and

Chants before Battle  225 theater director, had a career on the stage prior to his service in World War I. While he was in a Roman Catholic hospital in France in 1915, a painting of the sacred heart of Jesus he saw there inspired him to write a mysterium in the form of an unpublished play entitled Jacob, der Herr. A reader of the play, Elisabeth von Moltke, introduced Frederic to Anthroposophy and then to its founder, Rudolf Steiner.37 He thought much of Steiner until he read his plays, which were disappointingly artificial in tone. Although Mellinger was Jewish by birth, he was deeply attracted to German Christian mysticism, which he tempered by a study of Buddhism. He had been a longtime astrological student and had a wide exposure to the varieties of the occult experience, as evidenced in his Zeichen und Wunder: Ein Führer durch die Welt der Magie (ca. 1933), illustrated with photographs of some of the same spiritual leaders who had been in Crowley’s scope: Annie Besant, Krishnamurti, Aimee Semple McPherson, and Rudolf Steiner. Seeing the star of Hitler in the ascendant and being increasingly unable to work, he prudently left Germany in 1934 for London. From there he sailed to New York in November 1936 and made his way to Hollywood, where he applied for American citizenship. There Mellinger found something he had long sought: the celebration of the Gnostic Catholic Mass at Winona Boulevard was for him a summons to cease his “boyish staggerings to and fro between spirit and matter”38 and seek their union. He first signed the guest register on January 16, 1940; by August, Mellinger was offering weekly classes in astrology at the profess house. Mellinger had great love and respect for Smith, who gladly wrote letters of recommendation for his newfound friend. Although Jane initially speculated that Frederic (as they called him), a divorced father of two sons, was a frustrated homosexual, she soon learned that he was a man capable of close male friendships, all the while in constant yet discreet amorous pursuit of the ladies. His sophistication and Old World culture were welcome additions to the Thelema household. With the initiation of the Parsons couple on February 15, 1941, the degree work of Agapae Camp was again in full swing after more than a year’s hiatus. The minutes show that the Camp started to meet several times a month, and Smith opined to Crowley that the group was achieving solidarity like they had in Vancouver. Like many others in Smith’s circle, Jack became a Probationer under Smith on March 22, 1941, taking the motto Thelema Obtentum Procedero Amoris Nuptiae. Crowley amusingly replied to the bad Latin that “the motto which you mention is couched in a language beyond my powers of understanding.”39

226  The Unknown God The Beast’s news of importance was that Karl Germer, Frater Saturnus, was alive and well, having survived a series of internment camps. Their old arguments had healed themselves and Germer was the favorite son. Crowley affirmed that “he is the most valued member of the whole order, with no exception!”40 Germer had arrived in New York in March 1941 and was reunited with his wife Cora; he immediately filed a petition for United States citizenship with the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Germer, Mellinger, and Schneider all were under wartime restrictions as being technically enemy aliens. Mellinger, too, would file for American citizenship; Schneider could not apply as he had lost his papers which established his legal entry into the United States. The string of initiations in Agapae Camp did not warm Crowley’s heart; he had previously complained of the lack of proper official initiation reports and accounts and warned that “there will shortly be a smell of brimstone in the air.”41 He repeated his prior claim that his work was being stymied for lack of their support, owing to the fact that “you have never made proper arrangements to set aside a fixed percentage of O.T.O. monies, as you were sworn to do. I trust that Fra∴ ♄ will stand no more of your amiable dishonesty.”42 Germer was promptly elevated to the rank of Crowley’s plenipotentiary and personal representative, and Smith was strongly advised that he “had better act just as he wishes.” In the face of these increasing demands, a balance had to be struck, and Smith put Helen Parsons on the job of reporting on initiations and income to Germer. But the die had already been cast by Crowley: for his lack of what was deemed sufficient support, from the first Smith was held in disrepute by Germer, who swiftly moved into his preferred role of collection agent for Crowley. Crowley’s health was precarious. He believed without evidence that Smith was quietly waiting for his death to take over the order, which he had no intention of letting occur. Baphomet made it plain that Germer was the only disciple Crowley considered to succeed him in the office of the OHO, with reservations. He was convinced that the order needed to be radically reformed, and he quixotically put his trust in Germer, a man with no experience of the OTO, as the disciple for the job: I shall appoint you my successor as O.H.O. but on special terms. It is quite clear to me that a complete change in the structure of the Order, and its methods, are necessary. The Secret is the basis, and you must select the proper people. You can take outsiders; but everyone who has anything to do

Chants before Battle  227 with us at all must make a formal acceptance of AL and a formal renunciation of ideas denounced in AL. 49–​56. Cap. iii. The broad base of public association is the Gnostic Mass. I hope, before I die, to get this put on en grande terme by trained screen artists, so as to have a “sealed pattern” for future reference. The other rituals will have to tail along as best they can. I feel doubtful whether the time will ever return when there is either need to use such methods or leisure to cultivate them. Of course, the minor secrets in them have their special magical value, so that they will always maintain a certain use to certain types of mind. Also the actual magical effect on the candidate may be of the greatest value to him, and the training and discipline are always useful. But as means of propaganda they are absurdly slow, cumbersome and clumsy; the secrecy part of it is purely comic as long as there are any Gerald Yorkes in the world.43

The financial issue remained a large, unresolved point of contention. In fact, Smith had never sworn to hand over a “fixed percentage” of the OTO fees and dues he collected; instead, Crowley had instructed him that, in theory, 100 percent of the receipts should be paid over to the Grand Treasurer General, a post formerly held by Jacobi and for which Germer was eventually slated. The practice, however, would only conform “when the Order is working in numerous branches,”44 which was not the case at present. It was up to the discretion of the Grand Treasurer how much money would be returned to the lodge, and in Agape’s case, not a penny was sent to them from either Crowley or Germer. Smith eventually fixed on a figure of 20 percent of initiation fees to the Grand Lodge, a total of $2.00 per new member, but he personally guaranteed a monthly contribution to Crowley of $50.00, no matter what they collected.45 In any case, the monthly contribution would exceed 100 percent of the dues and fees. Culling, who had been initiated in May 1941, took the unpopular stand that all monies they collected should stay with the Camp, which was in fact a very small local group trying to keep afloat with inadequate resources. People refused to join when they learned that their money was going to be sent abroad. Culling’s position on money was simple, as was his understanding of those who thought otherwise: For the present, keep all moneys in the confines of Agape Lodge. Spend that money exclusively for the Lodge, the money to be spent in such ways as to increase interest, enthusiasm and increase membership. Then, after having increased the membership and also it’s [sic] interest and enthusiasm—​and

228  The Unknown God not before—​could money be intelligently taken from the Lodge and sent away. I am not at all hesitant to express that at least part of the motives of those who opposed my stand was that they were buying special favors from Aleister Crowley—​like buying one’s way into heaven. This is not to be taken that I mean that unselfish motives were absent—​but I can agree only to partly unselfish motives—​according to my honestly studied observation. . . . That it was shortsighted to bleed the Lodge, no intelligent mind can deny.46

A new heaven and a new earth were on the horizon. Even though the members tended to have an inward focus on their spiritual activities, they could not escape the demands of the war. The bombing of Britain had taken their toll on Crowley’s nerves, and the damp climate played havoc with his chronic lung problems. For the sake of his health, Crowley wanted to emigrate to the United States, and he sought affidavits of support from his American followers. Smith gladly pledged his aid on behalf of the man he called his friend. The problem was not so easily resolved in a time of war. Crowley needed permission not only from the U.S. government but from the British Home Office as well; his passport had been seized during his bankruptcy and his earned bad reputation for pro-​German propaganda in World War I eliminated his chances of being allowed to leave during the current war. Smith reported to Crowley that they hurriedly initiated a soldier, Grady L. McMurtry,47 on June 13, along with his fiancée Claire Palmer and Helen’s half-​sister Sara Northrup. Grady met Jack through their mutual involvement in the Los Angeles Science Fiction League, an early science fiction fan club which met at Clifton’s Cafeteria, and which included a teenaged Ray Bradbury as a member. Grady first attended the Gnostic Catholic Mass in December 1940; he was deeply impressed, and he asked Smith’s permission to bring his two girlfriends, Claire Palmer and Marjorie Fox (known as “Foxie”), to a Mass on January 5, 1941. His exposure to Smith and the Thelemites was of short duration, as he was drafted into the Army in February 1941, but he formed his opinions quickly. Smith was proud of his new recruits and boasted of them to Baphomet: “When you arrive here, I think there will be a few to greet you of a better sample that those that were around us 3 years ago when you blew the whole things to bits and scattered them.”48 His next move would initiate yet another hard series of knocks from Crowley. Smith issued a summons for a special meeting at the profess house of what he now termed “Agapae Oasis” for the evening of December 7, 1941.

Chants before Battle  229 He emphasized in his call for the meeting the “solemn and serious nature of the alliance” the members had made with the OTO and the Grand Master Baphomet. Germer, Crowley’s personal representative, was expected from New York shortly; in advance of his arrival, certain critical matters had to be shared with the members. The day chosen for the meeting was soon to be overshadowed by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor—​they received the news just before they went into session—​but it was held regardless of the national panic, felt with severity on the West Coast, which was the next likely Japanese target. Smith read to the assembled Brethren an exhortative “Manifesto” he and Jack had written for this day that would live in infamy.49 It was a call to arms, with a numbered list of demands, all of which were intended to increase involvement and assure commitment to the aims of the OTO. In order to counteract the charges that their Camp failed to support the general work of the order, each member was now required to contribute 5 percent of their earnings for a special “Emergency Fee” to aid the development of the order and to ensure the security of the OHO. It was their best guess at doing what they thought the exigencies of “the hour of the Beast” demanded. True to form, the Beast was not pleased with the initiative. He forwarded his reply to Smith via Germer, with the suggestion that he add his own comments. Each and every directive of Smith’s was held up to criticism. It was so wrong, in Crowley’s view, that it was impossible to explain what was self-​evidently in error in every line: Then the “manifesto”—​it isn’t a manifesto, by the way!—​goes on to invoke heaven and hell in the most formidable language; you hurl the thunderbolts of Jove and threaten the most terrible penalties; the whole established Universe shakes, crashes at your frown. What, in fact, you want, and bloody well never seem to get, is Fifty Cents a Month. No, I can’t hope to make it clear.50

Despite worries about appearances of disloyalty, and his renewed appreciation for Smith’s sincere and steady devotion to the work of the order, Crowley first made the suggestion in this letter for what would be his ultimate solution to his quarter-​century’s worth of worries about Smith and his interpersonal skills: “The best plan would perhaps for you to be too exalted to hold any intercourse with the profane!”51 In Crowley’s view, Smith was impossible as a leader, he had no power of attraction, and he presented

230  The Unknown God himself in a way that could only bring the order into contempt. Yet one can see from Smith’s record of initiations that he was quite able to attract and retain members in numbers far more than Crowley’s meager few. There had not been an OTO lodge in Britain in over two decades. Even though Smith was ineffectual as a leader and unacceptable as a figurehead, in Crowley’s eyes Max was no substitute. He, too, lacked the personality to lead a group or even retain private students. After years of correspondence, Crowley bemoaned his inability to grasp Max’s character—​a half hour’s meeting would suffice for the purpose—​and yet he felt perfectly confident in his analyses of all the other personalities in Smith’s circle, only one of whom he had been around long enough to know. Germer used the opportunity to suggest that any plans of Smith’s needed to be cleared with him first; he had heard of Smith’s Manifesto through Roy Leffingwell, who immediately balked at the terms and conditions. Since the December 7 meeting, Smith had suffered a mild heart attack and took to bed; although Germer’s letter was no help to his recovery, Smith had used the news of his potential inspection visit to get the members to make a choice whether to participate fully or not. But Smith was not taking Germer’s exalting of Max’s financial contribution as evidence of his worth to the OTO; its principles were more important than any person, Crowley included, and it was the work which came first in Smith’s mind. Max had violated his obligations to a fellow Brother so consistently that Smith was through with him. Although neither Crowley nor Germer approved of his wordings, in fact most of his Manifesto consisted of rephrased quotations from Baphomet himself; Germer couldn’t identify the OTO ritual paraphrases because he had never read the rituals, which lack he freely admitted. Smith found his way to thank Saturnus for his entirely insincere remark, “I do not wish to interfere,” nonetheless: such a vital point in organization, and the first time to be met with in practice, despite the mandates on this very point in our literature. Had paternal advice and suggestions been given to those in authority instead of slurring comment to those in subordinate positions; i.e. “piss on the grave of his unknown father,” “amateur theatricals,” etc., etc.—​amusing enough to a grown mind, bad for childish, particularly when they present them as Exhibit #1, #2, on up, to prove what the Master thinks, long ago the Order might have been on its own feet instead of being supported by an individual, and supporting Baphomet in a style befitting him.52

Chants before Battle  231 The postal blasts from Crowley, intermingled with faint praise, continued to arrive throughout the first half of 1942. A “comminatory Philippic” on their latest publication came through a letter to Jane, whose correspondence with Crowley was on a first-​name basis. Aleister lodged his strident criticisms of Smith’s publication of Liber OZ vel LXXVII, Crowley’s “Declaration of the Rights of Man,” an expansion of a portion of the ritual of the II˚ of the OTO. Smith’s edition was illustrated by the tarot trump XV, “The Devil,” from the forthcoming masterpiece of the Master Therion, The Book of Thoth (1944). Smith had answered the call from Germer to make sure to put Liber OZ into circulation as soon as possible, as “the book is to come into force by the Fall Equinox 1942. It is to make the world sure against all the forces of repression and oppression.”53 Smith printed 5,000 copies immediately, but once again, his response failed to meet its author’s expectations. On one hand, it was “a very noble effort, and ought to bring in a lot of people,” but the painting by Frieda Lady Harris, reproduced in black and white, was “so vile as to be hardly recognizable; the printing is entirely without character or style. The whole booklet would disgrace a hot dog stall.”54 Crowley had never forgiven Jane for her well-​meaning attempt to publish his Songs for Italy (1923), which he despised on every aesthetic count even though he knew the effort came from the heart. All this renewed upset over the OTO made Smith take stock of his life and health and well-​being. At the age of 56, he decided to retire from his $160 a month billing-​clerk’s job at the gas company; enduring the daily strain was nothing more than a masochistic drive, and he felt himself close to a nervous breakdown. After suffering eight years of discomfort, unrelieved by his attempts at self-​medication, he was operated on for hemorrhoids in early February 1942. His doctor wondered how he could have endured them, and the relief of the constant pain brought him the energy to cope with the state of his affairs. Crowley called Smith on his “mulish obstinacy” which had only done him harm by failing to seek proper treatment. He ascribed Smith’s problems in part to the influence of his once-​and-​former magical son, Charles Stansfeld Jones: “His callousness, his half-​jeering attitude were bad; and then, his shocking disloyalty, dishonesty, megalomania and gradually infiltrating insanity must have harmed you greatly.”55 Smith lacked “presence,” and Crowley suggested that Smith should cultivate reserve to compensate for it. Perhaps Helen Parsons, whose qualities had been favorably reported on to Crowley by Jane, might train Smith in the art of making a good impression—​he urged Helen to write him and tell him all she thought

232  The Unknown God and dreamed. Jane, with all her experience of stage and screen, had not improved Smith’s presence, in the Beast’s view. The needs of the Camp had outgrown the confines of 1746 Winona Boulevard. Smith told Crowley they had decided to look for better quarters in Pasadena. There were other reasons to seek a residence with more bedrooms than the current profess house that would soon show themselves. Helen went away in June 1941 for a vacation with her mother and sister Nancy at Twentynine Palms, an oasis of beauty in the Mohave Desert east of Los Angeles. Jack took the opportunity during his wife’s absence to throw his affections openly to Helen’s half-​sister Sara, 14 years her junior. When Helen returned to her house, she found Sara wearing her clothes; she then told Helen to get out, that she was now Jack’s wife. His prescient suggestion to his wife was “Get Willie a girlfriend.”56 Yet Jack knew he was solely to blame for the rupture of their marriage: “Everything is my fault—​my own mess—​ and I can take it—​I did it deliberatly [sic] and would do it again—​althou [sic] I didnt know quite—​.”57 It was not the first time he had cheated on Helen, but this was one affair that she could not forgive. His later rationalization of his adultery concluded that “[Sara] Betty served to effect a transference from Helen at a critical period. Had this not occurred your repressed homosexual component could have caused a serious disorder. Your passion for Betty also gave you the magical force needed at the time, and the act of adultery tinged with incest, served as your magical confirmation in the Law of Thelema.”58 Helen was despondent. She sought a shoulder to cry on, and she found one in Smith, even though their initial contact had been less than romantic. Parsons and Smith had arranged a swap of partners and Jack hadn’t bothered to tell Helen of the plan. All Smith got for his efforts was a ripped shirt. Yet Smith felt like he was like a boy in love for the first time, and he helped heal Helen of the betrayal she felt by Jack and Sara. Jack had left the marriage first. She confided to her diary that when she left Jack to be with Wilfred, their time together made her forget “the sore spot I carried where my heart should be.”59 Helen’s gradual elevation to the status of the Priestess in Smith’s temple boded the end of the productive magical partnership he had shared with Regina on Winona Boulevard for the past 10 years. On several occasions over the past few years, Smith felt Regina had drained him of all his energy, to the point of impotence. Regina’s great strength was too often dissipated in emotional battles that had everyone running for cover, and her own high blood pressure had left her ill. It was time for a change of partners.

Chants before Battle  233 In January 1942, Jack and Helen found a magnificent three-​ story California-​style mansion to rent at 1003 S. Orange Grove Avenue, an impressive street lined in palm trees, part of Pasadena’s “Millionaires’ Row.” The grand house had 16 rooms, five bathrooms, a wine cellar, and a large basement. It was built as the residence of the founder and president of the board of trustees of Caltech, Arthur H. Fleming, a wealthy logger—​he had entertained Einstein there on attempting to lure him to the campus—​and it was now managed by the Notram Corporation of New York. The house had remained unoccupied since the death of Fleming in 1940 and it needed work to be brought into habitable condition. In view of its disrepair, Jack offered the relatively small rent of $100 a month plus utilities. He wanted a one-​year option to buy the property at $10,000 or whatever sum seemed acceptable, which was negotiated down to a 60-​day right of first refusal. The lessor would assume no responsibility for any repairs or improvements. The terms were accepted for a two-​year lease, commencing on June 15, 1942.60 The new profess house exceeded the old one in every detail, but the unexpected impact of one significant change was soon to be felt. Smith and Regina were no longer the lord and lady of the profess house. Even though Smith threw the $1,200 retirement savings from the gas company into the fund for 1003, he was henceforth a resident and no longer the proprietor. Regina and Jane hesitated about the move, which they felt would mark the beginning of a serious ordeal. Their premonitions would prove correct.

17 Ten-​o-​Three The Thelemites took possession of 1003 S. Orange Grove Avenue on June 9, 1942, Smith’s 57th birthday. In a solemn manner, Jane entered the house first, at precisely 11:00 a.m., carrying their signed portrait of Aleister Crowley. Smith took in the lance borne by the Priest in the Gnostic Catholic Mass and The Book of the Law, followed by Regina with a copy of the “Stélé of Revealing” that had been painted in watercolors by Smith’s previous wife Kath and used in the temple at Winona. Helen was the last to enter, bearing the small model ark used in the OTO degree work; she placed it on a mantel in the room they had designated the Chapel. Smith then deposited The Book of the Law in the ark, proclaiming “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.” Frederic cast a horary chart for their entrance and said the stars were propitious for their undertaking. Within a week of their arrival a swarm of bees arrived, which Helen viewed as a good omen. Crowley took the number of the house as a portent of a different kind: to his mind it recalled the 1,003 Spanish conquests of Don Juan mentioned by Leporello in Mozart’s Don Giovanni. In Helen’s estimation, 1003 was ideal as a profess house, an estate with excellent room arrangements set amid countless trees on landscaped grounds. The grand old mansion, built in the style of a Swiss chalet or hunting lodge, was able to accommodate many more of the Thelemites than was Winona. The original inmates of “Grim Gables,” as they humorously named it, were: Smith and Helen Parsons; Regina Kahl; Jack Parsons and Sara Northrup; Jane Wolfe; Frederic Mellinger; Jonas Erickson; Joe Miller,1 his wife Grace, and their two sons, Tommy and Joe Jr.; Phyllis Seckler and her two daughters, Stella and Lisa. The Seckler girls had been baptized in the Church of Thelema by Smith and had been present for a few the gatherings on Winona. Jane questioned how their heavily restricted neighbors on Orange Grove Avenue would react to their living arrangements. Just as in Hollywood, they had no license to run a boarding house. In an open display of contempt for the morality of the day, at 1003 Jack and Sara lived together as a couple, as did Smith and Helen. Regina was now partnerless; her unhappiness with the change in her status was manifest. She The Unknown God. Martin P. Starr, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2024. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197744512.003.0017

Ten-o-Three  235 took refuge for the summer with Leona and Clarence Watson in Houston, Texas. The exchange of partners within the house was at times more furtive. Paul Seckler, who had served as “Emir” in many of the initiations, was discreetly described in the lodge minutes as being away on a prolonged absence; he was in fact in prison. Paul had been convicted of grand theft auto in 1940, committed while using a pistol he had stolen from his former employer Jack Parsons. Smith maintained a sympathetic correspondence with Paul, knowing his troubled past including a dishonorable discharge from the United States Marine Corps and his spousal abuse of Phyllis. Paul began his sentence at the California State Prison at San Quentin and in May 1942 was transferred to the California Institution for Men at Chino. Smith wrote letters supporting his request for parole.2 With Paul behind bars, Phyllis had quietly filled the gap by developing an affection for Joe Miller. Her heart was won as Joe sang her love songs while pushing her on the swings in the gardens of 1003. Having grown up in burlesque and vaudeville, Joe Miller was brash and quick but had no formal education beyond grade school; his spelling rivaled Smith’s for inaccuracy. He had an early career as a singer and actor and now worked as a painter in a shipyard to support his family. His interest in esotericism was sparked by reading a book on Theosophy which he found mis-​shelved in the public library in his hometown of Minneapolis; he joined the TS there around 1924. The First Ray Invocation of the Liberal Catholic Church3 inspired Miller to seek further light: he attempted to become a Liberal Catholic priest while working in Chicago at the Oriental Theater for the band leader Paul Ash, the “Rajah of Jazz.” He regularly attended the Liberal Catholic Church of St. Francis at 218 S. Wabash Street; it was only a block away from the South State Street burlesque houses where he was also employed. His line of work was considered by the local Bishop to be an obstacle to his ordination. By chance Miller met Annie Besant on her 1926 visit to lay the cornerstone for the TS Headquarters in Wheaton, Illinois; when he mentioned his desire for the priesthood, and the problems he had faced, she later suggested he had other work to do. Joe subsequently drifted through a variety of occult groups, including the “Mighty ‘I AM’ ” Fascist movement of Guy and Edna Ballard which had so amused Crowley from a distance. Joe was first exposed to Crowley’s work by Culling, who early in 1942 had run an ad in a San Diego newspaper promoting his “Thelema Club,” which offered for sale Crowley’s Magick in Theory and Practice. On Culling’s introduction, Joe promptly went to meet Smith; he joined the OTO in March,

236  The Unknown God and Smith accepted him as a Probationer on July 21 in that long summer of 1942. Although he appreciated his Neophyte, Joe was convinced that Smith pushed too hard in everything he did. Boastful of his own numerous female conquests, he believed that Smith’s womanizing was based on the idea that he needed to impregnate as many women as possible to spread the Law of Thelema. Joe thought Smith’s high-​pressure approach to the women, in imitation of how he imagined Crowley operated, lacked the gentle touch that would succeed. Joe was a more of a smooth operator, and first Phyllis and then Jane would succumb to his charms before he would return to his wife. The formal dedication of the profess house came on June 21, when a larger group was able to be in attendance. They raised the American flag and pledged allegiance; when the sun set they lowered it again. After moonrise they gathered in a circle in the sunken garden and Jane, Jack, Smith, and Frederic recited selections from Crowley’s poetry, the Holy Book “Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente,” and the Gnostic Catholic Mass. After dessert Jane read a poem by Frederic written in honor of the inauguration of what is for the first time in the minutes called “Agapae Lodge.” Smith sent a telegram to Crowley with the greetings of the Solstice from “all your children” who awaited his arrival at the new lodge.4 The new profess house at first seemed a center of life, light, love, and liberty, with domestic duties for everyone. Jack was the principal funding source for the profess house. Jane oversaw the groceries, accompanied by Sara. Regina was the social director and was given charge of the laundry with assistance from Helen, who also handled the cleaning. Phyllis, who was living on very little means, paid for her stay by serving as the chief cook, helped by Sara and Grace Miller. Frederic was given charge of the library and watering the lawns and gardens; he had come from money and manual labor was for him a new and clumsy experience. Joe Miller had little money and could not find his way to pay his share of the household expenses even though he was gainfully employed. Smith appointed Helen the profess house bookkeeper.5 Smith was the head of the household and general factotum, with help on the heavier work from Jonas, who stayed for three months, sufficient time to complete the tasks he was assigned. Frater 132’s persistence wore out everyone, including himself; he trimmed the hedges so furiously one day that his hands were useless the next. He took great pride in the establishment of 1003; in addition to a fine home, the spacious grounds allowed them to plant abundant vegetables in their Victory Garden and raise livestock as a step toward

Ten-o-Three  237 self-​sufficiency in a time of war rationing. The conferral of the OTO degrees continued, but although there was a space reserved for it, they did not set up a chapel for the Gnostic Catholic Mass at 1003, nor did they perform it. Its lack was felt; they had scarcely missed a Sunday since beginning regular celebrations of the Mass in 1933. All the changes in the domestic affairs were causing some repercussions in the Long Beach cluster of OTO members, whose de facto leader was Ray Burlingame.6 Jane thought Ray, who worked as a bartender, presented an excellent appearance and she was hopeful he could serve as a “front man” for the lodge and aid in membership recruitment. He had been an initiate of the Choronzon Club; a group of former members in Long Beach had stuck together after Russell closed the order to outsiders circa 1937. Ray brought in a number of the “Russellites” to Agape Lodge: the Bashams, the Grahams, Joseph Bradford Windsor, and Ray’s wife Elizabeth. Although some of them, still under the influence of conventional “troglodyte morals,” took offense at the open adultery in 1003 and kept their distance from the profess house, they did not know that Ray had his eye on Mildred Graham, who soon replaced Elizabeth in his affections. Ray did not stop at Mildred; he also bedded his stepdaughter Betty Lee Sisk, who became pregnant—​ Ray believed it was the bounden duty of the women to sleep with the heads of the OTO. He had so instructed Mildred, who presented herself at Smith’s bed one night. According to Jane’s account, Smith presumed she had her reasons and accepted the offer. Once Ray and Mildred’s affair was known, they were looked down upon by a few of those whom they had brought into the OTO, though the Burlingames continued as faithful members of the lodge. Mildred and Ray eventually divorced their spouses and married each other. In the interim, Smith helped straighten out Ray’s point-​of-​view on the work of the OTO, which had been influenced by his experience in the Choronzon Club, where Russell claimed the ius primae noctis. With all these varied personalities living under one roof, there were bound to be conflicts. Smith struggled daily to keep order in the household, and eventually some cohesion was achieved in their domestic arrangements. As an experiment in discipline and to push Smith to lead them, the residents tried taking a “vow of holy obedience” to Frater 132 for a set period of time, with middling results.7 For some, especially Jack, the “lust of result” was ever burning and the impatience of his youth made him chafe at Smith’s pace. Jack unburdened his concerns about Smith to Jane, who through years of

238  The Unknown God experience should have been able to predict the consequences of sharing Jack’s unfiltered opinions with Crowley: Not infrequently, that man Smith sours on Jack’s stomach. Now he is retching—​with some fearful grunts. He told the Wolfes in Hollywood if there was nothing doing within a given time he would not hesitate to walk out. . . . Away from here he “could so easily send Crowley $100 a month”; anyhow some of us could go together (meaning Jane principally), etc., etc. After our talk, he shut his jaw and said he would stick for his two years’ lease, and, by God, if anybody got out it wouldn’t be Parsons, it would be Smith! Equally, by God, he would address himself to getting hold of the inwardness of the Matter, and he wouldn’t have to live with any Smith! Smith is serious, inflexible, stands on the letter, drives. Jack is daring, flexible, has knife-​like trust & laughter. They complement each other, but I think it is Smith’s past life: deep within is a sense of insecurity, and he can’t let Jack flow where his flowing might or would be advantageous. Or so it seems to me. And Jack’s attitude to this? “I will have, in some way, to make him feel secure, then perhaps this barrier between us will fall away.”8

Before the profess house had even a chance to settle into a productive routine, Jane’s casual remarks supplied all the further evidence Crowley needed to support the next stage in his plan for the ultimate removal of Smith from control of the group. He had already picked out Jack as Smith’s successor. Crowley had great hopes for Jack—​he was young, seemingly brilliant, and held out the promise of money—​and Crowley had long ago tired of Smith’s approach to the Work. Even so, Crowley’s characterization of Smith is in complete contrast to what Jane and Jack gave witness: I am very worried about Jack and Smith. I suspect Smith of sabotage. I am writing to him enclosing it with this so that you can read it first. Smith’s trouble is ambition plus the feeling which you quite clearly describe that he is not man enough to hold the job, hence the frenzied outbursts and dictatorship and spleen and hence also the general surliness. I have written to Karl [Germer] about him at some length and you will of course take his instructions. You had better write to Karl yourself suggesting some administrative step. Do you think you could quite handle the Profess House? I feel quite sure that something must be done.9

Ten-o-Three  239 Crowley was willing to believe Jane’s remarks (which she later came to regret, claiming that she had hoped to amuse Crowley with her account of Jack’s ordeal) that Smith was hampering Jack; he wrote Smith that “I was in more than half a mind to withhold the Password, and see if you could do anything if you were right outside, with no authority or responsibility, but on your own.”10 It was an ominous foreshadowing of the end of Smith’s tenure in leadership; before the year had run its course, he would be forced out of the order and concurrently put out of his own house. Like his birthplace Marl Field House, the great halls of 1003 would not long welcome Smith; he was destined to be exiled again. Others would forcibly depart 1003 before him. On September 30, Smith asked Phyllis when she was planning to leave the house; she suggested she would move out in November. She left October 3, vowing never to return. Although she had help in watching over her children while she was busy in the kitchen, her daughter Stella’s uncontrolled tantrums had become a severe strain on the adults’ nerves. In combination with Phyllis, who struck Jane as “negligible,” the children had “an amazing capacity for upsetting the house.”11 It was indeed time for them to go, and Smith told her so. Phyllis had hoped that Joe Miller would set her and her children up elsewhere, but when his wife Grace returned on November 3 from a burlesque engagement in Montreal, Joe moved to San Pedro with Grace and their children, leaving Phyllis without his love or his support. Phyllis soon learned she was pregnant. She did not know who the father might be, for as Jane cattily phrased it, “Phyllis ardently believes in the communion of saints”12 and she wondered if the mother-​to-​be would soon present Frederic with a curly-​haired Jew. In time she would learn the father was Joe Miller—​their son Paul was born the following July. For the moment, Culling the reincarnated Phoenician sailor (as he saw himself) rescued Phyllis and gave her shelter at his shack in Rainbow Valley; he, too, was one of the potential fathers of her child. Phyllis’s departure was welcomed by Smith; it was the third exit she had made since the Winona days and the last time they would live under the same roof. Not so Regina’s. After her return from a month with the Watsons in Texas, Regina no longer wished to accommodate herself to the needs of the profess house. She tried to get an outside job; when one failed to materialize she went back to her laundry duties at 1003, which were tiring and which she resented. She tried to spend much of her time in the company of friends in Hollywood. Her volatile temper, combined with elevated blood pressure, had taken its toll; she confessed to Jane of having what she called “the blind

240  The Unknown God staggers.” Regina finally sought medical attention; her blood pressure was 300/​135. The doctors advised her to take a year’s rest in bed. Jack offered Regina a home with no work at 1003; she refused. On November 10, she announced to the profess house her impending departure for an extended bed rest in Texas and left 1003 to stay with her oldest friend in Hollywood. She returned only to collect her belongings, taking also items she had bought for the use of the order or the profess house. Smith regarded her sudden selfishness as a cutting blow; after a long talk she relented and returned the property in question. The profess house gave her a farewell dinner on November 19 and the next morning she left for Leona’s. The conflict over Helen’s place in Smith’s life had become too visible; she was pregnant by him and wondered how she could keep up 1003 without Phyllis and Regina. Yet their parting was amicable; Helen loved Regina and it was reciprocated. With help from Maria Prescott, Smith was able to slip on the train and wish Regina farewell. He felt certain that he would never see his beloved again. Smith’s separation from the Thelemites was the next hard blow. It did not take Baphomet long to make good on the idea that Smith needed to stand on his own, away and apart from his Brethren, but he placed the onus of the immediate decision on Jane, who was instructed: to make her own decision in the matter of the conduct of Frater 132 (Wilfred T. Smith) subject to the approval of Frater Saturnus (Karl J. Germer). She will withhold the Pass Word from Fra∴ 132, thereby placing him temporarily altogether outside the Order. She will advise him that his full reinstatement will follow the achievement of some definite personal action, conceived and executed by him alone, to the advancement of the Work of the Order.13

It is not clear to which order these instructions were meant to pertain. They seem relevant to the A∴A∴—​the distribution of the equinoctial password was limited to members of that order—​yet the document was signed by Crowley as the OHO of the OTO. The intermingling would confuse their recipient as well as their intended object. The password of the autumnal equinox of 1942 was “Thido.” Its meaning was said to be “the ‘Head of the Balances,’ i.e. the edge on which the arms rest. Thus the critical moment.”14 Its value was the key number 93. If Smith was already in possession of the password, Jane was to let the Brethren know that it was invalid without the

Ten-o-Three  241 answer to an additional test question: “Where is Thido now?” The proper answer was: “In a tent on the beach,” a reference to a magical retirement she had undertaken in Cefalù at Crowley’s suggestion. Owing to the slowness of the wartime mails, the autumnal equinox letter of instruction did not reach Jane until November 18. She was floored by its contents and was left with a feeling that she could not oust Smith. First, she confided in Jack and shared with him her letter of September 6 to Crowley which set off the avalanche. After dinner she showed Crowley’s instructions to Smith, who was still reeling from the ordeals surrounding Regina’s departure. He was too emotionally distraught to react. She could not sleep, dogged by the thoughts of her own past failures. She felt that she had a definite work to perform, but she questioned whether it was an obsession, or how it might be accomplished at her age of 67. Jack thought her wavering might cost Smith a prime opportunity, but Jane told him that she viewed Crowley’s instructions as her own call to action: “And it was with considerable diffidence, I made my Declaration. That mine was the role of Scarlet Woman. And asked him not to divulge it as yet.”15 How Jane read Crowley’s plain orders to reach her own decision about Smith and turned them into a call for her to assume the position of Scarlet Woman is impossible to fathom, but she had waited in vain for years to be summoned to this exalted post. Her day’s “retirement” she conducted on November 22 in the elegant teak-​paneled tea house on the grounds of 1003, with its white marble floor and onyx fireplace. It was a considerably more comfortable place of retreat than Crowley’s tent on the Sicilian beach. Her conclusion was that Smith should reside in the tea house under a vow of silence for 22 days; alternatively, he could be housed at Culling’s shack in Rainbow Valley. Jane preferred the former solution to the Smith problem, but her habit of passing along her stray thoughts would again set off the easily agitated Germer. Keeping in mind the duty of frankness between Brethren of the OTO, Germer’s letter to Jane of November 27 had been shared with Smith, to Germer’s great displeasure, who hysterically compared Smith’s methods to that of the Gestapo under which he had suffered. Germer was a student of astrology, which provided him means to justify his preconceived notions. He had concluded that Smith’s horoscope “is good and it is bad. Unless he succeeds in transmuting very much in his nature—​goodbye!”16 What concerned Jane was that Smith, always an animal lover, had taken in a gray kitten which he named “Chokmah.” This meaningless detail was in Germer’s view

242  The Unknown God an unmistakable symptom of Smith’s spiritual failure, under which delusion Jane was precipitously falling: Now you tell me that phantastic story about the Chokmah Grey Cat! It is revealing enough on the state of minds generally around there and explains the awe in which you all seem to live with regard to the person Wilfred. Now you yourself also show signs of a particular delusion. . . . Smith, realizing his outer failure, apparently seeks a compensation on some higher plane: Smith is nobody; ah, but 132! You poor fish have no idea that he is 9 =​2; so he’s got to hint at it! Don’t you see how morbid all this is. The next thing will be that he is an Ipsissimus like Mudd—​and end there.17

Jane sensibly replied that she could not see all the horrible things Germer claimed to see in Smith. They hardly held Smith in awe. His only fault was lack of initiative. Jane had enough of all the alarums and tantrums surrounding the issue; she left 1003 on December 11 for some quiet time at Leffingwell’s Rancho RoyAL,18 followed by a stay with Mary K. in Hollywood. In the interim she tried to collect her thoughts. She returned to 1003 on January 1, 1943. Soror Estai formally delivered to Frater 132 on January 13 the instructions she had been given by Baphomet for him to retire from the profess house for a time. In a personal note, she explained that they had been together for a long time, and that they would go through this ordeal together, she on the inside and Smith on the outside. His job was to expand himself and gain more wisdom; she needed to start taking action after years of indecision. Their combined efforts would strengthen them in the challenges that Thelema and the OTO would soon face. Jane wanted a quick decision, but now it was Smith’s turn to avoid action. Some positive work to spread Thelema was accomplished amid all the increasingly irrational recriminations against Smith. Never failing for an heir, Smith took Helen and Jack aside on the evening of December 1 and read them through the ritual of the III˚ of OTO, the first use of Crowley’s revised ritual in which was communicated his claimed restoration of the “Lost Word” of the Master Mason. With the departure of Regina, Smith had not the requisite number of officers to confer it ceremonially. Culling had been agitating for a new edition of The Book of the Law, central to the promulgation of Thelema. He conducted a ritual in San Diego with the “three Joes” he had attracted—​Joe Miller, Joe Crombie, and a third otherwise unknown magician, Joe Bonner—​along with others to bring about its

Ten-o-Three  243 publication. A local printer spontaneously offered to donate the paper and type and deliver 10,000 unfolded copies of The Book of the Law for $80. Joe Miller thought they should first ask permission from Agape Lodge, which was denied. Culling sent him back and told him to demand that they print it; this time they agreed to do so. Culling claimed that he gave Miller the magical name of “Tao,” as he told the former he did nothing to get the lodge to move. Smith took up Culling’s challenge but did not accept his proposal; he found his own printer. The text was carefully checked, except for the title page, which was supposed to have an imprint of October 31, 1942; it incorrectly bore the same date as the London 1938 paperbound edition.19 In form it was a handsome deep blue pamphlet bearing the seal of the A∴A∴ and the title in raised gold print on the upper cover. The new edition of Thelema’s primary sacred text was issued by the Church of Thelema, 1003 S. Orange Grove Avenue, Pasadena, California. It included a notice of the OTO which was added to the back matter. Around the same time Smith issued a pamphlet of the thelemic tract, The Message of the Master Therion, also under the imprint of the Church of Thelema. This time, his printing met Crowley’s standards, and he telegraphed Smith his congratulations on the receipt of The Book of the Law in late January. One significant omission was made in concession to the political realities of wartime: the phrase “Democracy dodders” was removed from Crowley’s introduction to The Book of the Law, which had been first published in the 1938 edition.20 There was a war on, and Jack’s character and loyalty were again under review by the War Department. Since the beginning of the secret high-​ explosive tests in Pasadena’s Upper Arroyo Seco in August 1940, his involvement in Caltech’s defense research had required Jack to have a security clearance. His research on explosives and rockets led to the formation of a business which would grow into a major defense contractor. He was one of the founders in 1942 of the Aerojet Engineering Corporation, the manufacturer of Jet Assisted Take-​Off (JATO) units which he had helped to invent. He was investigated again in 1943 by Army Intelligence. The Hollywood publication of Liber OZ had already raised their visibility, and its continued promulgation left Jack uneasy. Once again, the Church of Thelema was attracting unwanted attention, this time from the Pasadena police and the FBI. Their activities were under suspicion for the involvement of the enemy aliens Germer and Mellinger. Germer was already the subject of an FBI internal security investigation, begun in 1941 with Crowley’s application for a United States visa and

244  The Unknown God strengthened by letters to the Bureau from an acquaintance of Germer’s second wife Cora. The letters disparaged Germer for his support of Crowley and claimed that the former’s conversation was “violent Nazi-​propaganda.”21 Nothing could have been further from the truth, but given Crowley’s record as a pro-​German propagandist in World War I, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover took note and personally ordered an investigation of Germer. His New York apartment was searched on March 3, 1942, during a spot search of enemy aliens. Germer was interviewed—​he denied ever having been a member of the Nazi Party—​and his correspondence with Crowley was examined. Further pressure was applied when Germer received cables from Crowley that he was unable to explain; during the war, all cable communications were intercepted and read by the censors, both in the United States and England. Germer when questioned was naturally incapable of explaining the typos and other cryptic comments in Crowley’s telegrams. In the climate of wartime, well-​placed disinformation was sufficient to elicit a significant response. An anonymous letter signed “A Real Soldier,” dated September 7, 1942, and bearing a Texas postmark, had been sent to the Pasadena Police Department, which triggered an investigation. It alleged that “meetings were being held at Mr. Parsons home by a Mr. Smith, aided and assisted by Mr. Parsons and a German alien (A.R. #5145602) named Mellinger, in which “Crowleyism” and Sex Perversion were being advocated and taught, together with ‘Survival of the Fittest.’ ” The letter went on to state that the writer hoped they (the Police) would do something to clean out this nest of enemy aliens with their revolting practices.22 The letter was written after Regina’s visit to Texas but prior to her final departure. She angrily denied that anyone she knew had anything to do with it—​Jane was quite willing to believe that her sister Leona was capable of anonymous attacks. Helen was quite certain it was written by Allen Hall Graham, Jr. (1913–​1977), the disgruntled ex-​husband of Mildred Burlingame.23 The Pasadena Police interviewed Jack after the receipt of this letter, and their findings were shared with Army Intelligence and the FBI, who showed up at 1003 for the first time on the evening of January 16, 1943. Helen thought the G-​men, a Mr. Craig and another, asked a lot of stupid questions, some of the same ones they had put to Jack’s longtime scientific associates at Aerojet, including Professor Theodore von Kármán, Frank Malina, and his wife Liljan.24 Smith patiently answered all their questions and toured the agents around 1003. They were particularly interested in what might be in the basement vault. It was unused except for the storage of wine, which the Church

Ten-o-Three  245 of Thelema purchased in bulk from the Cucamonga Vintage Company, California’s oldest winery. Smith made sure that they spent a considerable time in a portion that was infested with fleas! Jack arrived just as the agents were ready to leave, and they proceeded to question him at length. The FBI found no indication of subversive activity by the Church of Thelema, which was characterized in their reports as a religious organization and possibly a “love cult,” but it was suggested that Jack’s involvement reflected poorly on his character and judgment.25 Within the order, Jack had come to his own judgments where Crowley and Germer and their methods were concerned. His apparent “crime” was that he was said to be influenced by Smith, the acknowledged local head of the OTO. Jack told Smith that he found Germer’s letters vague, hysterical, and paranoid in tone. On reading his letter to Jane of January 25, 1943, he had come to a sharp solution of the dilemma: “If Germer’s letter is true, Smith will have to go. If it is not, we can no longer deal with Germer.”26 Jack allotted 60 days to make a decision in the matter; if Jack could not reach a conclusion, he would terminate his connection with the OTO. Smith told Jane that his problems were not so simple that they could be solved by packing a grip and hitting the street. He wrote at length to Crowley on February 3, 1943, and would await the Beast’s response. The correspondence between Los Angeles, New York and London had grown increasingly negative and futile. Smith’s attempts to get Germer to moderate his vituperative and combative tone had no effect. Germer echoed Crowley’s contentions that there was something very much amiss with Smith, and each had a diagnosis of what they imagined to be the source of the problem. Crowley posited that Smith might have failed in his efforts to cross the Abyss to be reborn a Master of the Temple. Should he have held back any part of himself from the annihilation of the ego in the Abyss, it would only breed evil. To Germer, Smith was a carrier of spiritual contagion à la Tränker, Jones, Mudd, and a host of failed aspirants littering the Thelemic past. All those in sympathy with Smith were merely the victims of his malice, and 1003 S. Orange Grove was a spot defiled for ages to come. The very name of “Agape” was abhorrent to him, having been tainted by “incapable dwarfs.” Smith’s endeavor to correct Crowley’s view of the situation was equally bootless—​even Crowley’s own past negative characterizations of Smith were now taken by the former as self-​estimates of Smith’s current state of being. Jane’s lack of decisive action was read as a signal failure by Crowley, who suggested that Smith had been “vampirising” her. Smith’s recalcitrance “MAY

246  The Unknown God PRECIPITATE IRREVOCABLE THUNDERBOLT.”27 Jack and Helen cabled back that they could not afford to lose Smith and that Crowley should not believe all that he was told. Their telegraphed offers of “LOVE AND TRUST” were cynically rejected by Crowley, who found their sentiments risible. Crowley had hoped that Smith would improve with the departure of Regina and her “boisterous theatrical influence.” His manner would be remedied by Helen, of whom the Beast had received nothing but good reports from Jane. Although he had previously encouraged Helen to write to him fully with what she thought, planned, and felt, Crowley curtly dismissed her warm and chatty response as “pages and pages of irrelevant and incoherent details.”28 There was clearly no pleasing Baphomet, nor his shadow Saturnus, who found Helen’s entirely businesslike cover letters to their monthly donations to the “Crowley Fund” lacking in proper obeisance to his station as Grand Treasurer General. She tried to disabuse Crowley of the notion, repudiated by Jack himself, that Smith was holding Parsons down; to the contrary, he was a constant goad against Jack’s inertia and laziness. Smith had taught her many virtues, not the least of which was toleration of others—​she took offense easily—​and a proper self-​appreciation—​which had been stifled by the abusive experiences of her childhood. His greatest faults, in Helen’s estimation, were that he was oversensitive, that he did not have a warm nature on first acquaintance, and that he lacked self-​esteem and care for his appearance—​Jack was a better “looker” than Smith. Helen wanted Crowley to know that the lodge members were not a bunch of “crackpots” but individuals who could use a word of encouragement and some helpful suggestions, now and again. They were not forthcoming. Helen remembered that Smith was about to leave the house to purchase materials to recreate the furnishings for the Gnostic Catholic Mass when one of the “thunderbolt” letters came from Crowley—​he withdrew his labors. Helen had it right: “what is the use of planning, when all plans go awry?”29 Germer opined that the members of Agape Lodge had divided loyalties, and that they needed to put the officers of “Grand Lodge”—​that is to say, Crowley and himself—​before Smith, who had consistently stressed that “authority was absolute” in the OTO. With Crowley’s approval and to put them on record, Germer sent to every member a request for a reaffirmation of their allegiance “to the principles and the Constitution of the O.T.O.” and sought their “personal pledge of loyalty to the Officers of Grand Lodge themselves.”30 Smith signed the oath and returned it forthwith, but he remarked to its sender that the notion of its present necessity was evidence of his great

Ten-o-Three  247 misunderstanding of the situation in Pasadena. His attempts to defend himself from Germer’s unfair accusations were hardly the signs of disloyalty to the order. As he predicted, the other members signed the oath immediately, most without even so much as a comment. Crowley’s wrath against Smith and the Thelemites was further aroused by letters from Grady McMurtry, who suggested in his initial dispatch to Crowley of January 4, 1943, that his California followers preferred abortion to birth. He claimed that they made an outcast of two mothers, in gross contradiction to the published teachings of the OTO in the Blue Equinox, where motherhood was extolled as peculiarly sacred and worthy of honor. He knew that one of the female members had been given advice by an OTO Brother when she sought an illegal abortion: his former wife Claire Palmer, who had been financially assisted in the procedure by Jack. By 1943 all this was old news. Grady had been prevented from a reunion with his then-​wife Claire owing to Pearl Harbor. Grady came to believe that Claire had received help from Jack, his best friend in the OTO, in terminating an unplanned pregnancy which he blamed on the loose morals she learned from the inhabitants of 1003. Even though their brief marriage had ended in divorce in September 1942, Grady was still consumed with jealousy, convinced that Smith, among others, had enjoyed Claire’s company. Smith wrote Grady that he was sorry the latter had formed such a distorted view of their beliefs.31 In Jack’s view, Claire, whose natural proclivities were sufficiently indicated by her nickname of “Kitten,” was hardly an asset; she “slept with every man she met and was entirely irresponsible and shiftless.”32 Jack disingenuously claimed not to know whether an abortion had taken place. He affirmed that the order, Smith, and himself were opposed to abortion, but that it was a matter of an individual’s choice. The day before he wrote this letter, Sara, pregnant with Jack’s child, had an abortion. There was a period of indecision prior to the act: Jack had asked Helen, pregnant with Smith’s child, how she felt about Sara being the mother of his child, a cruelty she could hardly endure. Helen had wanted to be a mother for some time, and Jack had refused to cooperate. He made it clear to her that he wanted no heirs. Motherhood was nearly upon her, and she was determined not to let her unborn baby be affected by all the “sorry mess” sweeping around her. The cases of Claire and Sara were aberrations, for the Thelemites of Agape Lodge overwhelmingly chose birth. During 1943 a total of five children were born to Agape mothers: in birth order they were: Helen Parsons; Phyllis Seckler; Grace Miller; Barbara Canright; and Mildred Burlingame.

248  The Unknown God The first to give birth was Helen. Frederic had left 1003 in December for a hotel job in Chandler, Arizona, returning briefly to testify at his citizenship examination on March 17, where Jane and Helen stood as witnesses for his character. He came back to Pasadena on April 15, and for the first time he spent hours socializing with Helen, on whose natal chart he had commented in verse: Only who know to read in a mirror, can see you—​ wholly beyond, yet close by, yet real and true. Look at yourself, but let not your breathing becloud you! Come, come out from your silvery hiding—​break through!33

Frederic’s time in Arizona had raised his spirits. He thought Helen’s child would be born on April 30, and the two of them worked out potential names for her baby. On the morning of April 19, Helen was rushed to the hospital. Her son Kwen Lanval Parsons arrived at 10:58 a.m. Jack and Wilfred were with Helen until she was wheeled into the delivery room. The only day Jack didn’t visit was April 26, their wedding anniversary, which Helen saw meant nothing to him anymore. They were, however, still legally married. Previously they had agreed that, although the baby’s natural father was Smith, the child would bear the Parsons surname. Helen left the hospital and returned to 1003 on April 28. She immediately began to make plans to leave for what they now grandly termed “Culling’s Hermitage,” where Smith had decided to go for the retirement so frequently suggested by Crowley and now demanded by Germer. At the same time, Frater Saturnus deposed Frater 132 as head of Agape Lodge and appointed Frater TOPAN [sic], known to mortals as Jack Parsons, to serve in his place temporarily, assisted by Soror Estai. It was so lofty a decision that Germer stated no one in the lodge could judge the reasons for this change or its implications. The loyalty pledge was required to ascertain if the members were devoted to the order itself or only to a local leader.34 For the faithful there was only one right answer to this question: the charisma centered on Crowley alone. Germer opined in an open letter of May 15, 1943, entitled, “A few general observations on the question of allegiance” that “for our Orders (O.T.O. and A∴A∴) the Head is God Himself.” Crowley, His sole human designate, was next in line. To those few contemporaries who had any sense of the all too fallible humanity of the parties involved, the notion gave rise to huge gusts of laughter.

Ten-o-Three  249 Smith left for Rainbow Valley on May 8, following a farewell dinner at 1003 for himself, Helen, and Kwen. It was a joyous event, mixed with sadness for some. Helen had her first post-​pregnancy highball and got “deliciously high”! Jack was dejected at her leaving and broke down in tears; he proposed to call off his plans with Sara if Helen would once again make a home with him. She declined his offer. Somehow, she knew they would see this all through. Helen left with Smith and the baby, accompanied by Culling and Maria Prescott, and kissed everyone goodbye passionately. They arrived at Rainbow Valley at 1:30 a.m. the next morning and settled in for the retirement.

18 Apotheosis Culling’s hermitage needed work to be habitable. Welcome as it was as a place of refuge, Smith tried to transform the two-​room shack with the screen porch into a temporary home for Helen and their son. It had been little used for some time, and Culling encouraged Smith’s residence to help care for the property and the surrounding fruit trees. Smith’s first week was devoted to setting the property in order. Once the initial job of making the place livable was complete, Smith put in a garden for a source of food and exercise. He decided to let his magical work plan for the retirement reveal itself in time; he did not want to bind himself to any specific task permanently. For starters, he vowed to consult the Yi King daily and perform the adorations of the sun given in Crowley’s “Liber Resh.” He gradually added to the task list some simple magical and yoga practices as well as his OTO operations, with the goal of “Light on the Path.” He had brought his handcrafted magical weapons with him: the bell, the cup, the phallic ebony wand with a semiprecious stone in the tip which had been given by Crowley to Jane and to him in turn, along with his prized vellum-​bound copies of the thelemic holy books. In preparation for the work of self-​analysis, Smith began to reread all his correspondence with Crowley, a task he had wanted to accomplish for some time previously. Life in the Hermitage, away from the strife of 1003 (recalled by a visit from Jack and Sara), promoted his well-​being and peace of mind. Helen served him quietly and their infant provided a natural alarm clock for Smith, who despised mechanical ones. Jack and Sara were disruptive; on the day they arrived, May 29, Helen received “another one of ‘those’ ” letters from Crowley. Smith’s calm was quickly shattered; Crowley’s vitriol and scorn for all their efforts could no longer be denied. Even Helen’s good-​natured attempt to restore Crowley’s confidence in Smith by means of a supportive telegram merely met with his abuse: The telegram signed “Jack and Helen Parsons” gave me a somewhat bitter laugh. The last time anyone talked to me about “loving and trusting,” it was a very beautiful peroxide blonde who thought I didn’t know that she was

The Unknown God. Martin P. Starr, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2024. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197744512.003.0018

Apotheosis  251 double-​crossing me, and (what is worse) thought that I cared tuppence whether she was or wasn’t! Oh yes, Helen, “loving and trusting” doesn’t go down very well in this part of the world. I didn’t answer your letter of last October because I couldn’t find anything to answer. I forced myself to bore myself to the extent of reading it; and it was all about various people digging for victory—​at least I hope they were—​people I don’t know doing perfectly inept things, and wandering all over the place without any purpose, without any method, without anything at all.1

The letter to Helen made the ongoing situation appear hopeless to Smith. He imagined what a bombshell of a book the Crowley–​Smith correspondence would make; it was depressing to him that such a great man would engage in such ignoble letter-​writing for years on end. Yet as he read further into their correspondence, he happily discovered that not all the letters panned him; Crowley’s estimation of Smith was so high as to suggest that Smith was the logical one to succeed him. The immoderate praise was just as confusing as the ill-​considered abuse, and he thought it was equally unmerited. Unknown to its subject, the life and career of Wilfred T. Smith was also being analyzed outside the confines of Rainbow Valley. The loyalty pledge had brought Mellinger into correspondence with Germer, who pressed him on the reasons for his devotion to Smith. Germer was moved by Frederic’s account of Smith’s performance in the Gnostic Catholic Mass and he forwarded a copy to Crowley: And now, I feel, I may give you, without any minimizing mental reservations, that clear answer to your question about what I owe to W.T.S. May-​be, any good priest might be saturated with the letter and spirit of the scriptures he is preaching, as Wilfred is. But not every one is a personification of the essence of what he teaches, to that extent as Smith personifies Will, the Spirit’s basis. I owe to his example the best part of my understanding (as far as it goes) of that sacred mystery of the union between Spirit and Matter. That he was not all the time able to fully apply this astounding capacity to mundane affairs, has its reason in complexes (fed by those drastic shocks of his boyhood), and his overstimulated rational mind (☿ ☌  ☌ ♆) sapping the lifeblood of his spiritual vision. If you would have seen him once performing the part of the priest in the Mass, you would know that he belongs to that group of inspired actors who grow truly creative when supported

252  The Unknown God by the genius of a poet, and who might any day rise into that realm of original creators themselves whenever they will be ready to shed the shackles of their self-​conscious minds.2

Crowley’s first response to Mellinger’s letter, a copy of which he received on May 19, set the tone for what was to follow: “If this is all true, W.T.S. should be a Hermit Prophet-​Priest.” Frederic’s letter served as a stimulus for Crowley’s thoughts on how he might resolve his long-​standing issues with and about Smith. There were the seemingly endless domestic entanglements which so often seemed to involve Smith, and he had harbored a suspicion that Smith’s aspiration to the grade of Master of the Temple had gone wrong, leaving him demonically obsessed by his failure. Although Leffingwell later defended Smith to Crowley against Schneider’s negative characterization of his performance as Priest in the Gnostic Catholic Mass,3 he took the present opportunity to complain that Smith attempted to make sexual inroads on his family. Crowley’s reply to the latter allegations was definitive: “I think we must be rid of him once and for all; and this will include the Parsons, unless they disassociate themselves immediately from him, without any reservations.”4 Smith had to go, forthwith and all. Crowley began working on his “solution,” inspired by the tale of the bestselling novel The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg by Louis Bromfield, whose story, in the words of the dust jacket blurb, probed “the twin mysteries of love and religion and the confusion that lies between.” Crowley began to see parallels to Smith in the father of the title character, a fictional apostate Mormon prophet named Cyrus Spragg. He is said to be of unknown origins, but is rumored to have come “out of the wilderness somewhere on the borders of Canada.”5 Quite unlike Wilfred Smith, Spragg is tall and heavy and muscular in build; his flashing eyes are those of a man on whom the mantle of Prophet of God has unquestionably fallen. He is in the grip of a constant stream of revelations, both true and false. Spragg teaches that man can only be saved by returning to the ways of birds and beasts; there is to be no more marriage, and sinless Adamic nudity is henceforth to be their only clothing. The realities of winter and the reaction of the surrounding community soon bring an end to the latter teaching; nevertheless, the Spraggites continue to be compelled to believe in him as God incarnate. Cyrus Spragg leads his polygamous band of followers across the Middle West of the United States for decades until they settle in an unnamed place where three rivers meet, which they christen “New Jerusalem.” There Spragg

Apotheosis  253 builds his Temple, an eight-​sided windowless affair, with a single door, and his Ecclesiastical Palace. Spragg enters into the recesses of the Temple and rules over his flock as an “Invisible Presence,” a veritable Unknown God, waited on by teams of virgins who bring forth his utterances, but he is never again seen by men. When prophecy failed and misfortune strikes New Jerusalem, doubts gather about the Unseen Prophet. A crowd rushes the doors of the Temple and the truth is revealed. There is no Prophet in the Temple. Cyrus Spragg has disappeared without a trace. Bromfield’s novel strangely gave birth to an idea in Crowley’s protean mind. Smith had inspired great personal devotion and was himself wholly indoctrinated in Thelema, but his inability to deal with earthly matters had subjected him to Crowley’s near-​constant criticism. The proposed “solution” took the form of a liber or book of instruction, to which Crowley first gave the title “ΑΠΟΘΕΟΣΙΣ 132,” later known as Liber CXXXII. His misspelling of “apotheosis” in Greek led him to the incorrect numeration of 777 for the title, a detail that went unnoticed by all but Smith. Crowley also cast Smith’s natal chart (using for his birth data June 9, 1885, 12:40 a.m., at Tonbridge, Kent, England) and he was stunned at what he found. Based on his theory of the “astrological complex,”6 owing to the number of planets in close aspect in his nativity, Smith should have been one of the greatest men in history. Not halting at mere mundane greatness, the evidence led Crowley to a staggering conclusion: “Wilfred T. Smith, Fra∴ 132, is not a man at all; he is the Incarnation of some God.”7 The first two sections of Liber CXXXII were completed in early June and immediately posted to Germer. Crowley had also sent a congratulatory telegram on June 2 to Smith at 1003, announcing the discovery of his magical formula; it apparently never reached the intended recipient, as neither the telegram survives, nor is it mentioned in Smith’s meticulous diary. Crowley was elated: he wrote enthusiastically to Germer of his proposed plan of how to deal with Smith henceforth: I was very much impressed by Frederick Mellinger’s report. If it is really true that he becomes inspired when he fulfils the rôle of priest in the Mass, he ought to be encouraged to continue. To make a good officer, even in a minor capacity, requires very rare qualities. I think that where Smith has gone wrong is in allowing himself to be distracted from his True Will by paying attention to a whole lot of things which he should never have been allowed to touch. He is evidently quite incompetent in business, and he

254  The Unknown God has this dreadful faculty of getting himself into sexual messes all the time. I am reminded of Louis Bromfield’s book “The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg.”8 If you have not read this book, you ought to do so at once. I think you will see the analogy between the prophet and Wilfred. This should give you valuable hints as how to deal with him, but this prophet lived in a time in the history of the United States when things were very different. In those days there were plenty of great, open spaces; people could take the bit in their teeth and dash off in any desired direction without constantly knocking up against anybody else. You will see from this that my view of Wilfred is that he has not been putting himself too high, but too low. All reports seem to agree that he is absolutely saturated in the Book of the Law and the holy books generally. That example is inspiring, but it is limited to that part of his life which deals wholly with the higher planes. Whenever he is faced with practical problems and has to come down to domestic affairs and business arrangements, he is simply nowhere at all.9

The news of the “discovery” of Smith’s incipient godhood took time to cross the ocean. By early July, the text of the first two sections of Liber CXXXII had reached Germer, who in turn distributed copies to Jack, Frederic, and Max. Each reacted to the news in their own particular way. With the reflection of the prolonged silence of his retirement, Smith’s doubts were increasing daily. He contemplated renouncing all his grades, titles, degrees, as Jones before him had done; he had no need of them. He could see that the end of their relations was near, and the pattern was set. Crowley would denounce him to the order through an open letter, just as he degraded Jones, Russell, Germer, and Yorke from their former status in Thelema. His turn was up: he thought to suggest that Crowley should not go to the trouble of writing a new letter of condemnation. Rather he should simply take one of his old ones and change the names. His letter expelling Jones would do nicely as a model, but on reconsideration, too many words would have to be changed. He would write his own letter of expulsion! His sounding board was his diary, which he had no intention of sending to Crowley. He had the patent examples from the prior denunciation of Germer that the confessional content of the magical diary was subject to abuse by Crowley for his own political ends. Having acquired sufficient clarity and to help clear his mind of the train of prepossessing negative thoughts, Smith wrote a long letter to Crowley on June 10 which went unanswered.

