THE VOICE OF FIRE
The Editor in his robe
Volume 2, Number 1.
Summer Solstice. An CXXII. Sunday 21st
June 2026 e.v.
‘Draw into naught
All life, death,
hatred, love:
All self concentred in
the sole desire –
Hear thou the Voice of
Fire!’
Tannhauser. Aleister
Crowley.
Tannhauser. Aleister
Crowley.
Love is the law, love
under will.
Volume 2, Number 1 of
the Voice of Fire is dedicated to the poet, Ether Archer (1885-1962)
CONTENTS
Editorial
Ethel Archer
Victor Benjamin
Neuburg and Aleister Crowley: Lovers, Seer and Scribe.
Ra-Hoor-Khuit (poem)
From the Vaults
To Frater Omnia Vincam
(poem)
Boleskine After Crowley
The Four Adorations
EDITORIAL
Do what thou wilt
shall be the whole of the law
It has come to the
attention of the editorial staff here at the Voice of Fire that there is yet a
need for mirth and folly for it has been eleven years since the last edition of
the Voice of Fire (Autumn Equinox, 23rd September 2015 e.v.) and
this second volume, (the first number also being number eleven) is now making
its appearance. I cannot say for sure whether there will be more editions to
follow or if they do they will be more sporadic.
So what has happened
in the interim? Work has continued under several inefficient Prime Ministers,
all of whom have done sterling work in eroding the fabric of a once great and
prosperous nation and reducing its significance under the weight of poorly
prepared government; Prime Ministers and heartless politicians, I might add,
who think nothing of starving a nation that gave us Shakespeare, Nelson and
Churchill (and of course Edward Alexander Crowley) to death and inflicting
heavy tax burdens upon the poor; a people that know there is strength in
solidarity but are unable to wield and manage such force –
yet they are not
defeated, they never have been and never shall be. ‘Enough of politics!’ I hear
you cry, let them crumble unto dust! ‘I spit on your crapulous creeds’ [AL.
III: 54]
We all face various
difficulties and situations in our daily life but through struggle and
determination we overcome them to face the next challenge – in the immortal
words of Norman Mudd: ‘oil your tools and be ready to hew them in pieces before
mine eyes that I might paddle in their treacly guts’ [Letter to Crowley Oxford
University
I am also including
some photographs from my recent expedition to Boleskine House during the
Thelemic Holy days in April and my article on Neuburg, that rare and simple
soul, ‘Vickbird’, who had the courage and devotion to continue under his ‘sweet
wizard’ despite many tribulations and ordeals; without wishing to sound too
pompous or pretentious, it was he I found at Boleskine, although Crowley still
lingers in the Temple, if you seek him, it was the resolute shade of Neuburg I
encountered who inspired me to research and write the article I present here.
But first I wish to
talk a little about the magical path and how easy it is to become distracted
from one’s course and how the journey becomes more circuitous and one’s motions
seem inert. This is a natural feeling when an active motion suddenly or over a
period of time becomes decreased. One may stray from the path but there will be
subtle hints and nudges by a higher authority to remind one of the oath one has
taken; a declaration before the whole universe of one’s intentions towards the
Great Work for which you shall be held accountable. A magical oath is a binding
affirmation cast far unto the void for all the worlds to hear beyond mere space
and time and is not something to take lightly – every action has a re-action
(we can see this in climate change where nature is re-acting to mans’ actions
of the past) – one cannot simply walk away from it and not expect certain
consequences, for one shall find, and I have found, almost miraculously, one is
drawn and gently directed back towards the path thou hast chosen. In making an
oath, the magician is invoking the Powers of the Universe to assist, causing a
chain of events to be established and set in motion. ‘Courage is the first
virtue of the magician’ Crowley says in his Introduction to the Vision and the
Voice for one is invoking higher intelligences who orchestrate the celestial
beauty which governs Nature and all manifestations of perception – ignore thy
duties at thy peril, for thou shalt surely feel the loving wisdom or cursive
wrath upon the ‘conscience of the King’ [Hamlet: Act II, scene II].
Distractions are plentiful upon the journey or the quest – the daily grind to
put bread upon the table and the dirge of modern annoyances – the rise of
Artificial Intelligence can consume one’s whole being if left unchecked, but
let us remember that we are not slaves to ‘AI’, it is merely a tool to work
with, and AI has the numerical value of 11, the number of Magick!
We must recognise the
transient nature of things, of those around us and ourselves, for we are merely
a short intake of breath in the Mystic Laws of Transcendental Truth. Let us
remember, as we bask beneath the solstice sun at its zenith, raking the dying
embers and awaiting the sunset of Christianity and all the old religions that
we sit upon the sunrise of the Dawn of Thelema, a Law of Love and Liberty that
has only seen one-hundred-and-twenty-two similar sunrises – in that time, in
fact relatively recently, we have seen the acceptance of neural diverse
individuals, sexuality and different genders, expressed within the Light of
Love of the Crowned and Conquering Child before the death spasms of Christian
contempt for the individual’s rights to express such natural physical, mental
(moral) and spiritual emotions – that
same great orb of fire Crowley looked upon and that another hundred-million
souls will look up to see together with her sister Moon. We are on the
threshold of grasping infinity in our hands as mankind moves away from this
small and beautiful planet to reach other worlds and colonise them; to make
contact with cosmic civilisations and intelligent life forms beyond the measure
of our understanding. Humanity shall survive and so shall all of our desire,
passion, ingenuity and beauty, striving to create and explore which is in our
nature as we each play a valued and vital part in the expansion of Love and
Light and Liberty and the Law of Thelema!
Love is the law, love
under will.
ETHEL ARCHER
‘Love knows no barrier, Love knows no shame
All is enveloped in rose-coloured flame!’
[To Lilith. Ethel Archer. The Whirlpool, p. 17]
Ethel Edith Florence
Archer was born in Slougham, Sussex, in 1885, (she was christened there on 24th
November 1885) the fourth of five children born to the Reverend Osmond Andrew
Archer (1852-1943) and Emily Agnes Moore Sinyanki (1857-1926) who were married
at St Peter’s Church in Brighton, Sussex on 14th September 1878.
Osmond was educated at Lincoln
College Oxford Winchester Hereford 16th June 1938 ,
aged 57. The next child born to Osmond and Emily was Francis Herbert Archer,
born in Lancashire in 1882 who later became a
clerk in a shipping office; the next child was Maud Archer in 1883 followed by
Ethel in 1885 and Irene Constance Archer, born on 2nd December 1889 on the Isle of Wight . Irene married the well-known tenor singer
who had trained at the Royal Academy of Music, Lionel Ross Oliver (1879-1961)
at Hampstead on 14th February 1914; they lived at 1, Highfield
Avenue, Golders Green for the rest of their life and their daughter, Charmion
June Ross-Oliver L.R.A.M., A.R.C.M. was born on 2nd June 1920;
Charmion, was a professional pianist and teacher at the London College of Music
in 1954 and she gave recitals at London’s Royal Albert Hall, London Hippodrome
and Palladium, Scala and Wigmore Hall. Irene died in Hendon in 1961 aged 51 and
her husband, Lionel, died there twenty years later in 1961 aged 81.
There is an
interesting article in The Poetry Review, volume XVII, London, Erskine
Macdonald Ltd. 1926 (pp. 67-69) under the title ‘An Egregious Letter’ (a letter
from a child of ten [Ethel] with poems enclosed at the end of the last century)
which gives a little of Ethel’s background which says she began writing at the
age of eight – ‘almost before she could read!’ which goes on to say ‘until she
had reached the age of fourteen she never had a book of verse of any
description in her possession, nor had she read or heard any poetry except the
few scanty selections from Walter Scott or Shakespeare that were given out in
the school lesson once a week! The children were never given the book, except for
occasional correction. Seemingly at the school to which she had the misfortune
to be sent poetry was considered to be positively immoral: there was not a
single volume of verse to be found in the whole of the school library, and when
by the merest accident the school authorities discovered that the child had
been writing poems (for she was far too shy ever to have shown her work to anyone
but her father) she was given a long lecture by her dormitory mistress and told
it was ‘very morbid and unnatural and if she didn’t take care she would go
mad.’ Not once did this unhappy child, who possessed the unmistakable marks of
genius, ever have a word of commendation for her work, not even when as a child
of twelve she translated almost straightaway into good English poetry a French
poem upon which she had never set eyes before. She was practically expelled
from school for having asked a few simple questions in the Scripture class (and
for smoking a cigarette in the bathroom), quite a repetition of Shelley’s
treatment at Oxford
At the age of fourteen
the child I am speaking of wrote poems that might (except for their
spirituality) have been written by Milton or Keats in their early manhood. It
was merely considered ‘unhealthy’. Her poems were almost entirely
inspirational, and she seldom had to alter a word or a phrase (not even as a
child of ten), and even now her work is inspirational, though she has in these
days to polish up lines in a way that she never had to then. Many of her poems
were written in the middle of the night, but only mentally, of course; until a
poem was quite perfect in her head she never wrote a line of it down, and as a
consequence of this is able perfectly to remember every poem she has ever
written. Although there are about sixty of them!’ The article goes on to say
that ‘her father, when but twelve years of age, wrote an epic poem of more than
600 lines – an extraordinarily fine piece of work, he uncle Andrew (whose book
on the Crusades was published by Fisher Unwin in 1884) began to write poetry at
the age of seven! The other uncle, Charles, took a double first in Classics. He
was an ‘Oriel’ man, her father, a ‘Lincoln
One night Love flew
down from on high,
Leaving behind her the
starry sky,
And on the earth he
lighted down,
All living things with
joy to crown.
He touched the stately
lilies pale,
And they did his sweet
breath inhale,
And sending out a
sweet perfume,
Their lovely fragrance
found no room.’
The uncle the article
mentions who published The Crusades is Thomas Andrew Archer, M.A. Oxon
(1853-1905), brother of Ethel’s father, Osmond who were the sons of Thomas
Andrew Archer (1826-1853) who married Emma Charity Osmond (1826-1862) in
Salisbury, Wiltshire on 14th July 1847. The grandfather on her
mother’s side was John Elhanan Sinyanki (1815-1899) who married Agnes Moore
(born 1820) at St Margaret’s, Westminster 7th September
1852 .
Ethel published her
first book – the ‘Book of Plain Cooking’ in the Practical Housewife series
volume 2 [London
In 1908 Ethel married the
artist Eugene John Wieland (1880-1915), son of Thomas Thatcher Wieland (born
Scotland 1857, died 1942) and Eugenie Le Roux (1855-1931) [who were married in
Dover in 1877] of Sunnyfield House, Guisborough, Yorkshire. She nicknamed him
‘Bunco’. Ethel became a member of Crowley’s magical order, the A.A. and helped
with the publication of The Equinox – Eugene had set up the press, Wieland and
Co. which published the periodical. Ethel, (who had been dubbed ‘Sappho’ by
Victor Neuburg because of her love poems to women) and Eugene attended the
performance of the Rite of Artemis at 124, Victoria Street, on Tuesday 23rd
August 1910 and Ethel said of the Cup of Libation which was passed around the
audience (a concoction of mescal buttons [Anhalonium Lewinii- ‘peyote’], herbs,
alcohol and fruit juice) that it tasted like ‘rotten apples’.
Ethel’s first volume
of poetry was The Whirlpool published by Wieland and Co. in 1911 which had a
cover design by her husband, an introduction by Crowley and a dedicatory sonnet
by Victor Neuburg (p. 9) – ‘To E. A.’
The radiance of
darkness, and the surge
Of waves of blackness,
and the lucent veil
Of violet light,
compounded with the pale
Red light of passion,
here commingled urge
The spirit to
adoration: on the verge
Trembles a fiery Soul!
Hail! Hail! oh, Hail!
Thou lyric laughter of
the enfranchised Male,
Thou fury of the
eternal Woman’s dirge!
Ah! Lesbos! let thy
waves receive once more
This soul tormented,
striving still to gain
The land of laughter,
and the hungry Shore!
Ah! Sappho! thou art
born on earth again!
Call to thy lover till
the friends adore
Thy soul, and the
angels cry aloud for pain!
V.B.N.
Ethel included her
sonnet to Victor in the volume (p. 28):
To V. B. N.
What silent shadow
stirs the sentient air?
Like some dim-whirling
flame-flower from the Loom
Of Darkness; swifter
circling ‘mid the gloom
Of incense-laden
shadows, to the air
Of softly chanted
mantrams; till the prayer
So oft-repeated fills
the sombre room
With magic mighty as
the dusky plume
Of the Concealed One,
by whom we swear!
Victor! Twice Victor!
By the golden lays
Of many-moulded music,
hear our praise!
Accept our homage,
whilst our spirit whirls
With thine: in
fiercest ecstasy unfurls
New glory ever, - till
the vision slays
Itself, of its own
beauty, Passion’s pearls.
The volume is rich in
dark sentiments of love and passion and is reminiscent of Poe in its lyrical
beauty – ‘How shall I picture thee – how shall begin? / Lovely and Evil One
nurtured in Sin! / veiling those mystic eyes all thoughts within, /smiling yet
sorrowful, watching earth spin!’ [To Lilith. p. 16] And here, in ‘The Song
Virginal’, there is an extraordinary eruption of transient rapture at the touch
of a lover – ‘I love thy warm white body, magic hands, / that hold me for a
while from dark despair.’ (p. 19) The final verse (p. 19) echoes with the
destructive power of desire –
O come! My fair
enchanting Lotus-flower
Bear me across the
opal-tinted sea.
