Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The Un-Magickal Record of The Great Beast 666
The Un-Magickal Record of The Great Beast 666
How was Aleister Crowley portrayed by the press during his lifetime and after
his death? Were the press reporting fairly and accurately on Crowley? Did they
and comparing the coverage of Crowley against the coverage of other similar events
(including theatre reviews and general news), we may throw some light on the matter.
By establishing that the media (both now and in the 18th century) was not
essay ‘Charting the Golden Stream’ but instead, as Kate Jackson puts it “...an active
and integral part of it.”, we can take this to mean that whilst newspapers reflected
society back at its self, the same newspapers also exerted an influence by shaping
Aleister Crowley featured regularly in the press of his day, and it would seem
that for the most part, the attitude of the press towards him was one of benign
bemusement but as Robertson points out in the introduction to Richard T Cole’s book
useful for putting off fainthearts and attracting the adventurous and curious, but it
invocations or rites, each centered on one of the seven classical planets of antiquity.”
demonstrates how, as a playwright and director, he was perceived by the press; “...the
1
only relief in a dreary performance was afforded by a neophyte falling off his stool,
which caused mild hilarity among a bored and uncomfortable audience...” (Hawera &
Normanby Star, Volume LX, 1910) and “Mr Crowley says the end and aim of his rites
is ecstasy. Somebody ought to tell him that ecstasy of any kind is impossible when
A bad review does not prove that the press dealt unfairly with Crowley. A
audacious, not to say iconoclastic experiment” (The Times, 1910,) and “There is
much, however, that we venture to consider suspect and possibly harmful, harmful to
regard to the theatre, and if we look as far back as 1839, critics and artists alike were
imposing their (subjective) opinions on the public, albeit about paintings in the
following example. William Thackeray said of the French School of Painting “...the
bloated, unnatural, stilted, spouting, sham sublime, that our teachers have believed
and tried to pass off as real, and which your humble servant and other anti-
On July the 3rd, 1915 Crowley and a group of people renounced their
allegiance to England in a dawn ceremony at the foot of the Statue of Liberty. This
event was covered in The New York Times approximately ten days after the event, and
the report is amazingly detailed and even handed (New York Times, 1915) when one
considers the political climate in which Crowley and the group were acting.
It appears that The Times (London) was far too busy reporting on the first
World War because there was no mention of Crowley’s stunt from the 3rd of July
2
1915 or the following ten days afterwards. However, there were plenty of headlines
concerned with the war, including “The Battles of North Arras” (The Times, 1915)
“Russians Captured by Italians” (Ibid) and “The Second Battle of Ypres” (Ibid).
Crowley Scrapbook, Colin Wilson suggests that throughout his life Crowley was “...in
the grip of a ravenous, unsatisfied appetite for recognition...” and despite Crowley’s
suddenly, he became a household name when the magazine John Bull [Wilson’s
italics] dubbed him ‘the wickedest man in the world’, and ran headlines like THE
newspaper buyers into purchasing is not a new one, and is a hallmark of journalistic
Weiner’s Papers for the Millions, publications such as Lloyd’s Weekly (1842), the
News of the World (1843) and Reynolds’s Newspaper (1850) had made
In addition to the shocking headlines, there was also the belief that newspaper
editors should have “...no objection to facts if they are also novel. But he (should)
prefer a novelty that is not a fact to a fact that is not a novelty.” (Hearst, in Weiner). In
the July edition of Action magazine (1953), there is a lurid feature on Crowley entitled
‘The Strange Case of the Man Who Founded a Sex Cult’ which includes such
‘novelties’ (for they were certainly not facts) about Crowley such as Hitler believing
3
him to be a living god and Crowley exerting influence in America to the extent that
the dollar bill was redesigned to include the eye of Horus in honour of him.