Apotheosis  255 Smith received the first two sections of Liber CXXXII on July 10. Helen was away for a time in Pasadena, but they wrote each other daily. He was as skeptical of its conclusions as were all the other recipients: I glanced at it when received, leaves me cold. Am I supposed to take this seriously? Just as likely to an opposite tirade tomorrow. This accounts for Jane being all on my side now as Helen wrote; I guessed something had been received by her of a more complimentary nature. I don’t imagine anything like this thing. Helen of course did say they had been reading a comment on Liber CXXXII, and I looked through Equinox X and the Blue Equinox trying to find that Liber, and gave up the chase thinking it something unpublished. I never associated it with myself. Jack breathed a little different atmosphere. Jesus! why don’t people make up their minds of their own accord about another instead of hanging on A.C.’s or some other person’s opinion. . . . Surely A.C. would not go to that much trouble to pull someone’s leg; but he might. Anyhow he has been all wrong before and is still in some spots I can vouch for in this discourse. So the main part of it could be balls. But then I can’t say that either because I do know something about it anyway. But it will take a lot more consideration.10

Smith spent most of his waking hours trying to decipher Crowley’s meaning; he half-​suspected that Smith the black sheep was now being turned into the scapegoat, to be driven of the spirit into the wilderness. He was not at all pleased with the wide distribution this apparently private instruction had received. It was all so contradictory. What happened to the OTO motto Deus est Homo or the phrase in Liber OZ, “There is no god but man”? Even though Liber CXXXII stated that he was not supposed to be communicated with, Jane, Jack, Frederic, and Joe had all written to him about it. The notion that Liber CXXXII was a practical joke on Crowley’s part was hard for some Thelemites to shake. Max even grew so bold as to suggest that the instructions were the product of Crowley’s senile decay, of which notion Crowley was quick to disabuse him. In a moment of frankness, Crowley confessed to Leffingwell that he did not have his tongue in his cheek when he composed the first section of Liber CXXXII, but that he “might more amusingly have suggested that I put Il Principe of Machiavelli under my pillow, and dreamed it!”11 If his Machiavellian motives were not clear enough in the first two sections, by the time Crowley wrote Section Gamma (Section Delta

256  The Unknown God proved supererogatory) on July 11, they were all too apparent. The terms and conditions of Smith’s permanent retirement were to be set by Germer, who could appoint a committee of three local Brethren to attend to practical details. The power to control Smith now lay heavily in Germer’s hands, yet the latter was still not satisfied with Crowley’s solution to the Smith problem. Crowley put it back on Frater Saturnus to resolve the conflict: It is now up to you to find (a) an alternative theory to explain Smith, reconciling all the contradictory data (b) an alternative method, by which he can be got rid of completely, once and for all, without the appearance of ingratitude, harshness or injustice, in the form of a compliment. (This is based on our English plan of dealing with inconvenient M.P.s: they are raised to the peerage.) Suppose Smith refuses to play, then obviously he outs himself; if he accepts the situation, he may (a) make good—​a marvellous asset to the Order (b) make an ass of himself in any of 51 ways. In either case, he is barred from any communication whatever with the Order. My N.L.T. to Max was plain enough, surely.12

The task was entirely beyond Germer’s capacity, and for the time being he decided to acquiesce in Crowley’s superior wisdom, which he had previously found would most likely be justified in time. Smith, too, had found Crowley’s instructions lacking in precision, and he silently asked his diary for another portion of the essay. He prayed for light but only found more darkness, compounded by the news of the accidental death of his longtime friend Jonas Erickson. Prophetically he wrote: “Next will be dear Regina, and then perhaps A.C. Ye Gods! And at my end all the old ones will be gone.”13 Even though he felt that Jonas was better off now, for all that he suffered in life—​Smith was his only friend—​the pain of his death filled Smith’s mind with thoughts of suicide. He did not know how he would cope with the loss of those he loved, and he vowed to keep a dagger close at hand should the moment arrive when he wished to make his exit. Helen was his anchor to the world, and she tried to encourage him to consider her positive view of his life and work to date. Section Gamma of Liber CXXXII, titled “The Captain: Ship’s Discipline: Hints on Navigation,” arrived at Culling’s Hermitage on August 11. He stayed up late into the night; reading it put Smith back into the same negative state of mind as when he received the first part. He was adamant: “There is some mistake

Apotheosis  257 somewhere. I am not the man.”14 He thought he might just as well resign from the OTO and return to the world of mundane work. Without much more ado, Smith abandoned the diary of his retirement and gave up the task set him in Liber CXXXII. He was more demonstrative about his complete rejection of the operation since his receipt of Section Gamma in a letter to his “Old Faithful” and frequent correspondent, Regina, with worse than usual spelling: I have no intention of being a guiney [sic] pig, scape goat, living dead Budah [sic], Cyrus Spragg or Krishnamurti. I still intend to run my own life. . . . I am not a stud, I will do my own sellecting [sic] of secret visitors or have none. I don’t like being tatooed. I don’t like doctors. I don’t like stony knols [sic] in the bleak treeless desert of Ranch Royal. I have seen it. . . . I am still a Thelemite. Still believe He is the profit [sic] of the Gods. And a damned swell poet. But I am just plain Wilfred T Smith from here on.15

They stayed at Culling’s Hermitage until the following month. He hated the thought of returning to 1003, but it was the only home he and Helen had. What he had learned of affairs back in Pasadena only increased his dread. The great house was no longer his home. Max had abandoned Georgia Schneider while she was ill. She was replaced by Jean Phillips, destined to be the third Mrs. Max Schneider; her future husband had accepted her as a Probationer in the A∴A∴ on January 31, 1943.16 Since late June the Schneiders had occupied Smith’s former bedroom and were preparing to perform the Gnostic Catholic Mass at 1003, taking the parts of Priest and Priestess, respectively. Max’s cable sent to Crowley that summer, announcing their intent to revive the Mass, triggered the attention of the FBI to the presence of an enemy alien in Parsons’s home. When the news of this latest shadow cast on his career as a defense contractor reached him, it only strengthened Jack’s resolve to be rid of Max. Although they had tried to get along, Sara hated both Max and Jean, and Jack correctly surmised that Max was a conduit of negative information to Crowley and Germer. Germer had issued his own set of instructions to Jack on the handling of Smith. The orders specified that Smith would never resume his former position in the OTO. If he returned from his magical retirement, he was to be given a new mission. While he was on retirement, no member of Agape Lodge could have any communication or relations with Smith, on pain of immediate suspension. These orders were to be communicated to the lodge members at the next meeting.17 Jack had quite enough of the atmosphere

258  The Unknown God created by the floods of “promiscuous letter writing.” He thought the OTO had a serious mission which was not being met by the current arrangements, and suggested that it would be better to discontinue activities rather than continue the bickering. He would take no order from Germer via Max or vice versa, and he had grown sick of what he termed the “hysteria” about Smith, fed by Max’s jealousy and spite. He suspected that someone was worried Smith might return to his prior position, but he questioned whether there were orders from Crowley to this effect.18 Encouraged by Jack, Smith and Helen planned to return to 1003 in early September, even though they greeted the move with the greatest of diffidence. Helen had been invited to a special lodge meeting on the 9th; Smith was not allowed to attend. When Helen arrived on the afternoon of the meeting, she was greeted by Jane with tears in her eyes. The house was not as she had left it. She was discouraged to find that her and Smith’s belongings had been carelessly thrown into Regina’s old room and the attic without any regard for them. The lodge meeting, with Parsons presiding in the chair, was conducted without controversy; the next meeting was scheduled for the following Tuesday, September 14. Radical changes were coming faster than most of them knew. On the 10th, Smith and Helen moved their belongings from Culling’s Hermitage back into 1003. Jack confided in Smith that he was going to cease lodge activities forthwith. That day Smith cabled Crowley that he was postponing the operation of Liber CXXXII and resigning from the OTO, as Crowley hoped he would in response to the limitations of Section Gamma. More cables followed the next day. Jack cabled Germer that he was discontinuing OTO activities for the present and resigning as the head of the lodge. Trying to beat him to the punch, Max also cabled Germer on the 11th to report on Smith’s anticipated return in violation of the strictures against contact with him. Crowley was next in line to be informed of the resignations. Jack wrote to Crowley on the 14th, affirming his reasons for his suspension of OTO activities and his resignation as the head of the lodge, not the least of which was Crowley’s “appalling egotism, bad taste, bad judgement, and pedanticism in your personal writings and dealings.”19 If Smith did not want to communicate with others during his retirement, that was his business. He did not accept the notion of putting him in “Coventry”—​the form of social ostracization inflicted on Crowley as a child—​and punishing those who violated these terms. He was nauseated by the thought of Crowley taking Max and Jean seriously. The ceaseless destructive slander

Apotheosis  259 and libel of Germer and Schneider, aided and abetted by Crowley, had brought all their work to naught. Smith wrote Crowley the same day as Jack. The end was finally at hand. It was a long epistle of regret, ending with a tart reprove of Crowley for his lack of awareness: “Would to God you knew your people better.” He included a draft of a letter he planned to circulate among the lodge members; as Smith’s services were no longer required, 1003, his home, would no longer be available for order purposes. Germer had declared, “The Lodge must be cleaned of the last whif [sic] of the pernicious Smith atmosphere.”20 Jack, too, had a draft letter he planned to circulate among the lodge members, explaining in “whiter words” the reasons for his resigning the post of lodge Master. His cover story was that he closed activities because he wanted to pursue other spiritual interests. The battery of terminative communications was not yet complete. Smith took the time to wrap up his business with Germer, who had suggested that Max stay on at 1003 to observe. The suggestion was ruled out of order: since Germer had declared Smith was not a member of the IX˚, his home was no longer a profess house of the order. He was willing to let Schneider stay on at 1003 merely out of courtesy—​he left later that month—​but Germer was in no position to dictate who his houseguests may be. Germer’s problems with the FBI (who allegedly had questioned him about his contacts with the Pasadena “love cult”) were due entirely to the “stupid inflammatory and hysterical nature”21 of his correspondence, which had traveled far. If he wanted to know what had caused many of the messes of the past, Germer need look no further than his repeated violations of the obligation to protect the good name of an OTO Brother. With this parting shot, their correspondence would close, not to be reopened until 1950. Germer dismissed Smith’s letter. He deemed it unworthy of a reply and strengthened his belief that Smith was the tool of Choronzon and thus deserved further isolation. He named Max to the headship of Agape Lodge, but with the withdrawal of Smith and Parsons, the activities ceased for a time. Although he fumed privately in his diary about the “puppy Jack” when he received his letter on October 1, Crowley chose to ignore Parsons’s resignation on the grounds that it was not in proper form and therefore not official. He thought the future was Jack Parsons and took the time to write a lengthy conciliatory and avuncular reply. Smith had been “ignominiously kicked out—​ in Max’s accurate phrase, for malfeasance and larceny, but I wished to get rid of him without disruption. As soon as you appeared capable of replacing

260  The Unknown God him, he was replaced.”22 In his view, Parsons could never understand Smith, as he was not an Englishman; Crowley wrote that he knew all too well the “unfortunate class” which Smith represented. His character was akin to his description of “Lavinia King” in his novel Moonchild, the model for whom was the dancer Isadora Duncan.23 Jack Parsons preferred to compare Smith to Uriah Heep. The misunderstandings between Crowley and Parsons, the former opined, were due in part to their distance. Affording him forbearance perpetually withheld from Smith, Crowley opined that, 10 minutes after they met, he and Parsons would be smoking and drinking together, sharing stories, and talking about the good old days. Jack would never meet Crowley, like the majority of the Thelemites; he was a genius they worshiped safely from afar. The vituperations against Smith were now the subject. Witnessing the unfairness of what was being alleged against him, Jane rose to Smith’s defense. One of the more egregious slanders came from Max, who claimed that Georgia had been forced to sleep with Smith when she joined the lodge. Jane, who was a witness to Georgia’s behavior with men, labeled the story a “flagrant lie.”24 In Jane’s version, Georgia had thrown herself at Smith, and then slept with several other Thelemites before she was pawned off onto Max. Once Georgia’s tale of the harlot turned virtuous (as Jane sagely termed it) reached Crowley, it was distorted by him into an act of rape. Another false charge brought against Smith after his resignation concerned his relations with Phyllis Seckler. The story of her unwilling departure from 1003 had traveled east to the heads of the OTO. Germer chose to believe that Smith asked her to leave the profess house because she refused to sleep with the latter; to the contrary, as Jane testified, Phyllis had willingly slept with Smith several times in the past when he was trying to overcome his fears of impotence. Phyllis memorialized her view of the events leading up to her departure in a sketchbook of cartoons of 1003 and its residents. She forwarded it to Germer, who sent it to Crowley for his perusal. The latter was delighted; he proclaimed that the cartoons vindicated Browning’s thesis in The Ring and the Book: “Only through Art can one obtain a three-​dimensional picture of life.” Jack had previously unkindly but accurately characterized Phyllis to Crowley as an “indigent cook and non-​attending member.”25 In return of the favor, Crowley asked Phyllis to make a cartoon of the alleged description offered to him by an alleged unnamed mutual acquaintance (not a member of the OTO) that Jack’s attraction to Sara was like “ ‘a yellow pup bumming around with his snout glued to the rump of an alleycat.’ ”26

Apotheosis  261 From that moment forward, Crowley’s moniker for Sara was “the alley-​ cat.” Sara had sent curt letters to Crowley and Germer, filled with juvenile brusqueries that sat very poorly with them. She openly despised Max and his “low class bitches” but she defended “Willie” as at least being man enough to fight her to her face; they never made any secret of their mutual dislike of each other. Noting her pull on Jack, Crowley concluded that Sara was a vampire, by which he meant a woman or “an elemental or demon in the form of a woman” whose aim is to “lure the Candidate to his destruction.”27 He advised that Sara constituted a grave danger to Jack and to the Great Work in California. It was one judgment with which Sara heartily agreed. She was a danger, implicitly. Sara wasn’t the only hazard with which the Thelemites had to contend, according to Crowley. The crescendo of his criticism of Smith peaked in Crowley’s unsigned and undated holograph letter, postmarked November 3, 1943. Addressed to the “Illiterate incarnation of what God who know,” it is a veritable litany of libels, repeating many of the old false accusations and adding the new charge of rape. Smith had been offered a solution, but instead he chose “the road to Limbo, to the oblivion of Stansfeld Jones.” It was a last, demoralizing blow, bringing their communication to a halt. For all his strength of character, Smith took the manifestly unfair criticisms as a goad to try again at the task that had been set him. As a Machiavellian “solution” to the Smith problem, Liber CXXXII had failed. In the face of Smith’s continuing presence, Crowley chose to make criminal accusations against Smith, while Germer preferred to demonize him, though neither strategy had succeeded in completely removing him from Jack’s life. Despite all the prior threats of suspension or expulsion, Smith and Helen spent the remainder of 1943 at 1003 with Jack and Sara and their array of lodgers. The household was diminished in size, and Sara took pleasure in antagonizing Helen over petty details, even going so far as to restrict the food she sought for her son. Smith was still attempting to make sense of Liber CXXXII; Jack had inquired of Crowley if his instructions were inspired by Gerald Heard’s Man, the Master (1941). He replied that he did not know Heard, but his closeness to his acquaintance Aldous Huxley gave Crowley pause. Smith was ready to travel to see Heard at his home in Laguna Beach, but their meeting was postponed by the former’s prolonged case of the flu, and it ultimately never occurred. The new year brought another plan for fulfillment of Liber CXXXII: Roy Leffingwell offered Smith a place of retirement at his Rancho RoyAL in

262  The Unknown God Barstow. He confided in Regina that he never intended to abandon the operation. The first attempt at Culling’s Hermitage he knew would be an abortive start. The new plan of attack was for Smith to work with Culling to build a three-​room house on Leffingwell’s property, with a nearby place for Helen and Kwen. To this end he left 1003 for the desert on January 29, cognizant that his mundane duties were not entirely wrapped up. The responsibility for his son wore heavy on Smith’s shoulders, and he did not want these worries to plague his retirement. Sara’s abuse made Helen miserable; at times they were reduced to actual fisticuffs, with Sara telling her sister, “Why in Hell don’t you get out of here? This is no place for indigent mothers and bastard children.”28 Smith thought he had a real friend and ally in Leffingwell, who shared his point of view that, for all his spiritual greatness, Crowley the man was “an intellectual bully and a literary snob.”29 Leffingwell was sympathetic, and he adored Kwen, so he agreed to furnish the materials—​old railway ties, the cheapest form of lumber they could find—​and backed a plea for financial contributions Parsons planned to send to members of the lodge, which began to meet again on March 18. Smith journeyed back and forth from Barstow to assure himself of his family’s well-​being. Helen came for a few visits, but Reea’s dominance of the household left no room for another woman. Smith observed that, without Reea’s determination there would be no Rancho RoyAL. Helen’s place, until the house was built, remained at 1003. After having given the Great Work much contemplation, Helen signed the Oath of a Probationer in the presence of Frater V.P.O.V. on her birthday, February 6, on “Temple Hill” at Rancho RoyAL. This was the site suggested by Crowley for Smith’s retirement, but it was too far from the Leffingwell’s house to carry food and water, so they chose a more convenient location. It took more time and some help from Smith, but she eventually decided upon the motto “Perfect to Effect.” Her goal was to make ends meet and to work to bring about the realization of the operation in Liber CXXXII. It did not take long for Leffingwell and Smith to part ways. Smith felt it a prerequisite to the beginning of his ordeal to settle Helen’s problem of a lack of a home; her assistance was essential to his retirement. She was the only one he would trust with his diary, and the care of their child was paramount to his peace of mind. He and Culling worked long hours to put up the walls of the first dwelling. Before they could get the roof in place, Leffingwell decided Smith was making too many demands too early in the program. Smith refused to allow Schneider or Germer to have any say in his retirement; Crowley he would only deal with directly and sensibly, or not at all.

Apotheosis  263 He welcomed Roy as a committee of one to oversee the details, and even Crowley agreed that Schneider was too hateful and Germer too distant to be of use to Smith. Max’s insensate attacks on Smith had provided, with typical Crowleyan reversal, the best evidence of Wilfred’s worth. The Great Magical Retirement was fated never to begin at Leffingwell’s ranch. Roy withdrew his offer of help, earning Smith’s contempt for his double-​dealing, freely expressed in his letter to Crowley of April 9, which he allowed Smith to read. The latter knew from experience that Crowley would have no interest in his side of the story. Reea, ever the dominant partner in their relationship, felt Roy had made too many promises without consulting her and put her foot down. The operation of Liber CXXXII was postponed again. Culling walked off the job at Rancho RoyAL and Smith was back in Pasadena by the end of April. All of Smith and Culling’s construction had been appropriated by Roy for housing livestock; they never received so much as a word of thanks in parting. Roy subsequently believed that Smith had attracted evil forces to himself, resulting in coyote attacks on his flock of goats. Crowley’s distant judgment proved true to Smith’s expectations. He commented to Leffingwell that he “did right about WTS; but it was always hopeless. The test merely showed that he was always a hypocritical crook.”30 He felt it pointless to respond to the Californian Thelemites and their correspondence regarding Smith. To Germer he cabled that Smith’s “unmanly parasitic cunning interferes misinterprets countermines bleeds.”31 The Master Therion remained concentrated on the work of the moment: the sales of his newly published masterwork on the Tarot, The Book of Thoth (1944), and the composition of letters for students, entitled Aleister Explains Everything (published posthumously as Magick without Tears in 1954). His visits with Grady McMurtry had given him hope that the quick-​witted soldier might one day succeed him in the OTO; he had all the right qualities except the social. Crowley’s doubts about Parsons and the pull he believed Smith exercised over him cast a pall over his potential as a leader. He thought he could only help Jack by months of “really hard slogging” in person. Another regular caller and contemporary Probationer of promise was the London native Kenneth Grant,32 who idolized the American soldier McMurtry for his passionate devotion to Crowley, regarded by many as a thoroughly disreputable person. Crowley thought increasingly about his impending death. He had faith in a future for his work with these two young disciples under his direct instruction. The intended immediate successor in both the A∴A∴ and the

264  The Unknown God OTO was Germer, but he was only 10 years Crowley’s junior, and his age and his limitations presented a challenge to the advance of Thelema under his direction. Jane thought the time for the retirement had passed, and that Smith’s assumption of the duty laid upon him lacked sincerity. None of these adverse criticisms deflected Smith permanently from the task he had assumed, but he allowed himself to reflect on the sorry state of affairs to Regina, who had seen him through many an hour of darkness brought about by Crowley’s interaction with their lives: One wonders if there was any use in wrenching one’s heart by leaving a faired haired blue eyed son twenty-​two years ago for the Work, and later, two years ago, a passionately devoted dark haired mistress who slaved by my side for eleven years, of considerable self-​denial, to have it all come to this pass principally by the hand of the author of the plans himself.33

Culling, a friend with a deed, stepped into the breach and once again offered his Rainbow Valley Hermitage for Smith’s exclusive use. In the meantime, Smith returned to 1003. His stay there would be short, as Parsons made it clear that Smith would not be allowed to remain after May 27, nor would he support Helen and Kwen any further, for he believed it was “un-​Thelemic, and very bad magical practice to conceal the parenthood of a child, and to avoid the responsibilities contingent thereon, at the expense of a brother of the Order.”34 Jack was contemplating divorcing Helen, and his assumed paternity of Kwen was an obstacle. Helen felt that Thelemites should deal on their word—​part of their arrangement involved giving Parsons’s name to Kwen, as they were still legally married when he was born—​and not to be forced to obey the civil law: Yes, we conformed in our marriage, well, because it was the thing to do. But you will remember how we often said we would dissolve it some day—​ when we had the money—​and continue to live together, as free people and not bound by law. And now being Thelemites you ask me to continue by old Aeon bounds. It is a great deal more likely that you will marry again than I.35

Their tiff was temporary; Parsons continued his voluntary support of Smith and Helen, which he considered an obligation. The amounts were

Apotheosis  265 small but helpful to them as they passed the summer in Rainbow Valley, to which they had returned quietly. The second attempt at the Great Magical Retirement began on Labor Day, September 10, 1944, a year to the day since Smith and Helen had left Culling’s Hermitage to return to 1003, which was now up for sale (it was eventually purchased by Parsons). Smith’s mood at the inception of the retirement was dark: he had no enthusiasm for the task and yet did not want to give it up. His profound spiritual dryness was his constant companion, and contemplation of the void within him depressed him further. He had begun the retirement physically exhausted from the hard labor he had expended in the past six weeks. Helen left him the following day; in testimony of her will to serve Frater 132 in his retirement and taking a hint from Liber CXXXII, she adopted the magical name of “Grimaud,” the servant of Althotas in The Three Musketeers of Alexandre Dumas. She would be stationed a short distance away from him to attend to his needs without any unnecessary communication. She would be his sole contact with the outside world. Her selfless devotion brought him to tears, dutifully recorded in his diary and testified to in his dedication of the Great Magical Retirement: To Jones who led me to the gate, otherwise I might not be here now. Sorry he walked away. I know now a rat was worrying. To Aleister the Gargantuan, Ego and all. Poet, philosopher, master whose vision spans 300 years and only late dropped his eyes and noticed one at hand. Albeit his works cast the mould into which the gold was poured. To Jane who loved only 666 and echoed only he, nevertheless she lent a helping hand. To Regina, Mistress, Mate and Mother. Who bore me, nurtured me at her breast and years ago, the first, with love’s eyes saw me and knew. To Frederic, Advisor, Companion and Friend who loved, saw and knew and abided in his conviction. To Louie, Friend indeed, who loaned his place in love, waited and loaned it again to the task. To Jack my son, who loving recognized his father and helped, waited and helped yet again and still. To Helen my daughter, ministering angel, silent watcher, pal and nurse who delivered me and served with self-​effacement for love’s eyes caught the vision and she bore me a little man with eyes of blue.

266  The Unknown God To my child and may he come early into the light. To Max who hated well. Jones will remember him too. Like most of his race he buys and sells, even when he gives he buys. And honor was naught to the master’s favor. To Karl the Prussian Theosophist who barked when he thought his master barked. To Roy the little Baptist in pants who luckily married a man; he ought to be of the same race as Max judging by his perfidy. To the Rest who waited not knowing for what they waited. These all I must not fail.36

Only a few were worthy of being kept informed of Frater’s progress. Chief among them was his “Old Faithful” Regina, who was delighted that the urge to attain in Smith had at last reached the proper peak.37 She was certain he would attain. Helen bravely wrote Crowley that Smith had taken up the task again; she was happy to assist him even though, like him, she felt dreadfully alone. Crowley replied that he was content to reverse his opinion that Smith never had any intention of carrying out the operation, but even should he succeed, he would still be barred from contact with the lodge members.38 To express his thanks, he sent her a specially inscribed copy no. 52 of The Book of Thoth, the number symbolizing the “supernal mother” in recognition of her service in “bringing forth a Demiurge.” After the first month alone, Smith began to work actively on his spiritual practices. He filled his days and nights with pranayama, invocations of Thoth, beating on the tom-​tom he had fashioned out of a desert tree, reciting the Holy Books from memory, particularly the “Prologue of the Unborn” from “Liber Liberi vel Lapidis Lazuli” (one of Smith’s favorite sacred texts), and performing the Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram to help bring light on his peculiar path. All the while he struggled against the feelings of depression and futility. He wished he could devoutly pray: “I have prayed for years. Daily or more often nightly +​nothing has happened. I have seen +​heard nothing. I wish some thing unusual would appear. Spirit, Ghost, some elimental [sic] anything at all out of the common place.”39 He saw himself more fit for being a plumber in this life than a priest. Regina had driven him to perform the Gnostic Catholic Mass and now Helen was pushing him to carry out Liber CXXXII. His heart was not in the work any longer. The comparison of his diary with Crowley’s made their spiritual differences clear: Crowley knew there was a “pot of gold at the end of the rainbow; I don’t, its [sic] all

Apotheosis  267 hearsay.”40 Yet every so often he would recover his sense of perspective, move away from the endless self-​accusation, and enjoy the strange place in which he found himself, courtesy of Crowley, as witness the rhyme he left out for Helen to discover: Don’t try to clear the atmosphere Because a God resided here. Oh Vanished Goats and vanished land; Review the letters by your hand. You should have kept your word not lied. Gods do not like to be defied.41

And then the fatal blow fell. On January 6, 1945, Grimaud brought him word that Regina had died in Houston the prior morning. He could not bear to write about it in his diary, but if Helen had not been present, he thought the pain would have driven him to suicide. As with the death of his friend Jonas, he was overcome by the realization that he would never see his beloved friend again in life—​and still worse, he could never make right what he thought had gone awry in their relationship. To ease his sorrow, he recited the Gnostic Catholic Mass with Helen; on one occasion they both heard a note like the sound of a tuning fork as they carried out the ritual, an inexplicable phenomenon that suggested the presence of her spirit. Even Crowley, who never met Regina, was moved by her death. He suggested to Helen that her epitaph could be: “She was over-​engined; her soul had shaken her body to pieces.”42 If she had taken the oath to return to carry on the Great Work, they might expect to see her again in 20 to 30 years’ time. He suggested that the lodge have a memorial lecture in her honor; they in turn commemorated her passing with a selection of readings from the Crowleyan texts she had so often performed, closing with the shattering of a loving cup. With Smith gone and Regina departed, the lodge was never the same again. With the alienation induced by the death of Regina, Smith decided that the time for the retirement had ended. The ranch on which Helen had been staying had been sold and Culling wanted to reclaim his Hermitage. It was over, and Smith confessed his failure to Crowley: Ill started. Ill maintained. Ill terminated. “This shrine is desolate of the devine [sic].” has ever been and I am completely empty. So much so, I do not

268  The Unknown God know if I write accurately about myself. In fact I don’t know anything at all. Have nothing, am nothing. I started in a very bruised condition. Got over the resentment, but am none the less bruised, more so for I have added thereto in these months. The worst of it is I have some years yet to go and the prospect of having to live with myself is I assure you not at all pleasant. For I can’t see but that my brain will continually flog me till I go to sleep once and for all. I have ill understood your dealings with me these many years, and I am no better informed at this moment. It has seemed to me that much misinformation has been conveyed to you. But even that I will modify now, yet you have written such strange things of me that:—​well, never mind, for I repeat I just don’t know, have no ideas left about anything.43

Helen’s accompanying letter to Crowley was nowhere near as abject in tone; she refused to accept Smith’s negative assessment of the retirement. Smith and Jack exchanged letters in early February; Jack felt a great sense of duty toward Smith as “the first human ever to give me comfort and understanding.”44 There were so few torchbearers that some means had to be found for them to cooperate in the Great Work. Smith telephoned Jack on February 10 to tell him they were asked to leave Culling’s Hermitage and that he and Helen would be in Pasadena to discuss what living arrangements could be made for them since they were both homeless and penniless. The news from Smith was the chief topic of discussion at the meeting of the newly formed Third Degree Council of Agape Lodge held that day. Parsons expressed his opinion that Smith’s residence at 1003 was a positive danger for himself. Georgia offered her Hollywood apartment and Roy again suggested that Rancho RoyAL would be available for his retirement if the provisions of Liber CXXXII were literally observed. Following the meeting, Parsons cabled Crowley with the latest developments, renewing their pledges of loyalty, and asking for his guidance. Frater 132, Soror Grimaud, and son left Rainbow Valley on February 12. Helen stored some of her belongings at her mother’s house on North Hill Avenue in Pasadena. The patent hatred of her half-​sister Nancy drove her out before she could have dinner. Smith drove to 1003, where Jack welcomed him back with open arms while Helen and Kwen waited in the car. Jack put him up in the garage/​laundry outbuilding and had food sent out to him; he talked excitedly with Smith about reviving the Gnostic Catholic Mass and the OTO initiations and promised to write Crowley for his approval. He thought

Apotheosis  269 the garage could be fixed up as a dwelling for Smith, which would satisfy the requirements that he be kept away from the lodge members. Helen found a live-​in childcare job and took up residence there with Kwen. Crowley cabled his reply to the latest arrangement; the words “film” and “script” were inserted to avoid problems with censorship: IDEA FILM HERO EMERGES RETIREMENT DIVINELY SELF-​ CONFIDENT INDEPENDENT POWERFUL PREPARED CHARGES VAGRANCY LUNACY LIKE HISTORICAL EXAMPLES. FOLLOW SCRIPT 132 SCRUPULOUSLY AVOIDING OLD CONTACTS. WROTE HELEN NINTH.45

Once again, Crowley’s cable baffled rather than informed its recipient. The Third Degree Council met again on February 17 to discuss the telegram and its import. Parsons made it clear to the members present that, according to Germer’s latest letter to Jane, Parsons had the sole responsibility over lodge matters; he told Sister Mildred Burlingame that he was not “a toady. I can’t go around licking asses.”46 Either he was Head of the lodge or he was not. Jack intended to give Smith lodging for a reasonable time, on the order of a week, while he looked for a job; it was the least he could do to help a Brother in need. By February 25, Jack made the portion of the property where Smith temporarily resided off limits to the Thelemites. By March 17, Smith left 1003 and Pasadena. The approval Jack had sought would not be forthcoming. Should he follow through with his plan to give Smith temporary shelter at 1003, Crowley threatened Parsons that he would put Agape Lodge under “Interdict,” meaning that none of its future transactions would be recognized and that the members would receive no materials from Grand Lodge, that is to say, himself or Germer. It was a brutum fulmen; Crowley found out that ex-​ Frater 132 (as he now styled Smith) had already left 1003 before his order was sent to Parsons and Georgia. One can sense the measure of his anger in his now-​unnecessary rebuke of the lodge members sent to the latter: One thing you might point out. Jack says, according to Karl—​“Smith is a Brother +​must be helped.” He is not a Brother; he was expelled a very long while ago. What I wish you would see is that immediately Smith appears on the horizon the whole of the Work of the Lodge goes completely to pieces.

270  The Unknown God Nobody takes the slightest interest further in the Work. What to do about Smith! What to do about Smith’s mistress! What to do about Smith’s baby! What to do about the next 17 babies. It is impossible to imagine any more destructive influence than Mr. Smith +​it happens again +​again. Everyone pledges loyalty & obedience, and immediately that they have done so, give a loud rude laugh and are disloyal and disobedient as they can invent a way of being. And what is the nature of Smith’s hold on these wretched weaklings? The Yi King seems to say that it is something in his personality with perhaps a touch of the sexual.47

Crowley clearly spelled it out to his correspondents that any communication with Smith would bring about disfellowshipment from the OTO. Even so, he somewhat mocked Helen that “doubtless so clever a young woman has found a dozen ways, especially as I am not a parliamentary draftsman”48 to dodge the absolute prohibition against contact with Smith in Liber CXXXII. By the same mail he sent a letter of magical warning to Smith, claiming that the latter “blocked the plans of the Gods who would have welcomed you to Their circle, +​looked after you in every way.”49 He was threatened that further efforts on Smith’s part to disrupt the work of the Gods in California would meet with active opposition. To Jane, who requested “the judgment of Solomon,” he wrote that Helen should be suspended from the order so long as she chose to remain with Smith. Legally, Kwen was Jack’s responsibility, at least under English law; he suggested that it would be better if he were given away or adopted by a Sister of the order. Crowley’s latest scheme was to treat Smith like the black sheep of the family, adding onto his burden of having been excommunicated. In the former’s view, Smith—​who held a job his entire adult life until his retirement—​was nothing but a social parasite. Given Crowley’s near-​total lack of an income independent from his followers’ donations, it was a hypocritical accusation on its face. Yet the OHO of the OTO held out a chance for Smith to redeem himself. If he would agree to move as far away as possible, with or without Helen, the order would pay him a small weekly remittance, “conditional on his not entering the territory of the State of California, or communicating in any way with any member of the Lodge” [emphasis in the original].50 He thought that 10 dollars a week ought to be sufficient for this purpose. None of these proposals by Crowley was seriously considered or presented to their object. And so it came to pass that Smith was parted from them and

Apotheosis  271 carried up into Hollywood. By the Beast’s fiat, Smith was now an absolute exile, bereft of all ties with the Thelemites. The only one who chose to think for himself in this matter was Culling, who continued to meet with Smith privately after the latter left 1003 in 1945. According to Culling’s characterization, their conversations were strictly non-​social and non-​conciliatory. He believed that something might be salvaged for the good of Thelema from Smith’s hard experiences. Culling wrote Crowley that he understood that “your directive about no association with Smith was not for the purpose of putting him in ‘Coventry’ but was for Magickal Silence as a part of Smith’s retirement.”51 This view was not shared by the majority, but it was one that Smith himself eventually adopted. It is no wonder, given the contradictory nature of Crowley’s communications, that after investing so much of his life in the instantiation of his organizations, Smith would succumb to cognitive dissonance and attempt to find value in the machinations to which he had been subjected. Culling’s initiative provoked the wrath of Roy Leffingwell, who took charge of the increasingly few and faithful of Agape Lodge on the retirement of Jack Parsons in March 1946 to pursue his elemental invocations, the beginnings of what came to be known as the “Babalon Working” with the assistance of his newfound friend, L. Ron Hubbard.52 Leffingwell, without bothering to hear the other side, put Culling into “Coventry,” which was only lifted by Crowley accepting Culling’s explanation for his continued contact with Smith. As usual, Louie had his reasons. Culling reported on the Parsons-​Hubbard-​ Northrup business arrangements to Crowley and Germer; he ascertained that Smith and Helen had nothing to do with the financial entanglements which led to their mutual enmity. Nor did Smith have any part in Parsons’s occult involvements with Hubbard; Jack was on his own. Smith recounted meeting Hubbard once only, without mentioning any further details. Not all the Thelemites were amenable to the restrictions being imposed upon their freedom of association in the name of a higher cause. Parsons followed Smith’s lead and quit the OTO forthwith and all in August 1946. He had reached his fill with Crowley and the OTO and put the matter behind him; he had already paid the price in his mundane career for having been associated with the man and his movement. Agape Lodge was shattered. It was too late to mend most of the relationships that had been broken by Crowley and Germer and their attempts to control people at a distance as if they were chessmen. Yet for those few who remained, in his forced exile Frater 132 became taboo.

19 Hoc Id Est The passage of time wore heavily on Smith after he left 1003 throughout the spring of 1945. His final exile posed an immediate problem. There was a postwar housing shortage, but he luckily found a house for rent in Hollywood, 1801 Tamarind, and settled there with Helen and Kwen. He sought handyman jobs in the neighborhood and spent most of his waking hours wondering what had happened to him. His letter to Crowley of August 6 received a cursory and distant reply addressed to “Mr. Smith.” Helen sent Crowley $15 as a birthday gift the following month; she enclosed a photograph of “Smithy” which Crowley described as “silly.”1 Smith could not escape the ceaseless mental repetition of the passage in Crowley’s poem on the path of initiation, “AHA,” which he knew by heart: “HOW CONTROL THE HORROR OF THE MIND? THE INSANE DEAD MELANCHOLY?”2 He telegraphed these lines to Crowley at the winter solstice of 1945; it met with no response. He screwed up his courage and wrote a friendly letter to Crowley in January 1946, offering to present him with an object that was priceless to him: his hand-​painted copy of the “Stélé of Revealing.” He implored Crowley’s aid to raise his arm against the iniquity which oppressed him. Mr. Crowley’s reply to Mr. Smith was brief: he had his own copy, made from the original, and needed no other. As far as aid was concerned: “the arm was reached out to the utmost of its power, and you would not grasp it. You played the fool with a G[reat]. M[agical]. R[etirement]., and this is the silliest folly that anyone can do.”3 Even though Smith had no contact with Agape Lodge, his influence was still being blamed for their inability to cooperate with each other. Little did Crowley realize his own culpability in the years of ex parte communications; he and Germer had complained that Smith forced the members to be secretive about the lodge activities, when in fact Frater 132 made them resolve their interpersonal differences locally and respect the hierarchal structure of the OTO in which authority was absolute. Now that Crowley was favored to receive the reports directly, he complained to Mellinger that the “idiotic correspondence” he was sent was not worth his time to answer: “everybody The Unknown God. Martin P. Starr, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2024. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197744512.003.0019

Hoc Id Est  273 with his own silly complaint about some other person not quite so silly as him or her self: the time and energy that should be spent on working for the Order, or (better still) practising the prescribed methods which lead to initiation.”4 The lingering effects of Smith’s psychic atmosphere were believed to be baleful, and the more superstitious members were inclined to attribute their passing malaises, real or imaginary, to Smith’s astral effluvia, even when he had no physical contact with them whatsoever. For less occult reasons, Helen’s contact with Smith brought about a rift in her family, with her sister Eleanor and her husband Elbert Smith refusing to allow their children to visit their grandmother Olga Northrup unless the latter barred Wilfred Smith from her house. They felt Smith had harmed Helen and shamed her mother. Like the supportive parent that she had always been, Olga Northrup, who loved her daughter Helen and grandson Kwen and did not criticize her for her relationship with “Mr. Smith,” simply asked Helen to visit her house discreetly without informing Smith.5 Sara got her last shot in at Jack—​she tried to incite Olga to have Jack brought up on criminal charges, but Culling claimed to have averted the action. Culling never lost faith in Frater 132. Through his mediacy, Smith was introduced to two potential male disciples. One was Henry K. Dunn, whom Smith sized up as preferring the circle to the vesica; he promptly left his wife and began to fixate sexually on Smith, who felt himself too inhibited to return the affections. The second disciple was George G. Alton (1908–​1976). Just prior to the spring equinox of 1946, Alton went into a sort of trance after reading Liber CXXXII. In his lucid sleep he received a secret name for Smith: “TARUS,” followed by the phrase “U.S. United States you will remember.”6 Following Crowley’s preference for cryptic cables, he fired off one to the Beast with his new secret name (misunderstood along the way as “Taurus”) and his home address; Crowley again did not respond, but in his diary he noted the receipt of a “lunatic cable” from Smith.7 Dunn and Alton gradually drifted out of Smith’s life without making any commitments to Thelema. Frater 132 had lived to see so much of what he had tried to build up come crashing down. Now the end was in sight for 1003: Parsons had sold the house and it was scheduled to be demolished, with Culling working on the wrecking crew. Louie took Smith over to the house on January 12, 1947, to see what he might care to salvage from the mess Jack left behind. Smith found the pillars he crafted for the Gnostic Catholic Mass, the well he had built for the OTO degrees, and most important to him, the lance of the Priest. He

274  The Unknown God recalled that he was the first to enter the profess house bearing the lance and now he was the last to leave it, with the same magical weapon now tucked under his arm. Soon after his final visit, the grand old house was reduced to a pile of bricks and dust, with no trace left on record of the events that had transpired there. Like 1746 Winona Boulevard, which was demolished after their residence, 1003 South Orange Grove Avenue had disappeared from the map. Smith made a final attempt to raise the Beast’s interest. Despite his endless sessions of concentration on Crowley’s image, nothing settled his mental anguish and the feeling that he had unfinished business with his disapproving master. He braved another, final letter on June 27, 1947, just to get the need to write him out of his system. He addressed the letter to “To Mega Therion” and confessed his weariness with his inescapable task of constant attention to the thinking process. He had little hope for himself or for humanity: But I want to tell you that having gained some understanding I appreciate your effort and profound insight into tendencies I knew not of myself. In consequence of understanding replacing resentment, I deplore more heartily the lack of wit to take the tide when at the flood. Not that, as far as I am aware, fortune in itself had any lure [sic] but I might now be furthering the Man and Matter that alone seems to me of any consequence in this spiritually and materially decayed state of the world. Frankly I see nothing but cancer.8

He closed with expressions of sorrow for having failed to reify Crowley’s vision of him, with which he believed that the latter never lost faith. This final letter, suffused with regret for a destiny unfulfilled, is signed “Will Fried.” His heartfelt plea went unanswered and the silence only sickened Smith more. Near the close of August, Jack Parsons telephoned Smith; he informed him that Crowley was preparing for death. Smith affirmed in his diary that when Crowley dies, he will certainly feel like he should end his own life. He had failed utterly at the task his master set him: “If I were carrying on in some sort of way his work it would be different a reason for staying.”9 Without Thelemic activity, his life had no purpose. Within a few months, the dread news came. “The Sun went out. I heard at noon to day Crowley died.”10 He had died on December 1, and both Time and Newsweek found his passing sufficiently newsworthy to include his obituary, mocking in tone, but at the least the Beast was not ignored in death.11 Smith

Hoc Id Est  275 poured out his sorrow in his diary, wishing he could have been more capable of helping Crowley in the Great Work of establishing the Law of Thelema. The succession of the headship of the A∴A∴ and the OTO was left to Germer, the wisdom of which choice Smith had long found reason to doubt.12 Now it was over. All Smith could hope for was to improve his chances in his next incarnation. His own health was beginning to fail. By February 1948 he recorded a series of heart attacks in his diary. It is not clear from his descriptions whether he was in fact experiencing cardiac problems or merely severe heartburn. His spiritual health was no better. The metaphysical anguish as recorded in his diary never seemed to decrease, and he could find no practice of Magick which gave him the relief he sought. Although he was moved to extreme emotions by the passing of those he loved, Max Schneider’s death on April 7, 1948, went unnoticed and unlamented by Smith, who had long ceased to know or care about him. Germer, on the other hand, had befriended his young and attractive widow Jean, who quickly remarried a former member of the UB under Frater Achad who was now an aspiring Thelemite, Ero Sihvonen.13 Smith’s life had reached an impasse. By June 1948, he was ready to pick up what was left and start afresh. He confided to his diary the awful truth as he saw it: “Helen does not respect me or want me any more. Kwen would be sad for a while but child like [will] soon get over it. Where shall I go +​ how exist. Damned to get a living at 63.”14 Fortunately his depression and perceived dire straits were not permanent states of being; even so, he made provisions for a successor to the Church of Thelema corporation sole: his son Kwen.15 The solution to his existential despair was found in the resumption of the ritual closest to his heart, the Gnostic Catholic Mass. With assistance from Helen, Louie, and Maria Prescott, he once again took up his priestly calling in November 1948. His diary of private occult work, bar a few odd entries, ends shortly thereafter. The re-​establishment of the Church of Thelema seems to have made him at last feel he had a purpose to his continued existence. In many ways, Smith was driven by routine, and when he found one that worked for him, he adhered to it religiously. Absent a pattern to follow, he was miserable. He had not truly known the fullness of happiness since the days on Winona. Unknown to Smith, after a two-​year magical hiatus Jack Parsons had returned to the pursuit of Our Lady Babalon, “Mystery of Mysteries,” on Halloween 1948. He had lost everything that mattered to him: Helen he had abandoned in his lust for Sara, who in turn laid him aside for her future

276  The Unknown God husband, L. Ron Hubbard. Jack, too, married again in 1946, two days after his divorce from Helen was entered; his elemental bride was known in the world of men as Marjorie Cameron, a recent military veteran, and an aspiring artist.16 Her dominating personality could not brook rivals of any kind, and she made Jack promise not to see Smith, his link to the A∴A∴. It was a promise that he broke more than once. In September 1948, Jack was stripped of his United States security clearance due to a variety of causes (including his past involvement in the OTO) and was forced to take menial jobs to support himself; his wife left him, as did most of his friends. In a handwritten chronology he presented to Smith, Parsons recorded seeing Frater 132 on November 8. It was just a few days before he answered the call to take up what he termed “the Black Pilgrimage,” wherein in an astral journey to explore the seal of Babalon, he recovered the memories of his past lives as Simon Magus, Gilles de Rais, Francis Bothwell, and Cagliostro. In a subsequent vision he was given his name as a Master of the Temple, should he survive the crossing of the Abyss: “BELARION ARMILUSS AL DAJJÔL, ANTICHRIST.”17 He then swore the Oath of the Abyss. He dreamed that he was confirmed as a Master of the Temple in the City of the Pyramids, where “Candida,” Regina, and Frater 132 were present. He took upon himself the Oath of a Master of the Temple, which was for him the equivalent of the “Oath of Antichrist,” in the presence of Frater 132, whom he termed “the Unknown God,” on December 28, 1948. The self-​proclaimed Antichrist declared war on the restrictions of the Old Aeon and promised to establish the Law of the Beast 666 upon the world. Smith was a silent witness to Parsons’s grandiosity, but he was pleased to resume their comradeship in the Work. They had shared their separate experiences in the struggle for self-​realization that had cemented their fraternal bond. With the expansion of the freeways, the Smiths were motivated to move from 1801 Tamarind to another rented Hollywood house at 2140 North Beachwood Drive. There they resumed the performance of the Gnostic Catholic Mass. Helen’s maiden aunt Mary Cowley had joined their household and generously gave them the money to help them buy the house. Smith drafted and had printed a notice of the establishment of the Church of Thelema at this address, and sought contributions to allay the indebtedness, with communications to be addressed to Helen Parsons, Secretary Treasurer pro tem. Jane rejoined the Mass as the Deacon, with Helen as Priestess and Smith in his accustomed part as the Priest. The long living room was reconfigured to serve as the chapel

Hoc Id Est  277 for the Mass; by Smith’s account, Beachwood Drive proved a very satisfactory setting. Within a year of his assumption of the office of Antichrist, Parsons resumed his correspondence with Germer. Although they had not parted on good terms, there were so few thelemic Brothers, and Parsons’s potential had been so highly estimated, that Germer tentatively welcomed him back into the fold. On a brief visit to New York in January 1950, Parsons apprised Germer of Smith’s renewed efforts to celebrate the Gnostic Catholic Mass. Germer reported to Parsons that Leffingwell had “folded” and McMurtry was devoting his time to obtaining a college degree. Germer’s main effort was collecting Crowley’s literary remains. Louis U. Wilkinson had purchased them from the Official Receiver in Bankruptcy after Crowley’s death and with the assistance of Gerald Yorke and John Symonds arranged to have them shipped to Germer. It was the latter’s great hope to see more books of the Beast published, most especially Liber Aleph, which had been recently set into type but never printed. An English disciple, Kenneth Grant, was assisting in making typed copies of the Crowley diaries. Crowley’s papers were still in the hands of a journalist, John Symonds, engaged in the first posthumous biography of Crowley, The Great Beast (1951), which Smith loathed. The mover behind the efforts to gather Crowley’s scattered writings was Smith’s old correspondent, Gerald Yorke. Although he had broken with Crowley decades earlier as a disciple—​and Smith had received a carbon copy of Crowley’s characteristic denunciation of him, issued in January 1937—​Yorke took a magical oath to preserve all Crowley’s writings. Yorke had not forgotten his friends and former co-​religionists in Los Angeles; he had promptly written to Smith and Jane to inform them of Crowley’s death. Jack learned that Germer worked alone and had no group in New York. The latter felt the OTO was of no particular importance; he was waiting for a qualified man to come along to organize its activities again. His main question for Parsons revolved around Smith’s sincerity. It was not clear to Jack if Germer believed Smith was “a conscious fake, psychologically divided, or a plain fool,”18 not that there was much to choose between these points of view. No conclusion on Smith’s worthiness was reached, but Parsons felt that the door was once again open to good relations between the Thelemites on the East and West Coasts. Parsons responded to Germer that he now would work with Smith on a trial basis for three months following the vernal equinox of 1950; he had prepared a series of lectures and had memorized the Gnostic

278  The Unknown God Catholic Mass. They would be operating under the name of the Church of Thelema.19 Smith took the initiative and wrote to Germer on March 27, 1950, the first such letter since his seemingly final communication of September 17, 1943, which had gone unanswered. And so much had happened in the seven years of silence. In the hiatus, Smith had befriended a German who went by the name of Ernst von Harringa (1899–​1961). He was an art dealer and director of the Oviatt Galleries in Los Angeles. Von Harringa had studied in Count Hermann Keyserling’s “School of Wisdom”; he also claimed the passing acquaintance of Theodor Reuss. However, he knew nothing of Crowley’s work prior to his friendship with Smith. Calling on his training as a cabinetmaker, he had Smith construct replicas of Asian furniture for sale in his gallery. Helen cheerfully waited on her two “big boys” as they spent long hours drinking tea and sharing their ideas. Given von Harringa’s level of understanding, Smith considered him the equivalent of an Exempt Adept; Jane, too, was impressed by his person, thinking him a second Crowley, but changed her mind after she read several analyses of von Harringa’s horoscope. Von Harringa was an extreme individualist and he felt that any effort for humanity was a waste, in view of the catastrophe that he believed was just around the corner. He was not alone in envisioning a forthcoming apocalypse. A variety of millenarian views had crept into the thinking of Smith and Germer alike.20 Germer believed an “Armageddon” had been prophesied by The Book of the Law, to be preceded by an inquisition. He was convinced that he and his wife were targets of a ceaseless investigation by the FBI, which in his mind amounted to persecution for his beliefs. It was his destiny to continue to be crucified for Crowley’s teachings, as he was by the Nazis. Smith rationally worried over the growing threat of Communism and nuclear weapons and the decline in personal freedom and responsibility he saw in the world. In a sharp reversal of his previous outlook on his Thelemic work history, and echoing von Harringa’s views, Smith conceded to Germer that “I sometimes think it might have been better to have kept my nose to the grindstone and sent all spare cash to Therion for his publications, even as you, instead of spending it on efforts to establish something concrete, for people are so frightfully dumb, insincere and selfishly motivated.”21 Smith felt himself loved and understood by von Harringa, who left California in November 1952 for a job building dams in India and never saw his friend alive again. Helen and Smith kept up a regular correspondence with the Baron (as he was styled), and frequently lamented his absence from

Hoc Id Est  279 their lives. To his intellectual soulmate Smith revealed his thoughts on politics, gender roles, and the future of humanity, sometimes all rolled into the same paragraph: We are headed for a radical social change; which among other things, will ultimate in the ladies fulfilling the function nature (not man) adapted them to better grace, and less intrusion into spheres of activity they are so unsuited to occupy. Men will find them at hand when they are needed and in the interum [sic] enjoy tranquility and peace, or the company of an intellectual, wise, and understanding companion.22