Subdue me with thy
wondrous weak’ning power,
Siren that tell’st of
Sweet fertility,
And I renounce all
earthly destiny,
All that the gods may
give me for a dower,
All! All! To be with
thee, one brief mad hour.
Archer had many
articles and poems published in The Occult Review and The English Revew * and
she also had several of her poems published in The Equinox: from volume I,
number IV: ‘Midsummer Eve’ (p. 310) [also in The Whirlpool, p. 42], ‘The Felon
Flower’ (p. 325) [The Whirlpool, pp. 23-25], ‘The Dreamer’ (p. 208) [The
Whirlpool, p. 13]; from volume I, number V: ‘The Vampire’ (p. 143); from volume
I, number VI: ‘Circe’ (p. 52), ‘Come, Love awaken!’ (as ‘Song’) (p. 66), ‘Sleep’
(p. 112) [The Whirlpool, p. 43]; from volume I, number VII: ‘Silence’ (p. 290);
from volume I, number VIII: ‘In Limine’ (p. 77); from volume I, number IX: ‘The
Fairy Fiddler’ (p. 115) and from volume I, number X: ‘A Ballad of Bedlam’ (p.
207)
When war broke out,
Eugene served with the 19th Battalion London Regiment, 47th
London Division and attained the rank of sergeant. He was wounded at the Battle
of Loos and died in a Canadian Hospital on 5th October 1915 aged 35
and Sergeant E. J. Wieland, 2248, was buried at Le Treport Military Cemetery.
Ethel’s second and
final volume of poetry, Phantasy and Other Poems, was published in 1930 by
Victor Neuburg’s Vine Press with a cover by Harry Clarke. Her only novel, The
Hieroglyph was published in 1932 and draws upon the Rites of Eleusis for
inspiration. [all three books: The Whirlpool, Phantasy and Other Poems, and The
Hieroglyph were re-issued in original re-prints by Snuggly Books in 2023 – The
Whirlpool (pp. 98), Phantasy and Other Poems (pp. 118) and The Hieroglyph
(pp.286); there was also a 32 page chapbook, The Vampire and Other Poems
published with twelve of Archer’s poems by Occult Press (120 hand-numbered
copies) in 2025,and ‘Shadow & Shine’, an 82 page book of her poems,
published and unpublished with an Introduction by Phil Jenson, by Lulu.com]
Ethel Archer died in Chelsea
*such as the following poems in The English Review: ‘Silence’ and ‘A Song’ – volume XXIX, July 1919, p. 7, and ‘A Ballad of Bedlam’ – volume XXIX, November 1919, pp. 392-393. In The Occult Review: ‘Some Folk-Lore of the Mass’ – volume L, number 5, November 1929, pp. 327-329; ‘A Note on Exorcisms’ – volume XLVII, number 6, June 1928, pp. 389-392, and ‘Imagination and Reality’ – volume XLV, number 5, May 1927, pp. 306-309.
VICTOR BENJAMIN NEUBURG
AND ALEISTER CROWLEY:
LOVERS, SEER AND SCRIBE
BY
BARRY VAN-ASTEN
‘The mystic moon o’erhangs her, whence of lateThe gods to earth transferred their charge, and
she,The perfect Mother of the Uncreate,Hath taken to her flesh, that is to beThe way of carnal birth, the door of fateBetwixt the borders of Infinity.’ [from ‘The Creation of Eve’ by Victor Neuburg.Cambridge Poets, 1900-1913. Tillyard. 1913. p.
148]
In this analysis of
Victor Neuburg I wish solely to concentrate on the young poet’s development
under the influence of Aleister Crowley, an influence which sprung from love
and devotion towards the older poet and mystic, which climaxed into a vision of
Crowley as a god upon the earth and ended in doubt, abandonment and ritual
cursing.
Victor Benjamin
Neuburg, born in Islington, London Sunday 6th May
1883 , matriculated at Trinity
College Cambridge
Victor continues
writing poetry for the Agnostic Journal (which was founded in 1877) through
1906-1907 (2) and he is on particularly good terms with one of its
editors – William Ross Stewart, also known as ‘Saladin’. Another contributor to
the Agnostic Journal whom Neuburg becomes acquainted with at the home of
Saladin, 30, Canterbury Road, Brixton, London, is John Charles Frederick Fuller
(1878-1966). J. F. C. Fuller had written a critical essay on the poetical works
of Aleister Crowley which was published in 1907 as The Star in the West; Fuller
and Crowley became firm friends and associates following this. Fuller mentions
Neuburg to Crowley who has admired some of his poetry in the Agnostic Journal
for their sense of ‘astral travel’.
William Ross Stewart
died at his home in Brixton on Friday 30th November 1906 and Saladin’s
funeral took place on Thursday 6th December at Brookwood Cemetery,
Woking, and it is probable that Neuburg and Fuller attended (3).
Neuburg having written
a letter to Crowley on 28th January 1907, Crowley, takes it upon
himself to visit Cambridge to meet the young poet, Victor Neuburg, being a
Trinity man he is accustomed to visiting his old college and it is likely that
this occurred during the Lent term of 1907 (January to March) when Victor was
in residence (4); Richard Kaczynski gives the date of Thursday 28th
February (1907) when Crowley went on his “First Missionary Journey” to
Cambridge (5). Was Neuburg thinking of Crowley
The two poets became
acquainted very quickly and Victor was soon under the spell of the older poet
who saw in Victor, a young man with a developing magical capacity which could
be nurtured.
UNDER MAGDALEN BRIDGE
The lapping, lapping,
lapping of the stream
Makes songs around my
lazy-light canoe;
The soft brown haze of
dusk shines softly through
The dripping trees,
and the damp meadows seem
A plateau as of lost
desire, a dream
That melts from gold
to gray; a soft breeze blew
Across the brow of
waking night, and dew
Re-bathes the earth
that grows a fading gleam.
The sleepy river
ripples, ripples ever
Betwixt the old brown
wall and meadows trim;
The tideless song of
Never, Never, Never
Lulls the wet woods,
and ever growing dim
The fields are grey
with mist, and slip away
Into the darkness with
the dying day. (6)
In October 1907, two
undergraduates arrive that will become Neuburg’s friends and fellow enthusiasts
of Crowley – Gerald Hume Saverie Pinsent (1888-1976), who also resides in
staircase L at Whewell’s Court, and Norman Mudd (1889-1934), studying
mathematics, who has rooms in staircase J, Whewell’s Court (7). Norman
Mudd became a member of Neuburg’s Pan Society, a poetry reading club to which
Crowley attended several meetings to give talks (where he also met eighteen
year old Mudd); and Keneth Martin Ward became President of the Cambridge
University Free Thought Association (CUFA) which Neuburg is a member; Gerald
Pinsent later became President (8).
Another undergraduate
who became a friend of Neuburg’s and came under the influence of Crowley was
Kenneth Martin Ward (1887-1927) who came up to Emmanuel College, Cambridge in
October 1906 on a physics and chemistry scholarship (he met Aleister Crowley
while climbing at Wastdale Head during the winter of 1908) (9).
SPAIN
On Wednesday 8th
July 1908, Aleister Crowley is in Paris working on several literary compositions
[‘Clouds without Water’, ‘Sir Palamedes’ and the preface to ‘The World’s
Tragedy’; ‘Mr Todd’ and ‘After Judgement’] and with him is the young
undergraduate and poet, Victor Neuburg. Neuburg left Trinity College, sometime
after the end of the Easter Full Term, which ended on Friday12th June 1908. They
are staying in separate hotels and Crowley has begun training Neuburg in magick
as part of his initiation and curing him of his ‘romantic idealism’; with them
is Crowley’s lover, the artist’s model, ‘Dorothy’ [Euphemia Lamb, born Nina
Forest (1889-1957)]. After two weeks or more in Paris, Crowley suggests to
Neuburg that they take a walking tour across Spain, from Bayonne to Madrid, taking
two weeks to do so, avoiding the railway line. (10) On Friday 31st
July, the two men set off from Paris for Bordeaux. The next day, Saturday 1st
August, they travel to Bayonne and in the afternoon begin their walk to the
Spanish frontier, reaching Ustaritz that night.
They walked for three
days across the Pyranees and encountered difficulty and much hardship along the
way – ‘three times on the road we were arrested as anarchists. The soldiers
could not understand why anyone should want to go to Madrid except to kill
Alphonso, and I suppose there is something really to be said for this point of
view. They gave us no real annoyance, our passports being as impressive as they
were unintelligible. Of course they didn’t really think we were anarchists, and
they would not have cared if we had been; but most of these unhappy men were
marooned for indefinite periods in ghastly districts where there was absolutely
no amusement of any kind.’ [The Confessions of Aleister Crowley. pp. 577-578]
Together they travel
through Pamplona, arriving on Tuesday 4th August and leaving the
next day for a three day walk to Logrono, arriving on Friday 7th
August. They spent the next night together in a cave which they romantically
named ‘Bat’s Culvert’; they left Logrono the following day, on Sunday 9th
August and in the evening and camped for the night in a ravine which they
called ‘Jack Straw’s Castle. The next day they walked continuously until they
reached a small hamlet in the evening where they drank a cup of goat’s milk,
feasted upon a ‘small scrap of dry bread’ and slept upon straw in a ‘horribly
dirty barn’. [Confessions. p. 579] It is not surprising that they spent the
next night in a hotel at Soria having walked several hours in a severe
thunderstorm. The following day was Crowley’s fifth wedding anniversary,
Wednesday 12th August, and they spent the night in a ‘sinister
looking house’ with ‘sinister looking occupants’ in a place they named the
‘Witches’ Kitchen Village’ and they ‘barricaded ourselves for the night in the
main room. There were considerable alarums and excursions; but when they found
we meant business they decided to leave us alone and in the morning everyone
was all smiles.’ [Confessions. p. 580]
They had another 44 km
to walk without water or shelter. Burgo de Osma was about to celebrate its two
day festival and Crowley witnessed a bull fight. They stayed and rested here
for two days or possibly longer.
They marched on to
Aranda de Duero and then to Milagros and past many other villages. They were
now 50 km from Madrid and they came upon a place they called ‘Big Stone
Bivouac’ where a bitter wind forced them to try and shelter, ‘sleeping till the
cold awoke us, and then trying to warm ourselves by exercise until fatigue sent
us once more to sleep. An alternation of discomforts, which was repeated half a
dozen times during the night. The memory is delightful. All the unpleasant
incidents of the period have passed into oblivion.’ [Confessions. p. 584]
They reached Madrid Crowley Madrid
On Friday 28th
August Crowley and Neuburg left Madrid and walked all day; the next day,
Saturday 29th, they reached Granada and Crowley renews his relations
with the wild gypsy woman whom he met there the year previously and of whom he
wrote his celebrated love song ‘La Gitana’ on 21st July 1907. The
next day they walked to Ronda and arrived in Gibraltar on Monday 31st
August. They stayed at a hotel and later crossed the strait of Gibraltar to
Tangiers.
On Sunday 13th
September Neuburg left Crowley to visit his relatives in San Sebastian, [the
Michaelmas full term at Trinity College, Cambridge began on Saturday 10th
October, so he must have returned by that date]. On the same day, Sunday 13th
September, Crowley
‘To-night, the wind shall play among the trees,
To-night, still waters shall reflect the sky,
To-night, the moonlight over wide stretch’d
seas
Shall rouse the slumb’rous earth with melody.’
[The Garden of Youth (iii), A Green Garland. p.
1]
[The Garden of Youth (iii), A Green Garland. p.
1]
Neuburg published his first
collection of poetry, ‘A Green Garland’ in 1908 with the London publisher,
Probsthain & Co. It was published with financial assistance by his friend
and fellow undergraduate of Trinity College, Wilfred Edward Hermann Schmiechen
(later Merton) (12) The volume shows Neuburg’s delicate touches as a
poet, influenced by Shelley and Swinburne, with a huge appreciation for Edward
Carpenter and Walt Whitman:
‘A Leaf (Of Grass)
From Walt Whitman’ (p. 30):
Then the eyes close;
the lamp is darkened now,
The spirit’s prison is
empty, the spirit free;
A gentle hand smoothes
the unclouded brow,
Kind fingers seal the
eyelids tenderly,
And, maybe in the
darkness, ere he rise,
The watcher plants a
kiss on the shut eyes.
Asleep! asleep! the
soothing night-air blows
The hair the wind may
ruffle never more;
The door is shut; the
camp-fire cracks and glows,
The shadows waver
darkly in its roar
A shadow-play of death
and life: the damp
Of evening dews
o’erspreads the little camp.
Sweet breeze, blow
softly o’er the dead, the dead,
The day is passed, the
night is starless, chill
The herald-breeze of
dawn, ere dawn is red
With sunlight, blows
from the high eastern hill
The night is cold;
draw close your cloaks, for lo!
The unknown road far
stretches. Let us go.
The majority of the
poems in the collection are poems Neuburg has previously had published in the
Agnostic Journal, as this poem, ‘To Shelley’ (pp. 34-36) which was published in
the Agnostic Journal of 20th May 1905 and begins:
‘Radiant son of the
South, whose fingers
Strayed in Love o’er a
heart-strung lyre,
The glamour of
Summer’s veil still lingers
Over the hills of thy
native shire,
Sweetest of all our
country’s singers,
Whose voice was flame,
and whose eyes were fire.’