and certainly no shortage of novelties that were not facts but it was only after the
Crowley’s subsequent expulsion from the island by Mussolini) that the press truly
denounce Crowley (and presumably sell more papers into the bargain); these included
“Aleister Crowley’s Orgies in Sicily” (Sunday Express, 1922) and “New Sinister
Revelations of Aleister Crowley” (Sunday Express, 1923). The purpose of this piece
is not to explore the truths or untruths behind the headlines but it cannot be doubted
that headlines such as these would have had an impact on the public’s impression of
according to the lurid descriptions of his parents drawn from dimly remembered
The press blamed Loveday’s death on drinking the blood of a sacrificed cat
under the direction of Crowley – something he vehemently denied - and that Crowley
was a very, very bad man. Crowley refuted the manner in which he has been
portrayed by the press and blamed the entire situation on the newspapers and Betty
May (Raoul’s wife); speaking of her in his autobiography ‘An Autohagiography: The
Confessions Of Aleister Crowley’ he says “...an accident had damaged her brain
permanently so that its functions were discontinuous, and she had not mended matters
by taking to cocaine at the age of about twenty. After some years of addiction, she
found herself using a quarter of an ounce or more daily. She suddenly took fright and
4
cured herself by switching over, first to injections of morphia, and then to plain
alcohol.”. He also claims that unscrupulous journalists had gotten Betty May drunk
and convinced her to make up lies about the manner of Loveday’s death and activity
at the Abbey. Crowley also claimed that the media had deliberately misrepresented
the facts, knowing that he was too poor to sue for libel.
When it came to confusing the press (and people in general) Crowley didn’t
help matters; on the nature of blood and human sacrifices he wrote in Magick In
Theory And Practice that “A male child of perfect innocence and high intelligence is
the most satisfactory and suitable victim.”. A foot-note to this statement reads “It
appears from the Magical Records of FRATER PERDURABO that He made this
particular sacrifice on an average about 150 times every year between 1912 E.V and
1928 E.V”. This would suggest that Crowley sacrificed approximately 2400 boys
during this period. In actual fact ‘child sacrifice’ was a euphemism for a particular
strain of sex magick but Crowley did little to clarify this. The fact that that he also
claimed to be in contact with praeter-human intelligences and his work was therefore
outside the sphere of ‘normal’ understanding and ethical practices should also be
noted. It is hardly surprising that he was misunderstood by the press, who then in turn
artistic/theatrical pieces, the press were not particularly impressed, but the press were
equally unfavourable with their reviews of other theatre produced at the same time. It
has also been demonstrated that there was unfavourable press in existence even before
Crowley was born. Therefore we can discount the idea that Crowley’s art was
persecuted by the press – reviewers have, and will continue, to exercise their
5
Regarding the reporting, or lack of, about Crowley’s renouncement of his
allegiance to England; the New York Times article is very well-balanced and does not
report Crowley in any kind of negative light. It merely records events but does not
comment on them. Anyone reading the article could form their own opinions about
the event (although it is possible that their perception may have already been coloured
by previous news articles about Crowley and his behaviour). The Times in London
was too preoccupied with reporting on the war to even bother with writing an article
on the subject.
It has also been shown that the use of shock headlines to grab the reader’s
attention (and thereby sell more newspapers) was already an established practice. But
as suggested at the start of this piece, the press did not (and still does not) merely
reflect society; it also influences, therefore the idea that the public’s view of Crowley
was negatively influenced by the headlines of such publications as John Bull or the
If we also take into account that ‘novelty’ was also seen as being preferable to
‘fact’, it is neither a huge nor difficult step to conclude that the press made use of
Finally, we see that Crowley often made use of, what would have been at the
time, offensive and outrageous metaphors. He did not make much effort to clarify the
true meaning behind his ‘sleight of word’ and allowed people to arrive at incorrect
conclusions about his work and his behaviour. He certainly did not do himself any
Therefore it is only logical and sensible to conclude that admittedly the press
could be unfavaourable to Crowley’s artistic endeavours but this was clearly not a
personal attack; they just didn’t like his work. The press in his lifetime (and beyond)
6
were guilty of using sensational headlines to smear Crowley and they also invented
novel facts about him. However, in some instances, they reported in a clear and
unbiased fashion. Crowley, for his part, often wrote in an ambiguous manner which
would have confused the average person, let alone a ‘news-hungry’ journalist.
Would it be too much to suggest that Crowley and the press were in a parasitic
relationship whereby Crowley attempted to gain publicity and the press attempted to
gain increased readership through the use of outrageous headlines and suspect ‘facts’?
Big thanks to Mogg Morgan for his suggestions for research on this piece.