Smith lacked men he could meet as peers. He was now left with Germer as the only “mature Brother” Smith considered to be sincerely interested in the Work. Their relationship was overshadowed by the history of misunderstanding between them, in part fueled by the fact that they had never met—​ in 1929 Smith first suggested the necessity of them talking in person.23 The saddest news of the moment was that Charles Stansfeld Jones had died in February 1950. Once again, Smith felt alone in the Work. Even though they had been separated for decades, the warmth of their once-​close friendship had never left him. The suggestion that Smith be deputized to pick up Jones’s papers was angrily vetoed by Ruby; not only would she refuse him hospitality if she saw Smith in the area, she threatened to call the police.24 Jones had written a will in 1910 leaving everything unconditionally to her, and she would decide where his papers would go. Why she felt Smith was “taboo,” she did not say; they had no contact after the Jones’s last visit to Los Angeles in 1939, and their parting had been pleasant. Germer saw in Smith the only man with practical knowledge of the OTO degree work. To this end, he put Smith in touch with Kenneth Grant, to whom he had granted a charter for a Camp of the OTO in March 1951. Although Grant had been a personal chela of Crowley’s, he encountered him late in his life when he had ceased engaging in ceremonial work for many years. Smith was keen to cooperate, and he wrote at length about his experience and ideas for organizing a lodge.25 The distance between them was lengthened by Frater 132’s disquiet over Grant’s magical seal of “Aossic” that headed his reply of April 23, 1951. He sent Grant some of the old heavily masonic rituals of the OTO to copy, but quietly declined to send him the newer thelemic ones. Their communication lapsed. Germer, too, had his series of issues with Grant, and he with Germer. Despite his admiration for Grant’s

280  The Unknown God genius, what soured Germer on Grant was the latter’s Manifesto of New Isis Lodge O.T.O. (1955). Germer found it a “blasphemy” that Grant would identify a planet—​“an infinitely small speck of our little Solar System”—​with Nuit, the Goddess of Infinite Space.26 For this inexcusable error in doctrine, Germer withdrew his OTO authorization from Grant in July 1955 and expelled him from the order, justifying in Smith’s mind the restraint he had exercised in discussing the secrets of the order with a virtual stranger. Despite his misgivings, Smith presciently wondered, when he received the news of Grant’s expulsion, whether “our movement will not end up by having half a dozen different warring factions, like the T.S., claiming to be the real heirs of Madam B[lavatsky].”27 Before the remnants of Agape Lodge ceased to meet, they admitted a candidate who had been a disciple of Arnold Krumm-​Heller, founder of the Fraternitas Rosicruciana Antiqua. His name was Dr. Gabriel Montenegro Vargas, D.C. (1907–​1969). “Monty,” as he was known to his friends, was a Mexican-​born chiropractor and a devoted spiritual seeker. Monty first met Arnold Krumm-​Heller in 1927 and soon after became acquainted with H. Spencer Lewis. According to his widow Marguerite, Lewis and Monty met in a San Jose printing establishment where Monty was working. Montenegro had been granted an authorization by Krumm-​Heller for his branch of the Gnostic Church, which was derived from the “Heilige Gnostische Kirche” of Dr. Ernst Christian Heinrich Peithmann (1868–​1943), a German Lutheran pastor.28 Immediately prior to his first contact with the Thelemites, Krumm-​ Heller had urged Montenegro to establish the F.R.A.’s Gnostic Church in California. Monty’s chief interest was in the secret doctrines of the ancient peoples of Mexico; to this end he incorporated in California the “Toltec Research Society” to encourage the study of Mesoamerican religion. Although he pursued these plans, another current was entering his life. Three days after Crowley’s death, Monty heard a voice which directed him to Agape Lodge. Germer initially met him when he visited Los Angeles in April 1948 and witnessed his initiation into the Minerval degree, the first OTO degree the new OHO had ever seen. By special arrangement with Krumm-​Heller and at Monty’s request, Roy Leffingwell accepted him as a Probationer of the A∴A∴, in which he took the motto “Zöpirón.”29 Monty’s arrival among the Thelemites came at a time of near-​silence and inactivity. Leffingwell had been increasingly ill, and Monty turned to Jane for assistance on his path, along with a regular correspondence with Germer,

Hoc Id Est  281 who replaced Roy as Monty’s teacher. Jane brought Monty to Beachwood Drive, where he first witnessed the Gnostic Catholic Mass. Without much ado and seeking no one’s permission, Jane worked with Smith and Helen to raise Monty to the III˚ in early July 1951. Jane had previously read to him the I˚ and II˚. The III˚ degree conferral was a dramatic success, and surprisingly it met with Germer’s approval—​his only concern was that Monty might have taken some personal pledge to Smith. The candidate interpreted the vows in the OTO as he did in Freemasonry: the only oath was to the Grand Architect of the Universe, which he identified with himself. Monty speculated on whether he should leave Masonry as being in conflict with the OTO; he chose to retain his masonic membership in his mother lodge in Mazatlán, Mexico, and was coroneted a 33˚ by an unrecognized Scottish Rite Supreme Council in Mexico in the last years of his life.30 Smith found Monty naive in regard to the Path, but Germer reminded him that his differing cultural background should be taken into consideration, and besides that, it was obvious that they needed younger people in the Great Work. Germer had hopes that Monty could lead the OTO in time, a job with which he had been saddled against his every inclination. Despite his prior offer of help and assistance, Jack Parsons provided no support to Smith. The Brothers had drifted apart, but this time the breach was final. Parsons was living again with Candy even though they had divorced, and they packed for a planned move to Mexico. Candy had long cherished dreams of residing in Spain, still a Fascist state, but at a minimum they wanted to escape the McCarthyite oppression of the United States. They visited Jane on June 3, 1952, to say goodbye to their old friend, whom they both adored. Jack told her that “everything was dead” in Los Angeles for him. Those words assumed a horrible reality. Two weeks later to the day, June 17, 1952, Parsons set off an explosion in his home laboratory and died the same day from the injuries caused by the blast. His mother Ruth, overcome with grief, committed suicide that evening in the presence of a handicapped friend. Her corpse was featured on the front page of the tabloids. Jane could not escape the thought that his death was willed; Helen interpreted it mystically: “The Gods stepped in before he met a worse fate.” Owing to the extent of his injuries, the casket in the funeral home was closed when they arrived for the wake, and Parsons and his mother were cremated. The Thelemites sought out Smith to perform a private requiem Mass on June 19, 1952. Smith celebrated Jack’s “last journey with the Sun” at Beachwood Drive with the poignant wish that he had not been in such a hurry to leave

282  The Unknown God them. It was the last significant gathering of most of the Agape initiates: in the company of the officers of the Church of Thelema (Smith, Helen, and Jane) present were Ray and Mildred Burlingame and their daughter Laylah; Phyllis Seckler and her children Stella, Lisa, and Paul; Georgia Schneider; Ed Forman; Louis Culling and his lady friends Meeka Aldrich31 and Maria Prescott; and Sara, now Mrs. Miles Hollister. The pain of their loss had at last brought Helen and Sara together and helped heal their long fight; with Jack departed, it had no reason to exist. Eleven days after his death, Helen had a vision of an evening sky filled with stars. Amid the heavens were three cruciform stars, one considerably larger than the rest, which seemed to be hovering over a semiarid expanse, while at the same time moving toward a “fixed habitation.” Smith believed that Jack had neatly wound up his relations with the earth and was prepared to move on to the stars. Judging from a conversation Smith had with Jack 10 days before his death, he gathered that Jack was fed up with Candy; he had a great disinclination to go with her to Mexico and only consented to alleviate his intense loneliness. He questioned whether his death was truly an accident, for in his view Jack “took the easy way out.”32 By choosing death, Jack saved himself from further errors in this life which would have to be expiated in his next incarnation. Jack’s death freed Candy from her tenuous hold on external reality; despite all his dreaming and grandiosity, he had retained a measure of his scientific training and rationality. All of these were absent in Candy from the start of her association with Jack. She went on to imagine herself as the Scarlet Woman incarnate, in whom all power was destined to be given. Her delusions were fed by marijuana; her thoughts and behavior so worried her parents that they thought of having her involuntarily committed to an insane asylum. Using Jane as her sounding board, she formulated plans for a mixed-​ race anti-​Semitic group largely devoted to sex.33 Smith talked to Candy at length—​he welcomed her to their home for a respite after Parsons’s death—​ and concluded she had “bats in the belfry” or was suffering from marijuana-​ induced hallucinations. Unlike Jane, he took no note of what he termed Candy’s “Mad Mental Meanderings.”34 The death of Parsons was the news of the hour. The Los Angeles Mirror led the way in the exploitation of the tragedy, with a front-​page story on June 20 by Omar Garrison headlined, “ ‘Sex Madness’ Cult of Slain Scientist Revealed.” It was a series of lurid and inflammatory innuendos on the practices of the OTO in the Valley of Los Angeles, claiming that Crowley was

Hoc Id Est  283 a “witch doctor” who ordained the celebration of “a black mass patterned on the Catholic Mass in reverse” in which “the order of service as prescribed by Crowley requires the high priestess to disrobe.” Garrison wrote that the “love cult” was initially established on the West Coast in 1940, “when Wilfred Smith, an Englishman who had been a disciple of Crowley, opened the Ordo Templi Orientalis [sic] at 1746 Winona Blvd., Hollywood.” Much to Frater 132’s surprise, he learned of his own demise: “After Smith died in 1944, Parsons succeeded him as high priest of the order.” Culling was outraged and wrote a three-​page letter of criticism to Garrison for his absurdly bad reporting; on Smith’s alleged demise he commented, “I wonder who that W. T. Smith is who lives on Beachwood Drive in Hollywood?”35 This letter opened the way for Culling to be included in a 1955 local television program on the occult—​although his appearance earned Germer’s wrath and the scorn of his former teacher C. F. Russell, Louie had a strong belief in the power of “hokum” to draw in the faithful. Without as much drama, Parsons was followed in death by Roy Leffingwell; he died indigent in the Los Angeles County Hospital on November 20, 1952. Reea had heard so much good about the Parsons memorial that she had asked Smith to be ready to officiate when the time came. Although they stayed married, Reea and Roy had long since drifted apart as a couple—​Phyllis had become his magical partner—​but she cared enough to plan for a proper funeral for the father of her children. Smith’s proposed order of service began with a eulogy, with liberal quotes from a tract of Baphomet on death.36 It was to be followed by a recitation of a chorus from Swinburne’s Atalanta in Calydon, familiar to the initiates from its employ in the I˚ of the OTO, “Before the beginning of years,” and it closed with the collect for death from the Gnostic Catholic Mass. When the time came, the Leffingwell family instead chose to have an Episcopal funeral and cremation. Smith was not unhappy to have been spared the burden of conducting a public service as he had done years prior for Jane’s mother, but he could “guarantee that Helen will see I don’t get that kind of a send off!”37 Instead the Thelemites gathered at Beachwood Drive for a requiem celebration of the Gnostic Catholic Mass, led by Smith, in commemoration of Frater E.Q.V. Despite his prolonged illness, Leffingwell’s death came as a shock to Germer; he could see that the list of the faithful was growing smaller by the day. Germer and his wife Sascha had suffered a serious car accident in August that year which resulted in a Catholic priest giving him the last rites. Smith suggested that he give serious thought to leaving his Crowleyana to

284  The Unknown God the Church of Thelema whose corporate existence was legally clear. Germer did not immediately reject the concept. The historical and legal title to the OTO, an unincorporated association, was considered clouded by Germer. All he knew with certainty was that various parties claimed authority over it, and he felt sufficient doubt about his own rights that he contemplated abandoning the name altogether and operating under the name of “the Order of Thelemites,” a plan that was never more than mooted. One curious competitor, real or imagined, was the Self-​ Realization Fellowship, headquartered in Los Angeles, where it was founded in 1920 by Paramhansa Yogananda, a teacher of kriya yoga. Through Germer’s correspondence with Hermann Metzger,38 he had been informed that this ostensibly Eastern body had a representative in Europe who was granting their approval to OTO charters for high fees; they allegedly possessed the OT “Golden Book” of Theodor Reuss (the official membership record) and other documents and insignia of authority in the order. Germer deputized Smith to investigate the situation locally. He dutifully amassed historical data about the OTO from his correspondence with Crowley and Jones. In the end, Smith learned nothing about the Self-​Realization Fellowship’s supposed intents to take over the nearly dormant OTO; his visit to their Los Angeles headquarters only yielded copies of innocuous pamphlets on meditation. Although they could cooperate and correspond politely, the fraternal regard between Smith and Germer was a thin veil, with a great deal of accumulated distrust and dislike on both sides. Still, Germer took up Soror Grimaud’s charge, obtained while she performed the role of Priestess in the Gnostic Catholic Mass, to go on a magical retirement for six days, to seek “the Answer to the Question I cannot put to you.”39 Alas, Germer’s retirement in obedience to the divine summons resulted in neither the question nor its answer; he had no vision and heard no voice and blamed the messenger for the “fake” call to action. Germer’s anxiety grew as he read reports from Jane that Smith and Culling were planning to incorporate the OTO and thus “steal” the order from Germer. The truth was somewhat different. Culling had heard Smith bemoan the death of the A∴A∴ and the OTO; he blamed the situation squarely on Germer. As a first step and a goad to bringing the latter organization to life again, Culling at his own expense was going to have drafted articles of incorporation for the OTO for Germer’s signature—​the latter was expected in California in September 1953. Culling based his model for the corporation sole “O.H.O. of the O.T.O.” on Smith’s earlier incorporation of the Rex

Hoc Id Est  285 Summus Sanctissimus of the Church of Thelema. Smith’s sole connection with the affair was allowing Culling to review his file of incorporation papers. Because of Jane’s version of the events, Germer resurrected the ban of associating with Smith “for the present.” When Jane called to inform Smith of the latest imposition of shunning, Smith told Jane that, as far he was concerned, the order could be considered permanent.40 Germer extended the ban to Montenegro, who received the following order of excommunication of Culling and Smith, which incorporated a pledge against contact with these former Brethren: It has been found necessary to renew this injunction in the strictest form. Mr. Smith has had and does not have now any standing in the O.T.O. of any sort. He himself confirmed the expulsion by the Master Therion by “resigning in toto.” Yet he appears to attempt to set up with accomplices such as Mr. Louis T. Culling the O.T.O. behind my back. On the strength of the authority vested in me by Baphomet, the Master Therion, I forbid all and any contact by Thelemites with the above-​named persons and their gang, in particular Mr. Smith and Mr. Culling.41

The misunderstanding led Smith to write a 10-​page typed reply to Germer, rebutting in detail every major argument that had arisen in their decades of correspondence. Smith vented his anger at Germer’s inactivity, incapacity, and general lack of rationality. His renewal of the interdict was not to Crowley’s high purpose—​Smith understood the isolation to be necessary for him to cross the Abyss—​but to serve his low and selfish aims. In Smith’s view, the order had fulfilled its purpose, as he was now a full Magister Templi as well as an XI˚ member of the OTO of long standing. Germer’s tinny imitation of Crowley in his attempts to chastise Smith had fallen on quite deaf ears. “You apparently know not the formula of the Juggler, or his modus operandi. Don’t try to wear his suit of many colours. Remember, Jones, Russell, Regardi [sic], Mudd. But perhaps you will get away with it now that Crowley is not hear [sic] to blow you to pieces, so that Thelema starts out crippled by division.”42 He thrust before Germer a copy of Crowley’s damning “Early History of Karl Germer,” with an admonition to read it again and take its advice to heart. Germer interpreted Smith’s response as a claim to the grade of Magister Templi; he doubted its correctness and questioned whether Smith

286  The Unknown God could produce any proof of his attainment. Germer stated that Crowley had recognized his own attainment of the grade in 1938; Smith, as far as he was concerned, was in the “insanity” phase of crossing the Abyss. Once again, their correspondence ceased, this time for a matter of months rather than years. When it was resumed it was evident that, although little had really been resolved between them, they were willing to try again to see what they might accomplish in common. Smith insisted that some plan needed to be made, not for themselves, but for the sake of the “little children” of Thelema. The picture was all too clear: “Crowley dies, and there is less cohesion! Your turn will come, and there will be still less cohesion of the group. Without an organization, there is no perpetuity.”43 Part of Smith’s plans were tied up in real estate. Both Sara and Maria Prescott had moved to Malibu, and visits to their homes encouraged Helen and Smith to look for a piece of oceanfront property in the Colony that they could afford. Just as when they were searching for their previous home, Smith and Helen used the IX˚ to bring about a miracle. Their efforts were quickly rewarded; they found an undeveloped plot on the bluff just beyond Zuma Beach, with 200 feet of ocean frontage, priced within their means. He had hoped that their new address would be 32666 Pacific Coast Highway, but they were given 32752—​Smith named their new dwelling Hoc Id Est (“this is it”). The latter part of 1954 was spent in preparation for their move from Hollywood; they thought of retaining Culling as their builder, but one look at the house he built Maria Prescott dashed the plans on the Malibu rocks. Culling was too much effort for Smith to manage, and his work was not up to their standards; as a result, their friendship cooled. In contemplation of their move to the suburbs, Smith and Helen married on December 30, 1954, before the judge of the Municipal Court in Santa Monica. They married largely for Kwen’s sake; as Helen expressed it to me, “we were moving to the suburbs, and it was the thing to do.” To avoid explanations, she remained Mrs. Helen Parsons at the office. Foundations for 32752 were laid in January 1955. Smith poured himself into work on the house and grounds, but his efforts were cut short by illness. Smith was taken to the hospital on February 19, suffering from a recurrence of severe internal bleeding caused by prostate enlargement. He was operated on the next day; Culling took as a sinister sign the fact that Smith asked his friends to donate blood. The surgery forced him to cease work on the house for two months. With his indomitable spirit, he treated the major surgery as a mere temporary setback: “The doctor said I would be able to piss across

Hoc Id Est  287 the street, when everything healed. And, I understand storm warnings to virgins and near virgins should be issued when I get into circulation once again.”44 Smith’s recovery was not as swift as he had expected; for the rest of the year he had little energy. He was happy once they were finally in their new three-​bedroom house, which was small but partitioned so that the living room would give adequate space for the Gnostic Catholic Mass. As he healed, he reveled in the sun and the sounds of the ocean. The only sore spot was his isolation from Helen, who had to make a very lengthy daily drive to work and was gone all day; Kwen left in the morning for school. His sole human company was Helen’s maiden aunt Mary Cowley, who had moved with them from Beachwood Drive. The elderly lady did her best to look after Smith’s needs—​a lifelong bachelor at heart, he was hard-​pressed to make himself lunch. Smith had been expecting Germer to settle in California. Leaving the East Coast, however, was not so easy for Germer. His wife Sascha threw up endless roadblocks to prevent them moving from New Jersey. She had premonitions that they would come to a bad end in California; she was also suspicious of his desire to settle where virtually all the Sisters of the OTO were located, and with just cause. As Sascha saw it, even though Germer suffered from impotence, it did not prevent him from imitating Crowley and his ceaseless womanizing. Germer had problems selling his home near Hampton, New Jersey, owing to questions about the legality of his divorce from his first wife Maria and the lack of a clear title. Then there was the matter of moving his books and papers, the greatest bulk of which were the unfolded sheets of the second edition of The Equinox of the Gods; Helen offered her practical advice on shipping. Germer closed on his New Jersey residence and shipped his possessions to California without having first located a place to live there. Despite rivers of the bad blood that had passed between them, Smith looked forward to meeting Germer after all these years. Their first encounter in person was on June 20, 1956, at Malibu; that night they stayed up talking until 3 a.m. Germer left the next day; he adjudged Smith a mere intellectual, stagnating and spiritually dead—​one of Germer’s frequently employed phrases of dismissal. Smith, too, drew his own conclusions about Germer, which he shared with von Harringa: Germer arrived west a few months ago. He is what his letters over a period of years revealed to me. Only he is more so. He is 6 months older than I am, but . . . mentally I consider him in bad shape. Frankly I don’t think it is just his years, or the bad accident he experienced, but that it had never been

288  The Unknown God overly bright. I am trying to be tolerant, as there is a pretty good chance of the material left to him by AC might yet land on these 3 acres of terra firma. It is impossible for me to have any conversation with him. He always takes refuge in that terribly thread bare cloak of mysticism. Not that I am sceptical of genuine mysticism, but the true mystic doesn’t use it in conversation to hide his mental weaknesses.45

Germer returned to Malibu on August 18. He brought with him John Douglas Low (1931–​1972), a graduate student in religion who had expressed interest in becoming a Probationer. Germer correctly disclaimed to be a teacher in the Order of the A∴A∴ as he had not practiced its methods. The real instructor, he believed, was the Holy Guardian Angel, and to those who applied themselves to the practices, He would come. Low wanted a living teacher to direct his studies, as he felt he had learned all that he could from books. Smith was willing to assist him in the Work, and after their initial meeting he gave Low a Student examination, answers to which were never submitted. By the end of the year their correspondence ceased. The day after he took Low to meet Smith, Germer brought by a seemingly more promising aspirant to the A∴A∴, the Brazilian college student Marcelo Ramos Motta.46 Motta had been raised in Rio de Janeiro in an atmosphere receptive to occult study; his father was a spiritualist and his mother was a self-​professed freethinker. As a teenager Motta had been initiated in the Rio de Janeiro lodge of the Fraternitas Rosicruciana Antiqua, which after the death of its founder, Arnold Krumm-​Heller, was operating in an independent fashion. Motta traveled to Europe in 1952 to meet Krumm-​Heller’s son Parsival (1925–​2008) to open relations with the new putative head of the order. During his travels, Motta encountered John Symonds’s The Great Beast (1951) in a Lisbon bookstore; the dust jacket bore the same picture he had seen in the Rio temple of a “Great Master” of the order. He questioned Parsival on the relationship between Crowley, of whom Motta had formed a highly negative opinion, and Arnold Krumm-​Heller, whose memory he worshiped. According to Motta’s account, Parsival urged Motta to read more of Crowley and not judge the worthiness of his doctrines by the details of his life.47 After a year’s correspondence, Parsival wrote Motta that he was passing him on to a more highly evolved Master for the kind of instruction he believed he required. He furnished Motta a letter of introduction to Germer. Parsival sent Germer a chapter from Motta’s manuscript on Rosicrucianism,48 which praised

Hoc Id Est  289 Crowley and thoroughly repudiated Clymer, whom Motta had attempted unsuccessfully to meet. Motta, now a student at Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge, wrote at once to Germer. They first met in August 1953, where Germer agreed to accept him as his first and only Probationer of A∴A∴, taking the motto “I will to help,” subsequently changed to a Latin equivalent, Adjuvo. Jane, who had visited Germer in New Jersey and was his closest confidant, recollected to Phyllis Seckler that Motta, when asked to choose between the A∴A∴ and the OTO, asked Germer: “Which one costs money?” From the start, it was evident that Motta was a deeply troubled young man. He confessed his disordered beliefs to Germer, from thinking that his mother had caused him to have a small penis to a variety of other paranoid delusions. He was preaching to the converted. Germer’s belief in his “persecution” led him to send Smith a joint statement made with Sascha, a classic case of folie à deux, detailing the tapping of their telephone, house, and car whereby their every word was being monitored by “an organisation that commands the most tremendous power, has the most modern secret and occult facilities at their command, and draws on hundreds of agents to make this surveillance sadistically effective.”49 The organization, they speculated, was the FBI, but the motive force for their persecution came from the Roman Catholic Church. Their paranoid pseudo-​community50 of real and imaginary persons united in a conspiracy against them grew until “the plot” encompassed virtually everyone they knew. Frederic Mellinger had resumed his correspondence with Smith and asked him to ascertain in person how Germer might justify his slandering of Brethren; he could readily explain his behavior by assuming it was either “malicious lying” or “an outgrow of psychopathic illness: persecution mania coupled with megalomania.”51 Whatever the source of his interpersonal failings, Germer never sought professional help after his sessions with Alfred Adler, for whom Crowley was no substitute—​ to him, Germer was a pillar of strength. Motta and Germer were an oddly matched set of paranoiacs who somehow found a way to accommodate each other’s dysfunctional thoughts and behavior, which in both cases worsened over time. There was a chance Motta would be drafted in Brazil and would have to serve in the military for several years; on the spur of the moment, he made a trip to California to see Germer. Since Motta had expressed an interest in establishing the OTO in Brazil, he thought it proper that he also should meet Smith, the only person Germer believed to possess a working knowledge of the order.

290  The Unknown God Smith talked with Germer and Motta for hours on end, giving both of his guests the benefit of his experience and his hospitality. Motta wanted to know if the sexually explicit ceremony described in Crowley’s “Energized Enthusiasm”52 would be performed in the future; Smith suggested it was merely a fable. Motta replied that not only was Crowley’s account factual, but the same ceremony was also being performed somewhere that very minute. Motta was not at all enthused with Smith’s Church of Thelema; it was not radical enough of a concept for his liking, even though he believed that sooner or later someone would start a similar church. Germer, enchanted with Malibu, suggested to Smith that he would like to build a house on Smith’s land to hold his books and papers. Smith, who had made the same suggestion previously, sent Germer some sample floor plans. By the time of Germer’s third visit to “Hoc Id Est” on September 8, a catch emerged. Germer insisted that Smith deed to him the real property on which he wished to build his “headquarters,” claiming that it was necessary for him to fulfill Smith’s obligations in the VII˚ OTO., an organization from which Germer repeatedly claimed Smith had been expelled.53 Smith replied that he had vested property in the OTO in North Vancouver in 1918, and he didn’t need to do so again; he still had his copy of the indenture. He was more than willing to grant Germer an unlimited rent-​free sojourn. This would not suffice: Germer demanded that the land be deeded to himself, which was impossible given the terms of the loan Smith had contracted for building the house. Smith and Helen were greatly disappointed at Germer’s intransigence; they had been prepared to welcome him as their neighbor. Germer left Malibu the following day and withdrew from the plans in a huff, denouncing Smith to Motta as having failed the “test” to which he had subjected him: I did it merely out of consideration of his long-​standing loyalty to Thelema, the New Aeon, and to the Master Therion, who had definitely forbidden contact with him. I thought he could have changed fundamentally. He has not. He has built up all that what he has on his own Ego, almost a Smith Dynasty. His secret aim was to get all the Archives on his land.54

This was an openly expressed goal: Smith had voiced grave concerns that Germer’s collection of Crowleyana would be scattered after his death unless proper preparations were made. In Germer’s fatalistic view, “man proposes

Hoc Id Est  291 but God disposes.” In his case, it was the State of California which ultimately disposed of his books and papers. Motta was sorry that the deal fell through; he expressed momentary sympathy for Smith, even if he did not agree with his ideas for Thelemic group activities. Smith knew well that his days were numbered and that he had to look to others for future leadership. Yet Smith did not look to Motta for succor; had he known of his paraphilias, freely expressed to Germer, he would never have been welcomed in Smith’s house. I’m sorry for the old man—​he was extremely hospitable towards me, and I like his son. I doubt he’ll come out of that Church idea—​looks like he is too old. Incidentally, I did feel sexually attracted towards the boy—​but it embarrassed me to say so in the father’s presence. I don’t know what is wrong with me, that people develop feelings of amity towards me and I immediately want to go to bed with them! It happens quite frequently. Men, children, women—​even animals!55

Germer chose to rebuke Smith for his selfishness, which caused “the Order to withdraw its hand.”56 In an unsent reply, Smith could not imagine how so unfriendly a letter as Germer’s could close “Fraternally.” As he had in person, Smith punched holes in his claims, reminding Germer that he had declared in the presence of witnesses that the A∴A∴ and the OTO were nonexistent. Germer referred to “the Order” when it suited his immediate purpose. Smith had much more pressing matters to concern himself with than worrying about the current spate of Germer’s hysteria. His prostate condition had worsened; his doctor told him it was cancerous. Having had a long-​standing distrust of conventional medicine, Smith and Helen flew to Dallas, Texas, in December 1956 to seek treatment at the Hoxsey Clinic, one of the largest privately owned cancer centers in the world. It was founded by Harry Hoxsey, who claimed to have a secret family formula for the herbal treatment of cancer. Although he had successfully pursued a libel action in 1949 when he was labeled a fraud, in 1960 the FDA would ban the sale of the Hoxsey herbal treatment in the United States, citing the lack of evidence that it had any value in the treatment of cancer. It was a desperate measure, but throughout his life Smith had an aversion to orthodox medicine, which for his present condition had seemingly done him no good. Despite their reputation for medical chicanery, the Hoxsey Clinic told him there was nothing they could do for him.

292  The Unknown God Smith returned to Malibu and attempted to keep a positive outlook. With the new year came another visit from Motta and Germer; they showed up on January 2, 1957, with Motta’s girlfriend of the moment, whom Helen described as the most feminine woman she had ever met. Smith and Helen hosted a barbecue for their young guests on the beach and enjoyed the sun and the water. Later that day, Motta was introduced to Culling and his mistress Meeka Aldrich. Ever the thoughtful Thelemite, Louie came with a homegrown supply of Cannabis indica which he shared with Motta. Although many of the Thelemites had their doubts about his own character, Culling had a remarkably prescient vision of Motta. My impression of Marcello [sic] is that he is in the phase of “youthful enchantment”—​and moreover inclined to attempt to translate the whole thing into terms of his own enchantment. When one grows out of this, one either quits in disgusted disenchantment—​or else becomes a solid rational valuable Thelemite. One might even become twice blessed and become Re enchanted. However, in the mean time, I am never fooled by the enchanted—​one must wait to see what it brings forth—​a Chimaera or a Great Beast.57

It rapidly proved to be the former. After Motta learned that his now-​ pregnant girlfriend had recently performed “adorations to Nuit” with her Los Angeles host, Ray Burlingame, his insecurity and jealousy hit a new low. He denounced the OTO in the person of Burlingame for this “defilement” and questioned the paternity of his unborn child.58 He also focused his madman’s hate on Smith, whom he held responsible for Burlingame’s behavior as his “master,” but who was in fact wholly uninvolved in Motta’s cuckolding: “As for Smith, if wishes have any power, I hope he dies soon. He is wrong, dead wrong. He may be a king, but he is sick. Let him die.”59 In Motta’s view, Smith was ultimately to be blamed for the promotion of Agape over Thelema as the Word of the Law and thus leading the members astray. In this view he echoed Germer, who contemptuously referred to the former Agape Lodge as “a General Fucking Institute, Unlimited.”60 Brotherly love did not prevail, nor did any moral or social virtue cement the Thelemites. Smith’s condition worsened. Helen did her best to comfort him, and in his agony he would drift in and out of consciousness. His years of memorizing Crowley’s scriptures and verse caused him to recite long stretches of poetry repeatedly. Helen took comfort in the fact that he had

Hoc Id Est  293 promised to reincarnate and help her spread the Word of Thelema in a new human vehicle. They both knew the end was near. His doctor last came to call on April 21, 1957. Helen reached out to Jane, increasingly senile and now living in a rest home, in a letter written in the early morning hours of April 27; it was never sent. Most of us wait too long to do the things to make others happy. Frater would be happy to know that you are being so well cared for. That was his only concern when another, judging from his viewpoint, criticized him for even the thought of changing your abode. So now you are eating—​I am glad. After over forty years of Thelema as his whole life and every thought, so called brothers avoid him—​their loss—​and a pity. For your pleasure and my comfort may I bring you out to see Frater?—​he would not want to bother anyone else. I would want him to go on with the struggle for my loneliness but I can’t ask it of him—​of one who all his life has swum against the tide and struggled alone. He could only be aware you spoke to him. I read poetry to him I think he is aware of it but its music. Dear Jane—​I prefer not to have curious visitors so please phone me at once if you will let me pick you up—​and I will come at once. You may return as soon as you wish. Don’t bother anyone else with this information. So called brothers have left him alone and at this time their visit would be inappropriate and of no value to me. See the Prologue of the Unborn.61

Smith died at home at 4 a.m. on Saturday, April 27, 1957. Helen immediately cabled his old friends von Harringa and Mellinger. Overcome by grief, Helen mistakenly furnished his date of birth for his death certificate as June 9, 1875—​the year of Crowley’s birth—​when he was actually born in 1885.62 She gave his occupation as “Minister.” The cause of death was given as cancer of the prostate. Culling informed Germer of Smith’s passing. They took Jane out to Malibu the day following Smith’s death, where they performed an impromptu ceremony to mark his final journey. As the sun was setting over the Pacific, Helen recited “The Prologue of the Unborn” from “Liber Liberi vel Lapidis Lazuli,” a thelemic holy book Smith had committed to memory decades ago. Even though there was no longer a Priest to officiate, Helen felt he was not far from them at that moment. Even Germer, the lapsed Roman Catholic who had an aversion for all forms of ritual, found their memorial service inspiring.

294  The Unknown God Smith was cremated at the Grandview Memorial Park in Glendale on April 29. His old friend Ernst von Harringa wrote Helen that he could not sleep for three days after Smith’s passing. His newfound enemy Motta responded to the news of Smith’s death with the words: “Good riddance, and let him make a step forward in the next!”63

Epilogue Helen mourned the loss of her beloved “Frater,” someone who both understood her and listened to her. Their friend and housemate, the comely redhead Aana Adair (1919–​1983), kept Helen company for a short while until she proved to be too much of an economic burden. Smith’s passing left Helen heavily grief-​stricken, and like an old she-​bear she retreated to the safety of “Hoc Id Est.” Knowing Smith’s abhorrence of cemeteries, she wanted to build a shrine to him on the Malibu cliffs leading down to the Pacific, a tea house to hold his ashes, but she could never settle on a design. She was left alone and lonely, with a teenage son to support with whom she was frequently at odds. He missed his father greatly. Kwen, like a normal teenager, rebelled against the role into which his parents cast him. Although he retained his respect for their religious interests, he did not share them and sought his freedom in exploring nature. There were few Thelemites with whom Helen felt any sympathy. Grady McMurtry came to call in September 1957, with his “proper” wife Foxie and their 10-​year-​old son Grady Shannon, whom Helen found beautiful. She saw that Grady’s promise of being something, if not someone, had been diminished by his loveless marriage. He remained an outsider to her world. Although she had invested well through the purchase of “Hoc Id Est,” within a few years of Smith’s death Helen was forced to sell her cherished Malibu home to meet the rising property taxes she could no longer afford to pay. She packed up Smith’s books and his ashes and left town, moving from place to place in Southern California, never truly settling down. She resolved to von Harringa to carry on, for “somewhere I will meet with some one who has a mind to sit in Frater’s shadow.”1 Germer attempted to befriend Helen for his own purposes—​having seen him in action before when he tried to force Smith to deed over a portion of her Malibu property, Helen rightly suspected his motives from the start. Germer believed without evidence that Smith had intended for him to marry Helen and adopt Kwen after his demise, getting the land and his library as bonus prizes in the deal and becoming the head of the Church of Thelema as The Unknown God. Martin P. Starr, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2024. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197744512.003.0020

296 Epilogue well. He had married for money at least twice before, so the routine was a familiar one. In Helen and Kwen’s case, these were offers that were never made. Helen made it abundantly clear that he had no place in her life. With Frater gone, Helen no longer had to tolerate his friend Culling, whom Smith liked for being an original American character type, despite his obvious personal shortcomings. Helen distrusted Culling, believing he was responsible for the sudden disappearance of the candlesticks and other furnishings for the Gnostic Catholic Mass after Smith’s death. Culling tried to engage Helen in his plans to carry on the thelemic teachings by means of a “live and virile OTO (particularly as a focus channel and repository),”2 a wish he knew was close to the heart of Frater 132. He opined to Helen that the OTO should be started independent of Germer and suggested this could be accomplished by changing the name of the corporation sole “Rex Summus Sanctissimus of the Church of Thelema” to “OTO,” a matter of legal paperwork that the self-​taught Culling thought he could easily handle himself. The real barrier to the continuation of the OTO was Germer: “Frater ∴ Saturnus is actually a real Saturn Restriction to get anything going as O.T.O.,” for among other lapses he was “TOTALLY IGNORANT of the High Magick attendent [sic] with the male (proper magical attitude assumed) uniting sexually with as many different females as possible.”3 The largely masonic OTO degree rituals were not important, in Culling’s view; if they lacked the scripts, they could be rewritten in many ways. The radical inner teachings of the OTO and Thelema were the key to the future. But Helen did not rise to Culling’s schemes, provoking a humorous outburst from Culling: She superhumerates the bedizened robe of the Archimage and mouths the concomitant despiteous ex-​cathedra pronouncements in word of fantastic eolithic gentrice—​brachyology being superciliously ignored. This caliginous epexegesis is further marred and murked by resorting to either regressive cataplasia or “initiated” expositions for the benefit of us poor benighted. I might go so far as to add that while she demands psychophantic adherence to Pali[n]‌genesis, she allows small respect for Cenogenesis.4

Even the “Doctor of Magick” degree Culling awarded to Helen in 1958, conferred by his self-​created “Collegium ad Spiritum Sanctum of The Nuit-​ Orthogenesis Religio-​ Philosophy, Nuit-​ Orthogenesis Psychology and Magick, and The Orthogenesis Assembly of Nuit,” incorporated in California in 1956 under the acronym of “O.A.N. Dr.,” failed to motivate her to further

Epilogue  297 involvement with Louie.5 As Helen frequently remarked to me, “Culling was an R-​A-​T—​rat!” Their contact ceased, not to be resumed until shortly before Culling’s death in 1973. Soror Grimaud was a survivor. Her maiden aunt Mary Cowley followed her beloved Frater in death on November 11, 1957, leaving only Kwen at home. With the passage of Jane Wolfe to the Grand Lodge Above on March 29, 1958—​she died on public assistance and was cremated by the Los Angeles County Crematory6 without ceremony—​the last of the old Agape members whom both Helen and Frater admired was gone from her life. After a few years of living in near isolation, she agreed to meet Gabriel Montenegro at the Palisades in Santa Monica. His attentive ear and occasionally instructive tongue (for although Monty was a Mason always, he felt he could not confide unreservedly in a woman) and his willingness to lend a hand to the widow of a Brother drew them close to each other. Although Helen wanted to serve Monty as she had served Frater 132, Monty was unwilling to be tied too closely to anyone; it was a continual source of frustration for Helen, who found her completion in devotion to her ideal, embodied in a man. Yet despite their varying aims in the relationship, Monty was a source of comfort for Helen as she struggled to find her way. Befitting his magical name of “Saturnus,” with each passing year Germer grew colder and more distant from the small number of Thelemites in California, the majority of whom he disliked and distrusted. Those not disliked and distrusted by him were despised by Sascha. In June 1962, Germer analyzed his progressed natal chart and concluded that in his current medical condition he would live another 11 years at least. His delineations proved false; he did not live another 11 months. With his wife at his side, he died of uremia and cancer of the prostate on October 25, 1962.7 Ironically, after Smith’s diagnosis, Germer had alleged cancer to be a “spiritual disease and has roots other than the physical.”8 His end, according to Sascha, was horrifying. Following the typical choice of the American Thelemites as well as Crowley, he was cremated, with only his wife as a witness. With Germer expired the last chance for Thelema to take root in the United States, and the prospects internationally were no brighter. Or so one might have thought. Germer had successively accused Mellinger of being an FBI agent and kicked him out of his house, expelled Grant for blasphemy, dismissed McMurtry as a slave to his wife, and ceased corresponding with Metzger over differences in the Crowley translations in German the latter had published. Motta had fled the United States for his native Brazil after

298 Epilogue having been arrested in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in February 1961 on suspicion of drug trafficking; while in jail he confessed that the source of the drugs found in his apartment was none other than his OTO Brother, Louis T. Culling. Germer blamed the forces in opposition to Thelema for Motta’s arrest, which did not lead to any charges being filed against him. Germer was left with no one in whom he could put his trust but Motta, and even that was withheld until the very end. In the following year, Germer refrained from giving Motta a charter to open the OTO in Brazil, mindful of the fact that Motta, in his experience, only “switched temporarily back into sanity.”9 Yet on his deathbed what faith Germer had in a future for Thelema he apparently chose to vest in Motta, instructing his wife Sascha on his death bed to inform Frater Adjuvo that he was “The Follower.”10 What this designation may have meant became a subject of speculation that was never satisfactorily resolved. Sascha was at first unsure who was the proper heir of her late husband’s books and papers. Kenneth Grant declined interest when Gerald Yorke suggested that they might pass to him; even if the property was proved to be his, Grant was unwilling to pay their shipping costs to England. Sascha unilaterally decided that Germer’s literary effects should go to Hermann Metzger in Switzerland without consulting her co-​executor Frederic Mellinger, who, knowing Metzger personally and thinking little of him, promptly put a stop to her efforts. The issue of Germer’s heir to the headship of the OTO remained an open question to the few who knew or cared about it. Helen found out about Germer’s death from a copy of Metzger’s Manifesto, issued in German and English at the spring equinox of 1963, announcing his election to the office of the OHO of the OTO (as well as claiming the headship of other orders) by his own members on January 6 of that year: We, Grand Secretary General of the Sovereign Sanctuary of the Ordo Templi Orientis, hereby give due Notice . . . that the lamented Most Illustrious Frater Superior of the Ordo Templi Orientis, Frater Saturnus (Karl Johannes Germer) Outer Head of the Order, departed this earthly life and was called to the Grand East on Oct. 25th, 1962, E.V., and that a convocation of Prince Patriarch Grand Conservators of the said Rite on Jan. 6th, 1963, E.V. held in Abbey Thelema, Stein/​App unanimously elected the Very Illustrious +​H. Josephus M∴, Fra∴ Paragranus, Grand Master X˚ of the Ordo Templi Orientis, Sovereign Grand Master General of the Ordo Illuminatorum, Sovereign Grand Master General of Fraternitas

Epilogue  299 Rosicruciana Antiqua, and Sovereign Patriarch of Ecclesiae Gnosticae Catholicae henceforth to be Sovereign Grand Master General, Outer Head of the Ordo Templi Orientis.11

Metzger humbly accepted their acclamation “to guarantee the sovereignty and integrity of the Order and the Work of Thelema.”12 The copy of the Manifesto was addressed to “Dr. Wilfred Smith” at their former Malibu address; news of his death six years prior had not apparently reached the canton of Appenzell. None of the American Thelemites felt any calling to accept Metzger’s usurpation of the headship of the OTO. “The Swiss,” as Germer referred to his correspondent, was a stranger to the surviving members, and they knew that their vote had not been sought in his election. I once asked Helen to journey back in time to the moment when she was informed of Germer’s death and to tell me what she thought the future held for Crowley and his teachings. She said that she was convinced the movement was over; there were only a very few people who were interested, and they were so widely dispersed to make any kind of group work inconceivable. Culling, in association with Ray and Mildred Burlingame, tried to organize OTO activities immediately after Germer’s death. Helen predicted to Monty that their clandestine efforts would have no good end; both Culling and Burlingame bore the marks of the influence of C. F. Russell and his GBG. One of their first initiates was an English war bride, Georgina Rose Brayton, née Chalkley (1921–​1984), known as Jean, who had been a student of Burlingame’s since around 1956. Burlingame passed to Brayton the secrets of the OTO, along with a talisman of the IX˚ that Jane Wolfe had been given by Crowley. Brayton founded the “Solar Lodge,” with operations in Los Angeles and at their ranch in Blythe, California, which they named the “Kaaba.” Its members within a few years would gather attention, first from the local police on allegations of child abuse and later from the FBI for unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.13 In view of the darkness of the times, Helen packed away Smith’s books and papers against the day when there might be an active group again, but she had no hopes of living to see it. She continued to correspond with Monty to seek for others who might care to see the work of Thelema continue. Without telling her Helen’s response, I posed the same questions to Phyllis Seckler as to what she thought the future of Thelema might be after Germer’s death. She unequivocally stated that Germer’s death was an important transition, but that she always had confidence that the movement would grow into

300 Epilogue the great and flourishing enterprise it now was, in her eyes. Then I told her Helen’s reply, to which she snapped back her retort: “Oh nonsense, she knew about me!” Years after Germer’s death, when Helen and Phyllis joined forces to promote the OTO and Thelema, they would laugh together about the Jan & Dean song, “Little Old Lady from Pasadena.” Each could rightly lay claim to the title. Each also owed her connection to Thelema to the unsung labors of the Unknown God.

APPENDIX A

W. T. Smith Diary December 14 [1917]. J[ones]. is seriously considering how the “Aquarian” movement can be made to come under the O.T.O. and so form a new Lodge. If it can be done we get in the neighborhood of 200 members. He has desided [sic] to write [J. S.] Taylor; who at present got charge of it, while Muscalo [Herbert “Harry” Musclow] is doing 5 years, Taylor said he was too busy trying to get his chief out of jail to give J an interview.1 December 15. J. showed me the letter he wrote Taylor, it is very good and will give him something to think about. December 17. J. tells me he went to the Sunday evening meeting of the “Aquarian Movement.” He saw Taylor afterwards, he had however not yet received the letter. J. read to him a second one he had written, which he had intended to be read out to the members.2 Taylor seems to have been interested and took the letters with a view to studying them seriously. The second letter was very good too. He had picked out passages from the Book of the Law which fitted in with the views they themselves were expressing. To day the elections are on. I went over town to see J. and find out the results. The Union party get in means that we get conscription; I think this will bring trouble out here. December 18. At lunch to day J said he had good news, and to keep it quiet. He said something to the effect, that last night he had at last got the understanding or meaning of the 8˚=​3□ on the material plain; giving him a clear understanding of the whole course of affairs, at least as regards Canada, and more or less the part we should all play, mentioning Phelps and the Union he has formed of labourers. Also he understands the why and wherefore of the past events with us. He said he knew his true Will now; and that last night his consciousness spread over the whole of Canada; he expressed it, as something like looking down on a huge game of chess. He suggests that something has supplied the missing link; such as in A. C.’s case, the fall from the horse. May be the result of the Election, bringing in conscription which appears to be so apposed to the new Law of Do what thou wilt. It looks like something is moving again at last. Let’s hope so. Another incident, Taylor sent a messenger to J saying he would see him tomorrow night and all night if he liked. J. intends to try and get $500.00 out of him to get to New York with. December 20. J. tells me every thing is going on well. Taylor seems to be accepting things and has arranged another meeting, with J, for tonight. We lunched together, and afterwards he voiced the following to me. Which would reasonably seem to be the link or clue to the starting up of the current, so to speak; corresponding perhaps to A. C.’s accident, mentioned before. I should first of all mention, that several weeks ago J. bought an Ouija Board, and with Mrs J’s assistance, made several experiments. The one I am about to refer to being done without an invocation, and in the case of Mrs J, in an offhand inattentive manner. They apparently got in touch with a former lover of J’s whome [sic] he had known for a short time, when last in Paris. After saying one or two things that she and J only, knew,

302  Appendix A I have forgotten what, she said that her love for him kept her bound to earth, and begged him to do something to release her. Now to day he tells me that to do so, he formed a strong mental image of her and events as they transpired at the time he was with her. (He was aided, perhaps, in this, by her strong conditions, which were about the place after the experiment.) He then bid her good buy, consigning her to the bosom of Nuit, saying “That as one with Nuit he would always remember and love her.” This love, he suggested, might have been a stoppage or hindrance, on the astral plane, to a clear connection with other planes. Also it occurred to me, that by exalting an actual love that one had known, to a plane of the mind holding an abstract idea such as Nuit, one had formed a real link with her. He further pointed out that as the lady was practically a prostitute, it might have something to do with the mystery of Babylon and Nuit.3 December 21. J had a long talk with Taylor last night. He has great faith in Muscalow and does not like to do anything without consulting him. J has now left the matter up to him so he will have to do something on his own account or get an interview with Muscalow in prison. He is in a very positive state of mind but taking a rest and leaving things up to the Masters. He points out that the A∴A∴ with cosmic laws, the O.T.O. with solar, and that possibly this Aquarian Movement with planetary. Taylor has just now rung up (2 pm) and wants to know what he is to tell Muscalow about the O.T.O. and wants to get one of the manifestos. J told him that he could tell all he knew, but that he was not going to get any more information till he did something towards getting a Lodge formed. J points out (3.30 pm) that the events of June 21st 1916, with his claiming of the 8 =​3 and eventually getting to the 10 =​1, which he now feels more than ever he did; coming as they did at the summer solstis; would seem to indicate Solva. And now at the winter solstis, with the further illumination and the more concrete form it would appear to be going to take; might indicate the other half, Coagula. He tells me that he got a meaning of A∴A∴ which unifies all; where as the meaning A.C. gave him seems to him more like duality. He also got a word that he says A.C. knows nothing of. December 22 10 am. I have just been round to talk to J but he is too busy. In answer to my salutation, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law, he said this has been change to; There is no law beyond do what thou wilt. As the Aeon is now established it is changed from the future tense to the present. 11.13 am. Well things seem to be happening just as they did last year. I met J in the lavatory and he tells me that he got a lot more through from the magical plane last night. He saw Taylor again and says he fixed him up and made him a 7th. He repeats many of the statements he made last year, at the time of the other initiation; such as:—​The A∴A∴ being gone for ever and the grade of Magus, and in addition he says, the old Hebraic laws, the Quabalah and the curse of the beginning are wiped out. He does not say what the curse was. He lays claims to the 11th degree and takes over the whole Order under Parsival instead of Baphomet; also initiation will be comparatively easy, and the law of love will reign. (Nearly all his remarks parallel those he made last year.) Then he suddenly comes out with “I make you a 7th for now and ever” and we shook hands. After some further remarks, which I can’t remember, he repeated the above and taking my hands kissed me saying “I bind you with love instead of with an oath.” His face showed feeling as on June 21 1916 but not so strongly. He says there is a Supreme Grand Council with Mrs J, Taylor and myself as

W. T. Smith Diary  303 7ths. 777 he remarks; (the whole time he is finding symbolism in some name or number, and a small incident becomes full of import at a time like this.) Further he says; the curse Mrs J has been under will be lifted. He is most positive of all he says. Every word of the Book of the Law is true, he says, and that he has got the key to it and has sent on the explanation of the passage “This line drawn” etc. to A. C. as a proof.4 Being Saturday, we went out to see [Howard E.] White in the afternoon. On the way his whole conversation magical, or very nearly; the way he found something symbolical in almost every thing, was quite extraordinary. To mention only one thing. He suddenly remembered that the white pillar of the Lodge was tucked into the black one (they were hollow). This started a whole train of ideas and explanations, most illuminating and comprehensive, to a large extent, even to me. Nothing short of a dictaphone could possibly record it all and I am indeed sorry that such a poor scribe as myself was the only person to hear him. We found White in bed and certain he had got consumption and determined to keep it. He was expecting to go the sanitorium in a week or two. We could him no good his mind was finally made up. December 23. J & Mrs J & the child came over to day to dinner. K is troubled with pains but the arrival is not actually expected, we don’t think it due for two weeks yet. J is right in the thick of an initiation alright, and it is absolutely useless for me to attempt to write down all he says, he says so much and so quickly and jumps from one thing to another, that I could not sort out one thing from another. J says (5 pm sitting by the fire) that the child is Horus and will arrive at midnight tonight. He, J says he will die and told me where all his papers were, and that I was to keep them for when he grew up as he intended immediately to reincarnate in the coming infant. This upset Mrs J, and in her characteristic manner told J to talk sense, that no one was going to do any dying. This started him on another tack, and he took down Equinox X and starting reading from the B of the L, where it says “harden hold up thyself,” etc. He then had another heart pang (does the heart stop for a second) like that he had in bed in June 1916. After this he agreed Mrs J was right and went on reading from the Equinoxes; a part of “The Ship,” “A Ritual To Invoke Hice,” “Adonis” and I believe Liber A’Ash, though I am not quite sure about this; also he read “Aceldama.” I remember him saying after he read “Adonis,” “There the whole thing is in that.” He passed up the “Supreme Ritual” with “I dont think we will read that.” At the supper table he had a little joke to himself. He told me afterwards: what a joke it was, he having thought himself the Crowned Child, when it was only just about to be born; referring to the expected infant. (As on the previous occasion, to a very great extent he was quite oblivious to conversation and things in general going on around him.) Some time after supper he and K went out for a stroll and to get cigaretts. They were some time gone. After this while K and I talked by the fire, and Mrs J was making preparations in case the baby arrived; J and Nem talked in the kitchen. K went to bed at 12.30, and I went and sat with her. J and Nem sat by the fire and Mrs J and daughter went to bed. We had sat up till twelve as J said the baby was sure to arrive at that time. December 24. K began to be in real trouble at about 1.30, and J with me went for Dr Martin. I must again, say, that symbolism was being continually found in conversation and

304  Appendix A events the whole of this time. In fact the very quanty [sic] of it is the bar to remembering any of it. I know for a long time he fully expected A. C. to arrive to welcome the infant. He was quite sure the doctor was taking his place, and was Hermes. I should have said that, before we fetched the doctor, J and I went through a part of the third degree holding her hands. Expected the infant to arrive on the spot without any trouble. From the doctors arrival till the infant came at 5.38.40, nearly the whole time, J sat with the Sepher Sepheroth reading off the meanings of the numbers as the minutes ticked by. When the doctor came out of the bedroom for a minute at four o’clock, J said to him, in spite of me trying to persuade him not to, “that it was bound to arrive at 4.18 and the war would be stopped if it did.” The Dr was sceptical and said his calculations were out. J finally went to bed at 6.30 am, at least I should say lay on my bed with his clothes on. He got up about 9.00 o’clock and decided not to got to work and as I had a weeks holiday due me I decided to start it then too. He told me after breakfast that he has made 3 VII˚, 3 IX˚ and 3 XI˚ during this initiation. He talked a long time to me about the VII˚, and though at the time it was very interesting and illuminating, I can remember almost nothing now; he spoke so rapidly and so incessantly. One certainly gets a reflection of his illumination at these times, and things that one would not in the least understand at another time appear quite lucid and comprehensible. I think too, some of the things one has been told, come back to ones mind a long time afterwards when the time is ripe, and are then understood by being fitted, so to speak with some other piece of knowledge acquired in the interval. The things he says can be done with these secrets, reminds one of the rewards promised in “Shiva Sanhita.” The things may be possible of course. The J’s left for home about noon and I went over town with them Mrs J left us soon and we did some shopping together he talk the whole time. One phase of the affair is, that at times he actually does not know who of several characters he is, though of course he appears the same to me. A title he has taken like “Parzival,” seems to become to him a real personality, his own. And yet, though all this might appear like insanity, there is this big difference, that he is studying his own case and remarks often on the peculiarity of this or that phase, when it is actually upon him. We had a long talk in a White Lunch; he gave me some explanation of the I.H.V.H. formular, and referred to a letter from A. C. which had some explanation of it in pencil on the outside of the envelope; I remembered the letter as he asked me at the time if I could make anything of the hieroglyphics. It was here too we discovered that I was Judas; previously, by the way, it had be discovered I was Joseph, and on my demand for an explanation, he found it readily enough, as always. The explanation was quite lucid to me then, being half illuminated myself. There was some statement of J. C. trying to work the formular on Joseph who was disguised as Judas to get out of the business; or something like it. He wired A. C. that Horus was born and that he was to come and see. Of course the price of the wire was symbolical like nearly every thing else. We also went and bought some Christmas presents, and then parted company J wanted to get home, he was tired out after being up all night over at my place, and also as he told me later, he had hardly slept for several nights. From this point till Dec 27th at about 10.30 am, I heard nothing more of J. It was at this time his wife arrive at this house in a frantic state and in tears. She had hoped to find him with us. She then told us that he had left the house about 8 pm last night and not been back

W. T. Smith Diary  305 since. Apparently the initiation had been going on ever since he had left here, until it had nearly driven her silly. She said he had been “rolling off magical stuff ever since” getting up in the middle of the night to do things and trying to get her to assist. One night, she said, he dragged her down to the cellar, so to speak, went through a ritual and invoked annihilation. (But I am of the opinion this occurred before I saw him last; on the 22nd I believe. I should have said before, that one night at about 1.30 I awoke, due to what I took to be an earthquake, though of a peculiar kind, as I could not make out if the house, the bed or only myself were shaking; I felt my heart to see if that was going fast but found it to be alright. Mentioning this to J the next morning, he told me that at about that time he had pronounced a certain word, I think he said to destroy the universe, any how he attributed what I felt to the uttering of this word. I could find no one else who had felt any earthquake, though I asked several people.) She went on to tell us that he went to the office on Wednesday at least for a part of the day, and had fooled Terry about and given him a bit of a dressing down, also Grant. (These two were the heads of his particular office.) He told me later in regard to this, that he had thought it advisable to excuse himself to Terry for being away from the office on Monday, saying he was with a friend in child birth. Terry was a bit rude, and J gave him a bit of a talking to. He took off the afternoon afterwards. I should say here that the fooling of Terry (J told me later) consisted of writing 418 on a bit of paper and sending the office boy with it to Terry, and telling him to say that that was the solution of all his troubles; and other things of a like nature. She further went on to tell us that he had been quite often to “The Bungalow” (a tea room) to see a Mrs Sinclair, whom he suggested was an incarnation of Blavatsky; that to quite an extent he ruled his actions by instructions given him by herself and Dede, his little daughter, that he had asked for. She had asked me if there were any letters and he told her the box was locked; she took it to be a way of avoiding a proper answer as the box was always locked (but later he told me that he had been unable to open it for some reason. This box he took to be the Eye of Shiva and that had it been opened the railway bridge to Kitsilano would have been destroyed, as there was some connection between them.) Finally on Wednesday the 26th she was thoroughly tired of the whole affair and got very cross with him and while sitting by the fire at 8.00 pm, on his again saying the off repeated “I and my Father are one,” she had said “Well go and be one with him,” whereupon he promptly rose put on his hat and coat, crossed the room and took his copy of the Stelé [of revealing] off the wall, then bowing to her back and front went out; since which moment she had not seen him. She had practically been up all night, one of her main cares being to keep the fires going which she felt on no account must go out. (This almost amounted to a dread and lasted all the time he was away.) She had as soon as possible the next morning got Olive to stay with the child and hastened over to us. I went over town with her at once, phoned a man at the office to see if any information was to be got there; but they just thought J was taking a holiday. We then went and interviewed Mrs Sinclair. She rambled much in the way people do who think they know a lot about Occultism and Mysticism, particularly ladys. She had much of his being her pet lamb, and delicately hinted that his only want had been to copulate with her, but that she having long ago put away from all fleshly deeds and thoughts would not consent. Actually she looked all flesh, and as if she thought of little else. After some while he vaguely said she thought he had gone to Victoria to [Charles] Lazenby.