In the third verse the
poet truly reaches heights of sublime beauty: ‘Still are the sky-larks upward
winging / over the fields where thou hast been, / still the wild sea her spray
is flinging, / glittering greenly in sunlight sheen.’ Before the beautiful
fourth verse (pp. 34-35):
Brother and bard, thy
voice’s thunder
Changed the grey sky
of the past to white:
Still we listen in
pain and wonder –
Still we weep in our
heart’s delight
When the golden sun at
eve goes under
The earth’s red rim at
the touch of Night.
And the final and
ninth verse of the poem ends triumphantly (p. 36):
Our songs shall rise
as the dawn grows whiter,
Our hearts shall throb
with the promise of Day;
‘Neath skies more
deep, and in sunlight brighter,
With golden lyres we
will go our way –
Take thou this lay of
a dawning lighter,
A song of the
springtide, of Sussex
A list of other poems
in the collection – with those which appeared in the Agnostic Journal giving
the date of publication in brackets:1. The Garden of Youth 30th September 1905 ], 2.
The First Poet, (p. 5), 3. The Eagle and the Serpent, (pp. 6-10) [30th March 1907 ],
4. Two Sonnets, (pp.11-12), 5. Between the Spheres, (pp. 13-14) [8th October 1904 ],
6. Ballade of the Daisy, (pp. 15-16) [18th May 1907 ], 7. An Old Song, (p. 17) [27th January 1906 ],
8.The Swan Song, (pp. 18-19) [27th
May 1905 ], 9. My Homeland, (p. 20) [6th May 1905 ], 10. The Fugitive,
(pp. 21-23) [17th
June 1905 ], 11. Carmen Triumphans, (pp. 24-27) [13th August 1904 ], 12. A
Song of the Promise of Dawn, (p. 28), 13. Serenade, (p. 29) [12th May 1906 ], 14. A Leaf
(of grass) from Walt Whitman, (p. 30), 15. Young Summer, (pp. 31-33) [26th May 1906 ],
16. To Shelley, (pp. 34-36) [20th
May 1905 ], 17. A Recall, (pp. 37-40) [2nd March 1907 ], 18. An Agnostic
View, (pp. 41-42) [15th
September 1906 ], 19. A Lullaby, (pp. 43-44) [14th January 1905 ], 20.
Three Singers, (pp. 45-47), 21. A Song of Freedom, (p. 48-49) [14th May 1904 ],
22. The Dream, (pp. 50-53) [17th
February 1906 ], 23. A Song of Dawn, (pp. 54-55) [31st
October 1903]. At the end of the volume is a full page advert for Crowley American Republic
OLIVIA VANE
Neuburg’s poem ‘The
Romance of Olivia Vane’ was written in March 1909. Neuburg is in Paris and
seemingly waiting for Crowley to join him there. Neuburg must have travelled to
Paris after the Lent term at Cambridge which ended on Wednesday 24th
March (Full Term ended on Monday 15th March]
[Lent Term ran from Tuesday
5th January to Wednesday 24th March; the undergraduate
teaching period known as Full Term ran from Friday 22nd January to Monday
15th March]
Crowley London
From the beginning of
the poem Neuburg is in a state of apprehension for his magical mentor, his
‘sweet wizard’ to join him, longing in fact as he waits, for he tells us (in
verse V) that ‘I cross the water with the sun; / the light plays on the sea. /
The Channel waters race and run / betwixt thy soul and me’ and that he shall
‘love thee ever, unto death – / till the last star-crowned sun / in glamour of
spring-tide witnesseth / the thing that we have done.’ But what have Crowley
and Neuburg done? He tells us in the next verse (VI) that ‘I have found thee, I
have bound thee, / one in Pan are we!’
In verse V he writes
‘cross’ the channel which seems to imply he is writing this first section, at
least up until verse VI on the boat (verse VI begins: ‘Light wind, night wind’
and he may be composing this verse upon the deck). Verse VII states that he
‘crossed the channel, yesterday…’ and he is consumed with desire, summoning
Crowley to him – ‘Come thou and slumber with me; there is rest / for thee and
Love together, in my breast.’ He goes on:
Slow was thy wooing,
so I crept upon thee
Until thy radiant face
from sleep did rise;
And in the moment that
I leapt upon thee,
I felt the agony of
thy burning eyes,
And all my heart was
thine; and now I know
The depth of fire
beneath life’s glittering snow.
Again (verse VIII) he
implores his lover to:
Come back across the
sea to comfort me
With purple kisses,
touches all unplanned!
Let me once more feel
thy strong hand to be
Making the magic signs
upon me! Stand,
Stand in the light,
and let mine eyes drink in
The glorious vision of
the death of sin!
Verse X begins ‘All
yesterday the spring was born, / the spring that Ovid sang of old;’ it seems
that Neuburg is telling us that yesterday ‘the spring was born’, in other
words, the spring equinox of Sunday 21st March. If indeed he is we
can estimate that Neuburg crossed the channel to Dieppe on or around Friday 19th
March, four days after Full Term ended at Cambridge, and that verse X is
written on the fourth day after travelling (his third day in Paris), Monday 22nd
March (where ‘yesterday’ would have been the equinox of Sunday 21st).
In the next verse (XI)
Neuburg is anticipating the future when he shall be questioned upon Crowley and
their relationship – and he shall reply: ‘”I knew him once in this wide universe.”
And they shall ask me
of your garb and port,
And of the miracles
men say you wrought,
And I shall smile upon
their questioning,
And tell how in my
soul you wrought the spring.
The theme of spring
continues in verse XII and in verse XIII Neuburg is almost mad with waiting: ‘I
await thee in this city; when thou dost come, / my songs shall end; thy lips
shall make me dumb.’ Here it seems that Neuburg is confessing that these songs,
the poems in Olivia Vane, are an act of concentrated will to invoke his lover
to him. There is an erotic charge as he goes on:
My virile soul shall
tremble at thy coming,
And thou shalt spend
the spirit’s plenteous store
On me, to sleep and
death well-nigh succumbing
Beneath thy body’s
weight. Ah, come once more;
Grant me but that I
seek, and I shall be
For ever fastened on
the breast of thee.
Come, and bring ease
unto my thirsting soul;
Give what thou hast,
spare me nor pain, nor dread;
Ah! Having taken love
thou hast taken the whole:
Lie on my breast, and
let me stroke thy skin
With my light hand!
Come thou, and enter in!
The waiting is
feverish and brings anxiety: ‘I see the summer sky break into rime, / and I
must sing in rhythm with it still, / until thou comest tome; all the time /
thou art not here, with song dost thou fulfil / the daylight, since the secret
hour I won / the lyric light of thee, my risen sun.’
In verse XV he is
still waiting patiently: ‘Fresh from the heaven of new-born desire, /
I wait thee here, and
all my veins are fire’, he tells us that he ‘knew not love, till thou hadst
given me pain’ and continues in sweet supplication: ‘Take thou my body, now
hermaphrodite, / Pink-tipped and gleaming white, / for love’s sake wrought.’
In verse XVII he says
that ‘a hundred sonnets yesterday took wing, / a thousand lyrics flew…’ so we
may say that a new day has begun and this is more than likely the first poem of
that day. In it he makes a solemn confession that ‘the wonder thou has wrought,
lest should I blush / when next I hail thee, Bride.’ In the same poem he says
that he has ‘reached the city rare’ and ‘rode unto the western hill’ which
probably signifies he is in Montmartre, the artistic quarter, strictly in the
north, its western prospect overlooks views of the Eiffel Tower.
In verse XIX in the
‘City of Light’ (Paris) he is visiting the Luxembourg Gardens. He is in a state
of passionate expectation for ‘I shall see thee to-morrow’ and ‘clasped heart
to heart we shall lie / naked; all day we shall borrow / the space and the
spread of the sky.’ He is ‘lilies and burning red roses / that flame and grow
strong with desire’
In verse XXI he
recalls their first meeting (in Cambridge two years earlier in 1907): ‘Ah! When
we rose to greet, / did we pierce through the outer gloom? / when our eyes
first came to meet, / did we know of the secret doom / that lay in our hearts,
my sweet, / a perilous tender bloom?’ In the final verse (XXII) Neuburg seems
to prophesise a time in the future when there will be no need for secrecy for
‘the lovers yet to be’ like himself and Crowley, ‘who have dared a lonely sea.’
The next stanza repeats this notion: ‘Lovers! Ye shall dare to be / wise, and
in your wisdom free.’ And finally in the last stanza he sings:
Ages hence – my song
grows fainter,
For the light fades
from my mind –
Poet, player, singer,
painter,
Learn the secret: be
not blind.
Know the sign shall
set ye free;
Hear the word of
mystery.’
The poem ends with a
curious couplet – ‘There is a maiden harp-player, and a silver flute is held /
in the hands of an hermaphrodite: this thing shall be fulfilled’. We can assume
that Neuburg is finally re-united with his beloved Crowley and the song ends
suddenly; perhaps the final couplet is incomplete because the appearance of the
‘bride’ broke the songster’s spell or energised inspiration of poetic longing
for the union.
The great sense of
waiting for his lover to come to him echoes another of Neuburg’s poems written
prior to his sojourn in Paris and published in the first edition of the Equinox
in March 1909 – ‘The Lonely Bride’ (pp. 95-97) [also printed in The Triumph of
Pan, pp. 40-42]. This seven-lined eight verse poem speaks of a woman who
frequents the market place and waits, with head ‘bowed down with the shame of
my thought’, and ‘mine eyes grow hot with disgrace. / Oh the evil that men have
wrought!’ In the third verse she says that ‘I stare all day at the men that
pass, / and all that I see I crave’. There is a terrible ache, an unsatisfied
need, the same sense of desire as yet unfulfilled that Neuburg engaged with in
Paris, yet in his case it was Crowley who took the role of the bride; here,
Neuburg is the female form who says in verse VII: ‘If they but knew of my need,
my need, / as I wait in love’s barren land, / to me, to me, would they speed.’
(p. 96) Eventually, the tension mounts as it surely must find some relief –
‘Ah! the weary waiting
till one shall speak,
Oh! then the spell
will fall,
And I shall find what
I seek. (p. 97)
The poem, Olivia Vane,
tells me that Neuburg and Crowley were lovers during March 1909 and that any
doubt must surely be cast aside when it comes to their intimacy during Victor’s
initiation at Boleskine in Scotland.
Neuburg probably
travelled back to London with Crowley for on Monday 5th April he is
with Crowley during his initiation into Crowley’s magical order, the A.A., the
first probationer to do so.
Neuburg would have
returned to Cambridge for the start of the Easter Term on Saturday 17th
April [Easter Term 1909 was from Tuesday
20th April to Thursday 24th June; Full Term ran from Friday
23rd April to Monday 14th June]
With Easter Term
ending on Monday 14th June, Neuburg travelled two days later on
Wednesday 16th June to Scotland. [the Cambridge Tripos lists with
Neuburg’s name was published in the London Daily Telegraph and Courier on Friday 18th June 1909 ,
p. 12]
Victor Neuburg
(1883-1940) of Trinity College, Cambridge and Kenneth Martin Ward (1887-1927)
of Emmanuel College, Cambridge visited Crowley at Boleskine on Wednesday 16th
June 1909, they had travelled together by sleeper train from Cambridge, which,
Victor noted in his magical diary of Friday 18th June, he had ‘now
quitted in all probability for ever.’ Kenneth (whom Crowley had met at Wastdale
Head) was there specifically to borrow Crowley’s skis and Victor was there to
undergo a ten day magical retirement beginning on Friday 18th June
and ending on Sunday 27th June. Victor had a special chamber
prepared for him to work in upstairs (presumably an attic room) and the
Retirement consisted of basic yoga techniques and the performance of magical
rituals which included ‘The Bornless One’ invocation. The next morning, Thursday
17th June, Victor slept late and ‘after breakfast of tea and toast
he had a hot bath, then he was escorted to the chamber prepared for him. This
was a room where the floor was covered with a magic circle. There was an altar
on which incense was burning, and Victor found a further supply of incense and
of charcoal, also a magic sword and an ankh; he had on his magic robe. He was
left to his own devices.’ [Jean Overton Fullerton, pp. 157-158]
He would also learn to
recite mantras and write a record of his astral travels. Crowley also allowed
him to study the Holy Books.
On Friday 18th
June he wrote in his magical record: ‘At the time of my acceptance as a Chela
into the A.A. I was basically employed in working for my Final at Cambridge,
and having but three weeks wherein to do practically two years’ work,
everything other than Academic study had to be temporarily abandoned. The only
magical practice performed during these three weeks, and during the examination
(which lasted one week), was that of the Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram,
which up to this time has been regularly performed by me… I was successful, by
the way, in my examination, and am entitled to an honours degree, which I
shall, however, not take, having no use for it, and being unable to afford the
twelve pounds (or guineas) which it costs.’
Victor spent much of
his time alone at the house except when Crowley would visit him in his bedroom
on the ground floor to discuss elements of magical theory and philosophy or
Victor would go to Crowley’s bedroom. It is not overstepping the mark to assume
that both men enjoyed some sort of intimacy as each was indulging the others
tendencies: Neuburg was drawn to masochism and Crowley delighted in sadistic
behaviour. In an entry in his magical diary, for day five on Tuesday 22nd
June, Victor wrote at 10.32 a.m.: ‘My guru was dissatisfied, upbraiding me
bitterly with being among the Qliphoth [illusory images of an inferior nature].
