City of the Beast, page 24
“…no Golden Dawn and no nuffin’”: Howe op.cit. p.37.
“a reformatory”: Yeats to Lady Gregory, 25 April 1900 (“We did not admit him because we did not think a mystical society was intended to be a reformatory.”) Collected Letters of W.B. Yeats, Vol.2 1896-1900, p.515.
“black, bilious rage”: Hag.166.
“lank, dishevelled demonologist”: Hag.177.
“…the Order in its existing form came to grief…”: draft ‘Preface’ to The Book of Thoth (typescript p.8). Yorke OS LII.
13 RANDOLPH ROAD
HGA definitions: to Frank Bennett, see Kac. 374-76, Symonds (1997) 290-97; to Ann Macky, see Magick Without Tears, Chapter XLIII, ‘The Holy Guardian Angel is not the “Higher Self” but an Objective Individual’.
Paddington Hotel: 13.iv.1900.
Baptising dried peas, see e.g. Francis King, Ritual Magic in England: 1887 to the Present Day pp.71-2, and Gerald Yorke, ‘Magic and the Golden Dawn’ in Aleister Crowley, The Golden Dawn and Buddhism, p.75. Crowley seems to launch this story in ‘The Magician’, a section of ‘The Temple of Solomon the King’ in The Equinox, Vol.I no.3 (March, 1910).
Georg Witkowski, Von Menschen und Buchern (Leipzig, 2000) p.161, translation courtesy William Breeze.
entering daughter's room in astral body: Hag.225; Kac.92.
Horses, cab lamps, fires, mackintosh etc: 13/14/16.iv.1900. {OTO}
14 GOWER STREET
Horos case: see Gilbert, Golden Dawn Scrapbook pp.7-20.
“…most powerful medium living”: Mathers to Yeats 12 January 1901, cited Howe, Magicians of the Golden Dawn p.203.
Lola Montez: Golden Dawn Scrapbook p.14.
“I, Vera Croysdale…”: Golden Dawn Scrapbook p.8.
“Keep quiet, you reptiles!”: Golden Dawn Scrapbook p.10.
15 THE CAFÉ ROYAL
“…exuberant vista of gilding and crimson velvet…”: Beerbohm ‘Enoch Soames’, in Seven Men and Two Others (Heinemann, 1950) [1919], pp.3-51. Quotation pp.5-6; 15; 8-9.
“EPICURES are invited to taste the special dishes invented…”: e.g. Equinox Vol.1. No.8, cf draft in Yorke PD72 c.2.
Betty May: Tiger Woman p.43.
Crowley's account: Hag.644-46; 648;
Epstein's brief neutral account: Jacob Epstein, An Autobiography p.54.
Entertained a party of guests: Guy Deghy and Keith Waterhouse, Café Royal: Ninety Years of Bohemia, p.186. There is an entire if not entirely reliable chapter on Crowley, ‘The Magus of the Café Royal’, pp.177-186. Deghy and Waterhouse also recount the story of Crowley's “60th” (in fact sixty-first) dinner for about twenty people when Countess Lewenhaupt picked up the bill as intended, but the management were reluctant to accept it (p.185), also remembered by Cammell, 177-79 and in diaries 12.x.36.
Conical hat with stars: Deghy and Waterhouse op.cit. p.177; quoted as joke by Cammell p.164.
“That's just Mr. Crowley being invisible.” I used this particular wording in a book on Austin Osman Spare, and now see it drifting around the internet from that book. It is from a man at the Secret Chiefs speaker meetings, Princess Louise pub, Holborn; the same man who said “Have a fuck and make a wish.” See p.100, footnote 1.
16 ST. MARY’S TERRACE
Fancy dress contest: Hag.230.
“…eyes of Jesus”: The Book of the Law (Liber AL) III 51.
“…face of Mohammed…”: AL III 52.
“…crapulous creeds”: AL III 54.
“…I was Ankh-f-n-khonsu…”: Hag. 665.
“To worship me take wine and strange drugs…”:, AL II.22, p.41.
“The kings of the earth shall be Kings forever…”: AL II.58, p.47.
“We have nothing with the outcast and the unfit…”: AL II.21 p.41.
“…between Wilde and Hitler”: Cyril Connolly, ‘Engendering monsters’ [review of Symonds’ The Great Beast and other books] Sunday Times 14 Nov 1971.
“acute nomenclature”: cited e.g. Symonds (1997) p.102.
Opal in Bond Street: 12.iii.07. Possibly in the window of Hunt and Roskell, jewellers to Queen Victoria, a shop Crowley certainly knew: their name is jotted on an unrelated scrap among his papers in the Yorke collection. But there were other jewellers, including Asprey's.