306  Appendix A We then left her, Mrs J to go home to see if he had returned and I to send a wire to Lazenby. (I should say here that, part of the conversation with Mrs S was after I had sent the wire and not when Mrs J was there; I had forgotten for the moment.) I went out to his home but he had not returned, on my return to see if there was an answer to the wire, they informed me that the storms which had been raging for the past few days close around Vancouver (it had not touched Vanc.) had cut off communications with Vic[toria] and other places, and that there was no telling when we would get an answer. (Let me note here that, this storm was of an uncommon nature, big winds and heavy rains which froze six inches thick on the wires breaking off the telegraph at the ground with the weight in many case, and many trees in like manner were destroyed. It is noteworthy that in June 1916 on the occasion of J’s other experience, communication was for a time entirely cut off to New York from which point he was anxious to hear.) I forgot to mention that our first call on coming over to town had been to the famous Box 70 at the P.O. and strange to say I could not get my key to unlock the box. She then remembered J’s statement about it. As it could not be opened I informed an official and on repassing the box, being puzzled I tried it again and the lock that hardly a minute before would not turn, turned easily enough. There was only a letter for Mrs J and a small parcel for the child. I went over each day to see if he had returned and stayed with her a while; we received no answer to our wire. Monday 31st while at breakfast a message came from across the road to phone up the J.s, which I hastened to do; I was informed that J and his wife were down town together. I prepared to go over town, but just on the point of leaving the house they both turned up. (From this point on these notes will be more disjointed than ever, and won’t be in sequence, as they were told to me by J at different times days and weeks after they occurred, and no notes were made during his narrations.) He said he had been in Victoria all the time for three days in prison, where he had been placed as the authorities thought he was trying to evade conscription, and also I think because he had been behaving rather strangely at the hotel. He apparently went to the “King Edward” [Hotel] saying he wanted to see the King with whome he had an appointment for an audience. He had wandered through many of the rooms looking for him or some one else, causing some little annoyance to some of the inmates; he met however with better reception in one where he spent a pleasant hour or two. He was later introduced to two men with the remark “These are the men you are looking for” he evidently thought so too for he quietly went along with them to prison. In going over on the boat to Victoria he met with a man whome he says talked Rosy Cross degree all the time. He sat on the Stele in the smoke room most of the time with his thumb in his mouth, and took the noise of the steam radiator for the “War Engine,” mentioned in the B. of L.,5 there he met a man who was all the night making notes, and said he was doing the whole thing. He said he was on the Astral most of the way over though at times he thought he was in an aeroplane. Also that he was taking the storm from Vancouver and that his wife and child had been killed by it. On many occasions he took his life in his hands, as much as if, as one normally understands, he had risked it; for instance he was absolutely certain the bridge afore mentioned was going to be destroyed and even I believe went to see the manager of the Company to whome it belonged; and yet he crossed it feeling he would go down with it. In his state of mind the certainty was absolute in regard to the events he thought were going to take place, were taking place or had taken place in the light of the interpretation he put upon them.

W. T. Smith Diary  307 There was some scheme he had of balancing up things, the people or himself when walking the streets of Victoria; he crossed and recrossed the streets went round the blocks first this way and then that, and had to pass pedestrians in a certain manner and on a certain side. It is hopeless for me to try and explain it as much that he said I have forgotten or even write it down in any form. He was put in prison with a general riffraff of Chinamen and Whitemen the latter taking a keen delight in teasing him, all of which he took in good part and turned to good account. All their movements about the cells being ordered by him in his endeavour to balance things, which assumed such large proportion as the whole Universe. One of his main objects being to centralize the light, which was the one electric light in the cell, upon which he had concentrated for some time. This he eventually did in the centre of his chest. He described the agony as acute in his endeavours to get the men located in the right place to get this balance. He talked about the Tao to the Chinese who thought him a fine fellow. At one time he traveled to the war of the roses and right back through time to the beginning of things several times, not unlike the unwinding back and forth of a cinematograph film. He also concentrated upon the iron bar of the cell till it fused. Later he was put in a cell by himself, after a doctor had paid him a visit or a detective. Here for a time he was howling mad and a devil of a fight with demons ensued of a hair raising nature. At some time of his stay he was subjected to the 3˚ as they call it. Finally regaining normal consciousness he discovered he was actually in a prison, and after some explanation to the doctor he managed to get out. He located [Charles] Lazenby who introduced him at a Theosophical meeting as, a great Occultist of a powerful society, to which little audience he gave a lecture in his then unwashed, untidy condition after prison life for three days. I might mention that previous to his trip to Victoria or his visit to us at the beginning of the initiation, he had a great scheme to get A.C. the throne of E[ngland]. To which he was the rightful claimant. The idea was big, but as he remarked in one of his self-​critical moments, one might as well dwell on big ideas, as little.

APPENDIX B

The Trail of OTO MABEL NORMAND TO TELL STORY TRAIL OF O.T.O. SEEN IN DEATH OF HOLLYWOOD DIRECTOR 1 RITUAL IS MAILED PLAYERS Copies of “Equinox” Circulate Among California Film Folk The possibility of the sinister influence of the O.T.O. underlying the mystery of the murder of William Desmond Taylor, developed today, when it was discovered that many copies of the “Equinox” had circulated among the movie folk of Hollywood. Grover L. Morden, counsel for the complainant in the bankruptcy proceedings of the Universal Book Stores, Inc., in which the O.T.O. is the principal factor, said that a copy of the “Equinox” had been mailed to the wife of a prominent moving picture director in Hollywood some time ago, and it was known many other copies had been shipped to the movie colony. It is possible that the order has obtained a foothold in the picture colony and color is lent to this theory by the frequent occurrence of alleged drug orgies among the movie stars. Drugs Play Part Drugs and their indulgence play an important part in the ritual of the O.T.O., especially “hashish,” the exotic drug of the Orient. This combines the two theories of “Craig Kennedy.” He said, “Women, or drugs.” The O.T.O. combines both. Hashish, is a drug much used by voluptuaries of the far east and its evil influence may have been the moving influence in the crime. Some drug crazed maniac or jealous woman of the O.T.O. may have been Taylor’s mysterious assailant, believes Morden. Our contributing factor to the belief that Taylor may have been an active member of the O.T.O. is his power to attract women. Adepts in the rites of the O.T.O. are usually surrounded by many women adherents. Warning comes from Mr. Morden that the next O.T.O. scandal, and possibly another “sex crime” may come out of Chicago. “Chicago is now ripe for the organization of another branch of the O.T.O. says Mr. Morden. “That city has been crying out for copies of the ‘Equinox.’ ” The ground work is usually prepared by Aleister Crowley’s lieutenant and when the preliminary work is completed and a foot hold gained the “Master” follows to complete the work with his lectures and the distribution of the “Equinox.” There is every reason to believe that great numbers of the “Equinox” have reached the movie colony. Two thousand copies were run off the press and only 1,100 of these reached Detroit. A few filtered through to the south, where the O.T.O. is somewhat active in the state of Georgia, and none have reached Chicago. There are nearly 900 copies unaccounted for and there is every reason to believe that the most of these have reached the Pacific Coast. That would be the logical place for the dissemination of the O.T.O. doctrine, says Morden. Movie folk are peculiarly susceptible to the fascination of the occult sciences and Hollywood would be a fertile field for the promulgation of the mysticism of the O.T.O.

APPENDIX C

Crowley and H. Spencer Lewis [Aleister Crowley to H. Spencer Lewis, October 22, 1935] Thank you for your letter of Sept. 13. I am writing to correct certain misapprehensions which you appear to entertain about my work, and also about my position. For one thing, I fail to understand the fi ­ gures 95 and 97 after your signature. Both these refer to the Rite of Memphis. You say nothing about the Rite of Mizraim, or the Scottish Rite, or the O.T.O. which is the modern condensation of these and other Rites made by me on the request of Peregrinus [Theodor Reuss]. Yet your claim must be to 96˚. I should have expected you to sign VII˚ 33˚ 90˚ 96˚. I think it might be useful if I were to give you a short account of the State of the Order in 1912, when I was chosen to reorganize it on modern lines. England. John Yarker. He was very old; he had in view as his successor Henry Meyer, who in fact elected on his death, with myself as second in command. I succeeded him on the death of Meyer. Germany. Theodor Reuss. He was a very highly placed member of the Prussian Secret Service. His energy and ability made him the real leader; and he was O.H.O. and Frater Superior of the O.T.O., which derived, from Karl Kellner, from the 18th Century Rosicrucians. United States of America. Franz Hartmann. Reuss also gave me a charter for U.S.A., when I went to America in 1914, three years before I had the pleasure of meeting you in New York. Austria. Rudolf Steiner. He had been very useful in opposing the fantastic claims made by Annie Besant for Krishnamurti, but weakened about the O.T.O. when he discovered the terrific power of the secret of which he was guardian. This is why, in his last years, he turned towards a form of Christianity. Turkey. Sheikh [William Henry] Quilliam. Spain. Maduriaga,1 or some such name. He was quite or nearly a centenarian, and his work in that country had been negligible for many years. Italy. [Eduardo] Frosini.2 He was a very active man, and emerged as Grand Master after complicated intrigues. But then he quarrelled with Reuss, and I have heard nothing of him for many years. France. Dr. Gerard Encausse. (Papus.)

* * *​ With regard to the 97th. degree, Grand Hierophant of the Rite of Memphis. On Yarker’s death we elected Papus; when he died the succession fell upon Reuss. Reuss feeling himself about to die, wrote to me in 1921 in Sicily appointing me his successor, as a convocation of Grand Masters in General was impracticable owing to political conditions. I have

312  Appendix C myself the sole right to the 97th. Degree, which of course can only be held by any one person at one time. I have to admit that the succession is perhaps irregular by the strictest regulations of the Rite, but it seems to me to matter very little. The death of Reuss left things in Germany in some confusion, especially as Steiner also died shortly afterwards. Recnartus (Traenker) made a bid for the succession to the G.M. in Germany, and he showed me in fact warrants and charters from Reuss, but it did not take me many days to find that he was a complete fraud, and I gather that you similarly had as little difficulty of disposing of him when he approached you. The genuine G.M. at the present appears to be Dr. [Heinrich Arnold] Krum-​Heller [sic], who has also a large following in Central and South America where my supreme authority is generally recognized. With regard to your own position, apart from any question of the validity of your claim to establish a Rosicrucian Order in conformity to the constitution referred to above, there seems to be no doubt that you possess a Charter from Reuss, and this is automatically continued by me as his successor. Of course I should not dream of interfering with your jurisdiction, but it can only strengthen your position from an historical and legal standpoint to regularize it in accordance with the facts above set forth. I can quite understand and approve your political wisdom in calling no attention to this position at the present juncture. At the same time I wish to emphasize the fact that there can be no question that in the future the vast body of work for which I am responsible will be, on account of its scholarship and the manner of its presentation, the only Reference to Authority. I do not know how far Reuss gave you personal instruction; in any case my own researches have gone very far beyond what was known in 1912. I have not only justified the Rosicrucian tradition, but put the whole matter on a scientific basis. (I worked with Sir William Ramsey, Professors Buckmaster, Halliburton, Remsen, Starling, Hughes, Soddy, Dr. Alfred Adler, and others, besides such mathematicians as Bertrand Russell, Henri Poincaré, and Eddington. I was for three years with Dr. Henry Maudsley. I may add that my studies in psychiatry are largely responsible for my curious reputation. I hear that your Lodge Master in Los Angeles wishes to hear more of the conspiracies against you and myself. I am sure that you of all people are in no need of enlightenment on the general principle. From the very start, Rosicrucians have been indicted in the Alphabet of Crime, all the way from Anarchist to Zymotifer. In my case there are very special reasons:—​ 1) I have always behaved like a King. 2) I have always had the money to do it. 3) I have always led, what is, to the mob, a most mysterious life. (Mountain exploration was in my early days a somewhat sinister pastime. People skated in frock coats and top hats, and I was an outcast for adopting the Continental style of costume). 4) People cannot understand a man whose motive is only Righteousness without a moment’s calculation of results. So they can never guess what I am going to do; and fear accordingly. 5) There is also the universal guilt-​reaction against genuine religion. 6) There is a widespread fear of the terrific Powers behind me. The fate of all who have attacked me has been insanity, years of agonizing disease, imprisonment, or death. 7) I have produced great poetry (Compare Lord Byron, the disgrace of his country, despite his Peerage. Today the British Consulate in Paris is in a street called after him!)

Crowley and H. Spencer Lewis  313



8) I have been absolutely fearless and outspoken. This annoys the people whom I mention, and terrifies those whom I do not. I am very simple and rational, and this puzzles people. I have been uncompromising in my opposition to Orthodox Christianity. The Roman Catholics have sworn a Vendetta. 9) I have been mixed up in various secret political movements. (I am in perfectly good odour with my Government. 10) Some of those person whom I have exposed and punished have tried to be revenged (Clymer’s lies are based on those of an aged procuress and prostitute, mixed up in the “Peaches” Browning scandal.3 My enemies here are the same sort.) 11) My trouble is chiefly that the Press of today has become so sensitive to public opinion that even the best newspapers dare not take an independent stand. 12) But I have never been attacked by any serious newspaper or any reputable person. 13) The only issue is to punish the purjurers [sic]. The moment that this is done, the whole weight of public opinion swings over to my side. As soon as this can be done—​ which would be easy with your cooperation—​the result would be the vindication of our whole movement. Your own position would be thenceforth unassailable.

I think that the most practical plans is for F∴ Max Schneider to work out a plan with your Lodge master in Los Angeles, and submit to you a scheme for an active campaign. Aleister Crowley Baphomet X˚ 33˚ 90˚ 97˚ O.H.O. and Frater Superior

[Aleister Crowley to Wilfred T. Smith, January 3, 1936] On Monday afternoon I received your cable worded: “OFFICIAL LEWIS INVESTIGATION NEED PHOTOSTAT OF YOUR SUZERAINTY FROM REUSS TO CONFIRM OUR POSITION WITH AUTHORITIES.”4 The wording is somewhat obscure. I am assuming that the exposure of [H. Spencer] Lewis by [R. Swinburne] Clymer, Batchelor and perhaps others, and possibly definite complaints, have decided the State or Federal authorities to enquire into the whole matter. I am, therefore, asking you to consult with Schneider. He has copies of my correspondence with Lewis and with himself on the subject. I think it may simplify your point of view if I put down very briefly my opinion. I think Lewis is one of that type of people whom it is impossible to class either as honest or as dishonest. I am fairly sure that he has every intention to defraud, but I also think that he has a certain magical knowledge and power; see remarks in “Magick” page 97. There is also a certain excuse for his method. For instance, he has taken this silly book of Franz Hartmann’s “Among the Rosicrucians” which can be bought on the open market for one dollar, and issued it chapter by chapter as a secret instruction at something like $40.00. Now provided that one has a sincere wish to get somebody to read that book, I think he has found the only way to do it. And, dealing as he is with the lowest type of barbarians, one can admit that he had no option. I want the fullest details of all this investigation, with any documents at your disposal. You speak of “my suzerainty.” It was Reuss who had the suzerainty. It was I who acknowledged him. On the other hand, my price for doing so, if I may put it in such vulgar language, was the Charter referred to in the Manifesto of the O.T.O. par. 6.5 You will see that this covers America. The real facts of the situation at that time were that Reuss and

314  Appendix C myself were the only people in a position to take any effective action of any kind. That Charter is not immediately accessible, but the Manifesto of the O.T.O. was published and circulated quite widely in 1913. Reuss was working with me almost every day, and if he had made any objection to my claim, he would have done so. There is also in existence a pamphlet, issued by Reuss, with photographs of various prominent Grand Masters and other high officials of the Order.6 My photograph appears therein. Its publication is certainly later than the Manifesto. Let us now examine Lewis’s claim to hold a Charter from Reuss. The only document so far put forward, apart from the contemptible Toulouse forgery, is the “Facsimile Reproduction No. 20” in Clymer’s book.7 You will note that this has my own private seal in the centre of five seals at the bottom, and this was designed entirely by myself. We are in touch with the engraver who cut the die, if any question arises about the date. But I do not see how this can happen, as the document was issued evidently before Lewis received it. This document is dated 1921. At this time I was in retirement in Sicily, but in communication with Reuss in Basle and, I think, Munich. This document appoints Lewis (whom it recognises as a member of the 95˚, not the 96˚, of the Rite of Mizraim; and VII˚, not X˚, of the O.T.O.) to be an honorary member, not a full member, and to represent our Sovereign Sanctuary as “Gage of Amity near the Supreme Council of the AMORC at San Francisco (California).” This document is then a Diploma of sorts, as it says itself. It is not a Warrant. It is not a Charter. It confers no authority whatever. And, even as a Diploma, it is revocable. You will notice that the name of the Order is printed big across the middle of the document. It is quite absurd for Lewis to try to use it, and not use it at the same time; and I think it is pretty certain that he has no other document on which to rely. I am sure that no responsible authority in any serious Fraternity would have given Lewis any Warrant or Charter. Reuss, in his last years, that is after his paralytic stroke, got very careless and desperate, and handed out honorary Diplomas without proper enquiries on the chance that one or more of them might fall into good hands. And that, no doubt, is how Lewis got his Diploma at all. I wish you would make all possible enquiries about all this, and let me know at once. Now to turn to a totally different subject. I do not at all understand what you mean by confirming your position with authorities. Has the District Attorney been asking you for proof of authority to act as representing the Order of R.C.? My own view is that the authorities would not be impressed by Charters issued by unknown people. The real evidence is the existence of a body of literature with allusions and symbols which they can recognise as property in the full legal sense of the term. It is unquestionable that Lewis has appropriated numerous phrases and symbols from the Equinox. It is also to be particularly noticed that We do not make any claims to be the Rosicrucian Order. See again the very carefully worded expressions of page 97 of “Magick.” You will also notice that in “One Star in Sight” We do not explain the meaning of the letters R.C. This is in accordance with the tradition of the Rosicrucian Fraternity. This tradition has been violated by Lewis, and his action cannot be approved by us. But it is still possible to condone the offences of Lewis on promise of amendment. I think he is going to find it pretty hard sledding to keep out of jug on his position as it stands at present. And if he does not “bring forth works meet for repentance,” we shall certainly not stir a finger to help him. He might begin (for instance) by returning to us some of the money which he obtained by appropriating our property. You should be able

Crowley and H. Spencer Lewis  315 to ascertain whether the figures on page 126 of Clymer’s book are accurate: “AMORC has real and personal property valued at about a half million dollars, nearly $400,000 in cash in bank and an annual income of about $350,000.” But even if these figures are exaggerated, I feel pretty sure that he could contribute a sum of $25,000 towards the establishment of the Order in this country. And if I am freed from my present preoccupations by such a transfer, I shall be prepared to come over to California and save him. This at least is a suggested basis for negotiation.

APPENDIX D

OTO Degree Work, 1938–​1943 Name

0˚

I˚

Arnold, Margaret Basham, Genevieve G. Basham, Milton S. Burlingame, Elizabeth A. Burlingame, Ray G. Canright, Barbara W. Canright, Richard B. Carroll, Luther L. Crandall, J. Bernice Crombie, Joseph C. Culling, Louis T. Dyatt, Margaret I. Eller, John A. Eller, Thelma A. Elmasian, Leon Erickson, Jonas C. Ewing, Frederick J. Forman, Edward S. Forman, Phyllis J. Freeman, Esther F. Graham, Allen H. Graham, Mildred C. Hardin, Henry V. Hunter, John H. Hunter, Mabel R. Jones, Lowell E. Leadabrand, Russell A. Leffingwell, Reea G. Leffingwell, Roy E. McBride, Thomas J. McMurtry, Grady L. Mellinger, Frederic Miller, Frederick S. Miller, Grace E. Miller, Joseph D. Morris, Helen M. Northrup, Sara E. Palmer, Claire V. Parsons, John W.

8/​26/​1939 04/​19/​1942 12/​14/​1941 0/​28/​1942 12/​14/​1941 07/​18/​1942 07/​18/​1942 08/​26/​1939 04/​11/​1942 07/​17/​1943 05/​18/​1941 03/​14/​1942 12/​10/​1939 12/​10/​1939 07/​10/​1943 09/​28/​1939 05/​22/​1943 06/​11/​1942 06/​11/​1942 04/​11/​1942 04/​4/​1942 03/​28/​1942 04/​10/​1943 04/​18/​1942 04/​18/​1942 07/​4/​1942 02/​28/​1942 08/​26/​1939 02/​24/​1938 07/​17/​1943 06/​13/​1941 03/​22/​1941 02/​27/​1943 07/​4/​1942 03/​14/​1942 08/​07/​1941 06/​13/​1941 06/​13/​1941 02/​15/​1941

09/​08/​1939 04/​19/​1942 12/​14/​1941 02/​28/​1942 12/​14/​1941 07/​18/​1942 07/​18/​1942 09/​09/​1939 04/​11/​1942 70/​17/​1943 05/​18/​1941 03/​14/​1942 12/​10/​1939 12/​10/​1939 07/​10/​1943 09/​28/​1939 06/​11/​1942 06/​11/​1942 04/​11/​1942 04/​4/​1942 03/​28/​1942 04/​10/​1943 04/​18/​1942 04/​18/​1942 07/​04/​1942 02/​28/​1942 09/​08/​1939 02/​24/​1938 07/​17/​1943 06/​13/​1941 03/​22/​1941 02/​27/​1943 07/​4/​1942 03/​14/​1942 08/​07/​1941 06/​13/​1941 06/​13/​1941 02/​15/​1941

II˚

06/​21/​1943

06/​21/​1943

08/​25/​1942

06/​21/​1943 04/​15/​1942

318  Appendix D Name

0˚

I˚

II˚

Parsons, M. Helen Pastor, Carl R. Pastor, Harry H. Phillips, Jean Prescott, Maria R. Reid, Flory Reid, Raymond W. Rice, Earl S. Rose, Thomas Seckler, Paul H., Jr. Seckler, Phyllis E. Sisk, Betty Lee Soulé, Harold S. Soulé, Ruth M. Trombaks, George Tull, Perry M. Wade, Floyd E. Windsor, Joseph B.

02/​15/​1941 12/​12/​1942 12/​05/​1942 07/​10/​1943

02/​15/​1941 12/​12/​1942 12/​05/​1942 07/​10/​1943 03/​22/​1941 09/​09/​1939 09/​09/​1939 12/​27/​1941 05/​15/​1943 02/​16/​1941 09/​08/​1939 02/​28/​1942 09/​09/​1939 09/​09/​1939 02/​16/​1941 09/​04/​1941 08/​28/​1939 12/​27/​1941

04/​15/​1942

08/​26/​1939 08/​26/​1939 12/​27/​1941 05/​15/​1943 02/​16/​1941 08/​26/​1939 02/​28/​1942 08/​26/​1939 08/​26/​1939 02/​16/​1941 09/​04/​1941 08/​28/​1939 12/​27/​1941

APPENDIX E

Manifesto of December 7, 1941 TO THE BRETHREN OF THE O.T.O. IN THE VALLEY OF LOS ANGELES Issued by Authority of the Rex Summus Sanctissimus at the Sanctuary of the Gnosis in the Valley of Los Angeles Dearly Beloved Brethren: Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. The course of present events is such as to shake the foundations of Society. The forces of the old eon are rending one another even as the warriors of the dragon’s teeth in the Legend of Jason. The powers of tyranny and regimentation are girding for another mighty blow at the freedom and brotherhood of men. These are the facts now apparent to all, and have come to pass in accordance with the prophecies of Liber Legis, as requisite to the flowering of the new aeon. The hour of the Beast is at hand. The time is at hand for the final preparation to deliver the decisive stroke in the battle for freedom. The crisis comes swiftly. Be it known among you that we are a militant army devoted to the high cause of the liberty of the individual under which so ever flag he lives. We envision a society in which men walk in the ways of dignity and beauty, delivered forever from oppression and repression. We are committed to reestablish the magical way of life, and to bring harmony and balance into the world. Thus we have dedicated our wills to this dangerous and difficult purpose amidst the present disorder of things, and order a new heaven and a new earth. All this is openly declared in Liber Legis and the Constitution and literature of the O.T.O.; that it might fall into the minds of men and bear fruit. There is a time for sowing and a time for germination, a time for growth and a time for reaping. The time for reaping is yet to come, but the time for growth is at hand. We profess it a small thing if a man gives all that he has, even life itself, in the cause of Freedom of Man. For we are each one of us soldiers in this cause, and it is the privilege of a soldier to fight, to sacrifice, and mayhap to die. Be it further known that we are not paper soldiers, or parlor soldiers, but men dedicated to live and die under the banner of freedom. In our army, as in all armies, there are generals, and captains, and privates. There are plans of organization, of campaign, and of action universal in scope and intricate in detail. Further, there is discipline. Our army does not expect of its soldiers that they offer unasked for advice and criticism, or take it upon themselves to alter plans or conduct private campaignings [sic]. We expect only that they do their duty, without question and without demure. We expect that they are familiar with the principles and rules of the Order, and being thus familiar, understand why all these things must be. For the rest, they must trust to the integrity and wisdom of our system and its heads. Any other course would be fatal to our cause. In our initiation, we have undergone certain solemn oaths and obligations, and we have been instructed to prepare ourselves for a time of battle. That time is at hand.

320  Appendix E Therefore, by the authority of Baphomet, under the hand and seal of your Supreme and Holy King, a state of emergency is declared to exist within this camp. In accordance with this state of emergency, the following general and specific orders, rules and instructions are issued to take effect immediately; non-​compliance can not help but be construed as a violation of your obligations taken to our Grand Master Baphomet and as such appropriately dealt with. 1. Camp Attendance. All brethren must attend Lodge meetings. Exceptions may only be made upon the presentation of a valid written or personal excuse to Saladin, given prior to the Lodge, excepting in the event of sudden severe illness or accident. 2. Dues. Arrangement must be made with the Treasurer for the payment of a regular monthly sum towards all dues and fees due the Order. It is expected that each member will write or seek out the Treasurer and make arrangements with him immediately. 3. Emergency Fee. All members are required to pay Five Percent of their salary, earnings, and income towards the further establishment of the Order, and the security of its Head. This fee is in addition to all other dues and fees of the Order, and will be collected at Lodge. Those without an established income will be called upon to contribute at least Fifty Cents a month; absentees must make the payment promptly by mail. 4. Membership. Each member must present one candidate for membership within the next three months period. Absentee members in groups will be subject to a special ruling in this matter. 5. Robes. Each member must supply himself with a robe before the next Lodge. 6. Relating to the dignity and prestige of the Order. Each member will remember at all times that he is a MEMBER OF THE ORDER, dedicated to a serious and high purpose. Thus his conduct even in his daily affairs, reflects the prestige and affects the welfare of the Order. In regard to matters directly concerning the Order, and members of the Order as such, each person should conduct himself with dignity and brotherliness, and with deference to its principles, head, and officials. Slander, gossip and subversive criticism are not to be tolerated where they affect the welfare of the Order and its members. Bickering, emotional display, irrelevant arguments and personal opinions are strongly discouraged, particularly in the presence of strangers and prospective members. The flagrant violation of this Code can only be considered as subversion to the good of the Order. 7. Duties. Each member will be given orders, verbally or in writing, relating to his duties in the Order. These will be noted by the Secretary, and the membership will be required to report briefly on their progress at each Lodge. Further, each member will be required to report to Saladin or his chosen representative, verbally or in writing at least once during each month. At this time he will discuss his progress and problems relative to the affairs of the Order. If this report is made in person, it must be made at some time agreeable to Saladin, by pre-​arrangement with him. Be it understood that the commands of Saladin, under the discretion of the Supreme and Holy King, and by the Authority of Baphomet are final, and must be obeyed. FIRST TASK. Each member will prepare a personal copy—​in his own handwriting—​ of the Duties and Privileges of Members, and to present it at Lodge, January 8, 1942; absentees will send it by mail. Love is the law, love under will.

APPENDIX F

132–​666/​1943 [Wilfred T. Smith to Aleister Crowley, February 3, 1943] Thank you for the wire. I certainly owe you a letter, though I have written at least six on paper and many more in my head I have not sent you one. Matters have come to a sort of impasse and something has got to be done. The sickly style of writing, and double dealing, is bad for organization and a continual drag on our efforts to accomplish our aims. In 1935 I was a whoremonger, dishonest, a black magician. My memory serves me well and besides I have looked up the files on that case. Now I am a clown, vile and have a swelled head. Personally I cannot take these criticisms too seriously because I do not take myself too seriously, besides the accusations are so positively stupid and false. If it is an attempt at a correction measure it utterly fails because you surely must hit a man in his weak spots to be effectual. When two are selected for the duty of revolution surely they do not declare the king is a hunchback, knock-​kneed, pigeon toed and therefore physically unfit, when it is obvious to every moron, man, woman and child that he is none of these. Neither pride of position nor avarice of possession motivate me. I may have to get out and leave it to other hands to prove it; and some other things. I have no illusions that I am the only man for the job. But so far, in the handful of adherents that I am acquainted with, no one has ex[h]‌ibited the capacity, poor though that be as you persistently inform me and the others to whom you write. I love simple things, animals, nature, enjoy the ingenuity of my hands, good literature and intelligent conversation, am in good health, and having discovered a trick or two to maintain it, shall live a damned long time. Above all, my spiritual attainment, or whatever it may be called, however little, is mine. “To thine own self be true etc.” In this incarnation I shall not fail in that respect so fear neither the suspended sword nor the bomb. There may be damned little, but what there is, is pure. The illusion of Others, the illusion of the necessity to establish your God given way of life, on which you have so ablely [sic] sold me, obsesses me. Herein the “damned little” worries me, but not my own soul, attainment nor achievement. How can it? I am nothing, have nothing, what can there be to lose? “Therefor strike hard & low, and to hell with them, master!” But I have a dire disease called persistence, so as always, even in mundane things and when the pleasure therein or the imagined reward thereof had ceased to exist, I have had to keep on to completion of the job once started. In a real sense I do not exist, it is just “pure will unusuaged” [sic] etc., or is it just habit that constrains me in a course. I am just bound to go on talking of Beauty and the Beast. On the other hand: If you have “full confidence” in one whose memory is deplorably weak, who imagines that which was never said nor done, whose psychological judgment is so often but the

322  Appendix F echo of the opinion of some one else, and keeps the good opinion of others by the simple means of agreeing with their weaknesses, what am I to assume, and how shall I act? If the “word goes” of another who writes as in the following quotation, and is surely hysterical or sick, what am I to assume, and how shall I act? I have no dislike, let alone hate for any in the past or present who have played a part in these misunderstandings. In fact I am very fond of one in particular. I merely put it thus before you for elucidation. I cannot understand how anyone should have such feelings of another as expressed in the following quotations, from just one letter only. But above all it so hampers one’s efforts to get organized and do things. We are well aware how far we are from our goal. But just what is the precise charge against us anyway? For my own part I see the faults in people, which unfits them for some purposes but certainly does not damn them in toto. I even like them for them. My own weaknesses bother me far and away more, for I am always with them day and night. “ . . . If I can speak frankly to you, I would say that 132 acted like a little boy in his childish hatred, his vile remarks about everybody else in California, about A. C. himself, in many of his letters to me, which showed me too clearly over a year ago where he stood magically and spiritually. I forced myself to be very patient, used diplomacy where it was indicated, but did not refrain from being outspoken on some occasions. –​Jack, when visiting here, was treated by Cora and myself in the most hospitable way. He did not open up in the slightest, and kept shut up like a clam, but snooped the atmosphere like a detective who had to report to a superior. Yet I did my utmost, met him enthusiastically, as some of my earlier letters, to him showed. My antennae sensed the root of the trouble, and I made some outspoken remarks to him. Alas! he was and still is too young, immature, and unfree for the position I then hoped for him. He went back, reported to 132 what he had seen and heard, and now I feel acutely from several signs, will finally fall under the dreadful spell to which he yielded. “Do understand: I feel very intensely for yourself and the grave decision you had to take, and that you took it, that you affirmed your attachment once again to the OTO itself, its heads and what it stands for and shook yourself loose from the shadows that had hung over you. I feel intensely the difficult situation you are in which may torture you in its daily connections. Do remain firm; you have weathered storms in London in 1923 (was it?) and elsewhere that were worse. You will get help. “Why, for goodness’ sake can’t you find the way to Max and open up in a talk between brother and sister? It seems to me you have some distorted vision of Max’ soul. I know him very well; I know that he had to go through hard times and ordeals these last 12 years. But everything, every act of his during these last one or almost two years proves that he has come through. It was Max’s heroic efforts that were the main help to me. I wish Agape Lodge had shown similar devotion to the Work.”1 It is all too utterly childish and weak. By far the strongest sentiments ever expressed by me, and may be taken with some salt, are in the two paragraphs preceding the quotations. I told two FBI men ten days ago after three hours questioning that they had my full permission to read all my letters. And to make sure my mind was not failing I read all in one particular folder. I find no vile remarks of a single person! Is there only one type of heroic effort? Is it more commendable to mail a check to the Master for $150.00 than to reprint a book of his for $150.00. It is easier, I can tell you that! The $835.00 in a year is a very little we know, but still we could have used it to great advantage here. We did our best. Is a person continually to be chastised because he chose to be an advertising agent instead of an orderly? Both are necessary!

132–666/1943  323 If we here say grace at table in the form you set, and consider as you have stated, that the Great Work is the establishment of the Law of Thelema, are we less loyal because we do not add, to the form by saying, “What is the Great Work?”—​“To bring Crowley to America!” It is my humble opinion that you are the greatest being on the planet. But, I do not get cockey because you have written to me personally, and give myself airs because I am in direct touch with the Master. Also I know myself, with out any conceit, better equipped for some small purposes than He. And I have found it possible for Him to make mistakes in judgment. You thought one was a good organizer—​he appears not to have an ounce in his makeup. You thought another was a go-​getter—​and found him shy and retiring. Ye gods, and what you don’t think of me! And besides you have contradicted yourself so many times in so many letters, I have just had to formulate my own judgment. I am not bickering, whining, complaining. My hide is tough since I surplanted [sic] A. E. Waite, Dead Waite, Just Waite, More Waite, ad tedium. It is merely that this is a serious attempt to clean up the mess on the decks so that we can get into action, by showing the quandry you put me/​us into. Us more particularly! We have been harried by the FBI thrice lately, and other things are a continual source of annoyance. Can’t the internal unrest be stopped? You seem so often to be responsible for the continual disturbances. Just as we are trying our hardest to get out a small monthly publication of dignity and quality (which we hope will please you), got a quotation on it, figured out how we can squeeze it into our expenses—​You let fly another charge of buck shot, or tell some one else to. I say, Hell! What’s the use? Write a few strongly worded letters, throw them in the fire, clench my teeth and make another effort! Oh, yes, feeble if you will, we are not all A.C.s But the others don’t come back so easily, and a little more and the best of them may fly the coup once more. I know my own weaknesses. And I know just about what you want for I know what I want. I am trying in the face of material, financial and personal difficulties. External opposition and internal dissension. For obvious reasons people want optical, not oral demonstrations or proofs. I am sorry it is so; tis tough and against my inclinations, but I try.

[Aleister Crowley to Wilfred T. Smith, April 1, 1943] [Crowley’s annotation to Karl J. Germer: “For your information and approval. Please forward to W. T. Smith, with such comments as seem good to you.] I received your letter of February 5th just before the Equinox. I did not answer it for some days, because I want you to feel that I considered it very carefully, and have not written anything in a temper in a hurry. Your “greetings” cable was very welcome, as was Jack’s.2 At the same time I have to say that if you understood the situation here, you would realise that politenesses sound almost like insults. If a man goes over-​board, you do not shout to him that you will send him a postcard when you get to the other side. (My reply N.L.T. was in the nature of a test.)3 What you say about yourself in 1935 is, I daresay, perfectly true. I should not have put it quite so strongly; but (to be quite open with you) I hardly remember hearing of any activities of yours beyond squabbles, mostly of the petty personal or sordid sexual kind. With regard to your honesty, I have never been able to get any accounts from you, or even regular reports as to what you are doing. I sent you books of considerable value, and

324  Appendix F all fees and subscriptions should have been paid to the Grand Treasurer General, whose business it is to support the different Lodges, according to their needs, from the General Fund. The period from your starting work to the arrival of Frater Saturnus in New York was almost a blank of support of any kind. I do not think that in twenty years or more you contributed more than £150 at the very outside. You have done practically nothing yourself for the Order beyond keeping the Mass going more or less, and occasionally getting out a few small publications. Your expenses for matters connected with the Order can have amounted only to the most insignificant sums; but however that may be, the fact of your failure to correspond and to render accounts is sufficient condemnation. I am not quite sure in what sense you use the term “black magician”; so I cannot give you my opinion on that subject. You say that now you are “a clown, vile and have a swelled head.” It is quite natural for people to regard you as a clown, because you are always exercising what you apparently suppose is humour of the Jerome K. Jerome brand, and I must say that I received one of the shocks of my life when you sent me the photographs of the Temple and its Officers robed. The fact is that you simply cannot wear a robe. You have no dignity. It is not your fault that you are of small stature and that you never seem to know quite what to do with your hands; but when anyone has these qualities either they take the most extravagant measures to get over the handicap, or they are careful to avoid pushing the facts in peoples’ faces. You know, of course, the trouble that Mussolini, for one, has taken in order to look like something which has not been brought in during the night by an alley-​cat. I cannot understand—​I never could understand—​what Jane was doing not to correct all this. What is the use of her experience of stage and screen if she cannot produce a photograph of you which would impress at least certain classes of people with the proper feelings of respect? The point is really to be referred to the True Will. You were not built to swank about any more than St. Paul, or you would have made yourself extremely impressive by an atmosphere of darkness and mystery; but it is absurd to carry a sword if it is instantly patent to everyone who sees you that you would be scared out of your life if you had to use one. I don’t know quite what you mean by “vile.” I should have to examine the context. As to the swelled head—​I am told by several people, some of them entirely friendly to you, that you have been laying claim to all sorts of degrees to which you have no shadow of right. In the A∴A∴ you may possibly have been passed to Neophyte, but you certainly never went any further. Your claim to Magister Templi was merely a drunken freak; but of course this kind of joke is not appreciated by the Chiefs, and I daresay that 90 percent of your present troubles is due to that error. I am told that you have even claimed the grade of 9˚=​2□! But if you are a Magus, why have you not announced your Word? And with regard to the intermediate Grades, where are your examinations? Where are your records? Where are your diplomas? As regards the O.T.O. you have, of course an Honorary Tenth Degree as my deputy in California; but that is itself purely an honorary degree conferred for the convenience of running the Lodges in my absence; this is quite evident from the facts. I think you have the rituals up to the Fourth Degree; you may possibly even have the Fifth, but you certainly have not got any of the higher Grades. You do not even know what they are about! You are supposed to possess the secret of the Ninth Degree; but from a recent communication it appears to me very doubtful as to whether you understand it properly, let alone being capable of making good use of it.

132–666/1943  325 When it comes to the Tenth Degree, I may remind you that you registered the name of the Order as “Rex summus sanctissimus”!! For the excellent reason that you had not the faintest idea of the meaning of those very simple Latin words. If you are an honest-​ to-​God Grand Master, you should know all the other Grand Masters. If you will send me, for instance, the name and address of, let us say, the Grand Master of Denmark (pre-​war of course will do), I shall be inclined to believe you—​at least to the extent of suggesting that you should supplement so barren an item of information by the exhibition of a letter from him which acknowledges you.4 I am prepared to bet all the gold that ever came out of California that you have never had any correspondence with any member of the Order of any Grade outside the United States. Your paragraph 7 is the first which I can heartily approve; but even so you seem to be on the defensive. The whole tone of your letter is too peevish to be manly. You do seem to be obsessed about your character and position. You don’t live in the atmosphere of the work itself, although on that point your paragraph 8 is more reassuring. As to your paragraph 9: of course, your persistence has always been your greatest asset in my mind. If you would just go on with that, without wondering and worrying about grades and so on, I can see no reason why you should not come through all right. The Grades in themselves are nothing, except insofar as they are evidence of certain facts; and there have been plenty of people with all sorts of high degrees, perfectly genuinely acquired, who had really nothing in them at all. It was great slackness to allow of this; but sometimes emergency puts Grand Masters in a position where they make rather random gestures. For instance, the late O.H.O. [Theodor Reuss], after his first stroke of paralysis, got into a panic about the Work being carried on; (he had been misled by some rumour that I was dead, or in trouble, or something) he hastily issued honorary diplomas of the Seventh Degree to various people, some of whom had no right to anything at all, and some of whom were only cheap crooks.5 You may remember that John Yarker was nobbled by the Toshophist crowd. They tried to stampede the Order on his death. There is some small account of this in Equinox I. 10.6 Now we come to your “on the other hand” part; and this does certainly fill me with contempt and disgust. You keep on talking about “one who,” “another who,” and so on, but you haven’t the courage to mention any name. You leave me to guess. You tell me of one person “whose memory is deplorably weak.” Are you referring to the man who has Liber VII, Liber LXV and Liber Legis by heart? Or is this an attack on Soror Estai? In your next paragraph you apparently refer to Frater Saturnus, but anyone less hysterical I have never met. For solid good sense he is unsurpassed. Now there comes another “another,” who writes a letter with every word of which I most heartily agree. I have had unsolicited information from more sources that you suspect. There is no doubt that you are an expert at the game of playing people off against each other. I am told, for example, that you are showing my telegram congratulating you on the publications as evidence that you were the white-​headed boy, and are using it in that way. You are only able to play this game because the members of the Lodge cannot be got to understand the importance of frankness. If A wants to attack B, he is pledged, in writing to C about the matter, to let B know exactly what he has written. If you were to do this, you would checkmate any intrigues against you, and if they would only do this themselves, it is your intrigues that would take the count. Your complete unfitness for your position is most clearly indicated by your attitude to the F.B.I. You should have welcomed the investigators in the warmest way, assumed the offensive, taken the line that you thanked God that they had come to you at last, that

326  Appendix F the only thing you needed to establish your Work was to get the ear of people of sufficient importance, place, and intelligence to understand that the only hope of pulling the country—​and indeed all countries—​through the present assault of bureaucracy and totalitarianism in one form or another is to accept the Law of Thelema officially, and determine everyone’s job by an analysis of his qualities, his abilities and disabilities, and his tendencies (in the proper Buddhist sense of the word) from childhood upwards. This, you should have pointed out, is the object of the Magical Records for training people to analyse themselves pending the establishment of proper organisations to do it for them, at least in the earliest years when they are not yet equipped to carry out the research. Instead of that, you act like a person found loitering suspiciously on enclosed premises—​“Oh, please sir, you may see all my letters. I really haven’t been doing anything wrong”—​which is enough to stamp you in the mind of any intelligent investigator as a perfect scoundrel, except that he is likely to observe that, unless your manifest feebleness is a clever mask, you are simply not worth bothering about. But then (you see!) you are worth a great deal of trouble, not because of any ideas of your own, any work of your own, any output of your own, but because you have had the sense to understand the true and vital importance of the official documents of the Order. With regard to your paragraph about finance, what you did not understand was that this $150, or whatever it was, would have been of immense service in paying the instalments on the Tarot, whereas the books that you have published were not immediately vital. It is the business of the Grand Treasurer General to allocate the funds of the Order; and to withhold any money from him whatever is plain embezzlement. It is all very well to be an advertising agent, but the form of advertising is not in your discretion. At the moment the Tarot, the Hymn for Independence Day and L’Etincelle are of supreme importance, because they will reach a public of more or less normal people. We do not want any more drifting “occultists.” We want the great political leaders, great industrials and people of that sort, the kind of person who does not subscribe $835 in a year, but half a million dollars in a day; and every distraction or diversion of funds from the business of getting at such people is hardly better than throwing the money into the sea. In fact, I think it is worse; because the practice of doing so discourages me in my struggle, almost single-​handed as I am over here, against all the worse elements in sub-​ human society. I really cannot go on trying to find out your subsequent paragraphs, with the anonymous “one” and the anonymous “another” turning up again. You talk about cleaning up the mess; but you are principally concerned in the production of the same. Your original jealousy of 687 [Max R. Schneider] was abominable; on the lowest grounds, he was no danger to you; he is agreeable, plodding, loyal and magnanimous. If you have 1 percent of his qualities, how happy I should be! PI do not see how you can get out a “small monthly publication of dignity and quality.” I am not aware of anyone in your crowd who is of any account as a writer. I can hardly imagine a more grievous waste of money, a more certain source of disappointment, and a more fantastic exhibition of your ignorance as to what getting out a monthly means. The trouble with you is that you are hopelessly parochial—​and I am sorry to say that the parish appears to be Bow. Your general wind-​up is really difficult to understand, but at least you ought to run your community on the lines clearly laid down in official documents. I have been absolutely horrified by the account of a woman ostracized by you and yours, flat in the face of Liber CI pars. 13–​15, 37–​39 et alia, for doing that which the Order expressly encourages her

132–666/1943  327 to do. I am making further enquiries into this matter, and you will doubtless hear in due course what it is all about. Finally, in regard to your whole personal position, I really cannot see any proper and dignified course for you but to go apart into the wilderness, and start to train yourself for leadership. I am sure it has been very bad for you to have had a lot of people to play with. This is bad for almost everyone. Personally, I keep people who are studying with me apart as far as possible—​“let not one know well the other.” Whenever two of three people get together the old trouble starts all over again. I want you to work by yourself for a few months at any rate, avoiding any attempt at the Samson act of burying others in the ruins. If I could see you standing up straight and working for the Order on your own, writing daily a proper magical record of your experiences during retirement, I believe you would come back fifty times the man you are. 516 [Jane Wolfe], as you know, had a pretty hot time of it for a month, and she will also tell you that it was the only really valuable time that she ever had in her life.

[Aleister Crowley to Wilfred T. Smith, May 18, 1943] Rainbow Valley —​California Care Frater 666 93 “Go thou unto the outermost places and subdue all things. Subdue thy fear and thy disgust. Then—​yield!” 93 93/​93 Fraternally, 132 The woman +​child

[Wilfred T. Smith to Aleister Crowley, May 9, 1943] Well, can I help being glad that this affair is settled at last, although in so tragic a manner? How infinitely stronger you would have been had you only been weaker! Suppose that you had written me, at the first breath of Himalayan rigour, somewhat as follows:–​ “Only too well am I aware of my unfitness to occupy the exalted position which I have so lamentably failed to maintain. I assure you that is it not lack of goodwill, but of my original capacities. I shall be only too grateful to be permitted to resign and promise to co-​operate faithfully with my successor, giving him the advantage of my experience and prestige, such as they are.” What would have been my instant reaction? “Good God! I must be making a mistake. This man’s pure gold”—​and proceeded patiently with infinite care and caution, to set you right in every smallest detail. 96.85327 (according to the latest statistics) is too much percentage of absorption in sex. How much happier you will be, and how much quicker you will get on, in a little while, (the late Alfred, First Lord Tennyson, nearly wrote it):—​ “When the testes cease from troubling, And the penis is at rest”7

328  Appendix F You seem to have regarded the Order as a desirable Shoot for One Gun. My own rule was never on any account to have sexual relations with anyone who had first come to me on matters connected with the Order. (There might have been exceptions; but in fact there were not). Now, don’t regard yourself as “out.” Shew your manhood and your devotion to 93 by putting over the Order on a big scale. Think of Paul, of Peter the Hermit, of Savonarola, even of Billy Sunday! You must be not only single-​hearted and single-​minded, but a raging, raving, ranting, roaring, swashbuckling fanatic. There was another Smith, Joseph his other name, martyred and living, with a whole state of the Union tagged on to his tail. No other American ever did a job that size! No other State can boast a single Founder.8 And you have all his assets—​the Book of the Angel and all the rest of the apparatus. Now, then, let them say that come after: “The Stone that the builders rejected the same is become the head of the corner”9 and on your monument “This Smith wrought in steel!”

[Wilfred T. Smith to Aleister Crowley, June 10, 1943] It was a little surprise, yes and pleasure, to receive your letter the day before yesterday. I thought perhaps letter writing between us might be over. Now that I am quit of the whole business and have no funds of my own, may be I may expect a different type of letter than a revision of yours up to 1934 reveals I have previously been able to invoke (I am still rereading them). It might seem a pity that I have so seldom been able to interpret your wants, for one letter so contradicted the other, or understand the strange inflammatory misstatements you made. As an example: 1. “Take all the oaths you can and plunge into the work head first.” (March 1,1928) My interpretation now is called a peek, or freak (your letters differ on this point). The stone out of Jones’ Tree of Life pin (Summer of 1920) had absolutely nothing to do with the matter; that was purely his idea and I had forgotten about the incident years ago. 2. “Sell your car and live on sandwiches for a year to prove your sincerity.” And a short while afterwards, “You have to live as a banker who came over in the Mayflower.” There were plenty more. The inflammatory misstatements are legion—​seven tenths of so many letters to me and to others about me. The last two letters to me—​April 1st and May 18th—​one to Helen, one to Jack to mention only four are just pathetic in this respect. I am not presuming to judge or even to criticize, you may have some psychological reason for it all. I merely mention it to point out that I was left high and dry to figure it out as best I could, and do what I could with what equipment I had. The Church of Thelema: twice, or three times (I have not reread all my own letters) I wrote to you about the idea. No response. I go ahead, or rather Jacobie did, send you copies of papers, and get panned for it. Yes I knew with out any Latin, what R.S.S. means. Would not any one? The matter of the form of incorporation was taken up with the lawyer before ever you criticizing me for it. In his letter of January 22, 1935 he said it went back to before the time of Sir William Blackstone, and gave a long quotation from Book 1 of the Rights of Persons, Lewis Edition, 1897, pages 469–​470.

132–666/1943  329 But it is useless! As I look at your last letter but one—​April 1st,—​I quote, “What you say about yourself in 1935 is, I daresay, perfectly true. I should not have put it quite so strongly.” But, that is just how strong you did put it. In my letter which yours answered I was not saying those things of myself, but quoting you. And, you know it! May be I lack a sufficient sense of humor. I do not care the least little bit if you think I sent you only one hundred fifty pounds in over twenty years. I have actual banks records to show that you are away out. To say nothing of what I have expended at this end for you. The last item was better than $1200. which I collected on leaving the Gas Company, and thrown into the general exchecker to start 1003. From your letter I read, “I am told. I am told.” That is just it! You accept what others tell you. Look how you exploded over Grady’s letter. Grady for the love of Mike! Not a word of truth in what he conveyed. The yarns about declaring 8˚=​3 and 9˚=​2 grades, etc. are just pure fabrications. Besides, Grades and Titles never meant a damned thing to me personally. In my photograph I may look awkward, frankly I do not have any passion to be photographed; you on the contrary by yours appear to have. Yes, the Priest’s robe was unfortunate. I could only afford $1.95 a yard for imitation velvet after spending $150. to fix up the attic to put on your Mass for you. I look much better in the robe for Saladin which Helen made; and my photograph is splendid—​at least everyone here says so. Except Jane, who would have to wait for your sentiments before she would commit herself. I wish you could read some of your letters re the 9˚. Now you say I am not. You do so labor some points. I really do not mind if I am a 10˚ or 9˚, or anything at all. I have what I have, am what I am. Yes, I do happen to have the names of the pre-​war Grandmasters of other countries. But such a “barren item of information” is certainly of no matter now. I have on file letters from [George Macnie] Cowie, York [sic], [James Thomas] Windram, I think [Frank] Bennet [sic] and I faintly remember one or two others. How silly to say I have not the courage to mention names. When there is only one cat is hardly necessary to say, “The Yellow Cat named Minnie made the smell.” You know quite well I had reference to Jane and to Germer in my letter. Frankness is one of my strong points. Jane read the letter to you in which I spoke of her, as most every other letter I wrote. I made an extra copy of that letter for Germer, but was too weary to send it, feeling the whole business useless. You judge my fitness for a position by the way I handled the two F.B.I. men. Really, that is not sound! Suppose some one made a judgment of A.C. from the letters he wrote Smith. To have handled them the way suggested in your letter is laughable. If you only knew the type they were! Doubtless you could have used the $150. for the Taro, but Germer your official representative asked for and okeyed a reprint, as he did Liber Oz with which you were so disgusted. I have never been jealous of 687, and certainly never considered him a danger to me. That is more than enough, I think. The last paragraph of this April first letter is almost the only thing you have written to me which constitutes a little guidance. I thank you very much for it. It was just the little push which I needed to start what I had promised myself and put off for years. I am not here because of the threats. Now in response to yours of May 18th. I have not yet become aware of the “tragic” part in the settlement of this affair. Unless one could call it tragic that I did not start last June with $1200. to the good, instead of nothing now.

330  Appendix F Most remarkable! Did some one quote me so correctly, or did your intuition supply it? You quote an oft repeated phrase verbatum [sic] in paragraph 3. And, paragraph 4 is just my modus operandi upon leaving any job I have ever held. Paragraph 5, and that is just it, “Pure Gold.” And Great Master though you be you did not know it. Don’t know it. An unfortunate lack of equipment to manifest it—​I had a sad start making the preface to the World’s Tragedy look like a pink tea party, and Domby and Sons a day in the country.10 And you could have helped a lot, I have no doubt. You say so in Paragraph 5, by the way. I was not asked to resign. If it had been put that way I assure you there would have been a very different reaction on my part. I thought you were expecting me to stick to it under any kind of difficulty, and that you via Germer were making it so on purpose. It is in a way more deplorable to find it was not so, that you really thought the things you wrote. And I showed that I was certainly not the man for the job by making such a pathetic mistake in assuming you were incapable of making such blunders in judgment. You are wrong again on the S.Q.11 “The Testes and Penis” have not bothered me for years. Ask dear old Regina. In fact I thought for the last three or four years at Winona Boulevard, as did she, that I was about through with such activities. I find more recently that I can play a good game of golf with vigor if I have a good companion. But golf hardly ever passes my mind until I am out on the course. I like your last letter quite a bit; it is better than any received for some time past. I don’t know that I quite agree that the outcome of my experiment here will be as you suggest. I have never had any desire to be a “raging, raving, ranting, roaring, swashbuckling fanatic.” Much as such a one may be needed. We will see. I have determination but enthusiasm is slow in developing. This place is almost ideal now; after some real hard work it is livable with the minimum amount of toil. I have an excellent cook, housekeeper, companion and typist. We will leave it at that. Not talkative; leaves me alone, but urges me along so that it appears she is more interested in my doing a good job than I am myself. She really fulfills the outline of what they should be like which you gave in “Confessions.” And the boy is an excellent alarm clock, for one A.M. rising. It all seems to be working out to my advantage—​may it continue. I am as near happy as I have ever been in my life. And I am away from people and can see the Stars at night. What a sky! If I don’t get some inspiration here I will just go out with a begging bowl. I have to turn myself round a bit, and use my terrific energy in another direction. It is a bit slow at the first, but I shall get there. My diary will be pretty verbose but I promised my self to write instead of talk—​the former is so much harder for me than the latter. No one has to read it after all. That I pull off the Hat Trick is all that matters. At this time—​yes, I guess it will pass—​I am inclined to say “God’s in heaven and all’s right with the world.” And so, if you had not failed to see that “This man’s pure gold” I might not be here to do a job which I have to do. May I succeed. P.S. June 22d Finally I decided to mail this letter, and not throw it in the waste paper basket as so often before. Yes, scores of times. It unfortunately, for me of course, has never been possible to write as one would to a friend, brother, teacher. Each sentence almost, yes and even word, I write I foresee your comeback: snub, sneer, sarcasm, satire. I am not always right. What then was the use to mail my letters receiving the answers as I wrote them? The contents of yours has seldom been a surprise. “Here we go again” is the thought as I tear the envelope, and sure enough it is so. You should just read through your letters to me as I have been doing here. Have got as far as 1934. Notwithstanding all that I look forward to receiving your letters. Perhaps I am morbid and like punishment. W.T.S.

132–666/1943  331

[Wilfred T. Smith to Aleister Crowley,] August 10, 1943] First let me thank you for the “City of God” and the inscription therein.12 It was forwarded to me after a little delay from 1003, I have had it about ten days. For a little more than three weeks now I have spent the major part of my waking hours (I don’t think I average six hours sleep out of the twenty-​four) thinking over Liber CXXXII and considered often and well the course of my life in relation thereto. Many questions have arisen to some of which I found an answer. The first reaction was surprise, I expected something so different. Second was elation with the thought, now we can cancel out the hectic past and start anew from scratch, and perhaps get somewhere. Then followed a long period of skepticism and even ridicule. Obviously work, serious thought and possibly something more than that had been put into it. But the exaggerated criticism of the man Smith made me wonder how much of the New Born Idea was to be discounted also. I have tried to find a reason for such an over exaggerated statement as “mentally and morally he possesses every vice, every defect conceivable.” And perhaps I have answered that question. However the Chitham [sic] is slowing down some what and I have about come to the conclusion that the practical thing to do after all is to find out by working on the proposition. I hope you will forgive me for delaying so long in writing you on the matter. But for my part I am glad I did not write sooner. I was not serious enough about it and I might have postulated many foolish questions which are now answered; for which reason I shall ask none of those yet unanswered. If this operation is successful there are some things that might be of use, not the least of which is exhibit number one, a louzy three month’s record to show how we can take a sack of old dried peas and magically change them into rubies. Or should I have said from a plain bar of “pure gold” we by our Magic create a masterpiece of the Goldsmith’s art? Needless to say I shall welcome any further suggestions you may have to offer for, paragraph eleven notwithstanding, the way, if not entirely dark, is at least a little foggy. And in any case I am always anxious to hear from you. This is a grand spot and I have revelled in mother nature like never before in my life—​ tanned from head to foot. And there are no people. You would love it, and I wish you were here. Helen looks after the wonderfully happy natured son, cooks, types my diary, letters, and leaves me alone. Fraternally and affectionately, 9/​14/​43 Written just before [Section] Gamma came to hand +​revived many previous objections +​added many more.