He is apparently a homosexual sadist for, in giving me thirty-two strokes with
a gorse switch drew blood, he showed great unction. He performed the ceremony
with obvious satisfaction. The ceremony was quite painful, though it aroused no
emotion in me save that of laughter. I shall rest for a space.’
Crowley added a
footnote to this entry: ‘Slandering one’s Guru is punished in the thirty-second
and lowest Hell’, beneath which Victor writes: ‘A small price to pay for the
invention of a new vice.’ [Fuller. pp.164 and 169]
On Friday 25th
June Victor wrote in his record: ‘By God! the pessimism – the essential
pessimism – of Buddhism and Christianity are easily explainable now… There is
no way out. One is optimistic enough to hope that there is no God, and that
there are no gods. If this be so, one can weep. But if gods exist, one must
curse them besides weeping, and that is such a trouble. Scarcely worth while.
I can now realise why
everything that I have longed for and ultimately obtained has immediately
become dust and ashes to me. There is really nothing to attain, since we cannot
fathom the ultimates of the universe. We are all imbecile babes, and we break
our toys, and they cry because we have not more toys to break. And there are
fools who have learned the first two or three letters of the Alphabet, and they
go about bragging of their knowledge of literature.’
At the end of his
retirement, he writes on Sunday 27th June: ‘I see how my only guide
so far has been Rebellion against Authority; this it is that has at length led
me to a faint glimmer of the True Light; I have, by the grace of the gods, been
led out of the darkness and the twilight.’
Victor had first met
Rose Crowley at Boleskine (whom it seems was sleeping alone at the house in a
separate bedroom) and she was at this time consuming a lot of alcohol.
Following the completion of the Retirement Victor was awarded the grade of
Neophyte by Crowley.
During the time of
Victor’s Magical Retirement Crowley had
been looking for his four large paintings of the Elemental Watch Towers which
he painted in Mexico, and thought to be at Boleskine House. The skis he had
promised Kenneth Ward were also hard to locate at the house. ‘After putting
Neuburg through his initiation, we repaired to London. I had let the house and
my tenant was coming in on [Thursday] the first of July. We had four days in
which to amuse ourselves; and we let ourselves go for a thorough good time.
Thus like a thunderbolt comes the incident on June 28th, thus
described in my diary:
Glory be to Nuit,
Hadit, Ra-Hoor-Khuit in the Highest! A little before midday I was impelled
mysteriously (though exhausted by playing fives, billiards, etc. till nearly
six this morning) to make a final search for the Elemental Tablets. And lo!
when I had at last abandoned the search, I cast mine eyes upon a hole in the
loft where were ski, etc., and there, O Holy, Holy, Holy! Were not only all
that I sought, but the manuscript of Liber Legis! [Diary entry: Monday 28th
June 1909]
The ground was completely
cut away from under my feet. I remained for two whole days meditating on the
situation – in performing, in fact, assort of supplementary Sammasati to that
of 1905. Having the knack of it, I reached a very clear conclusion without too
much difficulty. The essence of the situation was that the Secret Chiefs meant
to hold me to my obligation. I understood that the disaster and misery of the
last three years were due to my attempt to evade my duty. I surrendered
unconditionally, as appears from the entry of July 1st.
Once more I solemnly
renounced all that I have or am. On departing (at midnight from the topmost
point of the hill which crowns my estate) instantly shone the moon, two days
before her fullness, over the hills among the clouds.’ [Confessions. p.596]
This realisation on
Thursday 1st July 1909, two days before the full moon as Crowley
says (which occurred on Saturday 3rd July), seems to at once free
Crowley from his inhibitions and he is aware of his true purpose which is to be
the ‘means of emancipating humanity’ and to ‘establish in the world the Law
which had been given me to proclaim: “Thou hast no right but to do thy will.”’
But there seems to be
an inconsistency in what has been recorded about Neuburg undergoing further
initiation for in The Magical Dilemma of Victor Neuburg (p. 167) we are
informed that Neuburg, thinking his ‘ordeal was completed’ when the initiation
ended on Sunday 27th June, was told by Crowley that ‘for the next
ten nights he must sleep on the floor, entirely naked, on a litter of gorse’
and that he must cut and collect the gorse himself. It is possible that Crowley
had this in mind for his chela and suggested it to him and we know Neuburg took
three days writing up a written record of his day-to-day initiation in a special
bound volume Crowley had given him; it is conceivable that Neuburg began this
form of training while writing up his diary but if Crowley knew he had a tenant
arriving on Thursday 1st July, then ten nights would not be possible
as Neuburg ended on the 27th which left only three more days until
they had to vacate Boleskine. Also, the following day on Monday 28th
when Crowley and his guests were exhausted from playing billiards and fives
etc. and he re-discovered the manuscript of Liber Al just before midday, he
would probably have been less attentive towards Neuburg and concerned by the
significance of the revelation. So far as I can see, Neuburg could only have
completed three or four more nights of initiatory training, naked, upon his bed
of gorse.
On Thursday 1st
July 1909, Crowley and Neuburg travelled back to London; Neuburg stayed at the
Adlephi Hotel and assisted Crowley with the editing and publishing of his
magical periodical ‘The Equinox’ at the Headquarters of the A.A., 124, Victoria
Street, London, (convenient for Neuburg as his Aunt T lived opposite at 125,
Victoria Street).
As well as his duty
with the Equinox, Neuburg wrote the homoerotic poem ‘The Lost Shepherd’ which
was published in the second edition of the Equinox on 23rd September
(Autumn equinox) 1909 (pp. 131-136) [and also The Triumph of Pan, pp. 46-51].
The poem, which consists of 16 verses recounts the story of the shepherd,
hailed ‘a foolish man’, who in verse X, found the ‘groves of Pan’ and in the
following verse, succumbs to the goat god’s lust –
And as he clasped me,
slim and slight,
I roared with the pain
he gave,
And he cried, “I will
hold thee here all night,
My beautiful,
dark-haired slave;
Kiss my lips and laugh
in my eyes,
And I’ll bring magic
out of the skies,
And thy flame shall
yield to my eyes’ fierce light
Ere thine ashes are
laid in the grave!”
Victor could almost be
singing of Crowley… he goes on in verse XII:
The god’s tongue
flashed, and he roared with glee
At each spasm he drew
from the breast of me,
And the mystery of
Panic mirth
Lay bare in the sight
of a man.
CHORONZON
Following the
publication of the second edition of the Equinox in September, Crowley and
Neuburg decided to go on a great magical retirement together, to Algiers.
Together, they are to
explore the 30 Aethyrs using the Nineteen Enochian Calls or Keys as was
obtained by Sir Edward Kelly and his scribe, John Dee; Crowley acted as seer
and Neuburg was his scribe, writing down the record of all that occurred
[Crowley had already investigated the first two Keys (30th & 29th)
on November 14th and 17th 1900 – see The Temple of
Solomon the King, The Equinox volume I, number III, p. 269]
They reached Algiers Wednesday 17th November
1909 and from there two days later on Friday 19th they left
for Arba. On Sunday 21st November they reach Aumale and on Tuesday
30th November they are at Bou-Saada.
They had climbed Daleh
Addin, a mountain in the desert near Bou-Saada and ‘on the afternoon of [Friday]
December 3rd I invoked the fourteenth Aethyr. Here was a veil so
black and thick that I could not pass through. I tore off layer after layer
with desperate effort, while in my ears there pealed a solemn voice. It spoke
of me as dead.’ Crowley Crowley
The Abyss is an void
‘empty of being; it is filled with all possible forms, each equally inane, each
therefore evil in the only true sense of the word – that is meaningless but
malignant, insofar as it craves to become real.’ On Monday 6th
December, Crowley Crowley Crowley Crowley Crowley 4.15 p.m. ] and we
were both utterly exhausted, physically and in every other way. I hardly know
how we ever got back to Bou-Saada.’ [see Liber 418, The Vision and the Voice,
Introduction]
On Wednesday 8th
December they walked across the desert to Biskra, arriving there a week later
on Thursday 16th December, where they called upon the fourth Aethyr
between 9 and 10.30 in the morning, and the third the following day [9.30-11.30 a.m. ]. The second Aethyr
was invoked on Saturday 18th December [9.20-10.05 a.m. ] and continued on Monday 20th
December [8.35-9.35 p.m. ]
while the final and first Aethyr was invoked at Biskra (before finishing the
second Aethyr) on Sunday 19th December between 1.30 and 3.30 p.m. and thus ended the Vision
and the Voice.
There is a telling 13-page
letter that Crowley writes from the Royal Hotel in Biskra to Fuller, dictated
to Neuburg and written in the younger man’s hand, on Saturday 18th
December 1909; after praising Neuburg, his scribe, it goes on to say that ‘I
have had an awful job keeping him [Neuburg] off these Arab boys. He has a
frightful lust for brown bottoms, because when he was at school he was kicked
by a man with brown boots; and being a masochist as well as a paederast, that
accounts for it.’ (15) It is hard to believe that Victor, by all
accounts a sensitive man would have written such a statement to a friend such
as Fuller, yet it exists in his handwriting; the fact that he did not refuse to
write it suggests he did not disagree with the statement and that he felt no
shame in his desires. It is dictated by a man he truly trusts and believes in
(AC) to a devoted friend (Fuller) in confidence and perhaps a little with his
tongue in his cheek, but it is another indication as to the true nature of
Neuburg’s sexual desire towards his own sex which I believe was, like Crowley,
bisexual. Crowley also hints at Neuburg’s uncontrollable passions early on in
his Algerian Diary in an entry dated [Monday] 22nd November 1909
while they are at Aumale and staying at the Hotel Grossat; he says that ‘after
dinner went to a wicked place, where I profoundly regret to be obliged to
confess, my comrade [Neuburg] displayed unequivocal symptoms of bawdiness. My
duty to his poor mother and uncles, as well as my own moral sense, compelled me
to repress this terrible lust for carnal copulation with words severe indeed –
but not unjust.’ He next adds that ‘I stayed, myself, with an Arab wench.’ (16)
Having completed the
Great Magical Retirement in the desert, on the last day of the year, Friday 31st
December, they left Algiers Southampton .
BARTZABEL
On Monday 9th
May 1910, three days after Victor’s 27th birthday (on Friday 6th
May) Victor was with Crowley and Leila Waddell at Rempstone Hall, the house of
Commander Guy Montague Marston, [Royal Navy] (1871-1928) in Dorset. During that
night, they invoked the spirit of Mars (see The Bartzabel Working)
The splendid result of
incorporating music and poetry to heighten the senses gave Crowley
Between Thursday 9th
and Friday 10th June 1910, Neuburg received the following poem
during an invocation: I.nsit N.aturae R.egina I.sis. In the poem a silent ‘green
goddess’ [Isis] whom the poet hails and asks: ‘How shall I have speech of Thee,
who know not thy speaking? / how shall I behold Thee, who art hidden in the
darkness?’ The young adorer goes on to say that ‘I have left the groves of Pan
that I might gaze upon Thee, / gaze upon the Virgin that before Time was
begotten, / Mother of Chronos….’ Then he hears a voice speak to another,
asking: ‘”Who stands with downcast eyes in the temple of our Lady?”’ and the
reply is: ‘”A wanderer from the world who hath sought the halls of silence; /
yet knoweth he not the Bride of the Darkness, / Her of the sable wings, and
eyes of terrible blindness / that see through the worlds and find nothing and
nothing, / who would smite the worlds to peace, save that so she would perish,
/ and cannot, for that she is a goddess silent and immortal, / utterly immortal
in the gods’ eternal darkness.”’ The poem, which Neuburg signs as Omnia Vincam,
was published in The Equinox, volume I, number IV, (pp. 21-23)
Another poem that
Neuburg writes in June is The Sunflower, which he composed on Tuesday 21st
June 1910, the day before the Summer Solstice and publishes in The Triumph of
Pan (pp. 66-70), dedicating it to the journalist and novelist, George
Raffalovich (1880-1958). In the poem he seems to record a vision of the Lord
Osiris who gives him the ‘long-forgotten signs’ and he is cautioned to ‘speak
them not aloud, till I with heavenly wines / am drunken, and in vision speak to
thee.’ The poem ends:
Let not the fear of me
abase thy pride;
I seek thee for a
bridegroom; I, the bride,
Shall come to thee,
unsought; be kind to her
Who comes to thee
bearing a Sunflower.
And the two Rods shall
strike, and there shall be
A mighty fire in
heaven to set me free
From prison; sleep
thou seven days again,
Until I bear the light
into thy brain:
And thou art weary, –
but await my word.
I go as Thunder, that
came but as a Bird.