Vow of silence: 7.iii.07.
Razor cuts; Rose angry: 9.iii.07.
Crowley moves out: 23-24.iii.07.
“…obvious from the style, in Paddington”: ‘Preface’ to The World's Tragedy, p.xxxvii.
17 WARWICK ROAD
Earl of Coke and Crankum: Hag.547.
150 bottles of whisky (figures for this vary from 120 to 159 – Symonds (1997) p.132 – but in the Confessions Crowley goes for a round 150): Hag.535.
Burlington Arcade girl: Miss Zwee, widely reported in accounts of the divorce proceedings, e.g. Dundee Courier, Nov 25 1909, ‘Amusing Divorce Evidence’. Having met in Soho, they had tea at the Criterion Brasserie, still there, and dinner at the long-gone Restaurant Venice, off Oxford Street, in what was then the notorious institution in restaurants of a ‘private room’ where sex took place, as well as at Warwick Road and 3-5 Orange Street, Haymarket, where Crowley had rooms. She lived at 48 King's Cross Mansions, Hastings Street, where Crowley also visited her, and they had a son on 28 October 1909. I am very grateful to William Breeze for sharing the divorce court papers with me.
Layout of house at no.21: Hag.569.
“prestidigitation” : ibid.
“life with Rose is intolerable…”: to Dr Murray Leslie, June 3 1908, copy in Fuller papers, King's College, item 4/12/18.
The servant or charlady was Bella Danby (or Dauby; variously transcribed in records) and the bejewelled woman she remembered was Jenny Zwee.
18 VICTORIA STREET
Two Englishmen invited: Symonds (1997) p.104. The other was Lord Brocket.
“abyss after abyss”; “ledge labelled Battersea”: ‘The Bismarck of Battersea’, Equinox Vol 1. No.7, p.403.
“moral pygmies”: Gilbert, Golden Dawn Scrapbook p.184.
“one too many”: Hag.589.
“A room, she reflected…”: Ethel Archer, The Hieroglyph, pp.7-9.
19 HENRIETTA STREET
Northam's advert: in several issues, e.g. Vol.I, no.7, unpaginated advert section in final pages.
Dressing up box: d’Arch Smith, The Times Deceas'd, p.79.
Four Red Monks Carrying a Black Goat: illustrated e.g. Symonds (1997) facing p.244, and sampled on the cover of Symonds's The Magic of Aleister Crowley (Muller, 1958).
“…in horror stories by Dennis Wheatley…”: Jean La Fontaine, Speak of the Devil: Tales of Satanic Abuse in Contemporary England, p.53.
There is more on the popular Dennis Wheatley aspect in Peter Bradshaw's comic novel Lucky Baby Jesus: “… these recovered memory yarns were about as real as the ones with which the apple-cheeked bairns of Orkney or whey-faced pre-school shoplifters of Middlesborough had once regaled their social workers: the ones about them dancing in a circle around their tumescent scout-master in his front room with the curtains drawn, dressed up in little Dennis Wheatley outfits his wife had run up.” Lucky Baby Jesus (Little, Brown, 1999) p.64.
20 SOUTH AUDLEY STREET
“If you are the one I seek…”: 13.xi.06.
“You pig-faced man!…”: Fuller with Crowley, ‘Half Hours with Famous Mahatmas’, The Equinox, Vol.1 no.4. (September 1910).
“Fuller at 60”: 17.xi.07.
Guru's later downfall: Dick Weindling and Marianne Colloms, ‘Remembering the West Hampstead “holy man” and his cult of women’, Hampstead and Highgate Express online https://www.hamhigh.co.uk/lifestyle/heritage/remembering-the-west-hampstead-holy-man-and-his-cult-of-3488096. He was convicted of indecently assaulting Suzanne Allaveue and Maud Anderson at 110 Goldhurst Road.
21 BRUTON STREET
“…management of line…”: The World, 29 October 1907.
“Mr. Spare's art is abnormal…”: Observer, 3 November 1907.
“Vicegerent of God…”: cited in Grant, Zos Speaks! p.43.
“…cannot afford the robe…”: cited in Semple, Two Tracts on Cartomancy p.19; Keith Richmond, ‘Discord in the Garden of Janus’, note 13.
“An artist. Can't understand organisation…”: Richmond op.cit. unpaginated.
Spaghetti; invisibility; “if I had to go to all that effort…”: Grant, Zos Speaks! p.43.
22 TOOK’S COURT
“Orridge”: Anthony Curtis, Lit. Ed.: On Reviewing and Reviewers (Carcanet, 1998) p.163.
23 BRITISH LIBRARY
“flies caught in a huge web”: Gissing, New Grub Street (Smith, Elder & Co., 1891), vol. i, pp.193-6.