[Wilfred T. Smith to Aleister Crowley, September 14, 1943] Many times these many years I have speculated as to how and when my turn would come as it has to so many others, and now it is here. With the limited powers with which I was endowed I desperately tried to hold together the Order and extend its influence, despite the dire blunders in the matter of simple first principals for organization which you so often made and your total failure to give me adequate support, as you acknowledged in one of your recent letters. As stated in mine to you of June 3rd, after leaving here, which you did not answer, I started out with some home that I might perhaps achieve somewhat for the benefit of all concerned, and started some practices and kept a record until August 13th.

332  Appendix F Perhaps unfortunately, who shall say, I took along and reread all your letters to me, and I think they, more than the contents of Liber CXXXII and subsequent events, decided me after over two solid months of thinking to change the course of thirty-​seven years of my life. There are besides many other factors which contributed to the final decision. Not without pain and anticipation of continued discomfort as a corollary do I, abandon, in one way, the aspirations of at least thirty-​seven years. I restart at fifty-​eight on the more distasteful task of competing for mere physical existance with my fellows. You indeed devine a basic tone of my nature in some of what you said in the Gamma section of Liber CXXXII, as I so fully discovered in the four months in the wilderness. But you also make some bad mistakes. In more than one respect I have chosen the hardest course, for I remember nothing so distasteful in my life as was the leaving of Culling’s Hermitage following my decision, some three or four days previous to my return to 1003, which threshold I half hoped never to cross again. Since arrival the distaste is no whit alleviated. I found several notable matters during revision of your letters that had entirely been forgotten, one of which was Mr. Germer’s long criticism of you, many good points therein, and your characteristic vitriolic and verbose attack upon him.13 Will it be necessary to write such a one in my case, or have you not already said enough to others already in your letters? Which by the way the F.B.I. seem to take seriously. I could now, as I have often in diary and destroyed letters, write you for hours on end. But I have never felt quite sure that you would not use the confessional of a record against me, as I so recently discovered (see above) Germer accuses you of doing in his case. That stack of letters from one who wrote Liber LXV, VII, XXVII, CDXVIII, XXI, and many, many more. In a spirit of sadness and not blame I say that they are deplorable and they have had their effect. I can only suppose you felt that there was no corresponding intelligence at this end to inspire or warrant anything better on your part. You should not have formulated such an opinion by my poorer ability than yours to express in writing my best, and because I left an “e” off of “before,” and some such blunders, through an undue haste to put into writing my thoughts. Had you not accepted so ardently the opinions of apparently a more convincing letter writer, or had the knowledge furnished by a higher source of information on May 28th, 3 P.M. come to you sooner, probably this sad ending would not have occurred [sic]. What is the use of writing, for I have no powers to write of much more subtle matters pertaining hereunto. I am sad. Pasadena, California I have held this now two days, but I must send something off to you though this represents little of what I wish I could say to you. It looks as if I was oblivious to my failures in the matter, but I assure you I am not. Yet I hear things daily which had I heard them before the decision would have hastened it. Never the less could the wire be recalled, at least in part, I would probably do it.14 “Sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of care”15 is the only surcease. Would to God you knew your people better.

132–666/1943  333

[Aleister Crowley to Wilfred T. Smith, circa November 3, 1943] Illiterate incarnation of what God who knows? Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. You maintain your adherence to the principals of the Order—​but it is those principals that you betray. [Of course you mean principles; but treachery is not among them.]16 I should be more nearly moved to tears by “very dear Aleister” if your every act was not calculated to damage both me and the Work to the—​rather meagre—​extent of your power. You were “kicked out ignominiously” as Mr Schneider accurately phrases it, on numerous grounds, years ago. My first duty to the Order was to keep it in being. When you ceased to perform the Mass, there was no further reason for you. But it was desirable to avoid dissension and scandal, so sentence was suspended until some one was found who (as was hoped) could assume the office which you had degraded and forfeited. Apart from all else, your sexual acrobatics tended to give the Order the reputation of being that slimy abomination, a “love cult.” Already in 1915, in Vancouver, all I knew of you was that you were running a mother and her daughter in double harness. Since then, one scandal has followed another. Your attempts to seduce newly-​initiated women by telling them that you were now in a position to order them to sleep with you were acts of despicable blackguardism.17 What grosser violation of the Law of Thelema can one imagine? Not to mention that by English law you might if successful have been found guilty of rape, and I should have heartily approved a sentence of penal servitude. It is not Germer’s wise and temperate letters, but your own erotomaniac antics, that have (very naturally) made the F.B.I. wonder what was going on. It is fortunate that in him I had a man of impeccable conduct, a man of integrity and dignity, to make manifest the serious and upright principles on which our Work is based. Notwithstanding, I fully appreciate the higher side of your nature, your devotion to the principles of the Order, so far as you understand them; and I am deeply touched by your attitude toward me personally. I now class you as “one of the believing Jinn.” You had a “way out”—​a way UP, too!—​offered you in Liber 132. By adherence, you could have become the greatest spiritual or magical force in—​well, perhaps in the world, for who knows? But you listened to flattery (curious how avid of praise Gods always seem to be!), and took the road to Limbo, to the oblivion of Stansfeld Jones. Even now, should you understand the love in this letter, you might repair most of the mischief done to the Work, and “make good.” Love is the law, love under will. Salutations to your divine self!

APPENDIX G

Liber CXXXII ΑΠΟΘΕOCIC  132 May 28 1943 E.V. 3.30 P.M. G.M.T.

} 

777 Birth of an Idea

Figure G.1.  Birth of an Idea.  Lady on cusp 10th  ♇ in 10th ☊ on cusp 11th idea came from a friend ♆ in 12th (A∴ A∴) □♅☿ △♂ ♄ in 9th

336  Appendix G 666 making Considerations of the True Will or Destiny of Fra∴ 132 was haunted persistently by the word Apotheosis. The Qabalistic value of this word is 645, which added to 132 gives 777!1 His work had been based on very varied reports concerning Fra∴ 132: friends, enemies and critics. He was able to reconcile all the conflicting accounts by this Idea: his memory then suggested Louis Bromfield’s book “The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg.” In the deepest purport of this book he saw an adumbration of the method by which Fra∴ 132 might come to full Initiation, the perfect realization of his Self, and the free fulfillment of his True Will. This came to Fra∴ 666 as a dazzling light thrown upon this very difficult case. He was impelled to take an Omen and an Oracle, and later to set up a Genethliacal figure. (This last heads these remarks: comment follows in due course.) The Omen was the 58th Hexagram, Tui, the watery part of Water; and the marriage of Water with the Sun, the child thereof. Roughly interpreted, this means a pleasing solution, and success through the Image of his Illumination. The Oracle was AL. III. 48. “Now this mystery of the letters is done, and I want to go on to the holier place”: incredibly apt; this might well be the actual Utterance of Fra∴132 at this juncture! The Magical Ring of Fra∴ 666 had stopped so as to cover the letters n to t in the words “on to the” in the MS. of Liber AL. The word “to” ‫ ﬨו‬is the Hebrew ‫ אתה‬Ateh, Thou; N ‫ נ‬is ♏, and T (of th) ‫♌ ט‬so that these letters might be read:—​ “Thou, between the Lion and the Dragon” (or Serpent). The 4 letters add to 465 =​5 x 93! (add this also to 645: the result is 1110.) Fra∴ 132 himself should be very specially qualified to appreciate these Qabalistic significances; perhaps better than any other member of the Order. The Horoscope. This is one of the most astonishingly fortunate figures that Fra∴ 666 has ever set up in his whole life. ♆ in 12th exactly on the place of 132’s radical ♅ shows the intervention of the Masters of A∴A∴. ☊ on the cusp of 11th shows the friendly intervention of 666. It is exactly on the place of 666’s radical ♅, his Magical Will. ♀ the Lady of the Figure, culminating, and ♃ in 10th show good fortune attending the Discovery. ♇ in 10th may shew permanence of the fame attaching to it. ♄ is in the 9th house—​philosophy, science and religion.  ☌ ♅ ☌ ☿ support ♆ from the Quartile, as does  ☌  from the Trine, aspect. They shew the Word and the Will taking charge of 132’s life.  ☌  in the House of Personal Initiation, supported by △ ♆ and   ♅ ☿ shews 132’s Energy softened, enlightened, and blessed by the protection of the Highest. Fra∴ 666 has from the beginning been baffled by the extraordinary Figure of the Heavens at the Nativity of Fra∴ 132. There are no less than 8 planets in close—​remarkably close; the limit of divergence is only 5˚—​aspect. Add ♇ 3˚ away: that is 9. [It will later appear significant that the only “outsider” is , the human self of W.T.S.] It is perhaps the most important astrological discovery of Fra∴ 666 that “greatness” always accompanies “complexes” of planets; they stabilize the whole structure, and each enriches the other elements of the complex. A complex of more that 5 planets is rare; of 8 Fra∴ 666 knows one only—​William Shakespeare—​beside Wilfred Smith!!

Liber CXXXII  337 12.40 A.M. 9–​6–​85 

W. T. Smith

Figure G.2.  Natal chart of Wilfred Talbot Smith. ♅*♀□♆☿♂ ♂☌♆☌☿☌♇ ♄☌♀  solus 8 planets in aspect!!! with ♇, 9!!!!

Tunbridge Kent

338  Appendix G Yet no corresponding qualities could be found in the man. He has no birth, no breeding, no education; physically he is a meagre specimen; mentally and morally he possesses every vice, every defect conceivable. Spiritually he has no attainments to his credit; his achievements are null. To set off these flaws, he can boast few virtues; even his persistence in upholding the Order may have been due to self-​preservation rather than to loyalty. These facts are patent: Fra∴ 666 has set them forth less from personal observation than from the reports of friends and admirers. Accordingly, the horoscope is completely absurd and nonsensical: indeed “a giant’s robe upon a dwarfish thief.”2 Yet, with all that has been said against Fra∴ 132, there is no doubt that Something in him demands and received the most extravagant, blind, unreasonable devotion. Fra∴ 666 was struck, while making these observations, by certain curious parallels between his personality (and his effect upon those who know him) and that of Cyrus Spragg, the “Prophet” of Louis Bromfield’s book.3 This book must be read with very great care, or it will be fatally misunderstood. The Key is in the last fact cited by Horace Winnery at the end of § ii of the last chapter. The simple, the astounding Truth, flooded the mind of Fra∴ 666 with light. It explains all obscurities, it reconciles all contradictions. We have all of us throughout been blinded by a single misapprehension, precisely as if a staff of Astronomers, mistaking a planet for a star, observed its motion, and so found nothing but irritating, bewildering, inexplicable attacks upon the “Laws of Nature.” All becomes clear on recognizing the fundamental mistake: Wilfred T. Smith, Fra∴ 132, is not a man at all; he is the Incarnation of some God. 666. 9˚=​ 2□ A∴A∴ Section β. DEAD RECKONING: AND THE PORT. It having been discerned above in α that Fra∴ 132 is an incarnation (not necessarily an avatar) of some god, it is expedient to discuss divers implications of this thesis. 1. The word “god” implies a fact; it is no question of convenience, as when the Ephesians called Barnabas Jupiter, and Paul Mercury. 2. The incarnation of a god is an exceedingly rare event to become known, although frequent enough when he makes it secretly “to take his pleasure on the earth among the legions of the living.” It being known, it is important to ascertain his purpose, especially when (as in the present case) the material envelope has been so perfectly constructed that he is himself not fully aware of it. 3. One must distinguish such cases very sharply indeed from that phenomenon—​ in these days so common as to constitute an appreciable percentage of the population, and to exercise notable influence upon society—​of the incarnation of elementals. Nor is a “god” here to be confounded with a “daimon” or “angel,” even although his function wholly or in part prove to be that of an “angel,” or messenger, or “prophet.” [Cf Liber AL I. 7. There is no reason to suppose that Aiwass is, or is not, a living man.] 4. By “god” is to be understood a complete macrocosmic individual, as contrasted with human-​elementals, who incarnate partial—​planetary or zodiacal—​intelligences4 of

Liber CXXXII  339









higher or lower rank in the Yetziratic Hierarchies; such are salamanders, undines, sylphs and gnomes in human form. 5. It is of the first importance for those who would reap full benefit from the sojourn of such a being on this planet that they should understand his nature; they ought “to know his name.” [cf. Neophyte ritual of G∴D∴ and J. G. Frazer’s remarks on this formula in “The Golden Bough.”] To determine his identity is a task of notable magnitude: what means are at the disposal of the Enquirer? In a matter of such moment it would be rash to rely upon the ordinary methods of divination; and in this particular case astrology fails to afford even a suggestion. The letter of Fra∴ 132 to Fra∴ 666 of Feb 3 1943 e.v. seems to supply a hint. The letter was written in a state of intense excitement: “in vino veritas.” Fra∴ 132 himself seems to regard himself as a “prophet” of the Law of Thelema, and even of Fra∴ 666 himself, adulating that very human brother in fantastically unbalanced and exaggerated language. If this were so, the fact would be immediately manifest when Fra∴ 132 began to “prophesy”; but even so, no light is thereby cast upon the problem of his identity. 6. Fra∴ 132, having hitherto been unconscious of his true Nature, is plainly incompetent to announce offhand who he actually is in the celestial orders; and his tempestuous and thwarted career while in subjection to the hallucination that he was human in the full sense has presumably obfuscated his intelligence, and masked his countenance with ten thousand irrelevant but direly deceptive excrescences, as it were a handsome youth smeared in the ordure-​t roughs of Dachau. 7. It must therefore be his primary object to recognize himself. With this end in view, he must first of all withdraw completely from further occasion of contamination; and he must devise for himself—​with some help as this essay may be able to render him—​a true method of self-​realization. This aim is of course that of initiation itself; but in the normal man the self to be realized is altogether beyond identification with any person; it is universal, and identical for all of us, since ultimately we differ only as points in a boundless space; that is, by position, which is itself only recognizable by virtue of imperfection in the analysis! 8. In this case Fra∴132 has to realize and to proclaim his identity and function very much as Fra∴ 666 regards himself in the light of what is spoken of him in The Book of the Law. He ought to be able to say simply: I am Apu-​t, or Kabeshnut, or Thoum-​ aesh-​neith, or as may be the case. It will not serve the present purpose to accept Asar, or Ra, or one of the Universal Gods, such as of whom all men are in a sense incarnations. It is not necessary that the god should have been incarnated at (or before) the birth of Wilfred T. Smith. A quite possibly significant moment might have been the Summer Solstice of ‘16 E.V. or the Winter of ‘09 E.V., when terrific forces were set in motion by the Chiefs of the Order.5 The “child” might well have been begotten by the “Paris Working”6 (Jany. ‘14) or as the result of some of the immense Enochian Invocations: in the latter case the name of the “god” required might be found on the Watch Towers of the Universe, and his nature determined by analysis of the squares concerned. Another possibility, suggested by the place of residence of Fra∴ 132, is that one of the aboriginal “Red Indian” gods may have seized the opportunity somehow afforded by Fra∴ 132’s state at the moment.

340  Appendix G

9. Do these suggestions conflict with the original thesis? Is the case rather one of permanent possession of a man by a god? This question recalls the phenomenon observed in the late Fra∴ Lampada Tradam,7 who became for periods (on one occasion it extended to 11 days) the vehicle of such deities as Isis, Jupiter, and Pan; also of obsessing demons, who were of course exorcised without delay, but often with extreme difficulty. During such times Fra∴ L.T. lost completely all his human characteristics, his awareness of the world about him, and lived in uninterrupted consciousness of the deity that was then possessing him, and manifested the qualities of that godhead in singular perfection, untainted, unalloyed, by any corporate externalization of the vehicle. 10. The case of Fra∴ 132 seems quite different. He appears almost continually thwarted, enraged, the imprisoned god chafing at his base confinement, and the “human” qualities those rather of some animal other than a man. Only in the ecstasy of the performance of his sacerdotal function in the Gnostic Mass, and when similarly freed by equivalent magical conditions, did Fra∴ 132 exult in the fullness of his self-​realization in freedom; but still, through failure to understand the true nature of the phenomenon, neither wholly satisfied with the present, nor capable of manipulating the future. 11. The strategical aspect of the task which confronts Fra∴ 132 is accordingly simple, clear, straightforward, and capable of being carried through in triumph on lines well-​known, well-​tried, and already proved applicable with satisfaction to and by Fra∴ 132 himself.   The problem may be succinctly stated as follows: To initiate himself to the point at which he may be classed in the hierarchy to which he belongs, so as to be recognizable by himself, and by observers of adequate skill.  The further Work of self-​initiation up to the final resolution of the pantomorphous tensorial equation: Naught ≡ two ≡ one ≡ many ≡ all (in ‫א‬° and ω dimensions) is clearly the business of the god himself to undertake; but it may be laid down on considerations of general principle that the first conditions of its success must be that the god has perfectly fulfilled the particular purpose to execute which he embarked upon so extraordinary and hazardous an undertaking as to incarnate in human forms. 12. The True Will of Wilfred T. Smith, or of Fra∴ 132, is from Α to Ω identical with that of every other star: videlicet, to discover, understand and enjoy his own original Universal Perfection by postulating it in terms of every possible Imperfection in every possible dimension; but the True Will, at any given moment, of any particular complex of Imperfections is for the individual so composed to discover by the accepted Formulæ. And it is certain that to be baulked of success in this “Next Step” is to be barred temporarily from attainment of the broader, deeper, and ultimate “Great Work.” 13. For the observer, therefore, who is bound by the Oaths of the Great White Brotherhood to assist Fra∴ 132 in his Work, receiving in turn the benefit appointed, it will be especially useful to study the following sections of this Essay.

Liber CXXXII  341 Section γ. THE CAPTAIN: SHIP’S DISCIPLINE: HINTS ON NAVIGATION. 1. It must appear of little really vantage to the divine Tenant of any human mansion to be aware of the name assigned to him by his neighbours, or even by the man who shelters him; but from a shallow and temporary standpoint it may be well for him to take measures that will ensure his proper treatment by, and even assistance from them. The problems of all concerned will be simplified if he be fitted with an accurate appellation. He must be enabled to fulfil himself with the least possible friction; this implies a preparation and a safeguarding of the conditions of his incarnation. Thus confident in reliance on the understanding, goodwill, and assistance of his appointed guardians, he must take the utmost pains to realize himself, to develop his nature so as best to carry out the purpose to accomplish which he has undertaken this rare and difficult form of strategy. 2. The divine nature must never be contaminated or cheapened by human associations. He must be seen and heard by his attendants only, except in actual ceremonial or when “prophesying.” The most difficult of all his tasks will be to establish and maintain proper relations with those attendants. “No man is a hero to his valet.” But that is exactly what he must be; and he must achieve this simply, without artifice, pose, or superficial play upon the emotions of his guardians. 3. It should be most convenient for him to dwell in a tent or “shack,” preferably on some remote yet consecrated place such as “Temple Hill” where his food could be supplied from the neighbouring G.H.Q. of the S.G.M.G. [Sovereign Grand Master General] now called Rancho RoyAL. He should occupy himself in building single-​ handed a Chapel or Temple from the materials there abounding, or till his own garden, or both. 4. To emphasize the solemnity of his dedication, and its irrevocable nature, it would be wise for him to cause the Mark of the Beast to be tattooed upon his forehead, or in the palm of his right hand; also if choose, over his heart and upon his Mons Veneris.8 5. He must always wear special robes appropriate to his nature and his work: (a) Ceremonial vestment correct for his particular godhead (b) working dress, the most convenient and comfortable for his daily life and work (c) whatever robes may be proper for any ceremonial of the Order in which he may be taking part. 6. “unassuaged of purpose.” He must not make speeches designed to bring about any course of events in the outside world. His words must be Utterances, followed by Silence. They must be confined to “prophecies,” definite outbursts of divine self-​expression. There must be no reporting of these Utterances, and no writings on any sacred topic. He must train his personal attendant as Athos did Grimaud in “The Three Musketeers” to understand his requirements with a minimum of speech. (Arrangements must be made for a medical visit to Fra∴ 132 at short regular intervals.) 7. It may be that, in order to fulfill his nature and mission, he must receive, from time to time, secret visitors. Such visits must be limited to a single aim, and while they last, all restrictions may be cancelled; the visit will have its own ceremonial amenities. But, the purpose of the visit once attained, there is to be no repetition; nor, before that, any undue frequency. The error to be avoided is that the tendency to establish normal human relations with any person is compelling: it must be eschewed, as utterly fatal to his whole mission.

342  Appendix G Applications to visit him must be allowed or disallowed by Fra∴ himself on his judgment of their propriety. Fra∴ 132 must never on any account have any say whatever in the matter. 8. Fra∴ 132 is to formulate his own “Oath of the Beginning”; he is advised to submit a draft of this for the approval and suggestions of Fra∴ 666. Fra∴ 666 may revise the terms of this Oath from time to time as Fra∴ 132 develops. 9. There should be a period of preparation pending the full assumption of his Dignity by Fra∴ 132. These suggestions following may be of use. α) Fra∴ might appoint a local committee of 3 Brethren to make the necessary practical arrangements. β) Fra∴ 132 should begin to attune himself to the final regimen at once by making a Great Magical Retirement, living alone, and seeing no one except for (say) two hours weekly conference with the Committee to discuss minor problems that may arise in the course of the preparations. γ) His main Work will of course be to use such practices, invocations, etc., as will help him to establish his Identity. Until this is discovered, beyond all possibility of error, there is a risk of making plans which would conflict with that Identity. E.g. a King of Oreads would require a mountain Dwelling; a King of Undines a lake, river, or seashore; a Son of Demeter a Grove: and so on for all. [Nevertheless, the suggestion above put forward of Temple Hill as an Abode, and the Building of a Chapel with garden as the material site of the work, came spontaneously and it may be not wholly without inspiration.] δ) During the period of preparation it is of the very greatest important that no hint soever of the significance of the activities of those concerned should reach the outer world; and the strictest silence in respect of the matter should be most straitly enjoined upon every member of the Order; not even among themselves should it be mentioned, much less discussed. The sole exception to this rule: Fra∴ 132 and the Committee; and they, to the exact contrary, should discuss nothing whatever that does not appertain to the business of the preparations.

Notes Foreword 1. Aleister Crowley, Snowdrops from a Curate’s Garden, edited with a prolegomenon by Martin P. Starr (Chicago: Teitan Press, 1986); Aleister Crowley, The Scrutinies of Simon Iff, edited with an introduction by Martin P. Starr, first collected edition (Chicago: Teitan Press, 1986); Aleister Crowley, Golden Twigs, edited with an introduction by Martin P. Starr, first collected edition (Chicago: Teitan Press, 1988); Aleister Crowley, Konx Om Pax: Essays in Light, with an introduction by Martin P. Starr, facsimile edition (Chicago: Teitan Press, 1988); Aleister Crowley, The Scented Garden of Abdullah the Satirist of Shiraz, with an introduction by Martin P. Starr, facsimile edition (Chicago: Teitan Press, 1991); Aleister Crowley, The Winged Beetle, with an introduction by Martin P. Starr, facsimile edition (Chicago: Teitan Press, 1992); Charles Baudelaire, Little Poems in Prose, translated by Aleister Crowley, edited with a foreword by Martin P. Starr (Chicago: Teitan Press, 1995). 2. Francis Israel Regardie was an influential British-​American author and occultist, who has served as Crowley’s secretary in 1928–​1929. From 1969 to 1975, Regardie edited and/​or introduced several of Crowley’s major works, including AHA (Dallas: Sangreal Foundation, 1969); Book 4 (Dallas: Sangreal Foundation, 1969); Eight Lectures on Yoga (Dallas: Sangreal Foundation, 1969); The Holy Books (Dallas: Sangreal Foundation, 1969); The Equinox 1 (1–​10) (New York: Samuel Weiser, 1972); The Vision & the Voice (Dallas: Sangreal Foundation, 1972); Magick without Tears (St. Paul: Llewellyn Publications, 1973); The Qabalah of Aleister Crowley (New York: Samuel Weister, 1973); Gems from the Equinox (St. Paul: Llewellyn Publications, 1974); and The Law Is for All (St. Paul: Falcon Press, 1975). 3. Both John Symonds and Kenneth Grant had known Crowley toward the end of his life, and Symonds was appointed Crowley’s literary executor, while Grant served as Crowley’s secretary in the spring of 1945. From 1969 to 1974 they cooperated in editing and/​or introducing several of Crowley’s works, including The Confessions of Aleister Crowley (London: Jonathan Cape, 1969); The Magical Record of the Beast 666: The Diaries of Aleister Crowley, 1914–​1920 (London: Duckworth, 1972); The Diary of a Drug Fiend (London: Sphere, 1972); Moonchild (London: Sphere, 1972); White Stains [Symonds only] (London: Duckworth, 1973); The Heart of the Master [Grant only] (Montreal: 93 Publishing, 1973); Magick (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973); The Magical and Philosophical Commentaries of The Book of the Law (Montreal: 93 Publishing, 1974); and The Complete Astrological Writings (London: Duckworth, 1974). 4. This approach also characterizes the editorial approach of William Breeze, who has edited and/​or introduced several important works of Aleister Crowley, often under his

344 Notes name as the head of the Ordo Templi Orientis, Hymenaeus Beta, e.g., The Holy Books of Thelema (York Beach: Weiser Books, 1983); The Equinox III:10 (New York: Thelema Publications, 1986); The Stratagem and Other Stories (Brighton: Temple Press, 1990); Liber Aleph vel CXI: The Book of Wisdom or Folly (New York: 93 Publishing, 1991); The Equinox of the Gods/​Eight Lectures on Yoga (New York: 93 Publishing, 1991); Little Essays Toward Truth (Scottsdale: New Falcon Publications, 1991); Magick: Liber Aba: Book Four, Parts I–​IV (York Beach: Samuel Weiser, 1994); The Goetia: The Lesser Key of Solomon the King (York Beach: Samuel Weiser, 1995); Tao Te Ching (York Beach: Samuel Weiser, 1995); Commentaries on the Holy Books and Other Papers (York Beach: Samuel Weiser, 1996); Vision & the Voice with Commentary and Other Papers (York Beach: Samuel Weiser, 1998); The Revival of Magick and Other Essays (Tempe: New Falcon Publications, 1998); The General Principles of Astrology (York Beach: Samuel Weiser, 2002); Liber AL vel Legis (York Beach: Weiser Books, 2004); The Drug and Other Stories (London: Wordsworth, 2010); White Stains (Stockholm: Edda, 2011); The Simon Iff Stories and Other Works (London: Wordsworth, 2012). 5. J. F. Brown, “Aleister Crowley’s ‘Rites of Eleusis,’” The Drama Review 22 (2): 3–​26 (1978). 6. Alex Owen, “The Sorcerer and His Apprentice: Aleister Crowley and the Magical Exploration of Edwardian Subjectivity,” Journal of British Studies 36 (1): 99–​133 (1997). 7. Richard B. Spence, “Secret Agent 666: Aleister Crowley and British Intelligence in America, 1914–​1918,” International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 13 (3): 359–​371 (2000). 8. Henrik Bogdan and Martin P. Starr, Aleister Crowley and Western Esotericism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). A German translation of the anthology was published as Aleister Crowley und die westliche Esoterik in 2014. 9. Marco Pasi, Aleister Crowley and the Temptation of Politics (Durham, NC: Acumen, 2014); Manon Hedenborg White, The Eloquent Blood: The Goddess Babalon and the Construction of Femininities in Western Esotericism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020). 10. E.g., Egil Asprem, “Kabbalah Recreata: Reception and Adaptation of Kabbalah in Modern Occultism,” The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies 9 (2): 132–​153 (2007); Egil Asprem, “Magic Naturalized? Negotiating Science and Occult Experience in Aleister Crowley’s Scientific Illuminism,” Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism 8 (2): 139–​165 (2008); Marco Pasi, “Varieties of Magical Experience: Aleister Crowley’s Views on Occult Practice,” Magic, Ritual, and Magic 6 (2): 123–​162 (2011); Stuart McWilliams, “Aleister Crowley’s Graphomania and the Transformations of Magical Inscriptivity,” Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural 5 (1): 59–​85 (2016); Henrik Bogdan, “The Babalon Working 1946: L. Ron Hubbard, John Whiteside Parsons, and the Practice of Enochian Magic,” Numen: International Review for the History of Religions 63 (1): 12–​32 (2016); Henrik Bogdan, “Deus est Homo: The Concept of God in the Magical Writings of the Great Beast 666,” Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism 21 (1): 13–​42 (2020); Aren Roukema, “Esotericism, Occultism, and Magic: The Case of Gurdjieff and

Notes  345 Crowley,” Correspondences 8 (2): 157–​217 (2020); Matthew Fletcher, “Inventing a Modern Ritual Magic Text: Assembling and Dis(a)ssembling Liber Israfel,” Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 17 (2): 297–​333 (2022); Henrik Bogdan, “Ars Congressus Cum Daemone: Aleister Crowley and the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel,” Entangled Religions: Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Religious Contact and Transfer 14 (3): 1–​30 (2023). 11. E.g., Hugh B. Urban, “The Beast with Two Backs: Aleister Crowley, Sex Magic and the Exhaustion of Modernity,” Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 7 (3): 7–​25 (2004); Hugh B. Urban, “‘Magia Sexualis’: Sex, Secrecy, and Liberation in Modern Western Esotericism,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 72 (3): 695–​ 731 (2004); Henrik Bogdan, “Challenging the Morals of Western Society: The Use of Ritualised Sex in Contemporary Occultism,” The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies 8 (2): 211–​246 (2006); Manon Hedenborg White, “To Him the Winged Secret Flame, to Her the Stooping Starlight: The Social Construction of Gender in Contemporary Ordo Templi Orientis,” The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies 15 (1–​2): 101–​121 (2013); Manon Hedenborg White, “‘The Eyes of Goats and of Women’: Femininity and the Post-​Thelemic Witchcraft of Jack Parsons and Kenneth Grant,” in S. Ferraro and E. D. White, eds., Magic and Witchery in the Modern West (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 175–​196; Manon Hedenborg White, “Proximal Authority: The Changing Role of Leah Hirsig in Aleister Crowley’s Thelema, 1919–​1930,” Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism 21 (1): 69–​93 (2020); Joy Dixon, “Sex Magic as Sacramental Sexology: Aleister Crowley’s Queer Masculinity,” Correspondences 10 (1): 17–​47 (2022). 12. E.g., Caroline Tully, “Walk like an Egyptian: Egypt as Authority in Aleister Crowley’s Reception of The Book of the Law,” The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies 12 (1): 20–​47 (2010); Gordan Djurdjevic, “Solve et Coagula: Attitudes toward the Ambrosial Aspects of Human Seed in Certain Yogic Traditions and the Sexual Magick of Aleister Crowley,” Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism 10 (1): 85–​106 (2010); Johan Nilsson, “Defending Paper Gods: Aleister Crowley and the Reception of Daoism in Early Twentieth Century Esotericism,” Correspondences 1 (1): 103–​127 (2013); Gordan Djurdjevic, “‘Wishing you a speedy termination of existence’: Aleister Crowley’s views on Buddhism and Its Relationship with the Doctrine of Thelema,” Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism 19 (2): 212–​230 (2019); Marco Pasi, “Aleister Crowley and Islam” in Mark Sedgwick and Francesco Piraino, eds., Esoteric Transfers and Constructions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), 151–​193. 13. E.g., Martin P. Starr, “Chaos from Order: Cohesion and Conflict in the Post-​Crowley Occult Continuum,” The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies 8 (1): 84–​117 (2006); Henrik Bogdan, “The Influence of Aleister Crowley on Gerald Gardner and the Early Witchcraft Movement,” in James R. Lewis and Merideth Pizza, eds., Handbook of Contemporary Paganism (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2009), 81–​107; Hugh B. Urban, “The Occult Roots of Scientology?: L. Ron Hubbard, Aleister Crowley, and the Origins of a Controversial New Religion,” Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 15 (3): 91–​116 (2012); Henrik Bogdan,

346 Notes “Reception of Occultism in India: the Case of the Holy Order of Krishna” in Henrik Bogdan and Gordan Djurdjevic, eds., Occultism in a Global Perspective (Durham, NC: Acumen Publishing, 2013), 177–​202. 14. E.g., Nick Freeman, “Wilde’s Edwardian Afterlife: Somerset Maugham, Aleister Crowley, and the Magician,” Literature and History 16 (2): 16–​29 (2007); Justin Sausman, “Science, Drugs and Occultism: Aleister Crowley, Henry Maudsley and Late-​Nineteenth Century Degeneration Theories,” Journal of Literature and Science 1 (1): 40–​54 (2008); Giuliano D’Amico, “Aleister Crowley Reads ‘Inferno’: Towards an Occult Reception of Strindberg,” Scandinavian Studies 84 (3): 323–​346 (2012); Michael Allis, “The Diva and the Beast: Susan Strong and the Wagnerism of Aleister Crowley,” Forum for Modern Language Studies 50 (4): 380–​404 (2014); Amy Clukey, “Enchanting Modernism: Mary Butts, Decadence, and the Ethics of Occultism,” Forum for Modern Language Studies 50 (4): 380–​404 (2014); Edmund B. Lingan, “A Disturbing Mix of Religion and Politics: Aleister Crowley’s The Savior,” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 38 (3): 90–​93 (2016); Giuliano D’Amico, “Between Occultism and Drama: Henrik Ibsen and Aleister Crowley,” Nordlit 34: 95–​103 (2015); Mark S. Morrison, “Apocalypse 1917: Esoteric Modernism and the War in Aleister Crowley’s Moonchild,” Modernist Cultures 12 (1): 98–​119 (2017); Christian Giudice, “It Was Your Wickedness My Love to Win: Towards an Appraisal of Aleister Crowley’s Decadent Period (1895–​1898),” Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism 21 (1): 43–​68 (2020); Joseph Bristow, “Aleister Crowley’s Poetic Fin de Siècle: Swinburne’s Legacy, Decadent Drag, and Spiritual Magick,” Victorian Literature and Culture 49 (4): 777–​805 (2021). 15. Marco Pasi, “September 1930, Lisbon: Aleister Crowley’s lost diary of his Portuguese trip,” Pessoa Plural 1 (1): 253–​ 283 (2012); Marco Pasi and Patricio Ferrari, “Fernando Pessoa and Aleister Crowley: New Discoveries and New Analysis of the Documents in the Gerald Yorke Collection,” Pessoa Plural 1 (1): 284–​313 (2012); Steffen Dix, “An Implausible Encounter and a Theatrical Suicide—​Its Prologue and Aftermath: Fernando Pessoa and Aleister Crowley,” in Mariana Gray de Castro, ed., Fernando Pessoa’s Modernity without Frontiers: Influences, Dialogues, Responses (Boydell & Brewer, 2013), 169–​180.

Prologue 1. For a discussion of “the magical family” group typology, see J. Gordon Melton with James V. Geisendorfer, A Directory of Religious Bodies in the United States (1977), 266–​268; it lists several OTO groups with whom Melton had contact. 2. Kenneth Grant, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley (1969), 27.

Chapter 1 1. Most of the details regarding Smith’s early life are taken from an undated and unpublished autobiographical essay by Smith entitled “The Skeleton in the Cupboard” (WTS Papers).

Notes  347 2. For the record of the Cox brothers at Tonbridge, see The Register of the Tonbridge School from 1861 to 1945: With a List of Head Masters and Second Masters from the Foundation of the School, ed. H. D. Furley (1951), 75, 77, 139, 204. 3. Crowley, “Suggested contribution for next number of ‘ORIFLAMME’ ” signed “T.K.J.,” ca. May 1943, WTS Papers. The Oriflamme was started in 1902 by Theodor Reuss as a German-​language masonic magazine for the Antient & Primitive Rite of Freemasonry; it was projected to continue under Crowley in 1914 as the organ of the OTO, but no issues appeared. Under the same serial title, Smith published an issue in 1943, which met with a severe drubbing from Crowley. 4. Gerald Suster, “Crowley, Edward Alexander (‘Aleister’) (1875–​1947).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 1993, https://​doi.org/​10.1093/​odnb/​978919​2683​120.013.37329. 5. Helen Parsons Smith (1910–​2003), born Mary Helen Cowley, later Helen Northrup, Mrs. John Whiteside Parsons, and Mrs. Wilfred Talbot Smith. 6. The vaccination record was located by Dr. Jacqueline Bower, Research Assistant, Kent County Council, Centre for Kentish Studies, letter to the author, April 22, 1992. 7. Certified copy of an entry of birth for Frank Wenham, General Register Office, London, June 30, 1992, author’s collection. 8. Minnie Florence Wenham was born in 1868 in Tonbridge, Kent, England. In 1889 she married Albert Woolley by whom she had four children. She died December 17, 1897, and was buried at Hothfield, Kent, England. 9. Sources for Smith’s schooling at Bedales include the Bedales School Roll (1906) and Gail Pottle, Secretary, Bedales School, letter to the author, June 30, 1992. I supplied additional information on Smith for the Bedales School Roll: biographical summary centenary edition, ed. Anne Archer, Denis Archer (1993), 267. 10. Smith to Gerald J. Yorke, November 14, 1954, WTS Papers. Gerald Joseph Yorke, Esq. (1901–​1983) was an English A∴A∴ aspirant under Crowley, a Master Mason, a member of the Universal Brotherhood (UB) and the major contemporary collector of Crowley’s literary remains. Wilfred T. Smith and Helen Parsons Smith maintained lengthy correspondences with Yorke, who made a transcripts of Crowley’s letters to Smith, now part of the Gerald J. Yorke Papers, Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study, University of London. 11. Arthur W. Simpson, letter of recommendation, July 28, 1906, WTS Papers.

Chapter 2 1. Employment record, Ramsay Brothers & Co. Limited, June 21, 1911, WTS Papers. 2. Employment record, British Columbia Electric Railway Limited, March 8, 1920, WTS Papers. 3. Although Smith does not name the books he read, some titles of Atkinson that would have been available after 1908 include Hatha Yoga (1904), Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga (1906), and Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga (the Yoga of Wisdom) (1907), all issued under Atkinson’s imprint, the Yogi Publication Society. It later published several books by Jones, including The Chalice of Ecstasy (1923) and Crystal Vision through Crystal Gazing (1923).

348 Notes 4. Charles Robert John Stansfeld Jones (1886–​1950). Like his mentor Crowley, his “magical names” were numerous, but he is best known as “Frater Achad.” 5. “Rhoma” was the name of a London clairvoyant, put in business by Jones; it was in her Regent Street studio that Jones had first seen a copy of The Equinox. See Jones to Crowley, August 3, 1932 (CSJ Papers). 6. Crowley, 777 vel Prolegomena Symbolica ad Systemam Sceptico-​ Mysticae Viae Explicandae, Fundamentum Hieroglyphicum Sanctissimorum Scientiae Summae (1909), 57. 7. An edited version of Jones’s early career in the Order of the A∴A∴ is given in “Liber CLXV: A Master of the Temple,” in The Equinox 3 (1): 127–​170 (1919). The title contradicted Crowley’s prior advice to Jones on his attainment of the grade of Magister Templi 8˚ =​3□ in a letter ca. July 20, 1916 (CSJ Papers): “You should not declare your 8˚ =​3□ to people, nay, not by any means.” 8. These are housed in the Pennsylvania State University Libraries, University Park, Pennsylvania. 9. For a general history of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, see Ellic Howe, The Magicians of the Golden Dawn (1972). 10. The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, ed. John Symonds and Kenneth Grant (1969), 539, hereafter cited as Confessions. 11. J. F. C. Fuller, “The Temple of Solomon the King,” in The Equinox 1 (1): 172 (1909). 12. Wieland & Co., “A:A: Books Required by Student,” December 1, 1913, WTS Papers. 13. Wieland & Co. to H. J. Lawrence, November 12, 1913, WTS Papers. Crowley’s Book Four, Part III was published as Magick in Theory in Practice (1929 in imprint but published in 1930). 14. Jones, quoted in Crowley, “Liber CLXV: A Master of the Temple,” in The Equinox 3 (1): 163 (1919), diary entry of November 9, 1913; the identifications are by Smith. Howard Enster White (d. 1918) became Frater Ad Alta of the A∴A∴. Jones dedicated his book, The Chalice of Ecstasy (1923) to him. 15. Prudence Rubina Stansfeld Jones, née Wratten (1887–​1981), usually referred to as Ruby. She was the mother of Deirdre Georgina Stansfeld Jones (1912–​1969), known familiarly as Dede. A contemporary of Smith and Jones, C. F. Russell told the author in a telephone interview ca. 1986 that Jones met Ruby in a brothel, which from Jones’s correspondence with Crowley appears to be correct. Russell obliquely refers to this detail in volume 1 of his privately published autobiography, Znuz Is Znees (second edition, 1970), 131: “she was no virgin by a long shot!” 16. See Crowley, Tannhäuser (1902); Crowley, “Adonis,” in The Equinox I (7): 117–​157 (1912); Crowley, “The High History of Good Sir Palamedes the Saracen Knight,” in The Equinox I (4) suppl.: 1–​113 (1910). 17. “The Training of the Mind” is a paper on Buddhist meditation by Crowley’s mentor Allan Bennett, the first Westerner to become a Buddhist monk, while “The Psychology of Hashish Part 2: The Herb Dangerous” and “The Solder and the Hunchback” were authored by Crowley; all are published in volume 1 of The Equinox. 18. “A∴A∴ Examination for Students,” WTS Papers.

Notes  349

Chapter 3 1. See John M. Hamill, “The Seeker of Truth: John Yarker 1833–​1913” (1990) and “John Yarker: Masonic Charlatan?” (1996). Hamill’s conclusions about Yarker in the latter paper are discussed in Henrik Bogdan, “The Esotericism of the Esoteric School of Quatuor Coronati Lodge” (2020). 2. See Helmut Möller and Ellic Howe, Merlin Peregrinus: vom Untergrund des Abendlandes (1986) for a biographical study of Theodor Reuss. Their earlier paper, “Theodor Reuss: Irregular Freemasonry in Germany, 1900–​23” (1978), is also a useful treatment of the masonic background to Reuss’s fraternal ventures. 3. See Cerneauism and American Freemasonry, edited by Arturo de Hoyos and S. Brent Morris (2019). For the reaction to Yarker by the Ancient and Accepted Rite, see John Mandleberg, Ancient and Accepted: A Chronicle of the Proceedings 1845–​1945 of the Supreme Council established in England in 1845 (1995). 4. See Harold V. B. Voorhis, Masonic Rosicrucian Societies in England, Scotland, Ireland, Greece, Canada & the United States of America (1958), 47. The SRIA, organized in a nine-​degree system denominated by Roman numerals, was not a source for Reuss’s OTO structure. The paradigm of the OTO sequence of degrees is found in the Swedish System, a masonic rite of 10 principal degrees in three divisions: St. John’s (I˚–​III˚); St. Andrew’s (IV˚/​V˚–​VI˚); and the Chapter (VII˚–​X˚). The Swedish System degrees combine Symbolic masonry, Templar masonry, and Rosicrucianism. There is also a seldom-​worked XI˚. An element borrowed by Reuss was the title of Vicarius Salomonis (Vicar of Solomon) which is the XII˚ of the Swedish System. See Henrik Bodgan, Western Esotericism and Rituals of Initiation (2007), 99–​100. 5. See Ellic Howe, “Theodor Reuss and the Theosophical Society” in Theosophical History 3 (1): 17–​18 (1990). 6. William Q. Judge, Theosophical Articles by William Q. Judge (1980), I: 41–​47. 7. Constitution of the Ancient Order of Oriental Templars O.T.O. [1906], [3]‌. Although internally dated January 22, 1906, it is a later publication, as it has on its cover an adaptation of the lamen designed by Crowley ca. March 1907 and redrawn by J. F. C. Fuller for the cover of the latter’s book on “Crowleyanity,” The Star in the West (1907). The Constitution of the Ancient Order of Oriental Templars O.T.O. Ordo Templi Orientis [1917] has the seal of the TS on the title page. 8. Constitution of the Ancient Order of Oriental Templars O.T.O. [1906], [3]‌. 9. See Joscelyn Godwin, The Theosophical Enlightenment (1994), ­chapter 16, “The Hermetic Reaction” for a discussion of Kingsford and Maitland. 10. For Crowley’s masonic career, see Martin P. Starr, “Aleister Crowley, Freemason?!” in Aleister Crowley and Western Esotericism, ed. and introduced by Henrik Bogdan and Martin P. Starr (2012), 227–​242. 11. Crowley, Confessions, 628. 12. See John Hamill, The Craft: A History of English Freemasonry (1986), 22–​25; he characterized the esoteric school as having “unorthodox ideas on the nature and purpose of Freemasonry, endowing it with mystical, religious, and even occult implications which it has never possessed.”

350 Notes 13. Crowley, review of The Arcane Schools in The Equinox 1 (4): 240 (1910). 14. Reproduced in Crowley, Confessions, plate 11. 15. Aleister Crowley and David Curwen, Brother Curwen, Brother Crowley, ed. with an introduction by Henrik Bogdan (2010), 58. 16. Reproduced in Occult Theocrasy (1933) by Edith Starr Miller Queensborough, vol. 2, appendix 4, i­ llustration 11. 17. Patent, date not visible [1914?] naming Crowley as “Inspector for the Antient & Primitive Rite and General Grand Representative of the O.T.O. for America.” It is reproduced in an article on Crowley in the Paris Détective, for May 2, 1929. The patent is referenced in Crowley’s correspondence with the American Rosicrucian H. Spencer Lewis (1883–​1939), founder of the Ancient Mystic Order Rosae Crucis (AMORC), and with Smith. 18. Yarker disapproved of Crowley’s plans to initiate women into the Antient & Primitive Rite; he found Crowley’s proposals “unconstitutional and even unmasonic. . . . If the body can only be formed in the way you profess I must withdraw the Dispensation for you would, by the method you propose, only bring the Rite into contempt. I would therefore rather it should expire altogether in honor” (Yarker to Crowley, August 12, 1912, OTO Archives). 19. See Crowley to John W. Parsons, February 19, 1946, HPS Papers: “I do not understand at all the arguments about the 9th degree which occupied so much of your letter of Jany. 26th. I do not see why you should not take it all simply as a labour-​saving device. To follow out fully all the formulae of technical ceremonial is really too much like hard work, though for that very reason of course it is enormously valuable. At the same time one must consider that the whole tempo of the world has changed since the 15th Century or thereabouts. . . . These considerations alone made me very happy when I was initiated into a method which produced equally good results without all this how-​d’-​you-​do.” 20. For examples of masonic degrees edited by Reuss for use in the OTO, see “‘Rituals of the Flaming Star’: German Esoteric Bricolage from Der Signatstern and Other Sources,” trans. Arturo de Hoyos, Collectanea 21:2 (2011). 21. A holograph of the Minerval Ritual in Crowley’s hand survives in the WTS Papers which is nearly identical to that printed in King, Secret Rituals of the O.T.O., 43–​47. After 1918 the English I˚–​III˚ rituals were altered by Crowley to replace the part of the Right Worshipful Master by Saladin. For a translation of the Novice or Minerval Degree used by Reuss, see R. A. Gilbert, Baphomet & Son: A Little Known Chapter in the Life of the Beast 666, edited by Darcy Küntz (rev. 3rd ed., 1997), 29–​35. 22. Emulation Lodge of Improvement, The Perfect Ceremonies of Craft Masonry According to the Most Approved Forms a Taught in the Union’s Emulation Lodge of Improvement for M. Ms. (1874). This book is specifically referenced in the III˚ ritual in “Sealed original of rituals authorized by the Grand Master Baphomet” (GJY Collection). 23. “Agape” is published in The Secret Rituals of the O.T.O., ed. Francis King (1973), 207–​ 229; “De Arte Magica” is published in Crowley on Christ, ed. Francis King (1974), 213–​232.

Notes  351 24. Compare the “Ansairetic Arcanum” in “The Mysteries of Eros” included in The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor: Initiatic and Historical Documents of an Order of Practical Occultism (1995) by Joscelyn Godwin, Christian Chanel, and John P. Deveney, 241, with Agape in Crowley, Secret Rituals of the O.T.O., 215. 25. Crowley to Dr. William Bernard Crow, July 16, [1944], GJY Collection. Crow (1895–​ 1976) was a professor of biology and an episcopus vagans or “wandering bishop”; he had an extensive correspondence with Crowley, from whom he had hoped to receive the degrees of the Rites of Memphis and of Misraim. See Peter Anson’s Bishops at Large: Some Autocephalous Churches of the Past Hundred Years and Their Founders (1964). 26. [Crowley], Manifesto of the M∴M∴M∴ (ca. 1913), 8. The last three paragraphs quoted above, “dust in the eyes of the profane,” secretly allude to the services offered by a sacred whore, parallel to the role of the consecrated priestess in the Gnostic Catholic Mass of the OTO. Crowley deconstructed the passage in a letter to Grady L. McMurtry of July 14, 1943 (OTO Archives), warning that there was a great danger “in the tendency to cheapen and vulgarize the whole proceeding.” 27. Crowley to Jones, August 18, 1921, CSJ Papers, “My P.G.M. in U.S.A. refers to a diploma which I got from Mc. B. Thompson [sic].” For the details of Thomson’s fraternal enterprise and the resulting mail fraud case against him, see Isaac Blair Evans, The Thomson Masonic Fraud (1922). 28. Crowley to Jones, August 20, 1914, CSJ Papers; by this time, Jones was actively querying Crowley on OTO and the possibilities of establishing it in British Columbia. 29. [Crowley], “Liber LXI vel Causae,” in The Equinox 3 (1): 56 (1919). 30. Crowley to Jones, February 7, 1919, CSJ Papers: “I should like to remind you of my experience in London. Although I was doing my work very strictly according to the programme of the A∴A∴, it was not very long before I found that people were meeting each other. This, of course, is most undesirable. Now if you cannot prevent people from meeting, the only solution is to treat them as groups, and to avoid trouble by discipline. It is principally for this reason that the O.T.O. seems to me so valuable, and there is no doubt in my mind that the head of the organization was sent to me at the right time by the right people.” 31. See Franz Hartmann, Cosmology or Universal Science . . . Eternity and Time Explained According to the Religion of Christ by Means of the Secret Symbols of the Rosicrucians (1888), II: 15, where the “Center” is described “like an ointment that has been poured out, and whose fragrance surpassed in sweetness all the spices of the East, and its fiery spirit was a key for the door of the Temple, and its possessor could enter the Sanctuary and grasp the horns at the altar.” 32. Crowley to Jones, December 1, 1914, CSJ Papers. 33. Matthew 21:23. 34. Crowley, introduction to his translation of Éliphas Lévi, The Key of the Mysteries in The Equinox 1 (10) suppl.: viii–​ix (1913). 35. The state of Jones’s knowledge of the masonic prerequisites of OTO are reflected in his letter to Reuss of July 6, 1920, CSJ Papers: “When, in Vancouver, I first became connected with the O.T.O. I had not taken the Blue Lodge Degrees in A[ncient].

352 Notes F[ree]. and A[ccepted]. M’[asonr]y, and since I afterwards understood that this formed one of the conditions in the Constitution of the A[ntient] and Primitive Rite, Misraim and Memphis, I did not feel my title to 33˚ 90˚ 95˚ entirely justified, I therefore took the opportunity to regularise myself by taking the E.A., F.C. and M.M. Degrees in Detroit Lodge No. 2, A.F. and A.M.” Jones was raised in Detroit Lodge No. 2, Free and Accepted Masons of the State of Michigan, on April 27, 1920. 36. Untitled printed introduction to OTO, [ca. 1935], WTS Papers. “TO MEGA THERION” is transliterated Greek for “Great Wild Beast” and is numerically equivalent to 666, a solar number. Like his usage of “Baphomet,” his adoption of “the number of the Beast” of Revelation was not meant by Crowley as a symbol of evil. It is beyond the scope of a note to explain Crowley’s personal mythology, which makes frequent use of the inversion of accepted meanings, but in this context he considered “The Beast” to be a title of a principal officer of the New Aeon. 37. Minute book, April 17, 1915, WTS Papers. 38. Clark was listed as the President of Vancouver’s Orpheus Lodge of the TS in Canada in Hartmann’s Who’s Who in Occult, Psychic and Spiritual Realms, comp. and ed. William C. Hartmann (1925), 161. 39. Clark was given the Minerval degree by Jones working alone on March 5, 1915, and he then assisted the latter to confer it upon White on April 10, 1915. Dawson was obligated to the IV˚ on October 23, 1915. 40. Smith later recorded the corresponding meditation taught him by Jones: “Imagine a place, a well of blackness within one and drop therein each thought as it arises” (Smith, diary, June 2, 1943, WTS Papers).

Chapter 4 1. The 1915–​1922 minute book (WTS Papers) freely varies between referring to female members as “Sister” or “Brother,” the latter being the sole term in use among female Co-​Masons. According to Crowley, “Liber LII: Manifesto of the O.T.O.,” in The Equinox 3 (1): 200 (1919), “The names of women members are never divulged.” The contemporary practice was to have separate degree conferrals for the male and female candidates below the Rose Croix degree. 2. Crowley’s letters to Jones in the period February–​July 1915 were only partially transcribed by Jones because they concerned OTO matters. The originals also do not survive in the CSJ Papers. Both Jones and Smith kept the letter of their OTO obligations throughout their lives and maintained the secrecy of the rituals. 3. Crowley, “The Rites of Eleusis as Performed at Caxton Hall Westminster in October and November 1910 by Miss Leila Waddell and Mr Aleister Crowley with Distinguished Assistance,” in The Equinox 1 (6) suppl.: 1–​124 (1911). 4. Corrected typescripts of “A Rite of Isis, being a simple magical ceremony for public use” are in the GJY Collection. 5. Crowley to Jones, September 13, 1915, CSJ Papers.