ARTEMIS
On the evening of
Tuesday 23rd August 1910, select members of the public and press
were invited to witness a ritual at 124, Victoria Street, a ceremonial Rite of
Artemis. A reporter from The Sketch, Raymond Radclyffe, attended the ceremony
held at 124, Victoria Street and described the event in The Sketch of the
following day, Wednesday 24th August 1910, (p. 44) under the heading
– ‘A New Religion’:
‘A certain number of
literary people know the name of Aleister Crowley as a poet. A few regard him
as a magician. But a small and select circle revere him as the hierophant of a
new religion. This creed Captain Fuller, in a book on the subject extending to
327 pages, calls Crowleyanity. I do not pretend to know what Captain Fuller
means. He is deeply read in philosophy, and he takes Crowley very seriously. I
do not quite see whether Crowley himself is driving; but I imagine that the
main idea in the brain of the remarkable poet is to plant Eastern
Transcendental Buddhism, which attains its ultimate end in Samadhi, in English
soil under the guise of Ceremonial Magic. Possibly the average human being
requires and desires ceremony. Even the simplest Methodist uses some sort of
ceremony, and Crowley, who is quite in earnest in his endeavour to attain such
unusual conditions of mind as are called ecstasy, believes that the gateway to
Ecstasy can be reached through Ceremonial Magic. He has saturated himself with
the magic of the East a very real thing, in tune with the Eastern mind. He is
well read in the modern metaphysicians, all of whom have attempted to explain
the unexplainable. He abandons these. They appeal only to the brain and once
their jargon is mastered they lead nowhere least of all to Ecstasy! He goes
back upon ceremony, because he thinks that it helps the mind to get outside
itself. He declares that if you repeat an invocation solemnly and aloud,
expectant of some great and mysterious result, you will experience a deep sense
of spiritual communion. He is now holding a series of séances. I attended at
the offices of the Equinox. I climbed the interminable stairs [five flights]. I
was received by a gentleman robed in white and carrying a drawn sword. The room
was dark only a dull-red light shone upon an altar. Various young men,
picturesquely red, or black, stood at different points round the room. Some
held swords. The incense made a haze, through which I saw a small white statue,
illumined by a tiny lamp hung high on the cornice. A brother recited the
banishing ritual of the Pentagram impressively and with due earnestness.
Another brother was commanded to purify the Temple with water. This was done.
Then we witnessed the Consecration of the Temple with Fire, whereupon Crowley,
habited in black, and accompanied by the brethren, led the Mystic
Circumambulation. They walked round the altar twice or thrice in a sort of
religious procession. Gradually, one by one, those of the company who were mere
onlookers, were beckoned into the circle. The Master of the Ceremonies then
ordered a brother to bear the Cup of Libation. The brother went round the room,
offering a large golden bowl full of some pleasant-smelling drink. We drank in
turn. This over, a stalwart brother strode into the centre and proclaimed The
Twelvefold Certitude of God. Artemis was then invoked by the great ritual of
the Hexagram. More Libation. Aleister Crowley read us the Song of Orpheus from
the Argonauts. Following upon this song we drank our third Libation, and then
the Brothers led into the room a draped figure, masked in that curious blue
tint we mentally associate with Hecate. The lady, for it was a lady, was
enthroned on a seat high above Crowley himself. By this time the ceremony had
grown weird and impressive, and its influence was increased when the poet
recited in solemn and reverent voice Swinburne’s glorious first chorus from
Atalanta, that begins, When the hounds of spring. Again a Libation again an
invocation to Artemis. After further ceremonies, Frater Omnia Vincam was
commanded to dance the dance of Syrinx and Pan in honour of our lady Artemis. A
young poet, whose verse is often read, astonished me by a graceful and
beautiful dance, which he continued until he fell exhausted in the middle of
the room, where by the way, he lay until the end. Crowley then made
supplication to the goddess in a beautiful and unpublished poem. A dead silence
ensued. After a long pause, the figure enthroned took a violin and played with
passion and feeling, like a master. We were thrilled to our very bones. Once again
the figure took the violin, and played an Abend Lied so beautifully, so
gracefully, and with such intense feeling that in very deed most of us
experienced that Ecstasy which Crowley so earnestly seeks. Then came a
prolonged and intense silence, after which the Master of the Ceremonies
dismissed us in these words By the Power in me vested, I declare the Temple
closed. So ended a really beautiful ceremony beautifully carried out. If there
is any higher form of artistic expression than great verse and great music I
have yet to learn it. I do not pretend to understand the ritual that runs like
a thread of magic through these meetings of the A.A. I do not even know what
the A.A. is. But I do know that the whole ceremony was impressive, artistic,
and produced in those present such a feeling as Crowley
Following a dress
rehearsal (of the Rite of Jupiter) on the afternoon of Wednesday 28th
September, there was a description of the temple at Victoria Street in the
Morning Leader of Thursday 29th September 1910 (p. 5) which said
that ‘after climbing innumerable stairs, the seeker after Truth came upon a
door guarded by a flaming eye.’ He goes on to say that ‘the room was
extravagantly furnished and reeking with the aroma of incense. The floor was
bare and polished and marked out with a wide red circle. Triangles and circles,
and all the strange Abracadabra of the True Mystic, hung around the walls:
there were silver goblets on stands, supported by volumes of strange books, and
upon a pedestal all to itself stood a bust, in black marble, of the High Priest
himself, inscribed with the motto ‘Fiat Voluntas Tua’ [Thy will be done]. In
the centre of the circle was a throne covered with a table cloth. The High
Priest vaulted upon it and sat cross-legged like a Buddha. At his feet
crouched, shivering, a youth (also in black and gold), and around the rim of
the red circle sat two youths and a Maiden in the most profound attitudes of
concentration. The Maiden was wearing a hooded robe of sea green, and she
carried a shining silver star on her forehead. The two young men were cloaked
in red and both carried a flaming sword (by Clarkson) point downwards.’ The
article goes on to describe the ‘weird ritual’ which ‘by the way, was the Rite
of Jupiter’, saying that the High Priest was ‘going off into an interesting
Primary Convulsion and waving a conjuror’s ivory wand.’ He then summoned ‘the
guests to the banquet’ and ordered that the libations be produced.
The Rite of Artemis was
later developed into the Rite of Luna in the Rites of Eleusis and the rites
were performed at London’s Caxton Hall over several nights on consecutive Wednesdays
with the doors opening at 8.30 p.m. and the performances starting at 9 p.m. The
first performance was the Rite of Saturn on Wednesday 19th October, followed
by the Rite of Jupiter [Wednesday 26th October], the Rite of Mars
[Wednesday 2nd November], the Rite of Sol [Wednesday 9th
November], the Rite of Venus [Wednesday 16th November], the Rite of
Mercury [Wednesday 23rd November] and the Rite of Luna [Wednesday 30th
November].One of the actresses in the Rites was Jeanne Heyes (1890-1912) who
went by the professional stage name Ione de Forest; she played the part of the
moon and Neuburg became infatuated with her, much to Crowley’s annoyance.
PAN
Rosa Mundi est Lilium Coeli
In the beginning of December
1910, Crowley and Neuburg set off once more to Algiers to continue the work
they had begun with the Enochian Keys. They arrived at Marseille around 7th
December and stayed at the Hotel de la Regence where they had to wait until
Friday 9th December to get the boat to Algiers; there, they caught
the train to Bou Saada, where they stayed for six nights and on Thursday 15th
December they began their walk, taking along with them, camels and the camel
guide and a young boy. Frustrated with the camel owner and the boy who both
showed lack of willingness, they continued alone with the camels but later
found them cumbersome and returned them to the camel owner, who had followed
them. The second day of walking saw them enduring a heavy rain storm which
ceased the following day (when they abandoned the camels) and they walked to
Biskra. No or very little magical work was done on the journey as they both
seemed despondent and Neuburg seemed plagued by illness and fatigue. Crowley
left Neuburg at Biskra and returned alone. Neuburg recovered well enough to
travel to Tunis and return from there. It was a disappointing time. While they
had been walking, Neuburg’s collection of poetry, ‘The Triumph of Pan’ was
published by The Equinox and many of the poems are dedicated to the poet’s
friends, such as Gerald Pinsent, Norman Mudd, Kenneth Martin Ward, Arthur F.
Grimble (17), and of course, Aleister Crowley. The poem after the title
of the volume, The Triumph of Pan, consists of 44, eight line verses and begins
by declaring that ‘there are three gods who in their talons hold me; / they dig
within my breast…’ and we learn in the second verse that the first of these
three gods is a woman, ‘with burning glances mingled / with longings soft and
pure’; and ‘the second god laughs loud upon my plaining, / seeing in me his
prey’. This second god ‘hath no pity’ and with his ‘great hand on my brow /
brings visions never to be known of me / till I be one with his mad mystery’ is
Pan himself, and lastly, the third god, ‘is one Great One, cold and burning’
who is ‘crafty and hot in lust’. This third god is male for ‘He sees the
immortal light / break through me to the night, / where Love is cast in
impotent despair / from her communion with the upper air.’ In the third and
fourth lines of verse IV the poet says as if in feminine form, this god ‘would
make me a Sapphist’ and adding in a homosexual context ‘and an Urning, / a
Lesbian of the dust.’ This third god is obviously Crowley.
The poem ends:
Yea! And the lyre is
mine, and I am fearless,
Naked, and free, and
young;
The torch is out; no longer
night is cheerless;
The hot young day is
sprung
From out the loins of
God!
Rise from the barren
sod,
Raise high the Paean
of God in Man!
Io Triumphe! Hail to
the new-born Pan!
THE UNKNOWN ROSE
The Equinox, volume I,
number X of September 1913 contains a poem by Victor titled ‘Rosa Ignota – A
Poem for Pilgrims’ (pp.129-198) The poem begins with the Latin phrase: Rosa
Verae Semper Quae Vivit Et Diliget – The Rose of Spring which Lives and Loves
Forever. And then we find the heartfelt words of the poet as he remembers his
saviour-poet and mystic, Crowley, coming to his beckoning letter, to Cambridge,
that fateful day in February 1907: I searched the world
for life; at length I cameUnto a gateway I could
not pass through;And then I turned,
calling upon the nameOf you. And so you came to me;
each dawn was new,And every sunset was a
scarlet flame,And noon was glorious
in gold and blue. So now I care not for
my mystic shame;Love brings no fears,
and life gives nought to rue,So I may sing unto the
love and fameOf you. The poem then begins
with an Invocation in which Neuburg is surely speaking of Crowley: O thou whose scent
enchanted my vain youthFrom the more bitter
truthOf easy things,How hast thou led me
onTo the mire?Thou madest thyself
wingsOf false and fecund
fire;Thou bad’st me donAn alien robe of
shame.Ah! Sweetheart, thee I
blame,And may not blame,For the sweet, eternal
shameThat seared my soul,And left my spirit
free,Free! to weep before
thee,And thou hast slain
me;Thou hast slain me
whole,I am all dead to thee,My Rose my Rose, my
Rose, It seems Neuburg is
singing of the loss of his ‘sweet wizard’s’ affection for him and continues by
declaring that ‘this my song shall be / the last I shall sing to thee, / to
thee. Oh, the wind blows / thy secret to me, Rose!’ (p. 138) These lines
suggest Neuburg has discovered something about Crowley
THE SAD DEMISE OF JEANNE MERTON
Jeanne Eugenie Heyse
was born on 19th June 1890 at Kirkwood House, Hornsey, the daughter
of Ferdinand Francis Ernest Heyse, born in Holland in 1861 and Margaret Murrane,
born in Galway, Ireland in 1866; Ferdinand, of 3 Guildford Place, London and
Margaret, third daughter of John Murrane of Tuam, Ireland, were married on 16th
February 1887 at St. Philip’s Church, Lower Sydenham (18). Ferdinand, a Freemason,
inventor of patents and a wholesale provision merchant and Margaret had the
following children: Kathleen Marguerite Louise Heyse, born 17th
January 1888 in Hornsey (19), Jeanne born 1890; Eileen Norah Heyse, born
29th December 1891 in Hornsey; Evelyn Florence R Heyse born between
January and March 1893 in Hornsey who sadly died a few months later, and
Blanche Mona F Heyse, born in Brentford, Hounslow, London on 28th
February 1897 (20).
Jeanne Heyse, 19 years
old of 167, Brixton Road, London, married Wilfred Merton at St. George’s,
Hanover Square on Friday 22nd December 1911 (Jeanne’s sister,
Kathleen witnessed the marriage). Just ten days later, at the start of the New
Year on Monday 1st January 1912, Jeanne’s father, Ferdinand Francis
Ernest Heyse died aged 59 in Lambeth, London. Jean Overton Fuller goes into
some detail about Jeanne, who had trained at RADA, and Wilfred in her Magical
Dilemma of Victor Neuburg (p. 211) saying that ‘after the ceremony at St.
George’s, Joan [Jeanne] and Merton and Victor travelled to Paris together, the
best of friends’ and that ‘Merton knew the situation which had existed
previously with Victor’ and his wife, Jeanne. ‘On their return’ she continues,
‘Joan and Merton went to live in [number 5] Cardinal Mansions, Westminster, and
Joan became an arts student studying painting and took a room in Rosetti
Studios, Flood Street. It was now that she met [the artist and writer] Nina
Hamnett’ (1890-1956). She continues: ‘About the beginning of June, five or six
months after marriage, she left Merton and installed herself in the studio. (p.
212) It seems that Neuburg was still infatuated with Jeanne and carrying on an
affair with her.
Wilfred, no doubt
exasperated by this, filed for divorce on Tuesday 4th June 1912,
citing Neuberg as co-respondent for adultery. Two months later, at her home,
Rosetti Studios, on Thursday 1st August 1912, 21 year old Jeanne
Merton shot herself in the heart with a revolver [gun licence issued to Jeanne
in the name of Ione de Forest on Thursday 18th July at Sloan
Square.’ (Fuller. p. 219)] She left a suicide note explaining that she
‘intended committing suicide tonight because of the unbearable position which
my extremely rash and unfortunate marriage has placed me in.’ There was another
letter for her husband which simply said: ‘You have killed me.’ prior to her
suicide she had been visited in the evening by Nina Hamnett who found her
packing; they had arranged to meet the following day at 11 a.m. at her
apartment. When Nina came the next day she found an envelope attached to the
door with the key and she let herself in and found the body prostrate on the
divan, the pistol by her slippers. The next day, Saturday 3rd
August, her inquest occurred at Chelsea Coroner’s Court.