“velveteen coat”: for Yeats on Mathers see ‘The Trembling of the Veil’, Autobiographies (Macmillan 1955) pp.182ff.
“…flavour that manuscripts only have in dreams”: ‘Diary of a Magus’ (Liber 63) 12.ix.16 {OTO}.
“One thing you can say about Satanists…”: Robert Irwin, Satan Wants Me, p.95.
24 THE BRITISH MUSEUM
Pearson's Magazine, August 1909.
discovered sarcophagus: 25.viii.30.
“imminence of world catastrophe”; “the New Zealander”: Hag.542.
Thomas Macaulay review of von Ranke's History of the Popes, The Edinburgh Review no.72 October 1840.
“…to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's”: Macaulay op.cit., cited David Skilton, ‘Contemplating the Ruins of London: Macaulay's New Zealander and Others’, Literary London: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Representation of London Vol.2 no.1 (March, 2004).
Walpole, “curious traveller from Lima” and visitor “from the banks of the Oronooko”, both in 1770s letters, Skilton op.cit.
“…Professor of Archaeology in the University of Lhasa…”: Hag.542.
25 ROYAL COURTS OF JUSTICE
“…wish to keep dark.”: Hag.268.
“…affection of a judge”: Symonds, e.g. Great Beast (1971) p.121.
‘Rosicrucian Rites: The Dread Secrets of the Order Revealed’: Morning Leader, 23 March 1910.
26 CAXTON HALL
keeping probationers and higher grades apart: Hag.629.
“shameless masturbation or indecent advances”: Crowley, ‘Energized Enthusiasm’, The Equinox Vol.1 No.9, p.33.
“…throbbing with jungle drums…”: Robert Fabian, London After Dark, p.77.
“…may be on to something”: Kac.216.
Account of performance: Raymond Radclyffe, ‘Aleister Crowley's ‘Rite of Artemis’’, The Sketch August 24 1910.
“By the power in me vested…”: Radclyffe op.cit.
“…elixir introduced by me to Europe”: ‘Energized Enthusiasm’, The Equinox Vol.1 No.9. In fact Crowley hadn't introduced peyote or mescaline to Europe: W.B. Yeats, Arthur Symons and Havelock Ellis had experimented with it in the 1890s. Nevertheless, as Mike Jay writes in Mescaline: A Global History, it is “probably true to say he was the first westerner to take peyote methodically over a period of years, and the first to adopt it as a ritual sacrament” (p.107). Crowley's first recorded use seems to be on the 12 March 1907, on the day he saw the opal in New Bond Street (see site 16); on the same day he had also visited Whineray, the drug supplier, at Lowe's chemist just off Bond Street. He mentions using a commercially prepared tincture (“presumably that of Parke, Davis”: Jay, p.108). Potter & Clarke at 60-64 Artillery Lane, near Liverpool Street station, were also noted suppliers of peyote at this time. Best known for Potter's Asthma Mixture and Potter's Asthma Cigarettes, which contained belladonna, they sold peyote buttons over the counter by the bagful.
27 THE LOOKING GLASS
Grave Diggers Journal: cover cartoon, The Looking Glass, Vol.II no.65, 23 December 1911.
“sham Buddhist monk…”: The Looking Glass, ‘An Amazing Sect no.3’ 26 Nov 1910 p.268.
“…notoriously evil character”: court transcript cited Kac.233, cf “one Crowley, who was alleged to be a person of disgraceful and criminal character”, Times April 27 1911 p.4.
‘The Rosicrucian Scandal’, reproduced Robertston, Aleister Crowley Scrapbook, pp.64-79.
“…trial in Alice in Wonderland”: Kac.232 cf Hag.641.
relative of Alice Liddell: I am indebted to Cecil Court bookseller Jake Fior for this information.
“…associate of the notorious Jones”: ‘Rosicrucian Scandal’, Robertson Scrapbook, p.79.
Postcards: Jean Overton Fuller, The Magical Dilemma of Victor Neuburg, p.165.
“If you wish to hoorosh down…”: Fuller to Crowley 2 May 1911 cited Symonds (1997) p.136.
28 RALSTON STREET
“…wonderful days in Chelsea…”: Neuburg in Calder-Marshall, The Magic of My Youth, p.60.
Pocahontas: Kac.221.
“piles of tasselled cushions…”: Evelyn Waugh, A Little Learning, p.212.
“Pity that stuff had no effect.”: Laver, Museum Piece, pp.118-19.
Bankes on Crowley: Why Not? pp.160; 201-11. Bankes description of Crowley's eyes as green seems to be fanciful; Cammell and others remember them as brown.