Notes  353 6. See Patrick Everitt, “The Cactus and the Beast: Investigating the Role of Peyote in the Magick of Aleister Crowley” (master’s thesis, University of Amsterdam, 2016). 7. Jeanne Robert Foster (1879–​1970), American poet. See Richard and Janis Londraville, Dear Yeats, Dear Pound, Dear Ford: Jeanne Robert Foster and Her Circle of Friends (2001). The long-​missing diary covering Crowley’s 1915 visit to Vancouver, “Rex de arte regia Tom: II,” was sold at Sotheby’s on December 17, 1996 (catalog LN6731, lot 337); I have been able to consult a photocopy of it. Crowley remarks on “Hilarion” in his Confessions, 800: “This was the ‘mystic name’ chosen for herself by the Cat. She had a smattering of theosophy and remembered this as being the name of some ‘Mahatma.’ ” The Master Hilarion in Theosophical terms is the Master of the Fifth Ray; He oversees the concrete sciences and is an aide to Spiritualists. 8. Horace Sheridan-​Bickers (1883–​1957) appears in Crowley, Confessions, 606–​608 as “Gnaggs”; his wife Betty and their daughter Sheila are described therein, 899–​907. 9. Shaw withdrew from membership in the OTO by letter of August 17, 1916, WTS Papers, “to take effect from October 19th 1915—​the date of my initiation.” 10. Crowley, Confessions, 769. 11. Crowley to Jones, undated [ca. October 1915], CSJ Papers). See also “In the Red Room of Rose Croix” in Crowley, Confessions, 767; it is part of his unpublished collection of poems to Jeanne Robert Foster entitled The Golden Rose. 12. Crowley to Smith, August 21, 1945, WTS Papers. 13. [Phyllis Seckler], “Jane Wolfe: The Sword: Hollywood,” in In the Continuum 3 (4): 32 (1983). 14. Jones, diary, October 21, 1915, CSJ Papers: “While he had his bath +​quietly told him I was sure I was on the track of the IX˚ Secret +​he eventually admitted that in some ways I was extraordinarily correct +​in other ways I was wrong.” After Jones’s elevation to the IX˚, Reuss sent Jones notes on the central secret (OTO Archives). For a discussion of the origins of the sexual magic of OTO, see Henrik Bogdan, “Challenging the Morals of Western Society: The Use of Ritualised Sex in Contemporary Occultism,” in The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies 8 (2): 215–​227 (2006). 15. Crowley to Jones, [ca. October 29, 1915], CSJ Papers. 16. Appointment rather than election of officers was usually followed in the OTO under Crowley’s direction; he had a lifelong disdain for democratic rule. 17. Jones, “Installation of Officers for 1916,” WTS Papers 18. Initiates of the OTO did not “bend the knee in supplication,” whereas regular masonic obligations are typically given with the candidate kneeling. 19. His “discovery” of the Lost Word is detailed in Crowley, Confessions, 705–​706. Crowley believed without evidence that the enmity of regular masons toward him was due to his recovery of the “true lost word.” 20. For a discussion of the strategies regarding legitimacy of origin in Freemasonry, see Henrik Bogdan, “The Sociology of the Construct of Tradition and Import of Legitimacy in Freemasonry,” in Constructing Tradition: Means and Myths of Transmission in Western Esotericism (2011), 271–​238. In “regular” or “conservative” Freemasonry, membership is confined to men. The OTO claims of masonic authority are rife with contradictions and denials. See the 1917 edition of the Constitution

354 Notes of the Ancient Order of Oriental Templars, 5: “Every man and every woman who becomes a member of the O.T.O. has an indefeasible right to the first three degree of Masonry. The O.T.O., although an Academia Masonica, is not a Masonic body in the sense in which that expression is usually understood in England, and therefore in no way conflicts with, or infringes the just privileges of the United Grand Lodge of England.” By denying it is a masonic body, it would suggest that the OTO is a form of “fringe Masonry,” according to the terminology adopted by Ellic Howe in “Fringe Masonry in England 1870–​85” (1972). However, by admitting women to membership, the OTO could be denominated as “irregular,” for violation of the “conservative” or “regular” masonic “landmark” that only men can be masons. The potential for the OTO to be a denomination of “fringe Masonry” (that is, a group that does not initiate masons) is contradicted in the claim of authority in the Constitution of the Ancient Order of Oriental Templars, 14–​15: “candidates are made Freemasons by the Directing Members (Fratres Superiores) of the O.T.O. by virtue of a charter issued on September 24th, 1902 e.v. by Bro: John Yarker 33˚, 90˚, 96˚, IX˚.” If the latter degree refers to OTO, this is the only printed source I have found to state that Yarker was a member. 21. Crowley to Jones, [ca. July 28, 1916], CSJ Papers. 22. Unattributed translation of the opening speech of Dr. E. Pargaetzi at the Congress of the International Masonic Federation, July 17, 1920, Zurich, Switzerland, published in Thomson’s newsletter, The Universal Freemason (December 1920): 131. Crowley declined to attend this event, preferring to remain a “Secret Master.” See The Magical Record of the Beast 666: The Diaries of Aleister Crowley 1914–​1920, edited by John Symonds and Kenneth Grant (1972), 132, 148. Reuss attended but left after the first day. 23. The Head of all True Freemasons is denominated the Master of the Seventh Ray, the violet ray of Ceremonial Magic, which included the ceremonial work of the Co-​ Masonic Order and the Liberal Catholic Church. 24. Crowley falsely accused Besant of being a proponent of abortion. She appears under the transparent name of “Annie” or “A.B.” in Moonchild (1929), his occult roman à clef, where she is portrayed as “an open advocate of this kind of murder” (p. 274), abortion being the black magical operation at the heart of the intrigue of the “Black Brothers.” Besant, a Neo-​Malthusian, was the first prominent female advocate of contraception, which position she later repudiated when she joined the TS in 1891. She was consistently opposed to abortion, of which she wrote: “the destruction of the foetus is the destruction of life.” See “A Dirty Filthy Book”: The Writings of Charles Knowlton and Annie Besant on Reproductive Physiology and an Account of the Bradlaugh-​Besant Trial by S. Chandresekhar (1981) for Besant’s writings on birth control. 25. Crowley to Louis T. Culling, December 17, 1946, WTS Papers. 26. See C. W. Leadbeater, The Hidden Life in Freemasonry (1926), 171–​173, for a discussion of the relationship between the degrees of Co-​Masonry and Christian orders. Crowley pointed out the disconnection between his Mass and the degrees of the OTO in an undated letter [ca. September 1944, GJY Collection] to the English “wandering bishop” and prolific collector of lines of apostolic succession, Hugh George de

Notes  355 Willmott Newman (1905–​1979), stating that “it is a public ritual” and “it has nothing whatever to do with any degree,” as some of the officers in the Gnostic Catholic Mass were children. 27. They were published in The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, from the Mahatmas M. and K. H. (1923). During his pseudonymous propaganda campaign against Besant and Krishnamurti in 1926, Crowley wrote a letter supporting the claims of the Master Therion to occult supremacy to William Loftus Hare. Hare later authored with his twin brother Harold Edward Hare a critique entitled Who Wrote the Mahatma Letters? (1936), according to which the Theosophical World Religion was declared, on order of the Maha-​Chohan, on October 12, 1925. 28. Compare H. P. Blavatsky, Transactions of the Blavatsky Lodge (facsimile edition 1987; originally published 1890–​1891) for the meeting of February 7, 1889 (85), “Similarly the ‘Germ’ is a figurative expression; the germ is everywhere, even as the circle whose circumference is nowhere and whose centre is everywhere,” with The Book of the Law (dictated 1904), II, 3: “In the sphere I am everywhere, the centre, as she, the circumference, is nowhere found.” 29. Jones to George Macnie Cowie, December 31, 1916, CSJ Papers. 30. First published as a pamphlet in 1916 by George Macnie Cowie, the Grand Treasurer General of the M∴M∴M∴. 31. [Crowley], “Liber ‫ ” תישראב‬in The Equinox 1 (7): 105–​116 (1912). 32. Smith to Kenneth Grant, April 9, 1951, WTS Papers. Smith concurred with the advice, declaring that “it is very largely of all wisdom.” 33. Smith’s Student examination answers do not survive among his papers. 34. Crowley to Jones, March 7, 1916, CSJ Papers. 35. Crowley to Jones, November 21, 1915, CSJ Papers. See also the author’s introduction to Crowley, Amrita: Essays in Magical Rejuvenation (1990). 36. Jones to Crowley, November 28, 1915, CSJ Papers. 37. Jones was a heterosexual who had experimented with homosexuality in his youth. There are suggestions in Crowley’s letters of 1917 to Jones that he was grooming the latter for the practice of homosexual magic in the magical retirement Crowley urged him to undertake with him. A section of the manuscript diary of Crowley’s, The Hermit of Aesopus Island, which included his workings with Jones in 1918, was ceremonially destroyed by Jones in the presence of Ruby on July 8, 1948, as Jones stated it contained evidence of Crowley attempting to murder Ruby by magical means. 38. This diary does not appear to have survived in the CSJ Papers. 39. Crowley to Jones, May 21, 1916, CSJ Papers. 40. Jones to Crowley, May 28, 1916, CSJ Papers. The reference is a play on words indicating post-​coital cunnilingus.

Chapter 5 1. Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice (1930), 22–​23. 2. Smith, diary entry for June 19, 1916, 7:50 p.m., WTS Papers.

356 Notes 3. Nem recounts her elevation to the V˚ on June 19, 1916, in a series of diary notes (OTO Archives); the condition of her advancement was her pledge to aid and support an unnamed Brother of the OTO in following out his highest desire. The Brother in question was Smith, and after a fashion, Nem supported him in his desire for Kath. 4. Smith, diary entry for June 20, 1916, 11:15 a.m., WTS Papers. 5. Smith, diary entry for June 20, 1916, 11:15 a.m., WTS Papers. 6. The first and second clauses are slight adaptations of the 18˚ “Petition and Obligation of Allegiance” of the Supreme Council 33˚ for England and Wales of the Ancient and Accepted Rite, privately published in The Ceremony of the Rose Croix of Heredom (1899). Crowley has significantly substituted the word “intercourse” for “communication” in the second clause. 7. Emphasis in the original (WTS Papers). According to the manuscript of the V˚ ritual (GJY Collection), the candidates were to be tattooed over the heart with the “Brand 666.” Smith had no tattoo; however, the day before Jones conferred the V˚ he spontaneously cut a cross on his chest. 8. In Nem’s version, she signed first, then Smith and Kath. A long pause ensued and Jones queried Ruby and White on their unwillingness to do the same, “Brothers, I have signed, is it lack of confidence in me, or in the Order?” 9. See John 18:28, 33. 10. Jones to Smith, [ca. June 21, 1916], CSJ Papers. 11. Jones to Crowley, July 26, 1916, CSJ Papers. 12. Jones to Crowley, July 23, 1916, CSJ Papers. 13. Crowley to Jones, [ca. August 4, 1916], CSJ Papers: “The Tree isn’t smashed up; the Tree is a map of the Universe. The problem is how to climb that Tree!” 14. See Crowley, Confessions, 801–​802, for his account of the discovery of the birth of Jones as his “magical son,” later recognized as the “Child” predicted in The Book of the Law. 15. S. L. Mac Gregor Mathers, The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abra-​Melin the Mage: As Delivered by Abraham the Jew unto His Son Lamech, A.D. 1458 (1899). 16. For a description of the grades of the A∴A∴, see Crowley, “One Star in Sight,” in Magick in Theory and Practice (1930), 229–​244. Jones believed himself to be Kath’s “Holy Guardian Angel.” By August 21, Smith came to the incorrect conclusion that Jones had enjoyed carnal “knowledge” of Kath. 17. A copy survives in the CSJ Papers. The “certain misunderstandings” included Kath’s questioning the need for secrecy in the OTO if its aims are good and true, the relationship between Masonry and the OTO, and whether or not Jones was a “second Christ.” According to Crowley, C. F. Russell’s pejorative nickname for Jones was “Jesus Stansfeld Christ.” 18. Jones to Crowley, July 26, 1916, CSJ Papers. 19. Crowley to Jones, [ca. August 2, 1916], CSJ Papers. 20. See Kenneth Grant, Remembering Aleister Crowley (1991), 55–​ 58, which memorializes Crowley’s long retention of a copy of Marian Dockerill, My Life in a Love Cult: A Warning to All Young Girls (1928). Dockerill (1878–​1972), who claims to have been the “High Priestess” of the American yogi Pierre Bernard (“Oom the Omnipotent”), luridly describes introducing her conventional youngest sister, Leah

Notes  357 Hirsig, to Crowley—​“the suave devil in human form”—​at a function in Greenwich Village, ca. 1918.

Chapter 6 1. See the introduction by the author to Crowley, Golden Twigs (1988), for the details of Crowley’s magical retirement of the summer of 1916. The Gospel According to St. Bernard Shaw was first published in 1952. 2. Jones to Crowley, September 17, 1916, CSJ Papers. 3. Smith, pocketbook notes, November 18, 1916, WTS Papers. 4. Subsequently published in The Equinox 3 (1): 207–​224 (1919). 5. Smith, diary entry, February 11, 1917, WTS Papers. 6. Jones, “An epistle of Parzival unto Sister Katherine Talbot on her Passing to the Second Degree, and to all Magicians working under the O.T.O. concerning the Four Powers of the Sphinx,” January 25, 1917, unpublished, CSJ Papers. 7. Jones, “An epistle of Parzival unto Brother Howard E. White, Past Master of British Columbia Lodge Number One, Grand Secretary General of O.T.O. for British Columbia,” January 21, 1917, unpublished, CSJ Papers. 8. Crowley to Jones, [ca. March 1917], CSJ Papers: “You can pass a man to Neophyte on clear evidence of good will, hard work; attainment of any kind is not necessary at all.” It is unclear if White, passed to Probationer during Crowley’s 1915 visit to British Columbia, progressed to Neophyte. 9. Baldly stated in Crowley to Jones [ca. September 25, 1916], CSJ Papers: “You should have fucked K[ath]. hard. I feel there’s a sex-​dissatisfaction of some sort in you. I have thought so for long. You have a long way to go to complete emancipation. You have no idea how deep-​rooted is our objection to doing what we really will.” 10. Jones to Crowley, March 19, 1917, CSJ Papers. 11. Both the original diary with comments and the rewritten and expanded Probationer diaries survive in the WTS Papers. 12. Jones to Crowley, April 5, 1917, CSJ Papers. 13. Jones, comment to Smith’s diary entry of May 25, 1916, WTS Papers. 14. Crowley, comment to Smith’s diary entry of March 14, 1917, WTS Papers. 15. Crowley to Jones, undated but ca. April 1917, CSJ Papers. The poetry quotation is an adaptation from Crowley’s, The Scented Garden of Abdullah the Satirist of Shiraz (1910), 82. See the introduction by the present writer to the facsimile edition (1990). 16. [Crowley], “Liber Stellae Rubeae: A Secret Ritual of Apep, the Heart of IAO-​OAI, Delivered unto V.V.V.V.V. for His Use in a Certain Matter of Liber Legis, and Written down under the Figure LXVI,” in The Equinox 1 (7): 29–​36 (1912). 17. [Crowley], “Two Fragments of Ritual,” in The Equinox 1 (10): 81–​90 (1913). 18. A significant portion of the contents of The International from August 1917 through April 1918 was written by Crowley under a variety of pseudonyms. See the author’s introduction to Crowley, The Scrutinies of Simon Iff (1987).

358 Notes 19. [Crowley], “Liber CXCIV: An intimation with Reference to the Constitution of the Order,” in The Equinox 3 (1): 239–​246. The Reuss OTO Constitution of 1917 was little-​known until its partial republication in R. Swinburne Clymer’s The Rosicrucian Fraternity in America: Authentic and Spurious Organizations as Considered and Dealt with in Treatises Originally Published and Issued in Monograph Form, 2: 590–​600 (n.d., ca. 1937). Gerald J. Yorke wrote Clymer on February 28, 1948; from the latter he obtained a typed copy of the integral document which then circulated for the first time among the American Thelemites. 20. Crowley, Confessions, 714. 21. Crowley to William Bernard Crow, April 4, 1945, GJY Collection. Crowley expanded on his spiritual aims for Russia in an untitled essay at the George Arents Research Library, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, wherein he stated that “Holy Russia” is not a mere turn of phrase, since: “Very many, if not most, of the people are naturally illuminati.” He proposed that the Master Therion should be proclaimed the spiritual savior of the Russian people, and that the Gnostic Catholic Mass be adopted as the form of worship, completing “the destruction of the dead and putrefied elements of Christianity. For the Ritual subjoined actually possesses the power to induce those phenomena which give any religion its moral energy.” 22. Crowley, “Ecclesiae Gnosticae Catholicae Canon Missae,” in The International 12 (3): 70–​74 (March 1918). 23. The Old Catholic Church, The Liturgy of the Mass (1917). The following year the church changed its name to the “Liberal Catholic Church.” 24. See The Liberal Catholic Church, Statement of Principles, Summary of Doctrine and Table of the Apostolic Succession (1921), 12–​13: “The Liberal Catholic Church aims at being a Gnostic church, not in the sense of reproducing certain extravagances of early Christianity, but in the sense of aiding its members to reach for themselves this certainty of knowledge—​the true Gnosis, of which St. Clement of Alexandria wrote so fervently.” C. W. Leadbeater expands on the inner meaning of the Liberal Catholic liturgy in The Science of the Sacraments (1920). 25. Old Catholic Church, Occultism of the Mass and the Old Catholic Church Movement (1918), 30. 26. Crowley, “Ecclesiae Gnosticae Catholicae Canon Missae,” in The International 12 (3): 70 (March 1918). 27. Jules Doinel (1842–​1902) founded a French Gnostic church which taught that Gnosticism was the spiritual basis of Freemasonry. See René Le Forestier, L’Occultisme en France aux XIXème et XXème siècles, L’Église Gnostique (1990). 28. Gérard Encausse (1865–​1916); according to a letter from Crowley to H. Spencer Lewis (see Appendix C), Encausse was elected Grand Hierophant 97˚ of the Rite of Memphis after the death of John Yarker in 1913. 29. Theodor Reuss, in the Jubilaeums-​Ausgabe der Oriflamme (1912), 19. 30. Crowley to William Bernard Crow, April 4, 1945, GJY Collection. 31. Crowley to Jones, March 13, 1919, CSJ Papers. 32. Sylvester Clark Gould (1840–​1909) was the publisher of the Rosicrucian Brotherhood (1907–​1909). According to an unpublished paper entitled “The Rosicrucians and the

Notes  359 Freemasons: Being a brief and concurrent history of the two organizations” (1922) by a senior member of Plummer’s SRIA, Henry Van Arsdale Parsell, Jr. (1868–​1962), a “Count Apponyi,” traveled to the United States from Austria to confer upon Gould “the Grades of the continental Rosicrucian Brotherhood up to and including the Ninth Degree” as the American High Council was deemed to be merely an exoteric antiquarian society. Parsell relates that in 1908 Gould passed to Plummer the secret teachings he had received from Count Apponyi and worked with him to create a new Rosicrucian society headed by Plummer. Edward G. Brown (1868–​1922) was Grand Master of the “Temple of the Rosy Cross,” founded by Paschal Beverly Randolph, and like Crowley, held an honorary IX˚ in Plummer’s SRIA. 33. Crowley to George Winslow Plummer, February 12, 1913, SRIA Archives. 34. In an unpublished speech by Henry van Arsdale Parsell, Jr., “Eulogy Delivered at the Requiem Service of the Imperator George Winslow Plummer (February 25, 1944), it is stated that: “His boyhood years were spent in Providence, Rhode Island. There he became an acolyte in the principal Roman Catholic church, thus getting a fundamental training in liturgical forms and customs.” See also Crowley, Moonchild (1929), 243; every place where “Butcher” appears in the published volume, “Plummer” is found in Smith’s bound set of page proofs. 35. George Winslow Plummer to Crowley, April 9, 1913, S.R.I.A. Archives. A photograph of the High Council of the Societas Rosicruciana in America patent issued to Crowley on March 21, 1913, certifying that he has been “duly elevated to the Rank of Priesthood” and “Honorary Magus,” is held in the GJY Papers (Binder NS74, 87). 36. R. A. Gilbert, “The Lost Stepchild: The Tale of the Societas Rosicruciana in America,” in The Proceedings of the Golden Dawn Conference: London ~ 1997, ed. Allan Armstrong and R. A. Gilbert (1998), 147. 37. See Holy Orthodox Church in America (Eastern Catholic and Apostolic), The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom: Abridged and Arranged for the Use of the Faithful by the Most Reverend Theodotus Archbishop of New York from the Ancient and Traditional Liturgies of the Holy Eastern Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church (1952). See also Timothy Francis Murphy, Religious Bodies: 1936 (2002) 574–​575, for a concise statement by Plummer of the history and aims of the Holy Orthodox Church in America. 38. Edward Gibbon, Memoirs of My Life (1796), 231. 39. Arnold Krumm-​Heller (1876–​1949), whose mystic name was “Huiracocha.” Reuss in 1908 appointed Krumm-​Heller a general grand representative and grand representative in Mexico for the German Sovereign Sanctuary of the Antient & Primitive Rite. Krumm-​Heller’s base of influence was in Central and South America; he first met Crowley in 1930 in Germany. 40. Compare with the drawing of “Atu XV” in Crowley’s mature work on the tarot, The Book of Thoth (1944): the Priest in the Gnostic Catholic Mass is the “judge” while the two child acolytes are the “witnesses,” that is to say, the Priest symbolizes the phallus and the acolytes represent the testicles. Smith used this image in his publication of Liber OZ (1942). 41. See James Branch Cabell, Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice (1919), 151–​158. 42. Philip Jenkins, Mystics and Messiahs: Cults and New Religions in American History (2000), 144.

360 Notes 43. Crowley, “The International Forum,” in The International 11 (10): 320 (October 1917). 44. Crowley, “The International Forum,” in The International 11 (10): 320 (October 1917). Crowley later wrote to Lazenby on April 2, 1918, asking him to confirm rumors of the death of Katherine Tingley—​she was in fact alive—​and stating that “I am inclined to conclude that your Attainment is equivalent to that of Exempt Adept in our Order, and that you are more in sympathy with the teachings of H.P.B. than any other member of the T.S.” (OTO Archives). 45. Crowley, “Liber LXXI,” in The Equinox 3 (1): suppl. 1–​132 (1919). Leadbeater’s commentary, written in collaboration with Annie Besant, was published as Talks on the Path of Occultism, Vol. II: The Voice of the Silence (1926). 46. See Harold V. B. Voorhis, The Order of the Red Cross of Constantine (1963); this Trinitarian Christian masonic order was founded by Robert Wentworth Little, who at the same time created the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, the esoteric masonic parent to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. 47. Jones to Smith, October 4, 1917. 48. Crowley, “The Ouija Board—​A Note” in The International 11 (10): 319 (October 1917). 49. Jones to Crowley, October 21, 1917. Smith was not present for this sitting. 50. I have used the version in an uncorrected typescript in preference to Smith’s manuscript diary volume for the same period ending December 22. 51. Technically, Jones was in charge of OTO, at least for political purposes. In a letter to Jones (dated [ca. early July 1917], CSJ Papers), Crowley wrote, “I have resigned in your favour, unofficially, to help [George Macnie] Cowie out. You write him +​say you’re Grand Master now, and to get on with Lodge work; damn his eyes! I made it unofficial so as to avoid all sorts of legal transfers; and if necessary, the incident need not count at all, if it appear advisable to ignore it.” The London Lodge of OTO had been closed by the police under suspicion of being a pro-​German front organization. Crowley had previously named Jones his heir in the A∴A∴ and the OTO by letter to Cowie; see R. A. Gilbert, Baphomet & Son (1997). 52. Jones to Crowley, January 5, 1918, CSJ Papers: “The first O.T.O. baby was born at North Vanc. on December 24th at 5 hrs 38 mins 40 secs A.M. He is already a wonder child being able to crawl on a table alone. He has the true force and fire in him and as he received his material body from his father and also is a spiritual child of thy son’s he may have Harpocrates hidden within him. In any case there is little doubt he will be extrardinary [sic] and may fulfil the hopes of the Nations. This was what I wired about on 24th.” 53. Jones to Crowley, January 5, 1918, CSJ Papers. See also Charles Stansfeld Jones, Liber Thirty-​One, ed. T. Allen Greenfield (1998) for further details of Jones’s initiations.

Chapter 7 1. Phelps had been initiated into the OTO in July 1916; he was the author of a paper entitled “Christ and the Message of the Master Therion,” GJY Collection.

Notes  361 2. The records of their communications survive in an unpublished diary, “The Amalantrah Working,” GJY Collection; it is discussed in Crowley, Confessions, 832–​836. 3. [Crowley], “Liber Samekh,” in Magick in Theory and Practice (1930), 265–​ 301. S. L. Mathers’s “translation” of the “Bornless One” invocation is plagiarized from Charles Wycliffe Goodwin, M.A., Fragment of a Graeco-​Egyptian Work upon Magic (1852), 6–​9. Crowley published Mathers’s version in The Book of the Goetia of Solomon the King (1904), vii–​ix. For a modern translation, see The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, ed. Hans Dieter Betz (1986), 103. 4. Jones to Smith, “An. XIV Sol in Aries” [ca. March 1918], WTS Papers. Following French masonic tradition as adopted in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, at every vernal and autumnal equinox, Crowley issued “the Word of the Equinox,” a password to govern the Order of the A∴A∴ for the following semester. The WTS Papers contain numerous examples of these biannual passwords. 5. See Crowley, “The Herb Dangerous Part 2: The Psychology of Hashish,” in The Equinox 1 (2): 31–​89 (1909). 6. See Crowley, Confessions, 768. 7. Crowley, “Synopsis of Six Articles on Drugs,” unpublished, GJY Collection. 8. Jones to Smith, April 11, 1918, WTS Papers. 9. Smith to Jones, April 21, 1918, WTS Papers. Kath made a sketch of Smith as she found him prone on the floor due to his ether experiment which she titled “The Hermit” (WTS Papers). 10. Crowley, “Liber CXCIV: An Intimation with Reference to the Constitution of the Order,” The Equinox 3 (1): 239–​246 (1919). 11. Smith’s indenture of his North Vancouver real estate to Jones, George Macnie Cowie, and Nem of January 5, 1918 (WTS Papers), was subject to a 1912 mortgage over three-​quarters of the property owed to his uncle Cyril Cox. The status of this indenture is unclear from Smith’s records, but in 1920 Smith conveyed the entire property free of debt to Nem. 12. Cecil Frederick Russell (1897–​1987), occultist and self-​described mathematician. His autobiography, Znuz Is Znees (privately printed in four vols., 1969–​1982), contains scattered references to his involvement with Crowley and the Thelemites. 13. In a letter to the author dated February 21, 1986, Russell detailed another OTO initiation in New York City: “Leah [Hirsig], AC & I put N–​through the Minerval at Washington Sq South, he went out and got drunk while we made the preparation—​ the idea was to extract a check for 35 for through 3˚ to be given later. A few months later he broke his back trying to kill himself because I had left him to work with taking over the Freemasons in Detroit.” 14. Crowley, Confessions, 871. According to Kenneth Grant (personal communication), he and his co-​editor of Crowley’s Confessions, John Symonds, had heard a rumor that Russell was still alive. They changed the references in the text from “Genesthai” to “Godwin,” which resulted in their receiving an annoyed letter from Russell. Russell’s motto was suggested by Crowley, who commented that “[t]‌he point is that this root includes the idea of KNOW as GNosis, Cognizance, +​c. Gentle, Gentile, Ingenious, Gonorrhea; it’s all the same idea” (Crowley to Russell, undated, ca. July 1919, C. F. Russell Papers).

362 Notes 15. Jones to Smith, July 26, 1918, WTS Papers 16. Jones to Crowley, August 27, 1918, CSJ Papers. 17. Jones, terminal comment to Smith diary, ca. October 1918, WTS Papers. 18. [Crowley], “Liber HHH,” in The Equinox 1 (5): 5–​14 (1911). 19. [Crowley], “Liber Liberi vel Lapidis Lazuli: Adumbratio kabbalae aegyptiorum sub figurâ VII,” first privately published in 1909; seeCrowley, The Holy Books of Thelema, 7–​35 (New York: 93 Publishing, 1989). 20. Jones, “A.A. Examination for Zelator,” dated “An XIV. Sol in Libra” [ca. October 1918], WTS Papers. Smith’s answers to several of the questions survived in the CSJ Papers. 21. Jones to Smith, November 12, 1918, WTS Papers. 22. Crowley, Confessions, 841; the bracketed identifications are mine. 23. Crowley, Confessions, 704; see also Crowley, Magick without Tears (1954), xxiii–​ xxiv, 70–​72.

Chapter 8 1. Albert Winslow Ryerson (1872–​1931), author of a comprehensive family genealogy, “The Ryerson Genealogy; Genealogy and History of the Knickerbocker Families of Ryerson, Ryerse, Ryerss; also Adriance and Martense Families” (1916). 2. Universal Book Stores to Smith, February 18, 1919, WTS Papers. 3. Jones to Smith, February 8, 1919, WTS Papers. 4. Most Worshipful Frank Terrell Lodge (1859–​1930), Past Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of Michigan (1899–​1900). He was also coroneted a 33˚ by the NMJ. 5. Jones to Smith, February 21, 1919, WTS Papers. 6. Crowley, “Liber LII: Manifesto of the O.T.O.,” in The Equinox 3 (1): 198 (1919). 7. Crowley to Hugh George de Willmott Newman, August 15, 1944, GJY Collection. The “Newcastle experiment” was a rude joke based on a literal misunderstanding of the imprecation, “go fuck yourself.” 8. Crowley to Jones, March 13, 1919, CSJ Papers. 9. It was styled “the Supreme Grand Council for the Lake Section of the United States of America” and the “Great Lakes Council VII˚,” founded on April 13, 1919. See Jones to Smith, April 14, 1919, WTS Papers. In addition to Ryerson and Lodge, Crowley affiliated the following Detroit Masons: William H. Bogrand; Dr. Frank E. Bowman; George Jarvis; Dr. Cedric Putnam Sibley; Charles Yale Smith; and Albert A. Stibbard. 10. A reference to the Supreme Council 33˚ for England and Wales of the Ancient and Accepted Rite, which is an exclusively Trinitarian Christian order, unlike the Scottish Rite Supreme Councils for the U.S.A., which admit Master Masons of any monotheistic faith. 11. Crowley to Arnold Krumm-​Heller, June 22, 1930, GJY Collection. 12. A typescript of Crowley’s original masonic-​form rituals for the I˚–​III˚ of the OTO, extensively annotated by Crowley with his revisions, is at the George Arents Research Library, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York.

Notes  363 13. Crowley, “Preface to the Revised Rituals of the O.T.O. as Presented to Frater Superior Merlin X˚,” in The Equinox 3 (10): 209 (1986). 14. Some of the disharmony was domestic in nature. C. F. Russell, in a letter to Morrill Goddard of September 25, 1922 (C. F. Russell Papers), alleged that he witnessed in Detroit Crowley’s marriage to Albert W. Ryerson’s mistress Bonita Bertha Almira Bruce while Ryerson was intoxicated with ether. The incident led to Crowley moving from Ryerson’s house. 15. Crowley to Jones, undated but ca. February 1920, CSJ Papers. Albert W. Ryerson made his own cautious alterations in the language of the preliminary pledge-​form to recognize Crowley as the “sole and supreme authority in Esoteric Freemasonry” and added the words “provided the foregoing shall not be construed to involve a breach of my masonic obligations” (CSJ Papers). 16. See Smith to Jones, September 24, 1921, and Jones to Smith, October 1, 1921, WTS Papers. Crowley felt free to waive or adopt procedures in the OTO at his pleasure; he affiliated Ann Mackey from Co-​Masonry in 1943. See Crowley, Magick without Tears (1954), xvi: “The affiliation clause in our Constitution is a privilege: a courtesy to a sympathetic body. Were you not a Mason, or Co-​Mason, you would have to be proposed and seconded, and then examined by savage Inquisitors, and then—​ probably—​thrown out on to the garbage heap.” 17. Jones’s masonic record was provided by Richard R. Amon, Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of the State of Michigan, in a letter to the author of November 15, 1993. 18. Crowley to Jones, July 25, 1921, CSJ Papers.

Chapter 9 1. Smith to Katherine Talbot, June 22, 1920, WTS Papers. 2. Smith to Noel Talbot-​Smith, July 24, 1920, WTS Papers. 3. See William G. Hanson to Crowley, November 11, 1919, and Crowley to Jones, December 18, 1920, CSJ Papers; Crowley, The Magical Record of the Beast 666, 297. 4. See Yorke to Samuel A. Jacobs, July 18, 1928, Philip Kaplan Papers. Crowley retained a bound partial set of page proofs which he believed was stolen from him ca. 1943. 5. Russell to Crowley, August 26, 1919, C. F. Russell Papers. 6. See Crowley, Confessions, 916–​917. 7. James Thomas Windram (1877–​1939), Frater Semper Paratus (Latin, “always ready”) 7˚ =​4□ of the A∴A∴ and Frater Mercurius Hon. X˚ (National Grand Master General) of the OTO for South Africa; see Crowley, Confessions, 693–​694. The South African section of the OTO was short-​lived; its sole subordinate body, “Temple Lodge No. 1,” closed by March 1918. 8. Hazel Leota Schneider, née Harris (1897–​1992), Soror ON of the A∴A∴. She divorced Max Schneider in 1937 and the following year she married John Bamber (1906–​1955). 9. Max Richard Schneider (1887–​1948), IX˚ OTO, a Prussian-​born jeweler and astrologer who had emigrated to the United States in 1909. Schneider crafted many

364 Notes pieces of occult jewelry, including Jones’s Tree of Life pin, Smith’s magical ring, and the “Ankh-​af-​na-​khonsu” signet ring worn by Crowley. The initials of his Neophyte motto were V.I.A.T.O.R., enumerated as 687. 10. Jones recounted his sexual frustration in a letter to Theodor Reuss of May 8, 1921, CSJ Papers; when Leota finally consented, Jones was impotent. C. F. Russell recounted their mutual attractions in a letter to the author of February 21, 1986: “Mr & Mrs Jones, Mr and Mrs Schneider, the two children [Deirdre Jones and Roland Schneider] & myself & my sweetheart all went swimming in Lake Michigan & you can imagine the cross-​current that flew there Ruby wanted me, Achad want Mrs S, etc. etc. the combinations are all there. The children were prudes.” 11. Jones, patent to Smith, June 13, 1921, WTS Papers. 12. See Crowley, “John St. John,” in The Equinox 1 (1) suppl.: 10–​11 (1909). 13. Crowley to Jones, June 16, 1921, CSJ Papers. Jones’s undated note does not survive. 14. Crowley, diary, June 16, 1921, GJY Collection. 15. Jones to Crowley, July 15, 1921, CSJ Papers. 16. Jones to Smith, July 10, 1921, WTS Papers. The precise wording of the charter is not quoted in the WTS Papers, but from Jones’s description it is likely that Reuss used the same printed form that he gave to Mathew Mc Blain Thomson (May 10, 1919), Jean Bricaud (September 10, 1919), H. Spencer Lewis (July 30, 1921), and Carl William Hansen-​Kadosh (September 3, 1921). 17. Crowley to Jones, August 18, 1921, CSJ Papers. 18. Jones to Smith, undated letter (ca. late September 1921), WTS Papers. 19. Theodor Reuss to Crowley, November 9, 1921, CSJ Papers. Crowley claimed that Reuss resigned in his favor (see Crowley, Confessions, 701) but in a letter to H. Spencer Lewis of October 22, 1935 (WTS Papers), the claim of abdication made above is converted into an appointment: “Reuss feeling himself about to die, wrote to me in 1921 in Sicily appointing me his successor, as a convocation of Grand Masters in General was impracticable owing to political conditions.” Crowley elaborated in a further letter to Lewis of December 2, 1935: “It was when he had given up all hope that he wrote (to—​not from—​Sicily) appointing me O.H.O. to succeed him.” Crowley finally claimed to Hugh George de Willmott Newman that “I succeeded Reuss automatically as O.H.O.” (undated note, ca. September 1944, GJY Collection). 20. Crowley to Theodor Reuss, November 23, 1921, CSJ Papers. 21. H. Spencer Lewis sent a telegram to Theodor Reuss on August 24, 1921: “What connection has Crowley with your organization.” Reuss replied on August 25, 1921: “Dissolved.” The location of the originals of these telegrams is unknown; I was furnished with copies of them. 22. Crowley, diary, November 27, 1921, GJY Collection. 23. Crowley to Jones, December 15, 1921, CSJ Papers. The “bare formula of the elixir” is described in an unpublished paper sent by Reuss to Jones (CSJ Papers), wherein he recounts his limited success with the secret of the IX˚. 24. Crowley to Grady L. McMurtry, November 21, 1944, OTO Archives. 25. Crowley to Adam Gray Murray, January 3, 1925, GJY Collection.

Notes  365 26. Jones to Smith, December 5, 1921, WTS Papers: “I cannot quite make out what A.C. is doing in regard to the O.T.O. I have an idea he will dispute the fitness of the present Head to continue activities. I am doing nothing till I hear more definitely.” 27. See “Ancient Order of Oriental Templars (Ordo Templi Orientis)” entry in Who’s Who in Occultism, New Thought Psychism and Spiritualism, compiled and ed. by William C. Hartmann (1927), 84, for the entry on the Danish Supreme Council of the OTO. This work, compiled from surveys submitted by the entrants, is an invaluable guide for organizational data on the occult communities of the period. 28. Crowley, “The Present Crisis in Freemasonry,” in English Review 35: 127–​134 (August 1922). This article, originally entitled “Are You a Mason,” after the play and silent film of the same name, and attributed to a “Past Grand Master,” is the basis of the discussion of Freemasonry in Crowley, Confessions, 695–​710. See Jones to Smith, August 19, 1922, WTS Papers: “I have heard no further news of the O.T.O. but am inclined to think that A.C. considers it as of the Old Aeon in its present form. There is an article by him in English Review (August) which implies as much.”

Chapter 10 1. See Henrik Bogdan (writing as Frater Taos), “Charles Stansfeld Jones and the Universal Brotherhood,” in Success Is Your Proof: One Hundred Years of the O. T. O. in North America (2015), 123–​143. It is the most complete treatment of the UB system published to date; the author had access to a much larger array of the UB instructional materials than were extant in the papers available to me. See table 1 for a list of UB documents by “mantra” level. 2. Katherine Tingley (1847–​1929) was the founder of the Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society, a splinter group of the TS formed in 1896 after the death of William Quan Judge, who had previously broken with Annie Besant in 1895 and taken the American section of the TS with him. Crowley thought Tingley could be a potential ally of his campaign against Besant. See Confessions, 772, for Crowley’s visit to Tingley’s Theosophical colony “Lomaland” at Point Loma, California, on November 12, 1915, an uncensored account of which is in Crowley’s holograph diary, “Rex de arte regia Tom: II” (private collection). The night following his visit, Crowley believed the “witch Tingley” had caused him to experience a waking nightmare of being sexually attacked by a half-​human pig-​faced entity which he strangled; he noted: “Nothing of this sort has occurred since the summer of 1899 E.V. when W.B. Yeats sent his vampires after me.” 3. Paul Foster Case (1884–​1954), author and founder of the occult order, Builders of the Adytum. See Case to Israel Regardie, October 25, 1933, GJY Collection: “As to the purple papers—​they were in circulation as long ago as 1905, possibly earlier.” Israel Regardie (1907–​1985) had been a member of the UB as well as the United Lodge of Theosophists and the Washington College of the Societas Rosicruciana in America. 4. Merwin-​ Marie Fitz Porter Snell (1863–​ 1921). See Charles Brodie Patterson, “Merwin-​Marie Snell, Ph.D.: A Biographical Sketch,” in Mind 13 (3): 240–​246 (1904).

366 Notes 5. See Merwin-​Marie Snell, “Transcendental Monism” (1904), 149, for his self-​definition as “an Ultramontane Catholic, who believes himself to represent the pure Albertino-​ Thomistic Scholasticism of the Dominican school . . . which he has developed (in the light of modern and Oriental philosophy and science, and yet from within, and not by any mere process of accretion or eclecticism) without contradicting.” For an application of his form of Thomism, see Merwin-​Marie Snell, One Hundred Theses on the Foundations of Human Knowledge (1891), 35, where Snell asserts that “it is impossible to find a rationally tenable religious or ethical system outside the Church.” 6. Merwin-​Marie Snell, “The Future of Religion: A Farewell Address Delivered before the Parliament of Religions at Its Last Session,” in The Open Court 7 (40): 3824–​3825 (1893). For a discussion of the context of the 1893 session of the World Parliament of Religions, see William Sims Bainbridge, The Sociology of Religious Movements (1997), 180–​187. 7. See Joseph E. Ross, Krotona of Old Hollywood (1989), 110–​112, 171, 179–​181, and James A. Santucci, “H. N. Stokes’ Early Contact with the Theosophical Society,” in Theosophical History 2 (1): 18 (1987). 8. Smith to Schneider, September 26, 1925, WTS Papers. 9. Smith to Germer, November 5, 1950, WTS Papers. 10. See Paul Foster Case to Israel Regardie, letter of August 10, 1933, in The Golden Dawn American Source Book (2000), ed. Darcy Küntz, 54. Some of the Washington, D.C., members of the UB were affiliated with the Oriental Esoteric Center; see James A. Santucci, “H. N. Stokes and the O. E. Library Critic,” in Theosophical History 1 (6): 129–​139 (1986), and Ross, Krotona of Old Hollywood (1989), 251–​252. 11. Schneider to Crowley, WTS Papers, November 8, 1936. 12. Russell to Smith, WTS Papers, November 26, 1921. 13. See “Postinventional: Open Instruction on Aspiration and Attainment,” presented by Martin P. Starr in Theosophical History 9 (2): 5–​8 (2003). 14. Smith to Jones, December 28, 1921, WTS Papers. 15. Ellis E. Andrews to Smith, December 31, 1921, WTS Papers. 16. Smith to Ellis E. Andrews, January 10, 1922, WTS Papers. 17. Jones to Smith, March 12, 1925, WTS Papers. 18. Sydney Turner Klein (1853–​1934), author of Science and the Infinite (1912), From the Watch Tower (1917), and The Way of Attainment (1924), all which Smith read. 19. Jones to Smith, October 1, 1921, WTS Papers. 20. Frank Page to Smith, October 31, 1921, WTS Papers. 21. Undated newspaper clipping enclosed in a letter from Albert W. Ryerson to Smith, May 10, 1921, WTS Papers. See Richard Kaczinski, Panic in Detroit: The Magician and the Motor City (2006). 22. See Appendix B, “The Trail of O.T.O.” 23. Roy Mendenhall to Smith, January 14, 1922, WTS Papers. 24. Jones to Crowley, February 14, 1922, CSJ Papers. 25. “‘Do Anything You Want to Do’—​Their Religion and the Trail of Wrecked Homes, Scandals and Troubles Which Have Naturally Followed the Preaching of That Evil Doctrine,” American Weekly, March 5, 1922, 3.

Notes  367 26. Crowley to Jones, undated but postmarked March 14, 1922, CSJ Papers. 27. Jones to Smith, March 25, 1922, WTS Papers. 28. See Crowley, Liber XXX Aerum vel Saeculi sub Figura CCCCXVIII Being of the Angels of the 30 Aethyrs: The Vision and the Voice with Commentary by the Master Therion (1952), 96–​105. 29. Russell to Smith, February 16, 1922, WTS Papers. 30. Russell to Smith, March 11, 1922, WTS Papers. 31. Smith to Jones, April 24, 1922, WTS Papers. 32. Crowley, The Book of the Great Auk, May 14, 1919, unpublished, GJY Collection. 33. Russell to Smith, May 14, 1922, WTS Papers. 34. Russell to Smith, June 27, 1923, WTS Papers. 35. Russell to Smith, May 2, 1923, WTS Papers. In a letter to the author (December 12, 1985), Russell pointedly remarked that “I don’t care particularly to go down in history as a ‘man who buggered Crowley’—​there were too many who did.” 36. Russell to Smith, April 23, 1922, WTS Papers. 37. Russell to Smith, October 13, 1922, WTS Papers. Russell, like Smith and Henry Ford, was a promoter of the anti-​Semitic forgery, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. 38. Crowley to Helen Parsons, July 25, [1942], HPS Papers. 39. Jones, diary, May 31, 1922, WTS Papers. 40. See Crowley, Liber XXX Aerum vel Saeculi (1952), 145. Eno’s Fruit Salts is an antacid and laxative.

Chapter 11 1. Charles Baudouin, Suggestion and Autosuggestion: A Psychological and Pedagogical Study Based on the Investigations Made by the New Nancy School (1921). 2. Compare with the definition of Magick as “the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will” ([Crowley], Magick in Theory in Practice [1930], xvi). Jones had been sent the typescripts of the book by Crowley in anticipation of a first American edition under the former’s direction which did not make it beyond the planning stage. 3. Jones to Smith, September 22, 1922, WTS Papers. 4. The Theosophical Movement 1875–​1925: A History and a Survey (1925), 703. As a corrective to the stress given to personalities and authorities within the Theosophical movement and in keeping with the editorial policies of the ULT journal Theosophy, the authors of this work were anonymous. 5. Jones to Crowley, October 3, 1922, CSJ Papers. I would like to thank John L. Crow for sharing his work on the manuscript and the version of Jones, Psychomagia: “the teaching you have been waiting for” (1924). 6. A copy survives in the WTS Papers. It states: Every man and every woman in the Society has accepted the fact that they are “Stars,” and since the Star Universe, as it is known to men of earth, exists without

368 Notes visible means of support, so is it the desire of the Stars of the Psychomagian Society that its Constellations shall give Light freely, while appearing to move in their appointed courses without support of a material nature. 7. Crowley to Jones, October 17, 1922, CSJ Papers. He urged Jones to “make it clear that the modus operandi is the getting into a semi-​Samadhic state, or on to the Briatic or Yetziratic planes mentally. Coué is now being quite discredited here because the method of ‘cure’ has not been understood. Obviously, the training is everything.” 8. Crowley, Confessions, 582. 9. [Crowley], “One Star in Sight” in Magick in Theory and Practice (1930), 240. 10. Jones to Crowley, August 28, 1921, CSJ Papers. 11. Crowley to Jones, January 9, 1923, CSJ Papers. 12. Will Ransom (1878–​1955), printer, typographer, and author of Private Presses and Their Books (1929). See James M. Wells, “Private Press of Will Ransom 1921–​30,” in Inland Printers: The Fine Press Movement in Chicago 1920–​1945 (2003), 16–​17. 13. See Crowley to Jones, September 3, 1923, CSJ Papers. The Anatomy of the Body of God: Being the supreme revelation of cosmic consciousness explained and depicted in graphic form by Frater Achad with designs showing the formation, multiplication, and projection of the stone of the wise by Will Ransom was published in 1925. The Alpha and Omega of Initiation was never published in its entirety; the opening chapter appeared in two installments as “Initiation” in The Occult Press Review (July 1923, 100–​104, and August 1923, 9–​10). 14. The Occult Review (1906–​1928) of London was edited by Ralph Shirley. It published reviews of Q.B.L. or The Bride’s Reception (December 1922, 393) and The Anatomy of the Body of God (December 1925, 394). 15. Aleister Crowley, The Magical Diaries of Aleister Crowley (1979), ed. Stephen Skinner, 95–​96 (diary entry for July 24, 1923). 16. Crowley, diary for May 1923, GJY Collection. 17. Jones to Crowley, January 30, 1923. Crowley transferred Russell to Jones, who in turn witnessed Russell’s assumption of the Oath of a Zelator in the A∴A∴ on May 13, 1922 (CSJ Papers). Subsequently Russell began corresponding with Crowley again, attacking Jones by his favorite brickbat of “Jesus Stansfeld Christ.” Crowley noted Jones’s self-​identification with Christ in his diary for July 31, 1921, GJY Collection: “Further, as there is ‘no difference’ between Jones and Jesus, all Christendom has always worshipped Jones.” 18. Smith to Jones, December 4, 1923, WTS Papers. 19. Jones to Smith, April 18, 1924, WTS Papers. 20. Crowley, diary entry for November 12, 1923, GJY Collection. 21. Jones to Crowley, December 12, 1923, CSJ Papers. Crowley’s reply of December 23, 1923 (CSJ Papers), cited this paragraph, stating it was “the work of a semi-​demented megalomaniac” and “was so full of tangled grammar, and errors of fact, and ignorance of the Regulations of the Order that it is hard to judge it.” 22. The “regulations of the password” sent to Jones also included a dictum that “Membership of the A∴A∴ is for life, as any person who wills is entitled to claim the Grade of Master of the Temple, so having done so, he is not able to leave it, by virtue of certain other regulations known only to members of that Grade.”

Notes  369 23. Smith to Jones, June 14, 1924, WTS Papers. The reference is to A Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery: with a dissertation on the more celebrated of the Alchemical Philosophers being an attempt towards the recovery of the ancient experiment of Nature by Mary Anne Atwood, revised edition with an introduction by Walter Leslie Wilmshurst (3rd ed., 1920); Smith and Crowley interpreted the alchemical work described therein as a sexual process. 24. Smith to Jones, October 3, 1924, WTS Papers. 25. Jones to Smith, October 27, 1924, WTS Papers. 26. Jones to Smith, March 2, 1925, WTS Papers. 27. Smith to Jones, March 6, 1925, WTS Papers. 28. Jones to Smith, March 12, 1925, WTS Papers. The “Fixed Min. Contrib.” ranged from the “Diamond” level of $100 monthly down to non-​donors classified as “Doab & Slag.” 29. See Volker Lechler with Wolfgang Kistemann, Heinrich Tränker als Theosoph, Rosenkreuzer und Pansoph (2013) for an exhaustive study of Tränker’s life and works. 30. Heinrich Tränker to Jones, March 8, 1924, CSJ Papers. 31. Jones to Crowley, November 15, 1924, CSJ Papers. 32. Crowley to Jones, undated [ca. December 22, 1924], CSJ Papers. 33. Jones to Smith, March 2, 1925, WTS Papers. 34. Jones to Smith, April 1, 1925, WTS Papers: “the Pelican-​Ibis, a kind wood-​ibis rather interesting as a new alchemical bird.”

Chapter 12 1. Jones to Crowley, April 23, 1923, CSJ Papers. 2. Crowley to Jones, September 3, 1923, CSJ Papers. 3. Crowley to Annie Besant, undated [ca. March 1, 1925], GJY Collection. 4. Frank Bennett (1867–​1930), Frater Progradior of the A∴A∴ (6˚ =​5□) and Frater Dionysus IX˚ of the OTO; see Crowley, Confessions, 872–​877. He had been a Theosophist and Co-​Mason and left the latter on orders when he became active in OTO in 1914. 5. Crowley to Montgomery Evans II, October 26, 1926, Montgomery Evans Mss., Manuscripts Department, Lilly Library, Indiana University. “Southwood” is a reference to Mary Anne Atwood’s A Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery, ed. with an introduction by W. L. Wilmshurst (1920). See also Crowley, The Magical Record of the Beast 666, 152: “The Wilmshurst idea of Alchemy is quite clear by the way, from this. He uses the hand to hypnotize another person, so as to be able to direct his talismans, a conscious mind trying to master another man’s subconscious; ’tis the foulest pit of black magic.” 6. Crowley to James Thomas Windram, March 1, 1925, GJY Collection. Published under the pseudonym of “Alcyone,” Krishnamurti was the putative author of At the Feet of the Master (1910) at the age of 14; see Gregory Tillett, The Elder Brother: A Biography of Charles Webster Leadbeater (1982), 135–​138 for a discussion of its authorship.

370 Notes 7. Crowley, The Heart of the Master (1938). 8. Crowley to Jones, March 1, 1925, CSJ Papers. 9. Ibid. 10. The reference is to the media coverage of the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb and the discussion of its significance in The Egyptian Revival. 11. Crowley to Jones, [ca. July 14–​16, 1925], WTS Papers. 12. Jones to Crowley, August 21, 1925, CSJ Papers. 13. Chicago Daily News, August 22, 1925, 19. 14. Jones to Crowley, August 23, 1925, CSJ Papers. Jones recopied the letter and mailed it to Crowley again on August 10, 1932 (CSJ Papers); it received no reply. 15. Quoted in Schneider to Smith, September 2, 1925, WTS Papers. 16. Smith to Crowley, September 11, 1925, WTS Papers. 17. Smith to Jones, September 20, 1925, WTS Papers. The UB instruction, “Fourteenth Abhimantric—​ Postmantric of the Fourth—​ Instruction to Carakas Who Have Received the Fourth Mantra,” deals with “Right Sexuality.” 18. Jones to Smith, November 6, 1925, WTS Papers. 19. Jones included this title in his submitted entry under “Frater Achad” in Hartmann’s Who’s Who in Occult, Psychic and Spiritual Realms, comp. and ed. William C. Hartmann (1925), 11. 20. Smith to Jones, November 22, 1925, WTS Papers.

Chapter 13 1. [Crowley], The Equinox of the Gods (1936). 2. Mudd to Crowley, January 16, 1926, GJY Collection. 3. Crowley to Smith, June 8, 1928, WTS Papers. 4. Germer to Jane Wolfe, June 17, 1928, WTS Papers. 5. [Crowley], The Avenger to the Theosophical Society, n.d. [ca. December 1925]. 6. Crowley to William Loftus Hare, March 1, 1926, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin. 7. [Crowley], “The Black ‘Messiah,’ ” unpublished, WTS Papers. The Hindi kala admi, an Anglo-​Indian racial slur, means “black man.” 8. Yorke to Smith, November 24, 1929, WTS Papers. 9. Crowley, Magick without Tears (1954), 42. 10. A copy of the Schneider handbill survives in the WTS Papers. 11. An executed copy of the mutual release is in the GJY Collection; Schneider signed it on behalf of Crowley. 12. For these “trite remarks” see c­ hapter 6, above. 13. Smith to Crowley, May 12, 1927, WTS Papers. 14. Oliver Jacobi (1894–​1974), Frater C.H.A.C. or 913 of the A∴A∴ and the first Deacon of the Church of Thelema. 15. The marriage of John Whiteside Parsons and Mary Helen Northrup (born Cowley). 16. Mary Katherine Wolff (1874–​1958), who followed her sister’s styling of their surname as “Wolfe.” Prior to Jane arriving in Sicily, Mary K. had met Crowley in France where

Notes  371 she was serving as a Red Cross nurse; see Crowley, The Magical Record of the Beast 666 (1972), 140. Despite their closeness, the latter refused to join the thelemic orders as she had a distrust of churches, derived from their religious upbringing. 17. For Jane Wolfe’s early involvement with Spiritualism and Thelema see Crowley, Confessions, 863–​864. Transcriptions of her automatic writing sessions in 1918 survive in the WTS Papers. 18. Crowley, The Diary of a Drug Fiend (1923), 324. 19. [Crowley], “John St. John,” in The Equinox 1 (1) suppl: 11 (1909). Wolfe’s record of her retreat survives: “I shall start my Retirement with the Oath of a Magister Templi. It is inevitable—​I could not do otherwise” (diary entry, February 11, 1922). When the moment came, she had some resistance: “I presented myself at the Altar prepared to take the Oath of Master of the Temple. Over and over I tried to say the very simple words, but could not. I was calm. Therefore did I say, ‘As Thou wilt’—​meaning such Path as God saw fit” (diary entry, February 17, 1922, OTO Archives). 20. Crowley to Smith, March 1, 1928, WTS Papers. 21. Smith to Crowley, March 21, 1928, WTS Papers. 22. Crowley to Smith, July 27, 1928, WTS Papers. 23. Crowley to Smith, December 16, 1928, WTS Papers. The letter included a French newspaper clipping “L’Assassin de M. Goldsmith était aussi son ‘jeune ami’ ” (1928), a crime story of a Dutchman, Hermann Goldschmidt, who had been killed in Paris by a younger male, Raymond Bernard. 24. See Crowley, Confessions, 659–​661. 25. Katherine M. Smith to Smith, April 17, 1928, WTS Papers. 26. Smith to Katherine M. Smith, April 23, 1928, WTS Papers. 27. Smith to Katherine M. Smith, August 1, 1928, WTS Papers. 28. Katherine M. Smith to Smith, August 23, 1928, WTS Papers. 29. Smith to Katherine M. Smith, August 28, 1928, WTS Papers. 30. Katherine M. Smith v. Wilfred T. Smith, complaint for divorce, Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles, May 21, 1930, no. D85300, WTS Papers. 31. Smith to Crowley, February 25, 1929, WTS Papers. 32. Crowley to Smith, March 16, 1929, WTS Papers. 33. Smith to Leota Schneider, December 26, 1930, WTS Papers. 34. Jones to Regardie, September 21, 1929, private collection. 35. Smith to Crowley, October 8, 1930, WTS Papers. 36. Wolfe and Smith, diary, October 3, 1930, WTS Papers. 37. Crowley to Smith, January 20, 1931, WTS Papers. The “Latin Grimoire” is a reference to “Grimorium Sanctissimum” in Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice (1930), 325–​326.

Chapter 14 1. Regina Agnes Kahl (1891–​1945), opera singer and voice teacher. Regina’s Oath of a Probationer (January 23, [1931], WTS Papers) does not include her motto. She dedicated a poem “Wounds,” dated September 2, 1940, to Wilfred as Per voluntatem

372 Notes liberatam (Latin, “for pure will”) with a numeration of 196; she also used the initials “P.V.L.P.” in other order correspondence. Regina witnessed the Oath of a Probationer as Neophyte to Margaret Arnold, with the initials of the former’s motto as “J.W.F.I.S.A.” (September 27, 1939, WTS Papers). 2. Stuart Timmons, The Trouble with Harry Hay (1990), 76. Hay had been cast with Regina in a revival of an 1855 melodrama entitled The Ticket-​of-​Leave Man; he described Regina as “taller than Wilfred, a pleasantly rounded, a statuesque Operatic Contralto, with a controlled Lesbian charm and ‘presence’ appropriate to her stage profession”; he stated that “skinny cadaverous Wilfred WAS hung like a horse! . . . and alternately belligerent about, or miserably ashamed of IT!” (letter to the author, September 11, 1993). 3. A kabbalistic fairy tale in Crowley, Konx Om Pax (1907), 1–​24. 4. A Californian lady friend to Kasimira Bass; Crowley had urged Smith to seduce “that crazy codfish” Mrs. Reynolds in order to lay hold of Kasimira’s money, which she was believed to control. Smith declined the assignment. 5. Astrid Dorothy Olsen (1892–​1963), a former holder of the office of “Scarlet Woman.” 6. Wolfe annotated this passage: “Regina’s face is more physical in type, broad and a typical medium formation.” 7. Wolfe to Crowley, January 16, 1931, WTS Papers. 8. Crowley to Wolfe, February 4, 1931, OTO Archives. 9. Leona Kahl, Oath of a Probationer, February 21, 1931, WTS Papers. Leona took the motto “May my acts—​not words seal my destiny.” 10. Crowley to Smith, July 27, 1931, WTS Papers. 11. Crowley to Smith, undated postcard [ca. June 1931], WTS Papers. 12. Smith to Crowley, June 21, 1931, WTS Papers. 13. See Peter Anson, Bishops at Large (1964), 502–​508. The American Orthodox Church was the claimed episcopal source for George Winslow Plummer’s Orthodox consecration by William Albert Nichols on May 8, 1934; Nichols had been previously deposed by Bishara on November 2, 1933. I am indebted to Rev. Dr. Bertil Persson for a copy of his unpublished essay, “A Brief Biographical Sketch on Sophronios Bishara.” 14. Smith to Crowley, August 16, 1931, WTS Papers. 15. Her diary entry for the opus on October 3, 1931 (WTS Papers), recounted their doubt as to whether the call came in before or after their magical work. 16. See Crowley to Schneider, October 5, 1944, GJY Collection. 17. Wolfe appeared in one sound film; she played the role of “Mrs. Kenyon” in Under Strange Flags (1937). 18. Los Angeles Times, “Ancient Bells Restored to San Gabriel Mission,” September 6, 1931; Los Angeles Examiner, “Old San Gabriel Mission Regains Long-​Lost Bells,” September 6, 1931. 19. Crowley to Smith, January 1, 1932, WTS Papers. 20. Smith to Crowley, February 5, 1932, WTS Papers. 21. Crowley to Yorke, undated (ca. January 9, 1932), GJY Collection. 22. Crowley to Smith, February 10, 1932, WTS Papers. 23. Crowley, “Liber CXXIV: Of Eden and the Sacred Oak; and of the Greater and Lesser Hospitality of the O.T.O. an Epistle of Baphomet to His Excellency James Thomas Windram, Very Holy, Very Illuminated, Very Illustrious, Initiate of the Sanctuary of the Gnosis, his Viceroy in the Union of South Africa,” GJY Collection.