We can see from this
terrible action the predicament it put many of those around her and poor
Neuburg would have been utterly distressed and heartbroken. It was known all
along that Crowley had taken a dislike to Jeanne because of her and Victor’s
relationship. The poem, ‘Rosa Ignota’ speaks of a ‘wind that blows’ suggesting
he has discovered something about Crowley which he finds difficult to believe
and to me this suggests that he has seen a copy of Crowley’s Book 4, published
in 1913 and come upon the section where it says: ‘An adept known to the Master
Therion [Crowley] once found it necessary to slay a Circe who was bewitching
brethren [Neuburg]. He merely walked to the door of her room, and drew an
Astral T (“traditore”, and the symbol of Saturn) with an astral dagger. Within 48
hours she shot herself.’ In the footnote Crowley says that ‘The Adept here in
question was therefore obliged to incorporate the elemental spirit of the girl
– she was not human, the sheath of a Star, but an advanced planetary daemon,
whose rash ambition had captured a body beyond its capability to conduct – in
his own magical vehicle. He thereby pledged himself to subordinate all the
sudden accession of qualities – passionate, capricious, impulsive, irrational,
selfish, short-sightedness, sensual, fickle, crazy and desperate, to his True
Will.’ [Book 4, Magick in Theory and Practice]. Crowley is of course referring
to himself when he says ‘an adept’ – did he really stand outside Jeanne’s door
at Rosetti Studios on or around Tuesday 30th July 1912 and draw with
an astral dagger the letter ‘T’ and the symbol of Saturn? I don’t believe he
did, but it is possible Crowley travelled there in his astral form, the ‘body
if light’ and used the ‘astral dagger’; either way, it seems Victor took him
seriously at his word and whether he did or not, he is more than happy to take
the blame for such an awful tragedy.
MERCURY AND JUPITER
The two magicians seem
to put their differences aside and in December 1913, Crowley and Neuburg embark
on what will be their final magical work together which shall become known as
The Paris Working. Neuburg, now with the grade of Zelator, 2=9 and the motto
Lampada Tradam (21) takes on the role of scribe and performs the active
part in the ceremonies.
The first working (opus
I) occurred on Wednesday 31st December 1913 from 11.40 p.m. to 1.40
a.m. and the two men are utilising the sexual energies they had invoked in
Algiers four years earlier; during the ceremony, an invocation of Thoth
[Mercury] brings the god to manifestation as a young boy. As midnight struck the new year signalling the
death of the old, Neuburg reached his orgasm and the sacred words of the
Versicle were spoken in a swoon of ecstasy: ‘Jungitur in vati vates, rex
inclyte rhabdou / Hermes tu venias, verba nefanda ferens.’ [‘Behold! The Priest
is joined to the Priest: illustrious king of the Staff / mayest thou come,
Hermes, bearing the unutterable words!’] The magical operations are of interest
and worth a brief summary:
Opus II: Thursday 1st
January – Friday 2nd January 1914. The Temple was opened at 11.20
p.m. and the Versicle began at 11.40 p.m. and ended at 11.55 p.m. Crowley says
that ‘Frater L.T. [Lampada Tradam, Neuburg] completely lost control and
although a man of some education, degraded himself and dispersed the holy
invoked prana by defacing this volume with the meaningless scrawls…declaring
them to be the inspiration of Thoth, which were unworthy even of His ape. In
this way a great part of the virtue of the Rite was lost.’ Hermes as
‘Messenger’; the Temple was closed ‘about 2 o’clock of the forenoon of Friday.’
Opus III: Friday 2nd
January – Saturday 3rd January. The Temple was opened about midnight
and closed at 2.15 a.m. Hermes as ‘Force’. He is ‘Semen, the vehicle of the
Father. He despises talk, and is all energy and action.’
Opus IV: Monday 5th
January – Tuesday 6th January. The Temple was opened at 9 p.m. and
closed at 10 p.m. conversing until 1 a.m. Hermes. [Crowley is suffering from a
cold]
Opus V: Tuesday 6th
January. The Temple opened approximately at 9.30p.m. and closed at 10.30p.m. Juppiter.
Opus VI: Wednesday 7th
January. The Temple opened at 9 p.m. and closed at 9.45 p.m. Juppiter, but Frater
L.T. ‘failed at proper method.’
Opus VII: Thursday 8th
January – Friday 9th January. The Temple opened 10 p.m. and closed
at 11.20 p.m. Juppiter.
Opus VIII: Sunday 11th
January – Monday 12th January. Invoked Hermes.
Crowley and Neuburg,
the latter feeling ill, took a week off: on Tuesday 13th January
they performed ‘The Mass of the Phoenix’ and on Thursday 15th January
Crowley and Neuburg went to the forest to regain strength of health.
Opus IX: Monday 19th
January – Tuesday 20th January. The Temple opened at 11.45 p.m. and
closed at 12.30 a.m. Juppiter.
Opus X: Tuesday 20th
January – Wednesday 21st January.
The Temple opened at 11.30 p.m. and closed at 12.15 a.m. Juppiter, as
Amoun-Ra, ‘plumed and phallic. Astral bells.’
Opus XI: Wednesday 21st
January – Thursday 22nd January. The Temple opened at 11 p.m. and
closed at 1.45 a.m. Juppiter.
Opus XII: Thursday 22nd
January – Friday 23rd January. The Temple opened at 9. 55 p.m. and
closed at 11 p.m. Juppiter.
Opus XIII: Monday 26th
January – Tuesday 27th January. The Temple was opened at 11.30 p.m.
and closed at 2 a.m. Juppiter, Frater O.S.V. [Crowley] inspired to dance.
Opus XIV: Tuesday 27th
January – Wednesday 28th January. The Temple opened at midnight and
closed at 1.07 a.m. Juppiter.
Opus XV: Wednesday 28th
January – Thursday 29th January. The Temple was opened at 11. 15
p.m. and closed at 12.10 a.m. Juppiter.
Opus XVI: Thursday 29th
January – Friday 30th January. The Temple opened at 10.30p.m. and
closed at midnight . Juppiter
and ‘additional rites’.
Opus XVII: Monday 2nd
February – Tuesday 3rd February. The Temple opened at 10.30p.m. and
closed at 12.50 a.m. Juppiter.
Opus XVIII: Tuesday 3rd
February – Wednesday 4th February. The Temple opened at 10.30 p.m.
and closed at 1.05 a.m. Juppiter and ‘complete absorption of force.’
Opus XIX: Wednesday 4th
February – Thursday 5th February. The Temple was opened at 11.28 p.m.
and closed at 12.50 a.m. Juppiter.
Opus XX: Thursday 5th
February. The temple was opened at 10 p.m. and closed at 11 p.m. Juppiter.
Opus XXI: Monday 9th
February. The Temple was opened (mentally) at 9.10 p.m. and closed at 9.25 p.m.
Juppiter.
Opus XXII: Tuesday 10th
February. The Temple opened at 9.30 p.m. and closed at 10.15 p.m.
Opus XXIII: Wednesday
11th February. Juppiter.
Opus XXIV: Thursday 12th
February (the final working). The Temple opened at 6.15 p.m. and closed at 7
p.m. Frater L.T. [Neuburg] was ‘taken by Juppiter to be His cup-bearer.’ (22)
The Paris Working
would be the last time Neuburg and Crowley worked together. In May 1914,
Neuburg, Crowley and Hayter Preston [William Edward Hayter Preston, 1891-1964] are
at victor’s home in London when Hayter Preston and Crowley have a massive
argument. Victor goes to Branscomb near Seaton in South Devon, invited by
Olivia Haddon, to stay in one of the cottages (Vittoria Cremers is in another)
and it was here that they heard the news that war was declared on 4th
August; Victor left towards the end of September.
In conclusion I
believe the ultimate factors in Neuburg’s break with Crowley was Crowley’s attitude
and behaviour towards Victor’s relationship with Jeanne Heyse, later Merton and
the manner of her death, to which Crowley took great delight in being the
instigator of; this, together with the outcome from the Looking Glass trial of
1910 and friends and acquaintances such as J. F. C. Fuller, Hayter Preston and
Vittoria Cremers (1860-1937), all giving Neuburg advice to break from Crowley
whose reputation was floundering. It seems Neuburg took that advice and he went
to see Crowley London America Crowley Crowley
SERPENS NOCTIS REGINA
(Invocation a la Lune.
Ballade Argentee.)
Oh lustrous Lady of
the luminous lake,
Moving in magic mazes
through the trees –
The sombre, swaying
trees – light-lady, take
A moment’s murmurings;
heart-harmonies
That break my breast:
I kneel before thy knees,
All humbly hesitant;
the silver shoon
I crave to kiss make
molten melodies
To the Slow Nocturne of the Rising Moon.
Oh lustrous Lady, for
thy shadow’s sake
Is slain my slumber,
ended all my ease;
I dream at dawn, nor
with the wild-birds wake
To dulcet day; marred
are mine images
Of lost lowlands, of
secret summer seas,
Where grave gold Glamour
is so subtly strewn,
That from that
dryad-dream no faerie flees
To the Slow Nocturne
of the Rising Moon.
Oh lustrous Lady of
the Silver Snake,
Whisper thy worshipper
if his pleadings please
Thine ear; oh, merrier
music might I make –
Murmurs of moonlit
meads, of light-green leas –
Where pagan priests
muttered the Mysteries
Before the baleful
Birth; in their swaying swoon
They prophesied palely
in thy curious keys
To the Slow Nocturne
of the Rising Moon.
L’envoi,
Oh lustrous Lady, may
my memories
Of the untroublous
times ere noisome noon
Bring back thy secret
serpent-sorceries
To the Slow Nocturne
of the Rising Moon.
[Tillyard. pp.
155-156]
NOTES:
- Michaelmas Term at Cambridge during 1906
was from Monday 1st October to Wednesday 19th
December; Full Term (8 weeks) was from Friday 12th October to
Wednesday 5th December. V. B. Neuburg is listed under the list
of freshmen at Trinity, his residence being ‘L, Whewell’s Court’ in the
Cambridge Independent Press, Friday 12th October 1906, p. 6.
Also matriculating at the same time at Trinity and on the same staircase
at Whewell’s Court with Neuburg, is the philosopher, Charles Dunbar Broad
(1887-1971); Broad won a scholarship from Dulwich College and went up to
Trinity to study natural Sciences but later switched to Moral Sciences (he
graduated in 1910 and was elected a Fellow of Trinity).
- A list of Neuburg’s works in the Agnostic
Journal for 1906: An Old Song (27th January 1906), The Dream
(17th February 1906), Serenade (12th May 1906 [and
Green garland 1908]), Young Summer (26th May 1906 [and Green
Garland 1908]0, Three Lyrics and a Sonnet (2nd June 1906),
Freethought (30th June 1906), To the Moon (7th July
1906), Four Sonnets to William Blake (18th August 1906), Marie
Spiridonova (25th august 1906), A Song for a Free Spirit (8th
September 1906), An Agnostic View (15th September 1906 [and
Green Garland 1908]), Four Poems from the German (22nd
September 1906), Rejected Sonnets (24th November 1907),
Saladin: In Memoriam (15th December 1906); several works also
appeared in 1907: De Morte (in Honour of Saladin) (19th January
1907), Paganismand the Sense of Song (19th January 1907), A
Recall (2nd March 1907 [and Green Garland 1908]), The Eagle and
the Serpent (30th March 1907 [and Green Garland 1908]),
Freethought (6th April 1907), Ballade of the Daisy (18th
May 1907 [and Green Garland 1908]).
- The Michaelmas term at
- Lent Term at
- Neuburg’s letter to Crowley, 28th
January 1907, IV/12/7, papers of Major General john Frederick Charles (1878-1966),
GB99, KCLMA Fuller, Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King’s
College Library, London. Crowley’s
‘First Missionary Journey’, Crowley diary entries, 28th
February – 3rd March, 1907, Aleister Crowley Collection,
MS-01002, box 11, folder 5, Harry Ransom Centre, University of Texas at
Austin, given in Friendship in Doubt. Richard Kaczynski. p. 79.
- Under Magdalen Bridge, a poem by Neuburg
probably written while an undergraduate at trinity College and published
in Cambridge Poets, 1900-1913: An Anthology. Aelfrida Tillyard.
- In an article in the Cambridge Independent
Press of Friday 19th November 1909, p. 2, titled ‘Freethought
in Cambridge’ a lecture by the philosopher Mr. Anthony Mario Ludovici
(1882-1971) on ‘Nietzsche the Imoralist’ took place in a room at the
Liberal Club on Thursday 11th November 1909. Pinsent as President
presided and made the opening remarks, saying that the ‘Cambridge
Freethought Society had been open to misunderstanding from the beginning’.
