Aleister Crowley in England

A detailed examination of the last 15 years of Crowley’s life • Reveals Crowley’s sex magick relations in London and his contacts with important figures, including Dion Fortune, Gerald Gardner, Jack Parsons, Dylan Thomas, and black equality activist Nancy Cunard • Explores Crowley’s nick-of-time escape from the Nazi takeover in Germany and offers extensive confirmation of Crowley’s work for British intelligence • Examines the development of Crowley’s later publications and his articles in reaction to the Nazi Gestapo actively persecuting his followers in Germany After an extraordinary life of magical workings, occult fame, and artistic pursuits around the globe, Aleister Crowley was forced to spend the last fifteen years of his life in his native England, nearly penniless. Much less examined than his early years, this final period of the Beast’s life was just as filled with sex magick, espionage, romance, transatlantic conflict, and extreme behavior. Drawing on previously unpublished diaries and letters, Tobias Churton provides the first detailed treatment of the final years of Crowley’s life, from 1932 to 1947. He opens with Crowley’s nick-of-time escape from the Nazi takeover in Germany and his return home to England, flat broke. Churton offers extensive confirmation of Crowley’s work as a secret operative for MI5 and explores how Crowley saw World War II as the turning point for the “New Aeon.” He examines Crowley’s notorious 1934 London trial, which resulted in his bankruptcy, and shares inside stories of Crowley’s relations with Californian O.T.O. followers, including rocket-fuel specialist Jack Parsons, and his attempt to take over H. Spencer Lewis’s Rosicrucian Order. The author reveals Crowley’s sex magick relations in London and his contacts with spiritual leaders of the time, including Dion Fortune and Wicca founder Gerald Gardner. He examines Crowley’s dealings with artists such as Dylan Thomas, Alfred Hitchcock, Augustus John, Peter Warlock, and Peter Brooks and dispels the accusations that Crowley was racist, exploring his work with lifelong friend, black equality activist Nancy Cunard. Churton also examines the development of Crowley’s later publications such as Magick without Tears as well as his articles in reaction to the Nazi Gestapo who was actively persecuting his remaining followers in Germany. Presenting an intimate and compelling study of Crowley in middle and old age, Churton shows how the Beast still wields a wand-like power to delight and astonish.

Tobias Churton is Britain’s leading scholar of Western Esotericism, a world authority on Gnosticism, Hermeticism, and Rosicrucianism. He is a filmmaker and the founding editor of the magazine Freemasonry Today. An Honorary Fellow of Exeter University, where he is faculty lecturer in Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry, he holds a master’s degree in Theology from Brasenose College, Oxford, and created the award-winning documentary series and accompanying book The Gnostics, as well as several other films on Christian doctrine, mysticism, and magical folklore. The author of many books, including Gnostic Philosophy, The Invisible History of the Rosicrucians, and Aleister Crowley: The Beast in Berlin, he lives in England.

Acknowledgments INTRODUCTION He Never Sold Out PART ONE Pre-War 1932-1939 ONE Never Dull Where Crowley Is TWO Potted Sex Appeal THREE Justice Swift The Trial FOUR Unbelievable Terror A.M.O.R.C. Round One FIVE Bar 666 SIX Living in a Turkish Bath A.M.O.R.C. Again SEVEN Seriously on the Path Hitler and Germany According to Protective Prisoner No. 303 Cornwall--August 1938 EIGHT Khing Kang King Return of the Goetic Gourmet Qingjing Jing PART TWO WAR NINE Happy Dust TEN What Crowley Does this Year, England Does Next Torquay--Great Magical Retirement? ELEVEN Robed as a Warrior Rudolf Hess TWELVE In the Hour of Battle Winston Plus Cigar “Defeatist Activities of Really Serious Groups” Cambridge Spy THIRTEEN I Dreamed Time FOURTEEN Monstrous Worlds The Duke Street-King Street Bomb The Bell A New Gnostic Church--Almost The Book of Thoth Nancy Cunard PART THREE RETIREMENT FIFTEEN Death Is King Netherwood The Chinese Ambassadress SIXTEEN Eddies of Obsidian Babalon Now! SEVENTEEN The Universe Chronology 1875 to 1932: Crowley’s Life before He Returned to England Notes Bibliography Index