“…always Sunday afternoon”; “…high priest of black magic…”: Ethel Mannin, Confessions and Impressions, p.195. “Gwen Otter represents that fin-de-siècle tradition of the 1890s, a tradition fast fading into the background.”: p.194.
not in love and never lent money: Laver p.117.
29 SAVOY HOTEL
“artistic furniture throughout”: advert in The Times, 6 August 1889 p.1 (and purely electricity: “no gas or other artificial light used”).
“exchanging electricity”: Hag.676.
Desti's nightclub: diary entry 1 Jan 1920 in The Magical Record of the Beast 666, p.88.
“morning Sun Room”: 6.v.41.
30 SIMPSON’S-IN-THE-STRAND
“great dinner at Simpson's…”: Magical Record of the Beast 666 p.88.
dream of being hanged: 4.iv.41.
Powell's account in Messengers of Day (1978): “…false top to his head” p.82; “horrible baby” p.83; “sinister if gifted buffoon” p.152; “ponderous gags” p.82; “unkindness and backbiting” p.83.
“boiled toads, Mother, or fried Jesus”: Fuller, Magical Dilemma of Victor Neuburg p.183. The published quote in Fuller is ‘Jesu’, coming second-hand via Preston, but Crowley refers to his childhood diet of “cold boiled Jesus” four times within a dozen lines of the ‘Preface’ to The World's Tragedy (xix-xx) so I have taken the liberty of normalising it.
31 OLD TIVOLI THEATRE
three dipsomaniacs and four nymphomaniacs: Hag.711.
taking London by storm: Hag 690. He is joking.
32 ROSSETTI STUDIOS, FLOOD STREET
Calder-Marshall's account: Magic of My Youth, 168-171.
Jean Overton Fuller's account: Magical Dilemma of Victor Neuburg, 171-3.
“…adept known to THE MASTER THERION…”: Magick, p.298.
33 REGENT STREET
Account of Reuss: Howe and Moller, ‘Theodor Reuss: Irregular Freemasonry in Germany’ (1978).
“one of the greatest shocks of my life”: letter to Henri Birven, October 1929, cited Kac.252.
BABALON manibus: Rex de Arte Regia diary, 7 February 1915 (Manibus, i.e. by hand, solitary masturbation; concentrating on the idea of Babalon, the Scarlet Woman; in the hope of manifesting $20,000). Magical Record of the Beast 666, p.18.
Shivalingam temple: Hag.257.
“…far-off Jerusalem or Bethlehem…”: Paschal Beverley Randolph, Eulis, cited in Hugh Urban, Magia Sexualis (2006) p.66. Curiously the relevant page of Eulis is excised and replaced with a blank in the British Library copy.
Reuss as “Supreme and Holy King of Germany”: Hag.701.
“Supreme and Holy King of Ireland, Ionia, and all the Britains…”: King, Magical World of Aleister Crowley, p.81.
“There could hardly be a nicer set…”; “swank!”: Cowie to Crowley undated [late 1916] Yorke NS4.
“motherly old fool” and tea-leaf reader: Hag.756.
Crowley accuses Cowie of being anti-German: e.g. undated letters c. May 1913, Yorke NS4.
“severe shock”; “that use to be made of your stuff”: Cowie to Crowley 8 March 1917, Yorke NS4.
34 PICCADILLY
Christine Rosalie Byrne: Magical Record of the Beast 666, p.4.
“…an element of atomic weight…”: Hag.702.
“principal engine”: Hag.694.
inspiration and energy to write De Arte Magica: “…might the ill-health be part of the success…?”: Magical Record of the Beast 666, p.4.
Violet Duval and Leila Waddell: ibid.
Mona Lisa and Piccadilly prostitution: ‘The Herb Dangerous: The Psychology of Hashish’, from Equinox Vol.1 no.1 (1909), reprinted in Roll Away the Stone, ed. Regardie (1968) p.118.
Shift from Strand to Piccadilly: Collin Brooks, Tavern Talk, p.174.
“Save us from every evil demon”, Greek Orthodox liturgy: Symonds (1951) p.387.
35 AVENUE STUDIOS
Real number noted: Crowley annotations to Drug Fiend, p.31.Yorke Collection.
“Most Holy, Most Illustrious, Most Illuminated…”; “Gnostic Catholic Church…”: Oriflamme ‘Jubilee Edition’, reproduced in Howe and Moller (1978).
“Our Order possesses the KEY…”: Reuss in Howe and Moller op.cit.
“…caught the old cats”: Trevor Blakemore in Symonds (1997) p.203.
“evil bleating”: ‘Weird Rites of Devil Worshippers Revealed by an Eye Witness’: Harry Kemp, New York World 2 August 1914, in Symonds (1997) p.203.