The article goes on to say that ‘The Dean of one of the colleges had
hinted at the impropriety of forming it at all, and in regard to one
lecture in particular, in whom the Society had no personal interest except
on the part of a few members…’; the society ‘gradually raised its
membership during the past year until it reached the very low figure of
30. At the end of the year a good many went down, and now they had little
more than 20 members, among them two Fellows of Trinity…’ The second part
of the lecture by A. M. Ludovici was also held at the Liberal Club on the
evening of Thursday 18th November 1909; Pinsent presided and ‘a
short discussion followed the paper.’ [Cambridge Independent Press, Friday
26th November 1909, p. 8]
- Kenneth Martin Ward, born
- see the article: Heat and Dust:
- John St. John [The Equinox, volume I,
number I, Special Supplement, March 1909] is a fascinating document which
details
- Wilfred Edward Hermann Schmiechen
(1888-1957), son of the artist Hermann Schmiechen (1872-1923) who married
Antonia Gebhard in Dusseldorf in 1883 (they divorced in 1898); Hermann and
Antonia had four children: Herbert Keith Wolfram Schmiechen (1884-1950),
Elsa Emma Lily Antoinette Schmiechen (1886-1933), Wilfred and Gerald
Edward Siegfried Schmiechen (1893-1983). The Schmeichen siblings later
changed their surname to Merton, after their stepfather, Zachary Merton
(1843-1915). Wilfred Merton, engraver, publisher and book collector, later
married the actress who appeared in Crowley’s Rites of Eleusis, Joan Hayes
[Jeanne Eugenie Heyse, born Edmonton in 1890], who also used the professional
stage name Ione de Forest, at St. George’s, Hanover Square on Friday 22nd
December 1911. Joan and Wilfred parted several months later and Joan took
her own life, shooting herself in the heart at her home, Rosetti Studios,
- Norman Mudd to George Cecil Jones, 15th
January 1923, O.T.O. Archives. See Kaczynski, Friendship in Doubt, p. 81.
- Norman Mudd letter to Aleister Crowley, OS
EEI, Yorke Collection, Warburg Institute, London, given in Kaczynski’s
Friendship in Doubt, p. 86. Mudd wrote a follow-up letter on
- The Magical Dilemma of Victor Neuburg.
Jean Overton Fuller. p. 179.
- Algerian Diary (1909), J F C Fuller
Papers, Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King’s College,
University of London; also The Vision and the Voice with Commentary and
Other Papers. Aleister Crowley with Victor B. Neuburg & Mary Desti
[The Collected Diaries of Aleister Crowley, 1909-1914 e.v.], The Equinox
volume IV, number II. Samuel Weiser, Inc.
- Sir Arthur Francis Grimble, KCMG,
(1888-1956), friend of Neuburg’s who was at
- Marriage: Heyse and Murrane,
- Kathleen Marguerite Louise Heyse married
Capt. Oscar Dunstan Winterbottom, (born
- Eileen Norah Heyse died unmarried on
- Neuburg probably chose this Latin motto Lampada
Tradam [I shall pass on the torch] as it is something he would have been
familiar with and seen at Trinity College, Cambridge for the motto is that
of William Whewell and it is carved onto the stonework of the main gateway
from
- see Liber CDXV Opus Lutetianum – The Paris
Working the Book of the High Magick Art that was worked by Frater O.S.V.
6=5 and Frater L.T. 2=9. (also the brief summary of the Paris Working;
Grimorium Sanctissimum, and The Holy Hymns to the Great Gods of Heaven)
[The Vision and the Voice with Commentary and Other Papers. Aleister
Crowley with Victor B. Neuburg & Mary Desti, being The Equinox volume
IV number II. Samuel Weiser,
RA-HOOR-KHUIT
I
This splendid thing of
tort religion and reason;
This curve of
simplistic design; this chisel
I sculpt with and
create wondrous things with;
This abstract notion
remaining undefined…
By beauty’s pulse to
flicker slow within me
And by summoned will
to ceaseless stir the
Indefatigable passions
I wear around me to
Remove them slowly and
find me bare of
Antique shames and
modern insecurity, that
We clothe ourselves
in… In rhythms show me
Death’s boundary and
lines drawn of ecstasy;
Fill me with
inescapable wonder, pull through
Your world of glamour
and false suspension
And complete me by the
utter ravishing of me
For I have buried my
whole self and my religion
In the boundless
beauty and perfection of you;
Buried my soul in your
soul – gently carry me
In soft dimensions of
your thoughts that shroud me.
And like a child
within your arms, surround me
In all the essence of
your being and everything you do.
This noble distraction
of the mind I dwell upon
Is the outward
projection of your brain’s formation
Wished into being
through strange ceremonies of
Our desire, dreaming
as petals upon our naked skin…
It is the brush with
which I paint my legacy;
The pen with which I
write my song!
II
His hungry mouth,
sensual and unending
In its night-time hunt
upon me, by limb
And torso, fixed
fearsome and firmly by
Tooth and lip… and a
ruthless intensity
Preys upon me by
predator instinct; by
A senseless compulsion
to digest love
In avenues and dark
places of solemnity…
To overwhelm by
consumption and impale
Between thighs of muscular
longing that
Rage to his beauty and
sweet satisfaction
That joins him deep
within me without regret.
In perpetuity, he
shall sing and devour beauty;
Make sun appear when
clouds are charred grey
And light the bosom
rejoicing at his coming
Upon which he kisses
faithful and turns away;
Away to new dimensions
of this animal form
Released from the dark
night unto the holy day!
III
Earthwards, in our
frail rejoicing
Like two comets,
bodies touching,
Where the inward deep
is pressing
Into the aftermath of
our nuptials;
We each compress our
passions as
In silence, we wept of
our monolithic
Tender feelings – and
I will taste you,
I said, through the
seasons in our soft,
Intrepid devotion,
sweet upon lips that
Are humble and mime
the words that
Night shall bring upon
them. Nectar-
Breathing honey and
morning dew,
Caressed by tongue and
lip together…
We forged a chain of
semi-erections
In the dark; of
shadowy blushes unseen
As each folded upon
the other and made
A sanctuary of love
and beauty and lust…
All things which
comply to our understanding
And the wonder of
bathing in our naked
Misconceptions of the
unknown or the
Harsh words thrown
idly in our anger
As we gaze upon the
organs of our misrule
And never tire of
praising them in our
Devoted way, like
acolytes in love…
I loved you in the
enormity of my passion
And devoured you, body
and brain…
We formed our features
to compel joy
Upon our bodies and
our minds; to bring
Sweet contentment to
our souls… and we
Lengthened by
moonlight soft into solid
Posture and drank our
fragrant surrender.
We slept, and like
flowers budding on the
Morrow, our pollen
drifted into us and over
Us and fair we seized
then what was ours
By conjuration as sun
upon the window;
Pollen lifted by the
breeze and the bee and
The gentle flap of
butterfly wing between us
As we touched and limb
to limb, we kissed
The day anew…
Barry Van-Asten.
FROM THE VAULTS
Ephemera from the
Thelema Beyond Crowley one day conference held at Conway Hall, 25, Red Lion
Square, London on Saturday 10th April 2004 e.v. The event (which I
had the good fortune to attend – editor) marked one hundred years since the
reception of The Book of the Law.
TO FRATER OMNIA VINCAM
‘I have, by the
grace of the gods, been
led out of the
darkness and the twilight.’
[The Magical Record of
Omnia Vincam: Sunday 27th
June 1909 ]
Here, in the belly of
its infamy, by the lonely haunt of Pan, I
Slept soft in moonlit
grove that echoed thy wild unrest where still
Remembrance of ordeals
and devotions beguile me strange and fill
My mind to thy
sonnets, thy ceremonies and thy song… O sigh,
Sweet songster, and
should thy body and brain be yet reborn
And thy shadowed soul
recalled and Pan desire thy features, torn
Through a wilderness
of strong caresses, sweet nymph unto faun
Who aches by subtle
madness at the swift coming of the dawn!
I call your name in
silence which speeds through my eager brain
And in the shade of
youthful folly unto each tender bosom, drawn
The shade of all thy
suffering, poet, is summoned once again
To reveal thy sadness
and thy longing and thy infernal pain…
O see mine angel come
to me, in sweet dream of love withdrawn…
And we messed each
other up with roses, so fragrant and forlorn;
Yes, we wore them in
our hair and thorns pierced us tenderly
And our blood infused
a sense of longing invoked magically.
O bend me into
manifestations beyond this mortal boundary of time;
Sing your love-words
truthfully from your sonnet-filled soul sublime.
And I wait to hold you
here with me, more than earthly blood and bone;
As I call your name
unto the air to stir the ancient throne
Where sits Our Father,
He, our God, the sacred Lord of Night!
Do I stand, my face
and form turned wildly towards thee, acolyte?
Brother, bind me not,
as I greet the sun with words… ye alone,
Release me that I may
be content within the Sanctuary of stone.
And for perfume – mix
blood and olibanum, infuse the Temple
Our hearts to fragrant
movements as we dance sylph-like by lustral light
With sweet words from
sweeter lips aroused by love’s simple orison
To surrender in our
ravishment of songs – O poet, dearly thou hast won
The laurels from the
heads of Keats and Shelley and Lord Byron… see
The green-boughed forest of Inverfarigaig
Deep in thine
enchantment, unmoved…should this rapture never cease
Until Death’s dark
call in the wilderness, signals our release!
Barry Van-Asten.
Boleskine. Friday 10th
April 2026 .
BOLESKINE AFTER CROWLEY
Aleister Crowley sold
Boleskine House in 1913. On Monday 5th May that year it was sold to
protect Crowley Crowley Crowley
Crowley Crowley Crowley Crowley
Inverness .
I called on the new owners, went over the house, mused in the Italian garden. Crowley Crowley Inverness
at public auction.’ [Aleister Crowley the Black Magician. C R Cammell. 1951
(1969 ed. p. 45)]
The ‘public auction’
Cammell mentions occurred on Tuesday 22nd April 1919 at Queen’s Gate
Hotel Hall in Inverness; the household furniture and complete furnishings were
sold off and the Inverness Courier had been advertising the up-coming sale
since 8th April 1919 promising ‘particulars later’. The Friday 18th
April edition of the Inverness Courier (p. 8) listed an inventory of the
interior furnishings of the house to be sold: ‘Hall: very fine brass dial 8-day
clock, in carved oak case; handsome oak hat and umbrella stand; wheel
barometer, Hall tables and chairs, linoleum, rugs, mats etc., Dining Room:
inlaid mahogany telescope table, 8 ft; mahogany sideboards, couch, easy chairs
and 6 small chairs in Pegamoid [an artificial leather waterproof fabric]; desk,
stationary holder, revolving book-cases (2), occasional tables and easy
chairs; Brussels carpets, rugs, fender, kerbs, rests, and fire-irons; curtain
poles and curtains; portier [portiere, hanging curtain or drape], pictures,
ornaments etc., Drawing Room: circle door French cabinet, mahogany cabinet,
fine music cabinet, mahogany corner cupboard, sofas and couches, easy and
single chairs, card table, antique tea caddy; coal vases [decorative metal
(brass or copper) coal holder (usually with handle) to stand by fireplace],
china, pictures and ornaments; fine axminster carpet and rugs etc., Billiard
Room: oak billiard table and accessories, occasional tables, easy and single
chairs, pictures, ornaments etc., Bedrooms: fine walnut and mahogany suites,
brass and iron beds and bedding; odd wardrobes; chest of drawers; mirrors,
carpets and rugs; bedroom ware, pictures, ornaments, fenders and irons etc.,
blankets, fine lace and embroidered bedspread etc., Pantries: solid silver tea
and coffee service (Georgian), 2 fine old English entrée dishes, spoons, forks,
cutlery etc., dinner, breakfast and tea sets, glass, crystal etc., Kitchen:
tables, chairs and all the usual utensils, including solid cast aluminium
sauce-pans, stew-pans, frying-pans; copper and enamelled kettles etc., etc.,
Miscellaneous: 1 pair curling stones, in wicker cases; fine brass spread-eagle
reading stand, suitable for church or hall; fishing rods, reels etc., and other
sporting appliances. Sale 11 a.m. Maciver &
Co. R. J. Douglas, Auctioneer.’
THE PRIESTLEYS AT BOLESKINE
Boleskine was
eventually sold on Friday 12th July1918 to Dorothy C. Brook who had
been living in London Regents
Park 16th January 1919
at All Saint’s Church, Finchley
Road , St. John’s London Saturday 8th February 1919 , p. 32-33]
Dorothy, was the daughter of the zoologist and naturalist, George Brook, FLS
[Fellow of the Linnean Society], FRSE [Fellow of the Royal Society of
Edinburgh] (1857-1893), and Fanny Elisabeth Scott (1861-1917), who were married
on 10th January
1888 at Benwell in Northumberland (3).
Arthur Edward
Priestley, of the Manor House, Offord D’Arcy, was born in St Neots,
Huntingdonshire on 30th June 1888, the son of William Priestley,
(1842-1912) and Elizabeth Looker (1846-1913) (4).
Dorothy and Arthur
seem to have taken to Highland life and were
well-liked within the community; In September 1921 Mrs Priestley was
advertising for a caretaker at Boleskine House, ‘used to housework, must be
highly recommended’ [The Scotsman. Friday 16th September 1921 , p. 1] Dorothy
Priestley also attended the Foyers Gala Day on Saturday 10th June
1922, a lovely summer afternoon in which there was a pavilion and a shooting
gallery, clock golf, a shinty six-aside tournament and even a ‘face-washing’
competition; Mrs. Priestly of Boleskine House was one of the three judges in
the Baking competition; also, there is a Miss Scarf of Boleskine House, who
received equal second place, presumably she is one of the servants at the
house. [Highland News. Saturday 17th June 1922 , p.
3]
During April 1926
Arthur Edward Priestly living at Boleskine House had applied for the licence
for Foyers Hotel, which was granted [Aberdeen Journal. Thursday 22nd April 1926 ,
p. 5 and Highland News. Saturday 24th April 1926 . p.