Notes  373 24. Crowley to Smith, July 11, 1932, WTS Papers. The partial performance of the Gnostic Catholic Mass at Cefalù is described in the final chapter of Crowley’s novel, The Diary of a Drug Fiend (1922). 25. [Crowley], “Liber Astarté vel Berylli,” in The Equinox 1 (7): 37–​58 (1912). 26. Wolfe to Max and Leota Schneider, WTS Papers, January 9, 1933. 27. Max Schneider, diary, February 12, 1933, OTO Archives. 28. John Bamber (1906–​1955); he signed the Oath of a Probationer under Smith on February 22, 1933 (WTS Papers), taking the motto Vincam Ne Vincando (Latin, “I will conquer lest I be conquered”). 29. Crowley to Smith, December 18, 1932, WTS Papers. 30. Church of Thelema, guest register, March 19, 1933, WTS Papers. 31. According to Harry Hay, Jack Ross was entrapped for being a homosexual and Hay took his place as the paid organist for the Church of Thelema at Regina’s request: “The tacky Mendelsohn and Nicolai, not to mention the Rubenstein (Anton) in the Gnostic Mass accompaniment would have to GO! My accompaniment—​which included Wagner and Strauss (Richard), Satie, Bax, Nin, Cage, and moi, earned a paean [which wowed the congregation—​in addition to me] by the Wolf(e) Sisters” (letter to the author, September 11, 1993). 32. Crowley to Smith, April 22, 1933, WTS Papers. 33. Crowley to Smith, undated [ca. April 1933], WTS Papers. 34. Smith to Crowley, April 24, 1933, WTS Papers. 35. Robert P. Shuler, Sr. (1880–​1965), known as “Fighting Bob,” a Los Angeles Methodist minister well known for his attack-​laden radio broadcasts which resulted in the revocation of his broadcast license by the Federal Radio Commission in 1931. 36. Regina Kahl to Crowley, August 13, 1933, WTS Papers. 37. Crowley to Smith, August 29, 1933, WTS Papers. 38. Smith to Crowley, July 24, 193, WTS Papers. 39. Crowley to Jones, [ca. July 18/​19, 1916], CSJ Papers. 40. Gerald J. Yorke, “666, Sex, and the O.T.O.,” GJY Collection. 41. Leota Schneider, diary, June 16, 1933, WTS Papers. 42. Crowley to Schneider, July 31, 1933, WTS Papers. “S.A.” is an abbreviation for “Sex Appeal.” 43. Leota Schneider, diary entry, July 17, 1933, WTS Papers. 44. Carrie Dinsmore signed the Oath of a Probationer, August 16, 1933 (WTS Papers), taking the motto “Victorious attainment through Love—​Understanding—​Wisdom.” 45. Crowley to Schneider, August 31, 1933, GJY Collection. 46. Schneider to Crowley, September 26, 1933, GJY Collection. 47. Schneider, diary, October 30, 1933, OTO Archives. 48. Smith to Schneider, December 2, 1933, WTS Papers. 49. Smith, “Crowley Night,” April 11, 1934, WTS Papers. 50. See Denise Hooker, Nina Hamnett: Queen of Bohemia (1986), 197–​206. 51. Crowley to Smith, undated [ca. late September 1934], WTS Papers. 52. Smith to Crowley, October 21, 1934, WTS Papers. 53. Crowley to Smith, December 15, 1934, WTS Papers. 54. Smith to Crowley, May 20, 1935, WTS Papers.

374 Notes

Chapter 15 1. Russell to Crowley, November 4, 1930, GJY Collection. 2. Crowley to Russell, October 21, 1931, C. F. Russell Papers. 3. See Crowley, Snowdrops from a Curate’s Garden (rev. ed., 1986), ed. Martin P. Starr, xvii–​xviii. 4. Louis T. Culling, a former member of the Choronzon Club, still felt oath-​bound not to reveal its secret name when publishing a highly edited and rewritten selection of Russell’s teachings, The Complete Magick Curriculum of the Secret Order G∴B∴G∴ (1969), which he knowingly misstated to mean “Great Brotherhood of God.” Russell glossed the acronym as “Gnostic Brotherhood of God” in the Choronzon Club “Premonstrance.” (GJY Collection). Culling discusses the sex magic teachings of the Choronzon Club in A Manual of Sex Magick (1971). 5. Russell, untitled introduction to the Choronzon Club; a copy survives in the Choronzon Club instructions issued to Dr. John P. Kowal formerly in the collection of the author (John P. Kowal Papers). 6. Russell, “Official Order No. XVII,” John P. Kowal Papers. 7. See Ida Craddock, “Psychic Wedlock,” in The Equinox 5 (4): 597–​618 (1981), for her exposition of the three degrees of sex magic. Crowley favorably reviewed Craddock’s Heavenly Bridegrooms: An Unintentional Contribution to the Erotogenetic Interpretation of Religion (1918) in Equinox 3 (1): 279–​280 (1919). 8. Russell to Dr. John P. Kowal, August 11, 1930, John P. Kowal Papers. 9. Russell, Liber Z-​Z, John P. Kowal Papers. 10. The first group of former Choronzon Club members who pledged to join the OTO included: Mary Green; Betty L. Obermiller (1902–​1989); Hilda Concorde Brodeur (1888–​1968); Charles Asa Muzzy (1898–​1979); Chloe E. Scott (1896–​1954); and Franklin Thomas, Jr. (1892–​1959). Muzzy’s Choronzon Club papers and correspondence with C. F. Russell are in the GJY Collection. 11. Crowley to Smith, June 21, 1935, WTS Papers. 12. A typescript of “Book Chameleon” is in the WTS Papers. The integral Crowley text on which it was based was published as Crowley, Shi Yi: A Critical and Mnemonic Paraphrase of the Yi King (1971). Russell later wrote his own versification of the Yi King, Book Chameleon: A New Version in Verse (second ed., 1967). 13. Crowley to Smith, telegram, July 30, 1935, WTS Papers. 14. Crowley to Smith, June 30, 1935, and August 5, 1935, WTS Papers. 15. Russell, “Choronzon Club Circular,” Appendix C, Starr, The Unknown God: W. T. Smith and the Thelemites (1st ed., 2003). 16. Crowley to Smith, August 15, 1934, WTS Papers. 17. Crowley, denunciation of C. F. Russell, enclosed in Crowley to Smith, August 15, 1934, WTS Papers. 18. Smith to Rudolf F. Holm, August 19, 1935, WTS Papers. 19. Maria R. Prescott (1891–​1974); she became a Probationer of the A∴A under Smith on August 11, 1934 (WTS Papers); in the OTO she was known as “Soror Vesta.” 20. Sometimes written “Ra Ma Ka.” Smith took his name as an X˚ in the OTO from a throne name of Queen Hatshepsut. It is typically transliterated “Maatkare,” meaning

Notes  375 “Maat is the Ka of Re.” Smith’s understanding of this name was taken from Amelia Edwards, Pharaohs Fellahs and Explorers (1891), 263: “the interpretation which most commends itself to me is ‘Ra, the Life of Ma,’ with the meaning that Truth, Law, and Justice are the vital manifestations of Ra.” 21. The text is similar to that published as “An O.T.O. Prospectus,” in The Equinox 3 (10): 195–​197 (1986). 22. Edward H. Brown to Henry Marston, September 22, 1917, Societas Rosicruciana in America Archives. 23. Crowley to H. Spencer Lewis, December 2, 1935, WTS Papers. 24. First published by Lewis in the AMORC’s Rosicrucian Digest, November 1933, and reprinted in Clymer, The Rosicrucian Fraternity in America, 1: 380 (n.d., ca. 1935) and 2: 283 (n.d., ca. 1937). A line in the original document indicating the “Cerneau” origin of the Scottish Rite degrees was obliterated in the reproduction, avoiding conflict with the American Supreme Councils of the Scottish Rite. 25. Crowley and Jones to H. Spencer Lewis, ca. July 1918, GJY Collection. It is not clear if the document was in fact delivered to Lewis; the signed and sealed original was sold at Sotheby’s in London on December 17, 1996 (catalogue LN6731, lot 344). 26. See R. Swinburne Clymer, The Mysticism of Masonry: The Key to the Correct Interpretation of Masonic Symbolism, One Harmonious with Both the Ancient Osirian Teachings and Those of the New Dispensation (1924) and Manisis: The Interpreter of the Divine Law for the Manistic Dispensation (1955). 27. Crowley to Chris Kraemer, October 27, 1938, GJY Collection. 28. Regarding Lewis’s arrest, see “Grand Imperator Grieved at Arrest,” New York Sun, June 19, 1918; the complaint was dismissed for insufficient evidence. See also Crowley, Confessions, 659, 791–​792; he omits Lewis’s name in these passages. 29. Jones to Theodor Reuss, August 31, 1922, CSJ Papers. 30. Crowley to H. Spencer Lewis, October 22, 1935, WTS Papers. The AMORC National Membership Defense Committee in their White Book “D”: Audi Alteram Partem (Hear the Other Side) (1935), 31, repudiated Clymer’s false charge that the OTO document Lewis possessed was signed by Crowley. The AMORC report falsely claimed that Crowley had appropriated the titles and symbols of the OTO after 1919, in the same way they alleged Clymer stole the degrees and fraternal devices of P. B. Randolph. 31. Crowley to H. Spencer Lewis, December 2, 1935, WTS Papers. 32. Smith to Floyd M. Spann, January 11, 1936, WTS Papers. 33. Crowley, memorandum re AMORC, January 28, 1936, WTS Papers. 34. Elmer Gertz (1906–​2000), civil libertarian attorney and writer. 35. For the details of this application of the IX˚ secret, see Crowley, Amrita: Essays in Magical Rejuvenation (1990), ed. Martin P. Starr. 36. Donald Wayne Walker (1909–​1989); he later styled himself “Thane of Hawaii” and was the founder of a metaphysical group named “The Prosperos,” where his method of therapy was described in the word “Agape.” 37. “Schwankovsky joined the TS in 1928 and introduced his pupil Jackson Pollock to Krishnamurti.”

376 Notes 38. Crowley to Schneider, January 23, 1936, GJY Collection. Rosicrucian Park is the name of the AMORC headquarters in San Jose, California. 39. Smith to Schneider, March 19, 1936, WTS Papers. 40. Smith to Crowley, May 18, 1936, WTS Papers. Jane had previously reported to Germer that Case used Crowley’s books in his classes, with acknowledgment: “Smith and Bamber went over, heard a lecture, talked with him, etc., etc. But he wants to travel a lone hand. Said Regardie asked him to rejoin G.D. but that he refused to do so” (Wolfe to Germer, July 13, 1934, WTS Papers). Case signed the profess house guest register again on July 25, 1937 (WTS Papers). 41. Crowley, note added to a letter of Bertha van Brunt to Crowley, May 17, 1936; he forwarded it to Smith for his response. Crowley later remarked in a letter to Jane of January 7, 1942: “Paul Case seems a very cheap crook.” 42. Georgia Elinor Haitz Schneider, née Berkey (1893–​1980), IX˚ OTO, Soror Omnia Praesto Virtute (Latin, “I perform all things by Virtue”) of the A∴A∴; the initials of this motto, suggested by Crowley, add to 156. Georgia later adopted the last name of her lover, Joseph Clifford Crombie (1908–​1971), after her divorce from Max Schneider. 43. Smith, undated diary entry [ca. February 1936], WTS Papers. 44. See Timothy D’Arch Smith, The Books of the Beast (rev. ed. 1991), 19–​21. 45. Crowley to Schneider, August 18, 1936, GJY Collection. 46. Schneider to Crowley, August 21, 1936, WTS Papers. 47. Crowley to Smith, September 16, 1936, WTS Papers. 48. Smith to Crowley, telegram, September 30, 1936, WTS Papers. Smith had been working on an exegesis of the thelemic Holy Book, “Liber Trigrammaton: Sub Figurâ XXVII Being the Book of the Trigrams of the Mutations of the Tao with the Yin and the Yang” (1909); Smith’s unpublished commentary met with Crowley’s approval. 49. Crowley to Jones, August 28, 1936, CSJ Papers. 50. Crowley to Jones, August 28, 1936, CSJ Papers. 51. Jones to Smith, October 3, 1936, WTS Papers. 52. Jones to Crowley, November 25, 1936, WTS Papers. 53. Jones to Crowley, undated [ca. October 1936], CSJ Papers. 54. Crowley to Jones, undated [ca. November 23, 1936], CSJ Papers. 55. Jones to Crowley, December 13, 1926, CSJ Papers. Jones considered his letter of December 12, 1923 (see ­chapter 11, above) to be a prophetic warning, fulfilled 10 years later. 56. Crowley to Jones, [ca. November 28, 1936], signed “Baphomet O.H.O.,” WTS Papers. 57. Jones to Smith, December 27, 1936, WTS Papers. 58. I interviewed Robert J. Lund in 1983 at his American Museum of Stage Magic in Marshall, Michigan. For details of the discovery and sales of the Detroit Crowleyana, see Philip Kaplan Papers (VFM 222), Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, and “Black Magic Once Detroit Cult: Lives Ruined Decades Ago by Sorcerer Aleister Crowley,” by William T. Noble, Detroit Times, January 26, 1958. Kaplan’s collection was sold to the University of Texas at Austin, and now resides at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center.

Notes  377

Chapter 16 1. Phyllis Evelina Seckler, née Pratt (1917–​2004), later the wife of Grady L. McMurtry, with whom she restarted the OTO in 1969. 2. Luther Carroll signed the A∴A∴ Oath of a Probationer on March 18, 1939; Paul Seckler signed on April 4, 1939 (WTS Papers). 3. Louis Turley Culling (1894–​1973), Frater Aequila or 153 of the A∴A∴ and the OTO, author, organist, and jack-​ of-​ all-​ trades. His understanding of the sexual inner teachings of the Choronzon Club and the OTO is given in his book, A Manual of Sex Magick (1971). His account of Smith and the founding of Agape Lodge on page 73 of that work incorrectly claims that, through his use of sex magic, Smith gathered “eighty-​five loyal working members” within a year of the lodge’s founding; the real number of members in that period was a fifth of the figure. 4. Culling is listed as an “Alchemical Astrologer . . . Publisher and Inventor of ‘Astrological Chart for Meditation and Concentration’ ” in Who’s Who in Occultism, New Thought, Psychism and Spiritualism, comp. and ed. William C. Hartmann (1927), 59. 5. Louis T. Culling, “The Life Cycle of a Follower of Thelema,” unpublished, March 1957, WTS Papers. The details above of Cullings’s early life and education are derived from this autobiographical sketch. 6. Culling to Crowley, May 11, 1938, HPS Papers: “Before I overlook it I want to tell you about Russell magic method of destroying Liber Al vel Legis. He taught all members this ‘Secret Script’. . . . They were required to write the whole of the Book of the Law in this script and to consider that solely the Script characters were Holy and then to destroy it by water (dump down the Sewer). I quit before that culmination i.e. when they took the word Thelema out of the ritual and substituted the letter & which he vulgarly calls Ampersand.” 7. Crowley to Schneider, January 24, 1939, GJY Collection. 8. Crowley to Schneider, May 23, 1939, GJY Collection. 9. Discussed below, see note 13. 10. Crowley to Smith, September 1, 1939, WTS Papers. Roy Leffingwell described this performance of the Gnostic Catholic Mass in a letter to Crowley: “We had no paraphernalia. We circumscribed a Temple among the rocks. We used a rock for an altar. Another for a tomb. For a robe Wilfred had an old army overcoat that we found there. For his crown, some leaves intertwined. For the lance, a stick of wood. . . . Wilfred so intent, so reverent, so impressed with the solemnity of the whole ritual that it literally tore him apart. Regina couldn’t go through her love-​chant due to emotional choke-​ up. Wilfred, in an old army overcoat and some ridiculous leaves on his bald head, looking, acting, feeling every inch the Priest. The finest rendition of the Mass I ever saw him give” (July 11, 1943, GJY Collection). 11. The brothers Carl Rudolph Pastor (1915–​1991) and Harry Helmuth Pastor (1919–​ 1989) were both born in Germany and together joined the OTO in December 1942. Carl served briefly in World War II until he was injured. Harry moved into the Pasadena profess house at the same time he was initiated—​he was rejected by the draft owing to his great height. Carl was later known as “George Lloyd.” Harry’s assumed name was “Big Daddy Eric Nord,” and was crowned “king of the beat generation” by

378 Notes San Francisco columnist Herb Caen. As Eric Nord he was the founder of the “hungry i” nightclub in North Beach in San Francisco. 12. Jonas Conrad Erickson (1885–​1943), an epileptic Swedish Laplander miner who had been introduced to Crowley in Detroit. He became a Probationer of the A∴A∴ under Smith (WTS Papers) on December 31, 1928, taking the untranslatable motto Sagire ab Lux. 13. Roy Edward Leffingwell (1886–​1952), Frater Esse Quam Videri or 111 (“To be rather than to seem”) of the A∴A∴ . He swore the Oath of a Probationer before Smith (WTS Papers) on September 23, 1938. His wife Reea was born as Emma Selle (1891–​1978), known as Soror Alta Via (“High Way”). His son-​in-​law Raymond W. Reid became a Probationer under Smith on October 15, 1939; his Oath lacks a motto. 14. Quoted in Smith to Germer, January 28, 1942, WTS Papers. 15. John W. Parsons, “Analysis by a Master of the Temple of the Critical Modes in the Experiences of His Material Vehicle,” undated (ca. October 1948), GJY Collection. 16. See John W. Parsons, “The Witchcraft.” published in Freedom Is a Two-​edged Sword and Other Essays, ed. Cameron and Hymenaeus Beta (1989), 71–​73. Parsons wrote: “I know that witchcraft is mostly nonsense, except where it is a blind, but I am so nauseated by Christian and Theosophical guff about the ‘good and the true’ that I prefer the appearance of evil to that of good” (John W. Parsons to Crowley, November 26, 1943). It is unknown if Parsons was aware that he was a lineal descendant of “Goody Parsons,” Mary Bliss Parsons of Northampton, Massachusetts (1628–​1711/​1712), who in 1675 successfully defended herself against the charge of witchcraft. Parsons’s stated aversion for Theosophy was not encompassing; in the years immediately prior to his meeting with Smith, he enthusiastically took Helen several times to hear Krishnamurti speak at the Theosophical center at Ojai, California. 17. K. Lattu and R. Dowling, “John W. Parsons: Contributions to Rocketry 1936–​1946,” 52nd International Astronomical Congress (2001). 18. Edward Seymour Forman, often misspelled “Foreman” (1912–​1973); his wife was Phyllis J. Forman (1918–​1980). Richard Bruce Canright (1917–​1992) was known as Brother Raschach of the OTO; his wife Barbara Wylie Canright (1919–​1997) took the name of Sister D.V. (perhaps Deo Volente, “God willing”). The Formans and the Canrights joined the OTO in 1942. See “OTO Degree Work 1938–​1943,” Appendix D. 19. Burton Ashley Northrup (1872–​1946) ran a collection agency in Pasadena; in 1943 he gave information on his son-​in-​law Jack Parsons to the War Department. 20. Sara Elizabeth Bruce Northrup (1924–​1997), Soror Cassap of the OTO. She was later the wife of L. Ron Hubbard and Miles Hollister. 21. John W. Parsons to Helen Northrup, August 1, 1934, HPS Papers. 22. Smith and his first wife Katherine Talbot were wedded at Forest Lawn’s Little Church of the Flowers in Glendale, California, on August 24, 1927. 23. Many of the details regarding the courtship and marriage of Jack and Helen Parsons were taken from an untitled autobiographical sketch by Helen Parsons Smith, which was composed as a portion of her planned biography of Wilfred Smith. Her notes and drafts survive in the HPS Papers.

Notes  379 24. [Crowley], “Liber Resh vel Helios,” in The Equinox 1 (6): 29–​32 (1911). 25. Holograph statement by Los Angeles Herald-​ Express reporter (name illegible), February 28, 1939. 26. Crowley to Schneider, March 21, 1939, GJY Collection. The newspaper clippings sent by Smith to Crowley are in the GJY Collection. 27. Untitled script for radio interview, WTS Papers; the recording of the interview follows the script closely. 28. Francis King (1934–​1994) in The Magical World of Aleister Crowley (1978), 173, incorrectly stated that “W. T. Smith made an act of cunnilingus the central feature of his version of the Gnostic Mass.” When I queried King in September 1987 on his source for this detail, he attributed it to the American experimental filmmaker Kenneth Anger (1927–​2023), who claimed to King to have been an eyewitness to the event. When questioned a second time by King, Anger denied saying what he said the first time. Anger was never present at Smith’s performances of the Gnostic Mass; his initial exposure to the California Thelemites postdated the death of Jack Parsons in 1952. Sexual acts were not a part of the Church of Thelema’s semi-​public worship, nor was nudity, even though the latter was prescribed for the Priestess of the Gnostic Catholic Mass when not in a “savage country.” Helen Parsons Smith recalled to me that, for private performances, the Priestess was nude at the appropriate points. 29. Kenneth Grant recounted to me in person Crowley’s disdain as the latter showed him the photographs of Smith and the officers of Church of Thelema robed for the Mass. Grant’s silent and puzzled reaction to Crowley’s diatribe was that he thought they looked “rather good.” Even their mundane photographs were not spared Crowley’s criticism: “I once got a bunch of snapshots from Smith, and I must say I have rarely cast eyes upon a more fantastically common set of dials; most of them look loopy, and none of them look as if they had any birth, breeding or education whatsoever” (Crowley to Helen Parsons, May 4, 1943, HPS Papers). 30. She is referring to Karl J. Germer’s unpublished book, Protective Prisoner No. 303 (Under the Nazi Terror), the films rights to which Max Schneider had unsuccessfully attempted to sell; copies survive in the GJY Collection and the WTS Papers. Germer had been arrested by the Gestapo in February 1935 for the crime of being a friend of the English high-​grade Mason Crowley and held in a series of internment camps until he was freed by the complaints of his second wife, the American Cora Eaton (1872–​1942). 31. Untitled script for radio interview, WTS Papers. 32. Smith to Crowley, March 7, 1939, WTS Papers. See also Smith’s later statement: “A Jewish boy, wishing to capitalize on his knowledge and perhaps to establish himself as a second Iscarit [sic], collected thirty dollars from a Hearst reporter for introducing him to a possible scandal story to weave once again around the famous name of Aleister Crowley” (October 21, 1955, WTS Papers). 33. The transcription disks were transferred to vinyl in October 1955; six copies were pressed, and the G. J. Yorke set survives, as well as the original aluminum disks in the WTS Papers. On the reverse of the transcription disks are the recordings of the Gnostic Catholic Mass, along with Smith’s recitation of selections from Crowley’s poetry.

380 Notes 34. Crowley to Smith, March 17, 1939, WTS Papers. 35. The actual killer of Anya Sosoyeva was Dewitt Clinton Cook, who was convicted of her murder and executed at San Quentin Prison on January 31, 1941. 36. Frederic (Friedrich) Mellinger (1890–​1970), Frater Merlinus, a German actor, theater director, and playwright; he became a Probationer in the A∴A∴ under Smith (WTS Papers) on April 23, 1940, taking the motto Arte Unionem Manifestabo Gnosticam (“I will manifest the Gnostic union through Art”). 37. See Light for the New Millennium: Rudolph Steiner’s Association with Helmuth and Eliza von Moltke; Letters, Documents and After-​Death Communications, ed. T. H. Meyer, trans. H. Hermann-​Davey (1998). Steiner was claimed by Crowley as a member of the OTO; see Crowley, Magick without Tears (1954), xvii. 38. Mellinger to Germer, April 25, 1943 (typed transcript with annotations by Crowley), WTS Papers). 39. Crowley to Smith, May 15, 1941; the letter and the A∴A∴ Oath of a Probationer of John W. Parsons are in the WTS Papers. 40. Crowley to Smith, postmarked April 7, 1941, WTS Papers. Mellinger and Germer’s U.S. Immigration and Naturalization files were released to the author under the Freedom of Information Act. Mellinger’s sponsors for American citizenship were Jane Wolfe and Helen Parsons. 41. Crowley to Smith, March 24, 1940, WTS Papers. 42. Crowley to Smith, undated (ca. June 21, 1941), WTS Papers. In the same letter, in response to Smith’s question on a marriage rite for the Church of Thelema—​he had been asked by Grady L. McMurtry and Claire Palmer to marry them—​Crowley stated that one did not exist at present: “Obviously, both parties should be trained by experts, and their first performance approved by the assembled Church. Then, a brief reminder of the Duties +​Privileges relevant, and a special benediction. This could all be put into the Mass, and they should officiate at the next Mass, performing the Lance into Graal section actually instead of symbolically. That seems the sort of thing. But we may have to wait for the next War if we are keen on universal applause.” Although he did not perform marriages, on request Smith baptized children using a ritual he composed with Jack Parsons for the Church of Thelema (WTS Papers). 43. Crowley to Germer, March 14, 1942, GJY Collection. 44. Crowley to Smith, August 5, 1935, WTS Papers. 45. Smith to Germer, April 4, 1942, WTS Papers. 46. Louis T. Culling, “The Life Cycle of a Follower of Thelema,” WTS Papers. Parsons espoused an identical development plan in a letter to Crowley of November 26, 1943 (HPS Papers), as he saw that the financial demands for publication funds and the needs of the lodge could not simultaneously be met with their available resources. 47. Grady Louis McMurtry (1918–​1985), Frater Hymenaeus Alpha 777, soldier and poet; for the biblical references to “Hymenaeus,” see 1 Timothy 1:20 and 2 Timothy 2:17. McMurtry and Mellinger were the only American Thelemites to meet with Crowley during World War II. Their witness significantly affected Crowley’s views on Smith.

Notes  381 48. Smith to Crowley, June 15, 1941, WTS Papers. 49. See “Manifesto of December 7, 1941,” Appendix E. 50. Crowley to Smith, January 24, 1942, WTS Papers. 51. Crowley to Smith, January 24, 1942, WTS Papers. 52. Smith to Germer, January 10, 1942, WTS Papers. The phrases in quotations are extracted from Crowley’s letters to Schneider: “I hope that he [Smith] will show you his letters to me saying what a filthy bastard you were, and that you will show him your letters to me pointing out that his mother was a swine-​dog, and that jackals habitually piss upon the ashes of his unknown father” (February 4, 1936) and “I have felt all the time that too many people looked upon the G∴W∴ [Great Work] as a jolly lark which cost nothing—​unless on the scale of amateur theatricals” (July 31, 1933, GJY Collection). 53. Germer to Smith, January 19, 1942, WTS Papers. 54. Crowley to Wolfe, March 31, 1942, OTO Archives. 55. Crowley to Smith, April 1, 1942. Jones and his family had stopped over in Los Angeles to visit Smith on their way to Vancouver on November 28, 1939. 56. Jack Parsons to Helen Parsons, June 3, 1941, HPS Papers. 57. Jack Parsons to Helen Parsons, June 25, 1941, HPS Papers. 58. John W. Parsons, “Analysis by a Master of the Temple of the Critical Modes in the Experience of His Material Vehicle,” undated (ca. 1948), GJY Collection. 59. Helen Parsons, diary entry, August 16, 1941, HPS Papers. 60. Lease between Notram Corporation and John W. Parsons and Helen M. Parsons, June 15, 1942, HPS Papers. An extensive description of the Fleming House is in [Phyllis Seckler], “Jane Wolfe: Pasadena” in In the Continuum 3 (8): 34–​36 (1985). Seckler kindly drew for me layouts of the Hollywood and Pasadena OTO residences from memory.

Chapter 17 1. Joseph Dustin Miller (1904–​1992), IX˚ OTO; a former member of the AMORC and a lifelong Theosophist, he swore the Oath of the Abyss in 1944 and passed out of the circle of Thelemites. In later life he was known in the San Francisco Bay area as a Gnostic priest associated with Earl Blighton, the founder of the Holy Order of MANS, and was regarded as a kind of a Sufi Madzub (“divine fool”). A collection of his talks was published as Great Song: The Life and Teachings of Joe Miller (1993), ed. Richard Power. 2. See Smith to C. J. Fitzharris, Assistant Secretary, Board of Prison Terms and Paroles, State of California, June 22, 1943 (WTS Papers). Seckler was paroled on October 22, 1943. 3. See The Liturgy According to the Use of the Liberal Catholic Church (3rd ed., 1942), 417, where it is titled “An Invocation.” 4. Smith to Crowley, June 22, 1942, WTS Papers.

382 Notes 5. Helen’s accounting ledgers for 1003 S. Orange Grove and Agape Lodge survive in the HPS Papers. 6. Ray George Burlingame (1893–​1965), Frater Aquarius or 384, IX˚ OTO; his second wife was Mildred Christine Creamer (1913–​1981), Soror Interlucere (“to shine in the midst”) or 894 of the OTO. Their daughter was Laylah Mildred Burlingame (1943–​2008). 7. Crowley composed an essay “On the Vow of Holy Obedience” (unpublished, WTS Papers) in response to reports of the Pasadena experiments. 8. Wolfe to Crowley, September 6, 1942, WTS Papers. 9. Crowley to Wolfe, September 30, 1942, OTO Archives. 10. Crowley to Smith, October 4, 1942, WTS Papers. 11. Wolfe to Germer, October 11, 1942, OTO Archives. 12. Wolfe to Germer, April 5, 1943, OTO Archives. 13. Crowley to Wolfe (OTO Archives); although dated the autumnal equinox, which fell on September 23, 1942, from the chronology of the letters it appears to be backdated. 14. Crowley, Word of the Equinox, September 23, 1942, WTS Papers. 15. Wolfe, “Report of Soror Estai” to Germer, November 18–​19, 1942, OTO Archives. 16. Germer to Wolfe, December 3, 1942, OTO Archives. 17. Germer to Wolfe, December 3, 1942, OTO Archives. 18. “Rancho RoyAL” was Roy Leffingwell’s rural estate in Barstow, California. Leffingwell wanted to deed over his ranch to Crowley, but the transfer was ultimately unsuccessful as the former did not have a clear title to the property. 19. Jack Parsons’s handwritten title page (WTS Papers) for the 1942 edition of The Book of the Law shows the correct imprint date of October 31, 1942. 20. The text appears in the foreword signed “O.M.” to the 1938 edition of The Book of the Law, 14. Regina Kahl commented in a letter to Smith of December 20, 1942 (WTS Papers), on the subsequent phrase, “Ferocious Fascism, cackling Communism, equally frauds,” in that letter to the FBI from a confidential informant dated May 24, 1942, in Germer’s FBI file100-​65028, which was released to the author on August 12, 1983. 21. Letter to the FBI from a confidential informant dated May 24, 1942, in Germer’s FBI file 100-​65028, which was released to the author on August 12, 1983. 22. War Department, Army Air Forces, Materiel Command, Alhambra Area Office, August 2,1943; file on John W. Parsons released to the author under the Freedom of Information Act by the Department of the Army, U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command, on November 10, 1983. 23. The “Loyalty and Character Report for War Department,” dated August 2, 1943, stated that the source of the anonymous letter to the Pasadena Police Department “was a Gas Company employee, and live [sic] with the Parsons family. He is said to now be in the U.S. Army.” 24. Theodore von Kármán (1881–​1963), aeronautical genius, central to the founding of Aerojet and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory; Frank Joseph Malina (1912–​1981) was also a founder of Aerojet and the second director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Jack had named von Kármán and Malina as character references in his October 1940

Notes  383 Army security clearance; the former’s name raised a red flag, as the FBI reported that he had been a member of Hungarian and German Communist Parties. 25. Parsons’s FBI file 65–​59589 was released to the author under the Freedom of Information Act on April 5, 1983; in it are extracts from an internal security investigation conducted by the FBI (file 100–​189320) on the Church of Thelema (sometimes mistyped “Thelma”); that file was destroyed in 1973. 26. John W. Parsons to Smith, January 30, 1943, WTS Papers. 27. Crowley to Wolfe, telegram, January 23, 1943, OTO Archives. Jack and Helen Parsons’s cable in reply to Crowley was sent January 27, 1943, WTS Papers. 28. Crowley to Wolfe, February 16, 1943, OTO Archives. 29. Helen Parsons to Crowley, October 25, 1942, HPS Papers. 30. Germer to Smith, March 15, 1943, WTS Papers. 31. Smith to Grady McMurtry, April 22, 1943, WTS Papers. 32. Jack Parsons to Grady McMurtry, April 2, 1943, HPS Papers. McMurtry accused Jack Parsons of complicity in his ex-​wife’s abortion in his letter to the latter of May 8, 1943, OTO Archives. An abortion is mentioned in Helen Parsons’s diary for December 29, 1941, HPS Papers: “Dr. Z.T.M. and I performed murder with JWP help. The real job this time—​$50.00.” The physician was Dr. Zachary Taylor Malaby (1872–​1964), great-​grandson of President Zachary Taylor; he was a prominent Pasadena surgeon and professor of obstetrics who also performed Sara’s abortion on April 1, 1943. 33. Frederic Mellinger, natal chart of Helen Parsons, 1942, HPS Papers. 34. For a discussion of the organizational strategy of sectarian collectivities, see Roy Wallis, The Road to Total Freedom: A Sociological Analysis of Scientology (1976), 17: “Propounding a new gnosis and centralizing authority permits the exercise of greater control over the collectivity through the elimination or undermining of alternative loci of power and the transmutation of independent practitioners and teachers into organizational functionaries.” Wallis interviewed Helen Parsons Smith as the former sister-​in-​law of L. Ron Hubbard.

Chapter 18 1. Crowley to Helen Parsons, May 4, 1943, HPS Papers. Among Smith’s correspondence with Crowley is a draft of a telegram dated January 27, 1943, WTS Papers, suggesting that they cannot afford to lose Smith and that Crowley should not believe all he was told; the draft is signed “Love and trust Jack and Helen Parsons.” 2. Mellinger to Germer, April 25, 1943, WTS Papers. 3. Roy Leffingwell noted his appreciation of Smith qua Priest in a letter to Crowley, July 11, 1943, GJY Collection. 4. Crowley to Roy Leffingwell, May 3, 1943, GJY Collection. 5. Louis Bromfield, The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928), 52. 6. See Crowley, The General Principles of Astrology (2002), 49–​52, for a discussion of his theory of the “astrological complex.”

384 Notes 7. See Liber CXXXII, Appendix G. 8. Crowley annotated this passage in the letter: “To-​morrow I shall NLT [night letter telegram] you about this, +​write full instructions for a Magical Formula that I am digging up for him.” 9. Crowley to Germer, May 31, 1943, GJY Collection. 10. Smith, diary entry, July 10, 1943, WTS Papers. 11. Crowley to Roy Leffingwell, August 16, 1943, GJY Collection. 12. Crowley to Germer, August 30, 1943, GJY Collection. Crowley’s cable to Max Schneider of August 15, 1943, indicated that any communication with Smith except under the conditions dictated in Liber CXXXII would result in expulsion; see Crowley, diary, August 15, 1943, GJY Collection. 13. Smith, diary entry, August 2, 1943, WTS Papers. 14. Smith, diary entry, August 12, 1943, WTS Papers. 15. Smith to Kahl, August 27, 1943, WTS Papers. 16. Jean Stoddard Phillips, née Greife (1909–​1982). Her Probationer motto in the A∴A∴, suggested by Crowley, was Per Verbum Orior (“Through the Word I rise”). 17. Germer to Jack Parsons, August 22, 1943, HPS Papers. 18. Jack Parsons to Germer, August 27, 1943, HPS Papers. 19. Jack Parsons to Crowley, September 14, 1943, HPS Papers. 20. Quoted in Smith, “Letter to each member of the Ordo Templi Orientis,” September 14, 1943, WTS Papers. 21. Smith to Germer, September 14, 1943, WTS Papers. 22. Crowley to Jack Parsons, October 19, 1943, HPS Papers. 23. See Crowley, Moonchild (1929), 25. 24. Wolfe to Germer, September 9, 1943, OTO Archives. 25. Jack Parsons to Crowley, September 14, 1943, HPS Papers. 26. Crowley to Phyllis Seckler, October 20, 1943, GJY Collection. 27. Untitled note regarding Sara Northrup, October 1, 1943, GJY Collection; it was written the same day Crowley received Parsons’s letter of resignation of September 14, 1943. 28. Quoted in Roy Leffingwell to Crowley, April 9, 1944, WTS Papers. 29. Smith to Kahl, April 29, 1944, WTS Papers. 30. Crowley to Roy Leffingwell, July 3, 1944, WTS Papers. 31. Crowley, diary entry, May 23, 1944. GJY Collection. 32. George Kenneth Grant (1924–​2011). For details of his studies with Crowley, see Kenneth Grant, Remembering Aleister Crowley (1991). 33. Smith to Kahl, April 29, 1944, WTS Papers. 34. Jack Parsons to Smith, April 28, 1944, WTS Papers. He further wrote Smith: “I can see the point in protecting a brother, even at hazzard [sic] to oneself, but I cant see the point in taking a lot of shit just because someone else hasn’t guts enough to stand up to it” (December 28, 1944). According to Helen Parsons Smith, the issue of Kwen’s parentage did not arise in her divorce from Jack Parsons, the final judgment for which was entered on October 17, 1946 (No. Pasa. D 4167), although it was raised in the

Notes  385 early versions of her divorce filings. Parsons married Marjorie Cameron on October 19, 1946. 35. Helen Parsons to Jack Parsons, November 6, 1944, HPS Papers. 36. Smith, dedication of Great Magical Retirement, September 21, 1944, WTS Papers. 37. Kahl to Helen Parsons, September 17, 1944, HPS Papers. 38. Crowley to Helen Parsons, October 26, 1944, HPS Papers. 39. Smith, diary, October 17, 1944, WTS Papers. 40. Smith, diary, October 23, 1944, WTS Papers. 41. Quoted in Helen Parsons to Jack Parsons, November 6, 1944, HPS Papers. 42. Crowley to Helen Parsons, February 9, 1945, HPS Papers. 43. Smith to Crowley, January 20, 1945, WTS Papers. 44. Jack Parsons to Smith, February 6, 1945, WTS Papers. 45. Crowley to Jack Parsons, telegram, February 13, 1945, HPS Papers. Crowley had written to Helen Parsons on February 9, 1945 (HPS Papers), suggesting that Smith should come out of his ordeal transformed: “He must be prepared to be arrested as a vagrant, to be sent to the loony-​bin—​anything. All the saints have acted this way—​ that’s why they are saints.” 46. Agape Lodge, Third Degree Council minutes, February 17, 1945, WTS Papers. 47. Crowley to Georgia Schneider, March 14, 1945, GJY Collection. Crowley’s “Artemis Iota,” a treatise on thelemic sexual morality, was written in 1943 in direct response to the author’s perception of the affairs within Agape Lodge. The title was constructed to add to 666 by Greek isopsephy; it is published in Magick without Tears (1954), 79–​83. 48. Crowley to Helen Parsons, March 9, 1945, HPS Papers. 49. Crowley to Smith, March 9, 1945, WTS Papers. 50. Crowley to Wolfe, March 22, 1945, OTO Archives. 51. Culling to Crowley, October 23, 1946, HPS Papers. 52. Parsons’s involvement with L. Ron Hubbard in 1945–​1946 has been treated in Bent Corydon and L. Ron Hubbard, Jr., L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman? (1987); Russell Miller, Bare-​faced Messiah (1988), John Carter, Sex and Rockets: The Occult World of Jack Parsons (1999); and George Pendle, Strange Angel: The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons (2005).

Chapter 19 1. Crowley, diary, September 25, 1945, GJY Collection. See the frontispiece to the present book. It was taken by the Kourken Studio of Pasadena, California, and shows Smith dressed for the part of “Saladin” in the OTO degrees. 2. Crowley, “AHA,” in The Equinox 1 (3): 23 (1910). 3. Crowley to Smith, January 29, 1946, WTS Papers. 4. Crowley to Frederic Mellinger, October 30, 1945, location unknown, photocopy in author’s possession. 5. Olga Northrup to Helen Parsons, June 16, 1946, HPS Papers.

386 Notes 6. Smith, diary March 19, 1946, WTS Papers. Alton left Smith an enigmatic note which the latter tipped into his 1946–​1948 diary: “I love you in a way you have never been loved before.” 7. Crowley, diary, March 20, 1946, GJY Collection. 8. Smith to Crowley, June 27, 1947, WTS Papers. 9. Smith, diary, August 24, 1947, WTS Papers. 10. Smith, diary, December 14, 1947, WTS Papers. 11. The obituary in Time (December 15, 1947, 36) archly commented, “The world of 1947 buried him almost without noticing it, and without a shudder.” 12. In response to James Thomas Windram’s request for an order with more freedom but remaining under the aegis of the A∴A∴, after the breakup of Temple Lodge in June 1922 Crowley composed the “Constitution of the Order of Thelemites” (unpublished) and made Windram its “sole and supreme authority,” responsible to Crowley only. Windram’s Order of Thelemites had a brief period of activity. After Crowley’s death, the succession of the Order of Thelemites was confused with that of the A∴A∴, owing to an initial transmission by Yorke to Germer of a portion of the document. The requirement of the “Constitution of the Order of Thelemites” that a new head of this order be elected a year and a day after the death of his predecessor was still further confused by Germer with the succession to the office of OHO of the OTO. 13. Ero Olavi Sihvonen (1914–​1962). 14. Smith, diary, June 16, 1948, WTS Papers. 15. Smith named Kwen Parsons his successor in office in an open letter of September 25, 1948, WTS Papers. 16. Marjorie Elizabeth Cameron (1922–​1995), artist, familiarly known as “Candida,” “Candy,” or, most frequently, “Cameron.” 17. Jack Parsons, untitled chronology of the “Black Pilgrimage,” November 17, 1948, WTS Papers. The name “Belarion” is adapted from the titular “half-​god, half-​beast” character in Rafael Sabatini’s Bellarion the Fortunate: A Romance (1926). 18. Jack Parsons to Smith, January 25, 1950, WTS Papers. 19. Jack Parsons to Germer, March 31, 1950, GJY Collection. 20. Germer was influenced by the pseudo-​science of Adam D. Barber, whose The Coming Disaster Worse than the H-​Bomb (1955) predicted an imminent world flood due to the sudden reversal of the earth’s axis; his solution was to have lifeboats moored to poles at every street corner. Germer sent a copy to Smith, who remarked that he found in it a “lack of sane thinking” (Smith to Germer, December 15, 1956, WTS Papers). 21. Smith to Germer, March 27, 1950, WTS Papers. 22. Smith to Ernst von Harringa, June 28, 1954, WTS Papers. 23. Smith to Germer, May 16, 1929, WTS Papers. 24. Ruby Jones to Yorke, June 13, 1950, GJY Collection. 25. Smith to Kenneth Grant, April 9, 1951, WTS Papers. 26. Germer to Smith, August 22, 1955, WTS Papers. 27. Smith to Germer, July 26, 1955, WTS Papers. 28. Regarding Peithmann, see Helmut Möller and Ellic Howe, Merlin Peregrinus (1986), 180–​182.

Notes  387 29. Montenegro interpreted this word to mean “a spark from whence shall shine the Flame of a new life” (July 17, 1948, HPS Papers); its numeration was 487. He was later elevated to the IX˚ OTO by Germer. 30. Montenegro to Helen Parsons Smith, August 1, 1968, HPS Papers: “This last and most sublime degree of Free Masonry I find to be in a way connected to Thelema, perhaps remotely.” 31. The stage name of Anna Mary Aldrich (1903–​1996); she was a post-​Smith member of Agape Lodge, known as Soror IVA or 17. She first signed the guest register (WTS Papers) on December 17, 1933, as “Mika Aldridge,” an earlier former version of her stage name. Meeka Aldrich was a bit player in motion pictures and was cast alongside her mother Mariska Aldrich (1881–​1965), an opera singer who had befriended Max Schneider in 1934. 32. Smith to Germer, July 26, 1955, WTS Papers. 33. Smith to Germer, February 22, 1953, WTS Papers: “Candy wants to swing the eight or so people into the O.T.O., consisting of some negroes and some whites. It is revealed that they want to formulate an anti-​Jewish movement, and this was Jane’s block in approaching you.” Smith held anti-​Semitic views, blaming the Jews for the destruction of paganism by Christianity. His library included copies of Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion and a typescript of a parody of anti-​Semitism (which Smith took seriously), Marcus Eli Ravage’s “A Real Case against the Jews: One of Them Points out the Full Depth of Their Guilt,” from The Century Magazine (January 1928). 34. Smith to Germer, July 26, 1954, WTS Papers. 35. Culling to Omar Garrison, undated [ca. June 1952], HPS Papers. 36. Crowley, “Concerning Death,” in The International 11 (12): 365 (December 1917). 37. Smith to Germer, December 2, 1952, WTS Papers. 38. Hermann Joseph Metzger (1919–​1990), founder of the “Abtei Thelema” in Stein, Appenzell, Switzerland, and the leader of a postwar group of the OTO. 39. Helen Parsons to Germer, June 7, 1953, HPS Papers. 40. Smith to Germer, October 3, 1953, WTS Papers. 41. Germer, pledge issued to Montenegro, September 7, 1953, HPS Papers. On the recipient’s protest, Germer relented, and did not force Montenegro to sign the pledge. 42. Smith to Germer, October 21, 1953, WTS Papers. Regardie met Smith and Helen ca. 1954 at a garden party; Helen recounted that Frater 132 “steered me out of his way all afternoon, much to my desires for I did not like the ‘evil eye’ nor his aura! Regina [Kahl] had her experience with IR, and she came out of the acquaintance having a very high regard for F∴132∴ and Thelema” (Helen Parsons Smith to Gabriel Montenegro, November 17, 1963, HPS Papers). 43. Smith to Germer, March 28, 1954, WTS Papers. 44. Smith to Ernst von Harringa, April 13, 1955, WTS Papers. 45. Smith to Ernst von Harringa, November 20, 1956, WTS Papers. Von Harringa offered Smith his analysis of Germer in a note of August 1952: Strong neurotic imagination, which can easely [sic] put out of Balance. Is very aggresiv [sic], but can also be very social if it suits his purpose. Is very critical of others but cannot stand Criticism of himself. Restles [sic] emotional

388 Notes type, combined with a colossal egotistical complex. It seems as if he could walk over dead bodies, but lacks that ultimate courage for it, because he is primarily an actor, and like an actor always looking for the next role, will approach all human beeings [sic] from the point of what he can get out of them and how do I go about doing it. . . . Is a good observer with a certain amount of humor. . . . Has an adonis complex and thinks of himself like a halfgod. . . . Good possibility of a frustrated homosexual. 46. Marcelo Ramos Motta (1931–​1987), aspirant to the A∴A∴ and editor of Crowley’s Liber Aleph (1962) and a later series of Crowley’s works, including an edition of Crowley’s commentaries on The Book of the Law, published as The Commentaries of AL (1975). See also Lisa Whatley, A Window to the Sun (1999), a roman à clef of Motta’s mother and family, written by his half-​sister. 47. Motta’s Chamando Os Filhos do Sol (1962), privately published under the pseudonym of “M.,” includes an autobiography focusing on his early occult career. 48. Motta, “Masonry and Rosicrucianism—​American Masonry—​Masonic Rituals and Practices,” OTO Archives. 49. Joint Statement of Karl and Sascha Germer, June 8, 1956, WTS Papers. 50. See Norman Cameron, “The Paranoid Pseudo-​Community Revisited,” in American Journal of Sociology 65: 52–​58 (1959). 51. Frederic Mellinger to Smith, April 19, 1956, WTS Papers. 52. Crowley, “Energized Enthusiasm,” in The Equinox 1 (9): 17–​46 (1913). 53. See Crowley to Roy Leffingwell, October 12, 1942, GJY Collection: “It is quite unimportant to deed the property from a practical point of view, although of course it is one of the conditions of the 7th degree of the O.T.O. that some real estate must be given to the Order. Conditions, unfortunately, have changed so much in the last 50 years that we have had to waive this clause, as the gangsters who run the world are wiping out the small property owners.” 54. Germer to Motta, September 11, 1956, location unknown, photocopy in author’s collection. 55. Motta to Germer, September 20, 1956, OTO Archives. 56. Germer to Smith, December 18, 1956, WTS Papers. 57. Culling to Germer, January 6, 1957, HPS Papers. Culling’s “O.A.N. Glossary of Occultism” (unpublished, WTS Papers) defined the “Enchantment Method” thus: “There are those Occult & Metaphysical Tramps who haunt as many Occult Schools as possible, brouse [sic] and read the books in the Occult section, and soaking up the whole mixture like a dry sponge takes liquids. They then ‘know it all’—​they have arrived! They do violence to kindergarden [sic] rules of Logic, Synthesis & organized observation—​such rules are for those of low degree, still in the dark.” 58. Taking a cue from Smith’s unique name for his son, Motta named his son “Krel” after the long-​extinct technologically and ethically advanced race in Forbidden Planet (1956), the “Krell.” 59. Motta to Germer, April 10, 1957, OTO Archives. 60. Germer to Culling, August 15, 1953, HPS Papers. In The Commentaries of AL (1975), an edition of Crowley’s commentaries on The Book of the Law intermixed with Motta’s remarks, the latter noted that “Liber XV was read in California for several years, the Mass was performed, and interviews were given to reporters who referred to that

Notes  389 particular group as ‘The Purple Cult.’ It was indeed purple, and perhaps a bit too voluptuous. Love must be under will, and the word of the Law is thelema, not agape!” 61. Helen Parsons to Jane Wolfe, April 27, 1957, HPS Papers. 62. State of California, Department of Health Services, Office of the State Registrar of Vital Statistics, death certificate for Wilfred Talbot Smith, state file number 57–​041762. 63. Motta to Germer, May 7, 1957, OTO Archives.

Epilogue 1. Helen Parsons Smith to Ernst von Harringa, September 3, 1957, HPS Papers. 2. Louis T. Culling to Helen Parsons Smith, November 19, 1957, HPS Papers. 3. Louis T. Culling to Helen Parsons Smith, November 19, 1957, HPS Papers. 4. Louis T. Culling to Marcelo Ramos Motta, December 3, 1957, OTO Archives. 5. Certificate of Doctor of Magick degree issued to Helen Parsons Smith, May 1, 1958, by the O.A.N. Dr., HPS Papers. 6. State of California, Department of Health Services, Office of the State Registrar of Vital Statistics, death certificate for Jane Wolfe, state file number 58–​032162. 7. State of California, Department of Health Services, Office of the State Registrar of Vital Statistics, death certificate for Karl Germer, state file number 62–​106605. 8. Germer to Louis T. Culling, December 12, 1956, HPS Papers. Grady McMurtry later opined to the present author that Germer’s manner of death was the fulfillment of the penalty clause of the oath of the Minerval degree; his “offense” was not calling together the members of the IX˚ of the OTO to elect a new OHO a year and a day after Crowley’s death, as McMurtry mistakenly believed had been prescribed by Crowley for the OTO. 9. Germer to Motta, June 23, 1962, location unknown, photocopy in author’s collection. The wittiness of the phrase suggests that it may be an echo of one of Crowley’s obiter dicta. 10. Sascha Germer to Motta, October 30, 1962, location unknown, photocopy in author’s collection. 11. Ordo Templi Orientis, Manifesto Zums Frühlings-​Äquinox: To the Spring-​Equinox (1963), [15]. Helen Parsons Smith received the copy addressed to her late husband on April 19, 1963. 12. Ordo Templi Orientis, Manifesto Zums Frühlings-​Äquinox to the Spring-​Equinox (1963), [19]. 13. For a participant account, see Frater Shiva, Inside Solar Lodge: Behind the Veil: True Tales of Initiation and Inner Adventures (2012); see also Martin P. Starr, “Chaos from an Order: Cohesion and Conflict in the Post-​Crowley Occult Continuum,” in The Pomegranate 8 (1): 84–​117 (2006).

Appendix A 1. [The text here follows the typed carbon copy of this portion of his diary, which has been transcribed and partially rewritten by Smith from his holograph original and follows Smith’s erratic spelling uncorrected and largely uncommented.]

390 Notes 2. [It is entitled “An Epistle unto the Children of the Aquarian Movement concerning the Realization of their Hopes and Wishes and the perfect basis of Friendship”; a copy survives in the WTS Papers. In the letter Jones exhorts Musclow’s followers to take up the Law of Thelema and establish a “Lodge or Profess-​House.” Musclow is said to be “an astrologer . . . led through his studies to recognise . . . that we have entered a new Cycle, the Cycle of Freedom.” Taylor refused to allow the letter to be read. After Smith’s return to North Vancouver in June 1921, he re-​established contact with Taylor in November of that year with no results.] 3. [In the holograph entry for this date, Smith adds: “This looks more like writing a diary for some one else; but as I am doing no practices except trying to improve my spelling, composition, also once more rewriting my diary, there is nothing to enter.”] 4. [Smith’s holograph diary for this period ends here; the remainder survives only in a typed carbon copy in the WTS Papers.] 5. [See The Book of the Law, iii: 7.]

Appendix B 1. Published in the Detroit Times, February 10, 1922.

Appendix C 1. [The reference is to Isidro Villarino del Villar (1843–​1912), a central figure in unrecognized Freemasonry in Spain. Unaware of his death, in 1913 Crowley proposed Villarino for the office of Grand Hierophant 97˚ of the Rite of Memphis to succeed John Yarker, “not only because he is the eldest in years of us all, but because of the distinguished services which he has rendered to the Rite” (GJY Papers).] 2. [For Frosini, see Christian Giudice, Occult Imperium: Arturo Reghini, Roman Traditionalism, and the Anti-​Modern Reaction in Fascist Italy (2022).] 3. [See Marion Dockerill, My Life in a Love Cult: A Warning to All Young Girls (1928).] 4. [Smith to Crowley, telegram, December 29, 1935.] 5. [“The Authority of the O.H.O. in all English-​speaking countries is delegated by charter” in [Crowley], Manifesto of the M∴M∴M∴. (undated, ca. 1913), 8–​9, paragraph 7. The text cited above appears in paragraph 6 in [Crowley], “Liber LII: Manifesto of the O.T.O.,” The Equinox 3 (1): 201 (1919). R. Swinburne Clymer, Not under the Rosy Cross (ca. 1935), 107, backdates the 1919 publication to 1911. 6. [Crowley appears to be referring to the September 1912 “Jubilaeums-​Ausgabe” issue of Oriflamme where his photograph in masonic regalia appears on p. 31, captioned “Br∴ Aleister Crowley, 33˚, 90˚, 96˚, X˚ National-​Grossmeister für Grossbritannien und Irland der Mysteria Mystica Maxima des Orientalischen Templer-​Ordens OTO.” This publication is dated earlier than the presumed date of the Manifesto of the M∴M∴M∴., not later as Crowley states here.]

Notes  391 7. [See R. Swinburne Clymer, Not under the Rosy Cross (ca. 1935), 108, titled “Fac-​simile Reproduction No. 20.” The seal in question is corrected identified by Clymer as the OTO seal. The engraver was Benjamin Charles Hammond, an English member of OTO.]

Appendix F 1. [This is a direct quotation from a letter from Karl Germer to Jane Wolfe, January 25, 1943.] 2. [Smith cabled Crowley on March 20, 1943, during Agape Lodge’s vernal equinox party: “GREETINGS OF THE VERNAL EQUINOX FROM ALL AT TEN-​ O-​ THREE” (WTS Papers). On the same day Jack Parsons cabled Crowley: “GREETINGS WILL SEE GERMER SOON HAVE NOT WRITTEN YET NOTHING TO SAY SITUATION COMPLICATED BORING LOVE JACK PARSONS” (WTS Papers).] 3. [Crowley cabled Smith on March 22, 1943: “GREETINGS CORDIALLY RECIPROCATED BUT PRINTERS INSTANTLY DEMAND INSTALMENTS ALTERNATIVE CALAMITOUS IMMEDIATE RELIEF THROUGH GERMER IMPERATIVE” (WTS Papers).] 4. [Crowley is referring to his pre-​war correspondent Grunddal Sjallung (1895–​1976), Galahad X˚ OTO, the successor to Carl William Hansen-​Kadosh (1872–​1936) who had been given an OTO charter by Reuss in 1921. Hansen had advertised the existence of the Danish section of OTO in the second edition of Who’s Who in Occultism, New Thought, Psychism and Spiritualism, comp. and ed. William C. Hartmann (1927), 84: “The only surviving branch of the Ancient Order, which was reorganized in England and Germany, 1906, now resides in Denmark.” When Sjallung initiated correspondence with Crowley in 1938, he reiterated Hansen’s belief that OTO had ceased operating outside of Denmark.] 5. [Possibly a reference to H. Spencer Lewis, to whom Reuss issued a “Gauge of Amity” charter in 1921 which recognized him as a VII˚ in OTO.] 6. [For Crowley’s edited version of the Co-​Masonic tribute to Yarker, see [Crowley], “In Memoriam—​John Yarker,” in The Equinox 1 (10): xix–​xxii (1912).] 7. [A parody of Job 3:17: “There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest.”] 8. [Crowley is mistaken; Utah was founded by Brigham Young, not Joseph Smith.] 9. [Matthew 21:42: “Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes?”] 10. [Crowley, The World’s Tragedy (1910); its introduction includes a long description of Crowley’s “childhood in hell” which included being sentenced to “Coventry,” where none of his classmates were allowed to speak to him; Dombey and Sons (1846–​1848) is by Charles Dickens.] 11. [Smith noted: “Sex Question, in case you should write and say I was afraid to write it out in full.”]

