London’s Curse: Murder, Black Magic and Tutankhamun in the 1920s West End by Mark Beynon

Author:Mark Beynon
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780752466729
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2011-09-26T00:00:00+00:00

‘While his spiritual life soared with its victories, [Crowley’s] personal life crumbled under the stress of its burdens … On November 4 [1906, shortly before infecting Fletcher Robinson with laudanum] he wrote in his diary, “dog-faced demons all day. Descent into Hell.”’

Crowley blamed Lilith’s death on Rose and her increasing alcoholism. Left alone in grief, Rose descended into a world of madness and depression. She would not be the last of Crowley’s lovers to do so. Throughout this time, the Beast penetrated deeper into the world of the occult and ‘sex-magick’, this time taking a male lover, the writer Victor Neuburg. By the middle of 1907 Crowley was in search of a following and, looking to Cambridge for potential recruits, simply turned up one day in Neuburg’s room at Trinity College. Neuburg was already a published poet, and Crowley had been attracted by the mystical leanings in his work. Neuburg was then in his mid-twenties, not having gone up to Cambridge until 1906 when he was twenty-three, by which time his family had finally admitted that he was not cut out for a career in business. He came from a comfortable middle-class home in North London and had been raised by his mother following the departure of his father for his native Vienna. Together, Crowley and Neuburg travelled to France, Algeria and the Sahara to perform an Enochian ritual to summon up Choronzon, the demon of the abyss, seen in the occult world as the devil himself. This rite was said to open the gates of hell. Inevitably, like Rose before him, Neuburg was left mentally traumatised by his relationship with Crowley.

By 1909, Crowley had returned to London where he had taken residence at 124 Victoria Street. Now wishing to embark on a career in publishing, it was from this premises that Crowley began to print The Equinox, a series of publications in book form that served as the official periodical of the Argenteum Astrum, the magical order formed by Crowley after his break from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The following year, Crowley appealed against an injunction banning him from divulging the secrets of the Golden Dawn and the Rosicrucian Order in his Equinox publication. His appeal was successful and the injunction was overturned. On 22 April, the John Bull, a dedicated critic of the Beast’s, printed an open letter to him that underlined their contempt towards his practices:

To Aleister Crowley, Esq., Editor of ‘The Equinox’

Dear Mr. Crowley,

Congratulations on the result of your appeal.

It is rather nice to have lawsuits about Rosicrucian mysteries in the prosaic twentieth century.

Incidentally, there is also a fine advertisement for your periodical.

Meanwhile, I wish you would teach me to become invisible, to turn my enemy into a black dog, and to discover the buried treasures of the Djinn.

John Bull

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