392 Notes 12. [Crowley, The City of God (1943); Crowley sent Smith copy no. 132, with an inscription “To Wilfred Smith Fra∴ 132 Your own number—​but What is it? Love from 666.”] 13. [Smith is referring to Crowley’s denunciatory open letter of October 1931, “Early History of Karl Germer” (WTS Papers). Crowley and Germer had quarreled around the time of Crowley’s art exhibit in Berlin in October 1931 and Smith was a party to their postal exchanges.] 14. [Smith cabled Crowley on September 10, 1943: “POSTPONING OPERATION RESIGN INTOTO THANKS FAIRWELL” (WTS Papers).] 15. [Macbeth, ii. 2, l. 36: “Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care.”] 16. [The reference is to Smith’s open letter to the members of Agape Lodge of September 14, 1943 (WTS Papers), wherein he reiterated his continued belief in the “principals” [sic] of the OTO. The same spelling error occurs in Smith’s letter to Crowley of September 14, 1943.] 17. [A reference to a story told by Georgia Haitz, rebutted by Jane Wolfe, that the former was forced to have sex with Smith when she joined the OTO in 1936. An anonymized version of this tale had recently been circulated in a letter by Max R. Schneider which had been forwarded to Crowley: “Here is a little anecdote that is being told . . . to some woman he wanted and who didn’t want him he said, ‘Now that you have been initiated into the order don’t you realize that I can command you to sleep with me?’ ” (Max R. Schneider to Germer, July 4, 1943, WTS Papers).]

Appendix G 1. [The sum is the result of Crowley having misspelled “apotheosis” in Greek as in the subtitle; the correct total is 1375.]. 2. [Macbeth, v. 2, ll. 20–​22: “now does he feel his title hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe upon a dwarfish thief.”] 3. [Louis Bromfield, The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928). 4. [Crowley notes: “For the general theory the student may refer to Moonchild.”] 5. [The summer solstice of 1916 was the date of Charles Stansfeld Jones’s assumption of the grade of Magister Templi, to which Wilfred Smith was a witness. In the winter of 1909 Crowley experienced a series of apocalyptic visions by means of the “Enochian keys” of John Dee; the collected visions were published as The Vision and the Voice.] 6. [See Crowley, “Liber CDXV Opus Lutetianum the Paris Working” in Crowley, Victor B. Neuburg, and Mary Desti, The Vision and the Voice with Commentary and other papers (1998), 343–​398.] 7. [Victor B. Neuburg (1883–​1940), English poet and disciple of Crowley.] 8. [See Revelation 14:16: “And he caused all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads.”]

Works Cited Abbreviations CSJ Papers GJY Collection HPS Papers OTO Archives WTS Papers

Charles Stansfeld Jones Papers Gerald J. Yorke Collection Helen Parsons Smith Papers Ordo Templi Orientis Archives Wilfred T. Smith Papers

Unpublished Sources Charles Stansfeld Jones Papers, private collection (England). The majority of Jones’s surviving papers, including correspondence with Aleister Crowley and Karl J. Germer; diaries; literary works; miscellaneous correspondence. Consulted in photocopies from the OTO Archives. Philip Kaplan Papers, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. Kaplan’s correspondence with Karl J. Germer and others regarding Crowley’s literary works. John P. Kowal Papers, photocopy in author’s collection (United States). Letters and instructions from C. F. Russell and Sydney Hamilton French for the Choronzon Club (1930–​1934). Ordo Templi Orientis Archives, OTO International Headquarters. Correspondence and diaries of Karl J. Germer, Grady L. McMurtry, Israel Regardie, Max R. Schneider, and Jane Wolfe. C. F. Russell Papers, private collection (United States). Russell’s correspondence with Aleister Crowley; diaries; instructions for the Choronzon Club and the Universal Brotherhood; photographs. Helen Parsons Smith Papers, private collection (United States). Correspondence of Louis T. Culling, Reea Leffingwell, Gabriel Montenegro, John W. Parsons, and Helen Parsons Smith; diaries; ledgers; photographs; other materials related to Aleister Crowley, the OTO, and Thelema Publications. Wilfred T. Smith Papers, private collection (Canada). Smith’s correspondence with Aleister Crowley, Louis T. Culling, Karl J. Germer, Regina Kahl, Roy E. Leffingwell, Grady L. McMurtry, Frederic Mellinger, Max R. Schneider, Jane Wolfe, and others; diaries of Smith, Oliver Jacobi, and Leota Schneider; photographs; OTO rituals; guest register (1932–​1950); audio recordings; other materials. Societas Rosicruciana in America Archives, private collection (United States). Correspondence of George Winslow Plummer and the Societas Rosicruciana in America.

394  Works cited Gerald J. Yorke Collection, Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study, the University of London. The major collection of Crowley-​related primary materials: correspondence, diaries, and printed works.

Published Sources AMORC National Membership Defense Committee. White Book “D”: Audi Alteram Partem (Hear the Other Side). San Jose: AMORC, 1935. Anson, Peter. Bishops at Large: Some Autocephalous Churches of the Past Hundred Years and Their Founders. London: Faber and Faber, 1964. Atwood, Mary Anne. A Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery: With a Dissertation on the More Celebrated of the Alchemical Philosophers, Being an Attempt towards the Recovery of the Ancient Experiment of Nature. 3rd ed. Belfast: William Tait, 1920. Bailey, Alice A. From Bethlehem to Calvary. New York: Lucis, 1937. Bainbridge, William Sims. The Sociology of Religious Movements. New York: Routledge, 1997. Barber, Adam D. The Coming Disaster Worse than the H-​Bomb. Washington, DC: Barber Scientific Foundation, 1955. Barker, A. T., ed. The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, from the Mahatmas M. and K. H. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1923. Basu, Srischandra, trans. Esoteric Philosophy of the Tantras: Shiva Sanhita. Calcutta: Heeralal Dhole, 1887. Baudouin, Charles. Suggestion and Autosuggestion: A Psychological and Pedagogical Study Based upon the Investigations Made by the New Nancy School. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1921. Bedales School. Bedales School Roll. Petersfield, UK: Bedales School, 1906. Bennett, Allan [Ananda Metteya, pseud.]. “The Training of the Mind.” The Equinox 1 (5): 28–​59 (1911). Betz, Hans Dieter, ed. The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. Blavatsky, H. P. The Secret Doctrine. 2 vols. London: Theosophical Publishing House, 1888. Blavatsky Lodge, T. S. Transactions of the Blavatsky Lodge of the Theosophical Society. 1890–​1891. Reprint, Los Angeles: Theosophy, 1987. Blavatsky, H. P. The Voice of the Silence: And Other Chosen Fragments from the Book of the Golden Precepts for the Daily Use of Lanoos (Disciples). 1889. Reprint, Los Angeles: Theosophy, 1987. Bogdan, Henrik. “Challenging the Morals of Western Society: The Use of Ritualised Sex in Contemporary Occultism.” The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies 8 (2): 211–​246 (2006). Bogdan, Henrik [Frater Taos, pseud.]. “Charles Stansfeld Jones and the Universal Brotherhood.” In Success Is Your Proof: One Hundred Years of the O.T.O. in North America, 123–​143. New York: Sekmet Books, 2015. Bodgan, Henrik. “The Esotericism of the Esoteric School of Quatuor Coronati Lodge.” Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 133: 1–​13 (2020). Bogdan, Henrik. Kenneth Grant: A Bibliography from 1948. Göteborg, Sweden: Academia Esoterica Press, 2003.

Works cited  395 Bodgan, Henrik. “The Sociology of the Construct of Tradition and Import of Legitimacy in Freemasonry.” In Constructing Tradition: Means and Myths of Transmission in Western Esotericism, 217–​238. Edited by Andreas B. Kilcher. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2011. Bogdan, Henrik. Western Esotericism and Rituals of Initiation. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007. Bogdan, Henrik, and Martin P. Starr, eds. Aleister Crowley and Western Esotericism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Bromfield, Louis. The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg. New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1928. Cabell, James Branch. Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice. New York: Robert M. McBride, 1919. Cameron, Norman. “The Paranoid Pseudo-​Community Revisited.” American Journal of Sociology 65: 52–​58 (1959). Carter, John [pseud.]. Sex and Rockets: The Occult World of Jack Parsons. Venice, CA: Feral House, 1999. Chandresekhar, S. “A Dirty Filthy Book”: The Writings of Charles Knowlton and Annie Besant on Reproductive Physiology and an Account of the Bradlaugh-​Besant Trial. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981. Clymer, R. Swinburne. Manisis: The Interpreter of the Divine Law for the Manistic Dispensation. Quakertown, PA: Beverly Hall, 1955. Clymer, R. Swinburne. The Mysticism of Masonry: The Key to the Correct Interpretation of Masonic Symbolism, One Harmonious with Both the Ancient Osirian Teachings and Those of the New Dispensation. Quakertown, PA: Philosophical Publishing, 1924. Clymer, R. Swinburne. Not under the Rosy Cross: An Exposé of the Imperator of A.M.O.R.C., His Pilfering Charlatanism and His Connections with Aleister Crowley Notorious Black Magician and O.T.O. Despised Black Cult. Quakertown, PA: The Rosicrucian Foundation, n.d. [ca. 1935]. Clymer, R. Swinburne. The Rosicrucian Fraternity in America: Authentic and Spurious Organizations as Considered and Dealt with in Treatises Originally Published and Issued in Monograph Form. 2 vols. Quakertown, PA: Rosicrucian Foundation, n.d. [ca. 1935–​1937]. Corydon, Bent, and L. Ron Hubbard, Jr. L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman? Secaucus, NJ: Lyle Stuart, 1987. Craddock, Ida. “Psychic Wedlock.” The Equinox 5 (4): 597–​618. Nashville, TN: Thelema Publishing, 1981. [Crowley, Aleister]. 777 vel Prolegomena Symbolica ad Systemam Sceptico-​Mysticae Viae Explicandae, Fundamentum Hieroglyphicum Sanctissimorum Scientiae Summae. London: Walter Scott, 1909. Crowley, Aleister. “Adonis: An Allegory.” The Equinox I (7): 117–​157 (1912). Crowley, Aleister. “Agape vel Liber C vel Azoth: Sal Philosophorum: The Book of the Unveiling of the Sangraal Wherein It Is Spoken of the Wine of the Sabbath of the Adepts.” In Crowley, Aleister, The Secret Rituals of the O.T.O., 207–​229. London: C. W. Daniel, 1973. Crowley, Aleister. Amrita: Essays in Magical Rejuvenation. Edited by Martin P. Starr. Kings Beach, CA: Thelema Publications, 1990. Crowley, Aleister. “Artemis Iota vel De Coitu: Scolia Triviae.” In Crowley, Aleister, Magick without Tears, 79–​83. Hampton, NJ: Thelema Publishing, 1954.

396  Works cited Crowley, Aleister [ΑΛΑΣΤΩΡ, pseud.]. The Avenger to the Theosophical Society. N.p., n.d. [1925]. Crowley, Aleister. The Book of Goetia of Solomon the King: Translated into the English Tongue by a Dead Hand and Adorned with Other Matters Germane Delightful to the Wise. Inverness, Scotland: Society for the Propagation of Religious Truth, 1904. Crowley, Aleister. The Book of Lies: Which Is Also Falsely Called Breaks. London: Wieland, 1913. [Crowley, Aleister]. “The Book of the Law.” 1909. In The Book of the Law [technically called Liber AL vel Legis sub figura CCXX as delivered by XCIII=​418 to DCLXVI]. Pasadena: Church of Thelema, 1938 [1942]. Crowley, Aleister [The Master Therion, pseud.]. The Book of Thoth: A Short Essay on the Tarot of the Egyptians. London: OTO, 1944. Crowley, Aleister. The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography. Edited by John Symonds and Kenneth Grant. New York: Hill and Wang, 1969. Crowley, Aleister. Crowley on Christ. Edited by Francis King. London: C. W. Daniel Co., 1974. Crowley, Aleister. “De Arte Magica: secundum ritum gradus nonae O.T.O.” In Crowley, Aleister, Crowley on Christ, 213–​32. London: C. W. Daniel Co., 1974. Crowley, Aleister. The Diary of a Drug Fiend. London: W. Collins Sons & Co., 1922. Crowley, Aleister [The Master Therion, pseud.]. “Ecclesiae Gnosticae Catholicae Canon Missae.” The International 12 (3): 70–​74 (1918). [Crowley, Aleister]. Ein Zeugnis der Suchenden. N.p., n.d. [1925]. [Crowley, Aleister]. The Equinox of the Gods. London: OTO, 1936. Crowley, Aleister. Golden Twigs. Edited by Martin P. Starr. Chicago: Teitan Press, 1988. Crowley, Aleister. The Gospel according to St. Bernard Shaw. Barstow, Calif.: Thelema Publishing, 1953. [Crowley, Aleister]. “The Grades of the O.T.O. and Scale of Fees appointed for each.” The Equinox 3 (1): 246 (1919). Crowley, Aleister [Khaled Khan, pseud.]. The Heart of the Master. London: OTO, 1938. Crowley, Aleister. [Oliver Haddo, pseud.]. “The Herb Dangerous Part 2: The Psychology of Hashish.” The Equinox 1 (2): 31–​89 (1909). Crowley, Aleister. “The High History of Good King Palamedes the Saracen and of his following of the questing Beast.” The Equinox I (4) suppl.: 1–​113 (1910). [Crowley, Aleister]. “In Memoriam—​John Yarker.” The Equinox 1 (10): xix–​xxii (1912). Crowley, Aleister. Introduction to his translation of “Éliphas Lévi, The Key of the Mysteries.” The Equinox 1 (10) suppl.: vii–​ix (1913). [Crowley, Aleister]. “John St. John.” The Equinox 1 (1) suppl.: 10–​11 (1909). Crowley, Aleister. Konx Om Pax: Essays in Light. 1907. Facsimile edition with an introduction by Martin P. Starr. Chicago: Teitan Press. 1990. [Crowley, Aleister]. The Law of Liberty: A Tract of Therion That Is a Magus 9˚ =​2□, A∴A∴. N.p.: OTO, n.d. [1916]. Crowley, Aleister. Liber XXX Aerum vel Saeculi sub figura CCCCXVIII Being of the Angels of the 30 Aethyrs: The Vision and the Voice with Commentary by The Master Therion. Barstow, CA: Thelema Publishing, 1952. [Crowley, Aleister]. “Liber LII: Manifesto of the O.T.O.” The Equinox 3 (1): 195–​206 (1919). [Crowley, Aleister]. “Liber LXI vel Causae: A∴A∴ The Preliminary Lection Including the History Lection.” 1909. The Equinox 3 (1): 53–​61 (1919).

Works cited  397 [Crowley, Aleister]. “Liber LXV: Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente sub figurâ 1909 ”.‫אדני‬. The Equinox 3 (1): 63–​93 (1919). [Crowley, Aleister]. “Liber LXXI.” The Equinox 3 (1) suppl.: 1–​132 (1919). Crowley, Aleister [Baphomet, pseud.]. “Liber CI: O.T.O.: An Open Letter to Those Who May Wish to Join the Order.” The Equinox 3 (1): 207–​224 (1919). [Crowley, Aleister]. “Liber CL vel ‫בעל‬: a Sandal: De Lege Libellum: L-​L-​L-​L-​L.” The Equinox 3 (1): 99–​125 (1919). Crowley, Aleister [J. B. Mason, pseud.]. “Liber CLXI: Concerning the Law of Thelema.” The Equinox 3 (1): 225–​238 (1919). [Crowley, Aleister]. “Liber CLXV: A Master of the Temple.” The Equinox 3 (1): 127–​170 (1919). [Crowley, Aleister]. “Liber CXCIV: Intimation with Reference to the Constitution of the Order.” The Equinox 3 (1): 239–​246 (1919). [Crowley, Aleister]. “Liber CCC: Khabs Am Pekht.” The Equinox 3 (1): 171–​182 (1919). Crowley, Aleister. Liber Aleph vel CXI: The Book of Wisdom or Folly in the Form of an Epistle of 666 the Great Wild Beast to His Son 777. West Point, CA: Thelema Publishing, 1962. [Crowley, Aleister]. Liber Collegii Sancti sub figurâ CLXXXV: Being the Tasks of the Grades, and Their Oaths, Proper to Liber XIII, the Publications of the A∴A∴ in Class D from B to G. N.p., n.d. [1909]. [Crowley, Aleister]. “Liber HHH sub figurâ CCCXLI.” The Equinox 1 (5): 5–​14 (1911). Crowley, Aleister. “Liber Liberi vel Lapidis Lazuli: Adumbratio kabbalae aegyptiorum sub figurâ VII” 1909. In Crowley, Aleister, The Holy Books of Thelema, 7–​35. New York: 93 Publishing, 1989. [Crowley, Aleister]. “Liber Resh vel Helios sub figurâ CC.” The Equinox 1 (6): 29–​32 (1911). [Crowley, Aleister]. “Liber Samekh: Theurgia goetia summa (congressus cum daemone) sub figura DCCC.” In Crowley, Aleister, Magick in Theory and Practice, 265–​301. 1929 [1930]. [Crowley, Aleister]. “Liber Stellae Rubeae: A Secret Ritual of Apep, the Heart of IAO-​OAI, Delivered unto V.V.V.V.V. for His Use in a Certain Matter of Liber Legis, and Written down under the Figure LXVI.” The Equinox 1 (7): 29–​36 (1912). [Crowley, Aleister]. “Liber ‫תישארב‬: Viae Memoriae sub figurâ CMXIII.” The Equinox 1 (7): 106–​116 (1912). Crowley, Aleister. “Liber Trigrammaton sub figurâ XXVII Being the Book of the Trigrams of the Mutations of the Tao with the Yin and the Yang.” 1909. In Crowley, Aleister, The Holy Books of Thelema, 43–​49. New York: 93 Publishing, 1989. Crowley, Aleister. Little Essays Toward Truth. London: O.T.O., 1938. Crowley, Aleister. The Magical Diaries of the Beast 666 Aleister Crowley 1923. Edited by Stephen Skinner. New York: Samuel Weiser: 1979. Crowley, Aleister. The Magical Record of the Beast 666: The Diaries of Aleister Crowley 1914–​1920. Edited by John Symonds and Kenneth Grant. London: Duckworth, 1972. Crowley, Aleister [The Master Therion, pseud.]. Magick in Theory and Practice. N.p., 1929 [1930]. Crowley, Aleister. Magick without Tears. Hampton, NJ: Thelema Publishing, 1954. [Crowley, Aleister]. Manifesto of the M∴M∴M∴. London: n.d. [1913]. [Crowley, Aleister]. The Message of the Master Therion. N.p., n.d. [1916]. Crowley, Aleister. Moonchild: A Prologue. London: Mandrake Press, 1929.

398  Works cited [Crowley, Aleister]. “One Star in Sight.” In Crowley, Aleister, Magick in Theory and Practice, 229–​244. 1929 [1930]. Crowley, Aleister. [The Master Therion, pseud.]. “The Ouija Board—​ a Note.” The International 11 (10): 319 (1917). Crowley, Aleister. “Preface to the Revised Rituals of the O.T.O. as Presented to Frater Superior Merlin X˚.” The Equinox 3 (10): 209–​210 (1986). Crowley, Aleister. [A Past Grand Master, pseud.]. “The Present Crisis in Freemasonry.” English Review 35: 127–​134 (1922). Crowley, Aleister. “Review of John Yarker, The Arcane Schools.” The Equinox 1(4): 240 (1910). Crowley, Aleister. “The Rites of Eleusis as Performed at Caxton Hall Westminster in October and November 1910 by Miss Leila Waddell and Mr Aleister Crowley with Distinguished Assistance.” The Equinox 1 (6) suppl.: 1–​124 (1911). Crowley, Aleister. [The Late Major Lutiy and Another, pseud.]. The Scented Garden of Abdullah the Satirist of Shiraz. 1910. Facsimile edition with an introduction by Martin P. Starr. Chicago: Teitan Press, 1991. Crowley, Aleister. The Scrutinies of Simon Iff. Edited by Martin P. Starr. Chicago: Teitan Press, 1987. Crowley, Aleister. The Secret Rituals of the O.T.O. Edited by Francis King. London: C. W. Daniel, 1973. Crowley, Aleister. Shi Yi: A Critical and Mnemonic Paraphrase of the Yi King. Oceanside, CA: Thelema Publications, 1971. Crowley, Aleister. Snowdrops from a Curate’s Garden. 1904. Edited by Martin P. Starr. Chicago: Teitan Press, 1986. Crowley, Aleister. “The Soldier and the Hunchback:! and?” The Equinox 1(1): 111–​135 (1909). Crowley, Aleister. Songs for Italy. N.p., n.d. [1923]. Crowley, Aleister. Tannhäuser: A Story of All Time. London: Kegan Paul, Trench Trubner, 1902. [Crowley, Aleister]. To Man. N.p., n.d. [1925] [Crowley, Aleister]. “Two Fragments of Ritual.” The Equinox 1(10): 81–​90 (1913). Crowley, Aleister [Ankh-​f-​n-​Khonsu, pseud.]. The World Teacher to the Theosophical Society. N.p., n.d. [1926]. Crowley, Aleister. Works of Aleister Crowley. 3 vols. Foyers, Scotland: Society for the Propagation of Religious Truth, 1905–​1907. Crowley, Aleister, and Evangeline Adams. The General Principles of Astrology: Liber DXXXVI. Edited by Hymenaeus Beta. Boston: Weiser Books, 2002. Crowley, Aleister, and Mary Desti [Frater Perdurabo and Soror Virakam, pseud.]. Book Four. 2 vols. London: Wieland, n.d. [1912–​1913]. Crowley, Aleister, and Marcelo Ramos Motta. The Commentaries of AL. New York: Samuel Weiser, 1975. Crowley, Aleister, Victor B. Neuburg, and Mary Desti. The Vision and the Voice with Commentary and other papers. York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, 1998. Culling, Louis T. The Complete Magick Curriculum of the Secret Order G∴B∴G∴. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 1969. Culling, Louis T. A Manual of Sex Magick. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 1971. Dockerill, Marion. My Life in a Love Cult: A Warning to All Young Girls. Dunellen, NJ: Better Publishing, 1928.

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Index For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–​53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages. Tables and figures are indicated by t and f following the page number A∴A∴, 7, 12, 31, 55, 58–​59, 69–​70, 74, 77, 78–​79, 146–​47 aims and methods, 7 imprimatur and Charles Stansfeld Jones, 207 magical diary, 10 Magister Templi (Master of the Temple), 41–​42, 69, 130, 285–​86 claimed by Charles Stansfeld Jones, 48–​49, 126 claimed by Wilfred Smith, 157–​58 Magus, 31, 33, 69–​70, 74, 123 Neophyte, 55, 68, 78–​79, 82–​83, 91, 118f Probationer, 39–​40, 56, 77, 79, 83, 112, 189, 202–​3, 225, 262 Student, 9–​10, 39–​40 Zelator, 31–​32, 78–​79, 94, 117, 118f abortion, 67, 247 Abrams, Albert, 116 Adair, Aana, 295 Adams, Evangeline, 52–​53 Adler, Albert, 171–​72, 289 Aerojet Engineering Corporation, 243, 244–​45 Agape vel Liber C (Crowley), 19–​ 20, 172–​73 AHA (Crowley), 272 The Alpha and Omega of Initiation (Jones), 125–​26 American Astrology, 192–​93 AMORC (Ancient Mystic Order Rosae Crucis), 185, 194, 200–​1, 213–​14 claims of ownership of property by Crowley, 206–​7 relationship to OTO denied by Lewis, 195

separate from Freemasonry, 196–​97 The Anatomy of the Body of God (Jones), 13, 125–​26, 137, 141 Ancient Mystic Order Rosae Crucis. See AMORC Andrews, Ellis, 105–​6, 107, 148 Anglican Universal Church, 63 At the Feet of the Master (Alycone), 139–​40 Atwood, Mary Anne, A Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery, 131, 139, 164 Aumont, Gérard (pseud. of Crowley), 151 The Avenger to the Theosophical Society (Crowley), 150 Bailey, Alice, 102 Ball, Ethel Armine von Tempski, 200 Ballard, Guy and Edna, 201 Bamber, John, 175–​77, 180–​81, 182 Baphomet. See Crowley, Aleister Bass, Kasimira, 155 Bavarian Illuminati, 102–​3 BCER (British Columbia Electric Railway Ltd.), 6–​7, 44, 71, 72–​73, 82–​83 fires Wilfred Smith, 88–​89 Beals, Jessie Tarbox, 166 Beast, Great (To Mega Therion/​666). See Crowley, Aleister Bedales School, 4–​5, 12 Bennett, Frank, 139 Besant, Annie, 36, 67–​68, 105, 121, 150, 151, 173–​74, 235 accused of advocacy of abortion, 67 Bishara, Sophronios, 170 The Black Cat (1934), 183 The Black ‘Messiah’ (Crowley), 151

406 Index Blair, Michael, 222 Blavatsky, Helena, 16, 17, 66, 67, 139 Book Four, Part I (Crowley), 7, 9–​10, 13 Book Four, Part III (Crowley). See Magick in Theory and Practice (Crowley) The Book of Lies (Crowley), 9–​10, 18, 91, 164, 209 The Book of the Great Auk (Crowley), 115 The Book of the Law (Crowley), 48–​49, 50, 69–​70, 71, 125–​26, 148–​49, 203 Church of Thelema edition, 242–​43 The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abra-​Melin the Mage (Mathers), 49 The Book of Thoth (Crowley), 231 Brayton, Jean (Georgina Chalkey), 299 Bricaud, Jean, 65 Burlingame, Mildred, 176, 244–​45 Burlingame, Ray, 237 Busch, Bertha, 172–​73 Cabell, James Branch, 65, 224 California Institute of Technology (Caltech), 217, 243 Cameron, Marjorie (Candy), 275–​76 discussions with Wilfred Smith, 282 Carradine, John (John Peter Richmond), 183 Carroll, Luther, 211–​12, 221–​22 Case, Paul Foster, 102–​3, 202, 209 The Chalice of Ecstasy (Jones), 125–​26 Cheiro (Louis Hamon), 175 Chicago Daily News, 143 Choronzon Club, 115, 116, 186, 187–​89, 190 former members join OTO, 189–​90 membership diminished by Crowley and Wilfred Smith, 191 Church of the Foursquare Gospel, 168–​ 69, 218 Church of Thelema, 179–​80, 203, 204, 222, 223, 243, 244–​45, 276–​78 incorporation, 184–​85 labelled the “Purple Cult,” 221–​23 Clark. W. C., 26, 34, 50 Clymer, Reuben Swinburne, 199–​ 200, 288–​89 claims Rosicrucian credentials, 193–​94 claims AMORC under jurisdiction of OTO, 199

meets Crowley in New York, 194–​95 published denunciations of Crowley, 195 second coming of Christ as Manisis, 194–​95 Collegium Pansophicum, 134 The Comment of Frater Achad (Jones), 52–​53 The Comment to The Book of the Law (Crowley), 148–​49 Concerning the Law of Thelema (Crowley), 52–​53, 83 Confessions of Aleister Crowley (Crowley), 75, 79–​80, 149–​50 Coué, Emile, 120, 122 Cowie, George Macnie, 78 Cowley, Mary, 218, 276–​77, 286–​87, 297 Cox, Cyril, 1, 2 Cox, Ethel, 1, 2, 3–​4 Cox, Homersham, 1, 2, 4–​5 Cox, Margaret, 2, 4, 14, 82–​83 Cox, Oswald (father of Wilfred Smith), 1, 2, 3, 4–​5 Craddock, Ida, 187 Crowley Aleister, 6–​8, 9–​10 accused of publishing Ninth Degree secret, 18 advises against lodge members as sexual partners, 40 advises UB pledges were not binding, 144 alleges sexual abuse of Krishnamurti, 139 appreciation of Karl Germer as fundraiser, 158 asserts himself as visible head of A∴A∴, 130 attainment of the A∴A∴ grade of Magus, 33 attitude of superiority towards Freemasons, 34–​35 authority in OTO, 18 bullying as a spiritual discipline, 1–​2 campaign against Besant and Leadbeater, 36–​37, 67–​68, 150–​51 claims sole authority in Freemasonry, 25

Index  407 claims to be true heir of Blavatsky, 67, 173–​74 collaboration with Theodor Reuss, 19, 20–​21 comments on sexual magic of Wilfred Smith and Jane Wolfe, 164 comments on Wilfred Smith’s diary, 56 compares Wilfred Smith to “Lavinia King” (Isadora Duncan) in Moonchild, 259–​60 composes OTO degrees on masonic models, 30 composition of Liber CXXXII, 253–​54 confirmed Charles Stansfeld Jones in the Ninth Degree OTO, 41 considers Tränker a spiritual failure, 149–​50 contributing editor of The International, 58 criticism of Q.B.L. (Jones), 124 criticism of Wilfred Smith’s spelling, 3–​4 death, 274–​75 denounces staging of Gnostic Mass, 181 dissatisfaction with OTO rituals of Reuss, 19 early experiments with OTO sexual magic, 19 ecclesiastical preferment, 61–​64 emigration to USA, 228 examination paper for Wilfred Smith, 12 feudalistic reconstruction of society, 15 first appearance in the Dictionary of National Biography, 2 gives George Plummer an OTO patent, 64 gloss of Baphomet, 65 honorary member of PMS, 122 initial meeting with Theodor Reuss, 17 investigation by FBI, 243–​44 judgment of Wilfred Smith’s natal chart, 1

Liber CXXXII, 253, 254, 255–​57, 258–​ 59, 261–​62, 263, 265, 270, 273 linkage to OTO through Rosicrucianism, 17 masonic status, 17, 25, 98 meets Albert Ryerson, 82 meets Wilfred Smith, 31–​33 method as a guru, 9–​10 names Wilfred Smith his heir in OTO, 172–​73 negative response to Wilfred Smith’s OTO manifesto, 229 opposition to teaching occultism for money, 123 OTO as modern version of masonic rites, 24 OTO charters lost, 199 patrons preferable to pupils, 66 plans for removal of Wilfred Smith from OTO, 229–​30 plans visit to Hollywood, 179 propriety of handling OTO finances, 77–​78 publication of Second Order ritual, 17 receives masonic patent from John Yarker, 18 reputation as gay, 7–​8 requirement of vesting real property in OTO, 76 review of The Arcane Schools (Yarker), 17–​18 rule for claiming Magister Templi, 41–​42 seeks support for legal vindication from H. Spencer Lewis, 183, 196–​99 shipment of book stock to Detroit, 90–​91 suggestions for sexual partnering in OTO, 50–​51 suggests Besant appoint him as her successor, 138–​39 suspension of Wilfred Smith, 205–​6 teacher of occultism, 6–​7 transmuter of OTO into model of an ideal society, 15 as a usurper, 24

408 Index Crowley (cont.) utilitarian view of women, 56–​57 view on persons and offices in magical orders, 207 visits Vancouver, 31–​32, 34 as World Teacher, 151 Culling, Louis, 214–​15, 239, 243, 249, 264, 273–​74, 285 break with Cecil Frederick Russell, 213 Choronzon Club in comparison to OTO, 212–​13 first contacts with Crowley and Wilfred Smith, 212–​13 homestead in Rainbow Valley, 212, 213–​14, 215–​16, 239, 241, 251 impression of Marcelo Motta, 292 offers Rainbow Valley to Wilfred Smith, 264 Dawson, Benjamin, 26–​27, 29–​30, 34, 38–​39, 68 De Arte Magica (Crowley), 19–​20 De Lege Libellum (Crowley), 76, 83 The Diary of a Drug Fiend (Crowley), 65–​ 66, 156, 214 Dictionary of National Biography, 2 Dinsmore, Carrie May, 181, 201 Doinel, Jules, 60–​61 Draper, Olita Lunt, 177 drugs, 30t, 75, 111–​12, 187 Early History of Karl Germer (Crowley), 171–​72, 285–​86 Ecclesiae Gnosticae Catholicae Canon Missae (Crowley). See OTO (Ordo Templi Orientis), Gnostic Catholic Mass Église Gnostique, 60–​61 The Egyptian Revival (Jones), 125, 141 Ein Zeugnis der Suchenden (Crowley), 149 Elmer Gertz, 199 Encausse, Gérard (Papus), 60–​61 Energized Enthusiasm (Crowley), 11–​ 12, 290 The Equinox, 7–​8, 9–​10, 11–​12, 17, 65, 75, 82, 83, 203

The Equinox of the Gods (Crowley), 146–​ 47, 203, 207, 287 Erickson, Jonas, 256 FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), 243–​44, 259, 278, 289 investigates Aleister Crowley, 243–​44 investigates Church of Thelema and Jack Parsons, 244–​45 investigates Jean Brayton and Solar Lodge, 299 investigates Karl Germer, 243–​44 investigates Max Schneider, 257 Feider, Camille, 140–​41 Ferrando, Manuel, 64 First Rosicrucian Church of America, 64 Forman, Edward, 217, 218–​19 Foster, Jeanne, 31, 32, 52–​53 Fox, Marjorie, 228 Frater 132. See Smith, Wilfred Talbot Frater Arctaeon. See Jones, Charles Stansfeld Frater Genesthai. See Russell, Cecil Frederick Fraternitas Rosicruciana Antiqua, 65, 280, 288 Frater Parzival. See Jones, Charles Stansfeld Frater Perdurabo. See Crowley, Aleister Frater Saturnus. See Germer, Karl Frater VPOV. See Smith, Wilfred Talbot Freemasonry, 15, 16, 17–​18, 24, 25, 62, 99, 108–​9, 196–​97 Ancient and Accepted Rite (England and Wales), 15, 68 Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite (United States), 19, 62, 82, 85–​ 86, 197 Antient & Primitive Rite, 15, 16, 19, 24, 196–​97, 199 Co-​Masonic Order, 26–​27, 36 Order of Red Cross of Constantine, 68 Rite of Memphis, 15, 18, 24, 84–​ 85, 196–​97 Rite of Misraim, 15, 18, 24, 84–​85 Friedel, Albert, 193 From Bethlehem to Calvary (Bailey), 102

Index  409 From Crystal Gazing to Crystal Vision (Jones), 126 Fuller, J. F. C., 7–​9, 108 Garrison, Omar, 282–​83 GBG (Gnostic Body of God), 186, 212–​13. See also Choronzon Club Germer, Cora Eaton, 226, 243–​44 Germer, Karl, 171–​72, 203–​4, 238, 289, 291, 292 conditions for his successorship to Crowley, 226–​27 death, 298, 299 demands Wilfred Smith’s Malibu property, 290 elevated to Crowley’s personal representative, 226 excommunication of Culling and Smith, 284–​85 heir of headship of OTO, 298 imitation of Crowley, 285 inherits headship of Crowley’s magical orders, 274–​75 investigation by FBI, 243–​44, 278 millenarianism, 278 moves to California, 287 requires OTO loyalty oath, 246–​47, 248 sees Wilfred Smith as carrier of spiritual contagion, 245 sees Wilfred Smith as sole person with knowledge of OTO, 279–​80 visits Wilfred Smith in Malibu, 288 Germer, Sascha, 287, 289 informed Motta that he is “The Follower,” 298 Gertz, Elmer, 199 Golden Twigs (Crowley), 52–​53 The Gospel According to St. Bernard Shaw (Crowley), 52–​53, 91 Gould, Sylvester Clark, 62–​63 Grady, Maude, 26, 30t Graham, Jr. Allen Hall, 244–​45 Graham, Mildred. See Burlingame, Mildred Grant, Kenneth, 263–​64, 277, 298 The Great Beast (Symonds), 277, 288 Green, Mary, 188–​89, 190, 192 Haitz, Georgia (Georgia Schneider/​ Georgia Crombie), 202–​3, 213

sex with lodge members, 260 Harris, Leota (Leota Schneider/​Leota Bamber), 176, 177, 181 affair with Wilfred Smith, 162–​63 divorces Schneider and marries Bamber, 182 Hay, Harry, 166 Heilige Gnostische Kirche, 280 Herbst, Vernon, 199–​200 Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, 19–​20 Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, 8, 17, 19, 37–​38 Hirsig, Leah, 1, 153 Holm, Rudolph, 189, 191 Holy Orthodox Church in America, 63 Hoxsey Clinic, 291 Hubbard, L. Ron, 275–​76 Huysmann, J.-​K., 65 Illuminati, Order of, 57, 102–​3 Integral Fellowship. See UB (Universal Brotherhood) The International, 35, 58, 59–​60, 65, 66, 74–​75, 77, 171, 224 Jacobi, Oliver, 175–​76, 177–​78, 179–​ 80, 204–​5 break with Wilfred Smith, 206 distance from profess house, 185 first Deacon in Gnostic Mass, 177 initiation in OTO, 168 resignation from Church of Thelema and OTO, 204–​5 student examination, 154 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 217 John St. John (Crowley), 41–​42 Jones, Charles Stansfeld, 6–​7, 25, 26, 32, 49–​50, 52, 76–​77, 136, 148–​49 anatomy of Ra-​Hoor-​Khuit as Tree of Life, 137 assumption of Magister Templi, 46 attains Ninth Degree of OTO, 41 becomes a Probationer, 7–​8 becomes Mahaguru of UB, 163 break with A∴A∴, 143, 144, 146–​47 challenge to his position by Crowley, 126 claims authority from Reuss for OTO in North America, 208 claims Eleventh Degree of OTO, 69–​70

410 Index Jones, Charles Stansfeld (cont.) claims grade of Ipsissimus, 100, 130 conversion to Catholicism, 163 death, 279 elevation to Seventh Degree of OTO, 23–​24 experiments with Ouija Board, 68–​69 experiment with peyote extract, 30t expulsion from OTO by Crowley, 209–​10 falls in love with Leota Schneider, 93 involvement in Freemasonry, 88 lack of interest in OTO, 112–​13 lack of replies from Crowley, 206–​7 listed as Chancellor, 207 moves stock of Crowley’s books from Detroit to Chicago, 152–​53 passing Wilfred Smith to Neophyte, 68, 277 perceived lack of frankness with Wilfred Smith, 145–​46 position challenged by Crowley, 126 presides in British Columbia Lodge, 29–​30 proclaims Crowley as OHO, 136 pushes Wilfred Smith to remain in UB, 128 receives OTO charter from Theodor Reuss, 95 repudiates accusation of theft, 208–​10 resigns from OTO, 78 return to England, 157 right to claim degree of Magister Templi, 41–​42 secret of Ninth Degree OTO, 40–​41 takes OTO name of “Parzival,” 41 takes OTO name “Tantalus Leucocephalus,” 136, 208 visits Wilfred Smith in Los Angeles, 163 wanted Katherine Talbot as partner in sexual magic, 43–​44 writes Crowley that Wilfred Smith has taken the Oath of the Abyss, 94 Jones, Ruby (Prudence Rubina Wratton) conferral of OTO degrees on Cecil Russell, 77 initiation in OTO, 26, 30t involvement with PMS, 121 moves to Detroit with Charles Stansfeld Jones, 82

participation in Rite of Isis, 29 partner in sexual magic, 40 refuses contact with Wilfred Smith after death of Charles Stansfeld Jones, 279 refuses to sign Fifth Degree obligation, 46 sexual compact with husband, 72 visits Wilfred Smith in Los Angeles, 163 Jurgen (Cabell), 65, 224 Kahl, Regina, 168, 202–​3 “Crowley Night” on Winona Blvd., 183 death, 267 first Priestess in Gnostic Mass, 177 initial letter to Crowley, 179 initiation in OTO, 168 leaves Pasadena for Houston, 234–​35 meets Wilfred Smith, 166 parts permanently from Wilfred Smith, 240 signs Oath of a Probationer, 168 Kamloops, 91–​92, 108–​9, 110, 111 Katherine Tingley, 101–​2, 138 Kayser, Frederic, 102 Khabs am Pekht (Crowley), 52–​53, 83 Kingsford, Anna, 17 Krishnamurti, Jiddu, 37–​38, 68, 139–​40, 151–​52, 257 allegedly sexually abused by Leadbeater, 139 rejection of World Teacher role, 151–​52 Krumm-​Heller, Parsival, 288 Krumm-​Heller, Arnold, 65, 288 Là bas ( Huysmann), 65 The Law of Liberty (Crowley), 52–​53, 54–​ 55, 58, 83 Lawrence, Hubert John, 9–​10 Lazenby, Charles, 72–​73, 79, 82 praise of Crowley, 66–​67 Leadbeater, Charles Webster, 36, 61, 67–​ 68, 138, 150 alleged sexual abuse of Krishnamurti, 150 Leffingwell, Roy, 223, 255–​56 accepts Gabriel Montenegro as a student, 280 complains Hollywood profess house a gay haven, 220

Index  411 death, 283–​84 family join and leaves OTO, 215–​16 initiation in OTO, 215 marries Reea, 215 offers Rancho RoyAL to Wilfred Smith for his magical retirement, 261–​62 Rancho RoyAL, 242 Lewis, H. Spencer, 185, 196, 198, 199 arrested in New York for larceny, 195 death, 199 denounces Crowley and Jones, 195–​96 offered Seventh Degree of OTO, 194 Rosicrucian credentials, 194 Liberal Catholic Church, 36, 59–​60, 61, 68 Liber Astarté vel Berylli (Crowley), 175 Liber Cordis Cinti Serpente (Crowley), 83 Liber CXXXII (Crowley), 253, 254, 255, 261, 262, 266–​67, 268, 273 composition, 253 as non-​serious, 255–​56 provokes Wilfred Smith to resign from OTO, 258–​59 section Gamma received by Wilfred Smith, 256–​57 Liber Liberi vel Lapidis Lazuli (Crowley), 91, 266–​67, 293 Liber LXI vel Causae (Crowley), 83 Liber OZ (Crowley), 231, 243, 255 Liber Resh (Crowley), 221 Liber Samekh (Crowley), 74–​75, 175 Liber Stellae Rubeae (Crowley), 57, 154 Liebling, George, 177–​78 Little Church of the Flowers, 155–​56, 219 Little Essays Toward Truth (Crowley), 59–​ 60, 151–​52, 192–​93 Little Old Lady from Pasadena (Jan & Dean), 300 Lodge, Frank, 80, 82–​83, 84–​85, 87, 111 Los Angeles City College, 211–​12 Los Angeles Examiner, 172 Los Angeles Mirror, 282–​83 Los Angeles Science Fiction League, 228 Los Angeles Times, 172 Low, John, 288 Magick in Theory and Practice (Crowley), 9–​10, 158, 164, 171, 203

Mahacakra Society. See UB (Universal Brotherhood) Maitland, Edward, 17 Manifesto of New Isis Lodge O.T.O. (Grant), 279–​80 Manifesto of the M∴M∴M∴ (Crowley), 83–​84 Manifesto Zums Frühlings-​Äquinox: To the Spring-​ Equinox (OTO), 298 Marl Field House, 1, 4, 239 A Master of the Temple (Crowley and Jones), 83 Mathers, Samuel Liddell, 17 McMurtry, Grady, 247 initiated in OTO, 228 meets Jack Parsons in Los Angeles Science Fiction League, 228 meets Wilfred Smith, 228 visits with Crowley, 263–​64 visit with Helen Smith, 295 McPherson, Aimee Semple, 168–​69, 179, 218 Mellinger, Frederic, 243, 244, 253–​54 analysis of Wilfred Smith, 251–​52 co-​executor of will of Karl Germer, 298 introduced to Anthroposophy and Rudolf Steiner, 224–​25 persecution complex of Karl Germer, 289, 297–​98 The Message of the Master Therion (Crowley), 38, 52–​53, 83, 243 Metzger, Hermann, 298–​99 Mickley, Avilla, 156, 164–​65, 179 Miller, Joe, 234–​36, 242–​43 Minor, Roddie, 74–​75 Montenegro Vargas, Gabriel, 284–​85 initiation into OTO, 280–​81 Moonchild (Crowley), 63, 64, 259–​60 Motta, Marcelo Ramos, 288–​92 response to death of Wilfred Smith, 294 Mudd, Norman, 145, 148–​50, 245 as apostate of Thelema, 149–​50 Musclow, Harry, 69–​70 Northrup, Sara Betty, 218, 247, 260–​61 abortion of Jack Parson’s child, 247 begins relationship with Jack Parsons, 219–​20

412 Index Northrup, Sara Betty (cont.) initiation in OTO, 228 negative assessments by Crowley, 260–​61 Northrup, Olga, 218, 273 Not under the Rosy Cross (Clymer), 193 Occult Review, 126, 143 Of Eden and the Sacred Oak Crowley, 174 Olivier, Sidney, 2 Olsen, Astrid Dorothy, 189 One Star in Sight (Crowley), 123, 149, 189–​90 Ordre Martiniste, 60–​61 The Oriflamme, 22–​23 OTO (Ordo Templi Orientis), 17, 31–​32, 58–​59, 78–​79, 80–​81, 85–​86, 172–​ 73, 196–​97, 198 Agape Lodge, 192, 202, 247, 248, 259–​ 60, 268 exit of Jack Parsons, 271 initiations, 190, 192 members of, 203, 246–​47, 257–​58 moves from Hollywood to Pasadena, 232 source of funding for Crowley, 190–​91 threatened with interdict by Crowley, 269 British Columbia Lodge, 26, 32, 50–​51, 52, 53–​54, 109–​10, 111 charters, 64, 199 Constitution, 16, 96, 135, 246–​47 Detroit, Great Lakes Council, 85–​86, 87–​88, 112 esoteric instructions, 19, 250 Gnostic Catholic Church, 59, 61 Gnostic Catholic Mass, 59–​60, 64–​66, 84, 175–​76, 177, 223, 224, 251, 252 first celebration by Wilfred Smith, 177 Wilfred Smith rebuts newspaper coverage, 222–​23 gnostic teachings, 17 masonic origins, 15–​19, 84–​87 Mysteria Mystica Maxima, 18 Neo-​Gnosticism, 61 Ninth Degree, 17, 18, 19, 41, 64 OTO (Outer Head of Order), 17, 96, 98, 135, 226

pamphlet by Wilfred Smith, 192–​93 press description as a “love cult,” 50–​51, 112, 224, 244–​45, 259, 282–​83 profess house, 16, 170–​71, 176–​77, 232, 234, 236–​37 ritual of Minerval, 26, 27 similarity to Co-​Masonic Order, 16, 36–​38 statement of purpose, 22 structure of group working, 22–​23 Supreme Council, 24 unincorporated association, 283–​84 Palmer, Claire (Claire McMurtry), 228, 247 Parsons, Helen (Mary Helen Cowley), 2–​3, 218–​20, 233, 294, 299–​300 aftermath of Karl Germer’s death, 299 birth of son Kwen Parsons, 248 correspondence with Crowley, 246, 250–​51, 266, 268, 270 desire to be a mother, 247 encourages Wilfred Smith, 256, 266–​67 initiation in OTO, 216 lack of toleration for Louis Culling, 296–​97 learns of Karl Germer’s death, 298 magical instructions to Karl Germer, 284 marriage to Jack Parsons, 219 marriage to Wilfred Smith, 286 moves to Culling’s hermitage in Rainbow Valley, 258–​59 natal chart, 248 post-​mortem vision of Jack Parsons, 282 raising to Third Degree of OTO, 242 signs Oath of Probationer, 262 Parsons, Jack, 218–​20, 247, 248–​49, 255, 257–​58 abandons Helen for Sara Northrup, 232 agrees to swap partners with Wilfred Smith, 232 birth, 216–​17 death, 281, 282 defense contractor work and security clearance, 243 divorce from Helen Cowley, 264 early life and education, 216–​17 first attends OTO in Hollywood, 221 initiation in OTO, 216

Index  413 involvement in the Communist Party, 220–​21 judgment of Crowley and Germer’s methods, 245 marriage to Helen Cowley, 219 marriage to Marjorie Cameron, 275–​76 meets Grady McMurtry in Los Angeles Science Fiction League, 228 police interview on Church of Thelema, 244–​45 pursues “Babalon Working” with L. Ron Hubbard, 271 raising to Third Degree of OTO, 242 rents 1003 S. Orange Grove Ave. in Pasadena, 233–​34 resignation from OTO, 271 sale and demolition of 1003 S. Orange Grove Ave., 273–​74 signs Probationer oath under Wilfred Smith, 225 sources of initial contact with Wilfred Smith, 220 withdraws from Agape Lodge, 259–​60 Parsons, Kwen (Kwen Smith), 248, 249, 261–​62, 295 Parsons, Ruth, 216–​17 Pastor, Carl and Harry, 214, 280 Peithmann, Ernst, 280 The Perfect Way; or the Finding of Christ (Kingsford and Maitland), 17 Phelps, Maurice, 91–​92 Phillips, Jean, 257, 275 The Phoenix. See Crowley, Aleister Plummer, George Winslow, 62–​63, 64, 138, 193–​94 PMS (Psychomagian Society), 120–​22, 124, 127–​28, 146 Prescott, Maria R., 192 The Present Crisis in Freemasonry (Crowley), 99 Price, George Graham, 102 Q.B.L. or The Bride’s Reception (Jones), 117, 118, 122, 124, 125, 134, 137 Quatres Artes Club, 166–​67, 170 Randolph, Paschal Beverly, 19–​20, 62–​63 Ransom, Will, 125–​26

Regardie, Israel, 163 Reuss, Theodor, 15, 24, 25, 34, 58–​59, 60–​ 61, 68, 85, 97, 98–​99, 112–​13 claims of acquaintance with Helena Blavatsky, 16 collaboration with Crowley on OTO degree revision, 19 death, 135 deposed as OHO by Crowley, 97 explanation of OTO secrets, 18 first contact with Crowley, 17 gives OTO charter to Charles Stansfeld Jones, 95 OTO as Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism, 19, 197 OTO chartering of Crowley, 18, 98–​ 99, 135 A Rite of Isis (Jones), 28–​29 The Rosicrucian Fraternity in America (Clymer), 194–​95 Rosicrucianism, 62–​63, 196–​97, 288–​89 Russell, Cecil Frederick, 77, 114, 115, 116, 126, 188–​89, 211–​12 begins to close the Choronzon Club, 191–​92 ceases involvement with UB, 106 denunciation by Crowley, 113, 191 distance from Wilfred Smith, 186 joins Crowley in Sicily, 92–​93 metaphysical errors of Crowley, 187–​88 plan of Choronzon Club, 113–​14 promoter of Psychomagian Society, 121 signs as “Choronzon,” 113 views on A∴A∴, 114 Ryerson, Albert Winslow, 80, 82, 91, 101–​ 2, 111–​12 Saint-​Martin, Louis Claude de, 60–​61 The Scented Garden of Abdullah the Satirist of Shiraz (Crowley), 74–​75 Schneider, Max, 93, 141, 148–​49, 175, 177, 179, 182, 202–​5, 206 breaks with Leota, 180–​81 conduit of negative information, 257 correspondence with Crowley, 181–​82 death, 275

414 Index Schneider, Max(cont.) hatred of Wilfred Smith, 213 heads Agape Lodge, 259–​60 joins UB, 106 leaves Hollywood profess house, 182 moves to Hollywood profess house, 176 questions Crowley’s mental state, 255–​56 Schwankovsky, Frederick, 200 Seckler, Paul, 211–​12 imprisoned for grand theft auto, 234–​35 Seckler, Phyllis (Phyllis Pratt), 211–​12, 223, 260–​61 aftermath of Karl Germer’s death/​+​, 299–​300 asked to leave 1003 S. Orange Grove Ave., 239–​40 begins relationship with Joe Miller, 234–​35 cartoons of 1003 S. Orange Grove, 260–​61 sex with lodge members, 260 The Secret Doctrine (Blavatsky), 17 Self-​Realization Fellowship, 284 sexual magic, 19, 40–​41, 57, 74–​75, 114, 164, 169–​70, 187, 203 Sheridan-​Bickers, Horace, 30t, 32, 156 Sibley, Cedric, 80 Sisk, Betty Lee, 237 Smith, Helen Parsons. See Parsons, Helen (Mary Helen Cowley) Smith, Noel Talbot, 74, 79, 113 Smith, Wilfred Talbot, 1, 2–​3, 4–​5, 34, 78–​ 79, 111, 181, 252, 253 admits love for Katherine Talbot, 43 authorized to confer OTO degrees, 190 begins correspondence with Crowley, 144 bemoans the death of A∴A∴ and OTO, 284–​85 birth, 1, 2–​3 birth of son Kwen, 248 birth of son Noel, 71 breaks with Charles Stansfeld Jones, 147 confesses failure of magical retirement, 267–​68 correspondence with Crowley, 250 death, 295 elevated to Seventh Degree of OTO, 69–​70 enmity of Max Schneider, 181–​82 first Priest in Gnostic Mass, 177

founds OTO lodge in Kamloops, 110–​11 homosexual experience, 161 honorary Tenth Degree in OTO, 209 independence of OTO, 198 lack of contact with A∴A∴, 153–​54 marries Katherine Talbot, 155–​56 meets Aleister Crowley, 31–​33 meets Karl Germer, 287 millenarianism, 278 moves to Chicago, 93 moves to Hollywood, 174 moves to Malibu, 287, 288, 295–​96 natal chart, 1, 253 publication of Liber OZ, 231 received as Probationer, 39–​40 sale of Malibu home, 295 takes motto Velle Omnia Velle Nihil, 94 visits Hoxsey Clinic, 291 wartime OTO manifesto, 229 Snell, Merwin Porter, 103, 104–​5 Societas Rosicruciana in America, 62–​63, 64 Soror Estai. See Wolfe, Jane Soror Grimaud. See Parsons, Helen Soror Hilarion. See Foster, Jeanne Sosoyeva, Anya, 221–​22, 223 Southern California Gas Company, 117, 125, 154, 176–​77, 204 Spann, Floyd, 193 SRIA (Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia), 16, 17, 62–​63 Stepping out of the Old Aeon into the New (Jones), 83 The Strange Case of Miss Annie Sprague (Bromfield), 252, 253–​54 Suggestion and Auto-​suggestion (Baudouin), 120 The Supreme Ritual (Crowley), 57 Symonds, John, 277, 288 Talbot, Emily (Nem), 6–​7, 11–​12, 14, 25, 26, 31–​30t, 44, 50 Talbot, Katherine (Kath), 50, 156, 160 divorce from Wilfred Smith, 161 initial meeting with Wilfred Smith, 14 marriage to Wilfred Smith, 155–​56 pregnant with Wilfred Smith’s child, 58 Taylor, William Desmond, 111–​12 The Temple of Solomon the King (Fuller), 8–​9 Thelema, Law of, 78, 83, 117, 151, 169, 187–​88, 189, 274–​75

Index  415 doctrine of OTO, 33, 34 doctrine of the A∴A∴, 96 synthetic religion, 60 and Theosophy, 37–​38, 120 Theosophy, 37–​38, 67, 68, 103, 104–​5, 120, 121, 150, 201, 235 Liberal Catholic Church, 36, 59–​60, 61, 68, 235 parallels to Thelema, 37–​38 World Teacher, 37–​38, 59–​60, 139–​ 40, 151–​52 Thomson, Mathew McBlain, 22, 35 The Three Schools of Magick (Crowley), 152 Toltec Research Society, 280 To Man (The Mediterranean Manifesto) (Crowley), 138, 140 To Mega Therion. See Crowley, Aleister Tränker, Heinrich, 134, 136, 140, 141, 145, 149–​50 representative of OTO in Germany, 134–​35 TS (Theosophical Society), 16, 138–​39, 151, 152 Two Fragments of Ritual (Crowley), 57 UB (Universal Brotherhood), 101–​3, 104–​ 6, 128–​29, 131, 133–​34, 135–​36, 137, 140–​41, 145 comparison with A∴A∴, 128, 133 correspondence of Smith and Jones, 105–​6, 140–​41 John Kowal, 102 Paul Foster Case on its origins, 102–​3 purpose, 107–​8 Thelema Grama, 131 Wilfred Smith convinced it is Catholic, 107 ULT (United Lodge of Theosophists), 121 Universal Brotherhood. See UB Universal Pansophic Society, 209 The Voice of the Silence (Blavatsky), 67, 84 von Harringa, Ernst, 278–​79, 287, 294, 295 Wade, Floyd, 214–​15

Wagner, Richard, 25, 41, 61, 125, 223 Waite, A. E., 9–​10, 22, 84 Walker, Wayne, 200–​1 Watson, Clarence, 168, 170, 174, 234–​35 Watson, Leona Kahl, 166–​68, 174, 234–​35 Wedgwood, James, 36, 59–​60, 61, 68 Weishaupt, Adam, 57, 102–​3, 194 Wenham, Frank. See Smith, Wilfred Talbot Wenham, Minnie (mother of Wilfred Smith), 1, 2–​3 White, Howard, 13, 14, 26, 30t, 50, 54–​ 55, 79 Wilkinson, Louis, 152–​53 William Walker Atkinson (Yogi Ramacharaka), 6–​7 Windram, James, 93, 139–​40 Windsor, Joe, 237 Wolfe, Jane, 153, 156–​57 blacklisted by the movie studios, 172 Crowley’s demands for money, 211 death, 297 descriptions of Regina and Leona Kahl, 167 initial contact with Wilfred Smith, 153 instructions from Crowley for Wilfred Smith’s removal, 240, 242 magical partner of Wilfred Smith, 164 participation in first Gnostic Mass, 177 in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917), 156 Wolfe, Mary K., 177, 203 World Teacher, 37–​38, 59–​60, 139–​40, 149, 151–​52 The World Teacher to the Theosophical Society (Crowley), 151 XXXI Hymns to the Star Goddess (Jones), 125–​26 Yarker, John, 15, 17–​18, 19, 24, 37–​ 38, 196–​97 Yoga, 6–​7, 10–​11, 14, 22, 28, 38–​39, 154, 175 Yorke, Gerald, 151–​52, 172–​74