6]. In the same year (1926), a motorist was travelling along the road at Loch
Ness towards Boleskine House when there was an accident. The driver, Mr Vernon
Roberts of Dalpowie House, Dunkeld, a collector and connoisseur of Old English
pottery, swerved suddenly and his car went over a steep embankment, ‘falling
sixty feet on the rocks below. This, however prevented the car going into the Loch . Mr Roberts was uninjured, and a dog that
accompanied him in the car was thrown into the water, but swam ashore. The car
was badly smashed.’ [Aberdeen Wednesday 18th
August 1926 , p. 3]
In August 1931 the
Priestley’s place an ad in the wanted columns for a ‘caretaker’ who will ‘help
in the house when required. Apply with references, stating age and wages
required, to A E Priestley, Boleskine, Foyers. [The Scotsman. Thursday 27th August 1931 ,
p. 1] and the following year – ‘Cook, experienced wanted for Huntingdonshire
and Inverness-shire, six servants, including kitchen maid; five in family.
State age, wages, references, to Mrs Priestley. Boleskine, Foyers, Inverness .’ [The Scotsman. Saturday 19th November 1932 , p. 5]
Arthur attended many
local functions and meeting, such as the Foyers local branch of the S.W.R.I.
[Scottish Women’s Rural Institute, founded in 1917] on Wednesday 1st
October 1930, in the Club Hall, where he gave an ‘interesting lecture
descriptive of a trip to Jamaica’ and a ‘hearty vote of thanks was accorded to
him, on the motion of Mrs Skelton’ who presided. [Inverness
Courier. Friday 3rd
October 1930 , p. 5] The following year he was unable to attend the
Gleann Mor Horticultural Association’s meeting held at the War Memorial Hall in
Fort Augustus and sent a letter of apology for his absence [Inverness Courier. Tuesday 13th October 1931 ,
p. 6] but he did manage a few years later in 1937 to attend the Stratherric
branch of the S.W.R.I. in Gorthleck Hall on Thursday 11th November
where he ‘kept the members enthralled with his racy account of his holiday
experiences in the United States.’ [Northern Chronicle and General Advertiser
for the North of Scotland Wednesday 17th
November 1937 , p. 6]
Arthur Edward Priestly
is still living at Boleskine House up until at least November 1937 from the
newspaper articles- one article from 8th April 1936 [Aberdeen Press and Journal, p.
10] states that A E Priestly, Boleskine House, won the ‘best two yearlings’ at
the Inverness Show.
On Saturday 5th
June 1937 the owners of Boleskine House opened their gardens to the public from
2-7 p.m. under the ‘Scotland’s Garden Scheme for the benefit of the Queen’s Institute
of District Nursing (Scottish branch)’ [Aberdeen Journal. Friday 4th June 1937 , p. 6].
FOYERS HOTELS LTD.
In 1943, Mrs Janet
Helen Loweth nee Gray (1916-1995), of Boleskine House, Foyers, Managing
Director and Secretary of the Foyers Hotels Ltd. applied for a certificate for
the Foyers Hotel [Highland News. Saturday 30th October 1943 , p. 3]. Janet and
her husband, David Donaldson Loweth (1911-1963), intended to reside at
Boleskine House, which Janet’s father had recently bought, permanently. Janet
and David as Managing Directors of a recently formed company with £4000
capital, Foyers Hotels Ltd., had taken over Mr Edwards’ the Foyers Hotel.
David, born in February 1911 in Kettering Northamptonshire (he died on 21st February 1963
in Staffordshire) was the son of Mr Charles F. Loweth, Director of the Singer
Sewing Machine Co. Ltd. and he married his second wife Janet Helen Gray, born
in Glasgow on Friday 11th August 1916, the third daughter of Mr and
Mrs John Gray of Alloa (died 22nd September 1946) in 1939 in
Blythswood, Glasgow. Janet and David had a young daughter with them when they
came to Boleskine named Kirsteen Ann Forbes Loweth, born in Kelvingrove,
Glasgow in 1941, and while at the house, two more daughters were born: on Thursday 13th March 1944 ,
David and Janet celebrated the birth of their daughter at Boleskine House [The
Scotsman. Monday 13th
March 1944 , p. 6]; this must be their daughter, Diana J. G. Loweth;
and two years later, ‘At Boleskine, Foyers, on [Sunday] 24th March
1946 – to Janet, wife of David D Loweth, a daughter.’ [The Scotsman. Wednesday 27th March 1946 ,
p. 6], which must be Rosemary L. D. Loweth, born at Parkgrove Nursing Home,
Glasgow (5).
Soon after the birth
of Diana, in June, Janet would be in the news again for a different reason:
‘Mrs Janet Helen Gray or Loweth, Hotelkeeper, Foyers, pled guilty to a charge
of having, by the hands of one of her employees, on Sunday May 7, sold, or gave
out to Randell Pitman, attached to a Newfoundland camp, a quarter bottle of
port wine for consumption off the premises. She was admonished and fined only
in expenses, amounting to £1, 3s 6d. An agent stated that Mrs Loweth, when the
matter had been brought to her attention, had been very much annoyed by the
offence committed by one of her staff.’ [Highland
News. Saturday 24th
June 1944 , p.3]
The Loweths don’t seem
to have much luck with their staff at the house and seem to be continually
advertising for cooks, maids or gardeners; in January 1946 they were seeking a
‘cook-general or two girls, temporary or permanent, particularly good wage.
Phone Loweth, Boleskine’ [Highland News. Saturday 12th January 1946 , p. 8]
(the same month that the Loweths were selling a Henhouse with ‘5 divisions,
approx 40 ft by 8 ft, good condition £30’ [Inverness Courier. Friday 19th January 1945 ,
p. 2] and in August that year, appeared an ad in the wanted column of The
Scotsman [Friday 4th
August 1944 , p. 8] saying ‘handyman-chauffeur and general maid:
good prospects, accommodation in house. Cottage available later, if desired.
Loweth. Boleskine, Foyers, Inverness .’
The following year, a
‘House Tablemaid, trained or un-trained, permanent or temporary, good wages’
was requested in the Inverness Courier [Tuesday 11th September 1945,
p. 4] and another ad appeared in the Highland News of Saturday 8th
December 1945 (p. 8) saying Wanted Couple: Wife as cook-general, husband as
handyman, able to drive an advantage, or assist gardener; live in mansion house
or cottage, apply, Loweth, Boleskine, Foyers.’ The ‘gardener’ was a Mr. ‘R.
Phillips’ whose appointment to Boleskine House is mentioned in the Banffshire
Journal of Tuesday 27th
March 1945 (p. 8) which says that ‘Mr. R Phillips’ of ‘Galatord,
Dufftown, lately retired postman, has been appointed head gardener to Mr. D. D.
Loweth, Boleskine, Foyers, Inverness and is leaving Dufftown this week. Mr
Phillips has resided in Dufftown for 3 years and is well known as a successful
exhibitor of garden produce at flower shows. He is an ex service man and was a
sergeant in the Home Guard.’
DAVID SHIRLEY CRIGHTON SIMPSON
In 1946 Boleskine
House was in possession of Mr David Shirley Crighton Simpson (1909-1969), who
was born in Peebles , Scotland Harrow
School Cambridge University
In the Aberdeen
Journal [Thursday 2nd
January 1947 , p. 5] under ‘situations vacant’ appeared this ad:
‘Gardener wtd, keen and energetic, able to milk; wife assist in house;
first-class cottage, indoor sanitation and bath; on bus route and one mile from
school; references required. Apply Factor, Boleskine House, Foyers,
Inverness-shire.’
The house appeared
from time to time up for sale ‘by private treaty’ as a ‘desirable residence
known as Boleskine House, Foyers, with policy grounds… overlooking Loch Ness’
[Country Life, volume 113, 1953. p. 1114]
Articles continued to
appear in the British Press concerning Aleister Crowley, mostly painting a
negative portrait of the man. One such article which is relevant appeared in
the Picture Post:
‘I was very interested
in your articles on Aleister Crowley, as my Uncle (who is still alive) worked
for him at Boleskine for a year, laying out his gardens. Crowley Crowley Inverness )’.
[‘Crowley 17th
December 1955 ]
JOHN ROBERT RANKEN
John Robert Ranken
Fullerton was born in Thrybergh, Yorkshire on 22nd August 1894 ,
the son of John Skipwith Herbert Fullerton (1866-1940) and Mary Grace Clarks
(1872-1956) who were married at Silkstone, Yorkshire
in May 1894.
On Sunday 16th
March 1924, John R. R. Fullerton married his second wife, Evelyn May Palmer,
born 1899 in Northumberland, the daughter of Sir Alfred Molyneux Palmer (1853-1935),
3rd Bart, and Ellen Edith Young (8) John and Evelyn Fullerton
must have been living at Boleskine House during early 1949 as there is an
article announcing the engagement of
Naomi Fullerton, ‘only daughter of Mr and Mrs John Fullerton of Boleskine
House, Foyers, Inverness-shire’ in the Dundee Courier of Thursday 3rd
February 1949 (p. 2).
In July 1954, Mrs
Fullerton of Boleskine House, Foyers, presented the prizes at the Foyers Junior
Secondary School Friday 2nd
July 1954 , p. 6] and the following year, Mrs Fullerton opened the
Boleskine Church of Scotland sale of work at the Church Hall in Foyers, at 3
p.m. on Saturday 3rd September 1955 [Northern Chronicle. Wednesday 31st August 1955 ,
p. 1]; this was an annual sale in connection with Stratherric and Boleskine
Church of Scotland and they raised £137, 10s; Mrs Fullerton gave a speech to
open the sale. [Inverness Courier. Friday 9th September 1955 ,
p. 5]
Although not all their
activities were welcomed, as in this article from the Northern Chronicle [Wednesday 12th May 1954 ,
p. 5] which says that ‘two fox terriers, belonging to John Fullerton, estate
owner, Boleskine House, near Foyers, were stated to have worried a sheep on the
side of Loch Ness, and in his case a fine of £4 was imposed’ by Inverness
Sheriff Court.
The house seems to be
up for sale ‘at a very moderate price’ in April 1957 and is described as a
‘small home farm’ with ‘valuable timber and gardens’. The 34 acre estate has a
‘tennis court’ and ‘modernised cottages’ and the house contains: ‘Reception
rooms, 5 bathrooms, central heating and electricity. Boathouse and excellent
fishing. Grouse shooting and stalking available…’ This ‘small economical
property in a heavenly setting’ was being sold by agents John Speir & Co. Chartered
Surveyors, Glasgow. It seems the Fullertons had no buyer for this very tempting
offer and they remained at Boleskine until the end of the decade.
John famously
delighted in annually opening the gardens at Boleskine House in connection with
Scotland Highland News. Saturday 13th December 1952 , p. 2]. During 1954
the gardens were open on Wednesday 26th May from 2-7 p.m. and open the following year also; in
1958, the gardens were open on Wednesday 18th June from 2-7 p.m. [Inverness Courier. Friday 13th June 1958 ,
p.7] and in 1959 the grounds were open on Wednesday 17th June
from2-7 p.m. and admission was one shilling [Highland News. Friday 12th June 1959 ,
p. 9]. Prior to this, the Northern Chronicle of Wednesday 13th May 1959 (p. 1) ran
the following article: ‘Gardener, with good references, required; good house,
wages and perquisites; on main bus route; 1 hour from Inverness. Fullerton
The house was
advertised for sale in August 1959 as a ‘compact, fully modernised House’ with
a ‘most attractive garden’ and ‘2 modernised cottages’ and a ‘private
boathouse’; the agents were: Messrs Bernard Thorpe & Partners, 5 Glenfinlas Street , Edinburgh Thursday 6th August 1959 ,
p. 8]
SUICIDE AT BOLESKINE
Boleskine House was
then owned by retired Army Major Edward Errick Grant (1909-1960) and his wife
Nancy. Major Grant seems to have suffered from violent outbursts as several
months before his death in November 1960; he was on trial for three hours at Inverness Sheriff Court Thursday 12th May 1960 ,
p. 7] Sheriff Douglas Donald fined the accused £10 for the assault and £5 for
breach of the peace and he was ordered to lodge £25 caution for good behaviour
for one year. [Dundee Courier. Thursday 12th May 1960 ,
p. 6]
On Tuesday 8th
November 1960 the Major’s house-keeper Anna MacLaren heard the sound of a
gunshot in the house and when she went into the house she discovered Major
Edward Grant’s body, his head blown off with a shotgun in one of the bedrooms
at Boleskine. He had taken his own life at the age of 51. He was examined by
pathologist H J R Kirkpatrick and the cause of death on the death certificate
reads: ‘gunshot wound of head’.
Edward was the
youngest child of Frank Morrison Seafield Grant, a merchant and farmer born 29th
June 1865 at Dyke, Moray in Scotland and Caroline Frances Grant nee Philips,
born in 1872 (they were married in 1893 in Cheadle, Staffordshire). The Grants
lived at Knockie, Whitebridge in Inverness-shire and they had the following
children: Patrick Francis Grant (1895-1970), born in Eccles, Pendlebury, Lancashire (Patrick became a Lieutenant-Colonel in the
Royal Artillary and on retirement he farmed at Knockie from 1946-1966); Hugh
Murray Grant MBE, MC, (1897-1946) – Hugh joined the Queen’s Own Highlanders and
worked in administration in Kenya 1st February 1995 .
Edward Errick Grant, who was born in Chelford, Cheshire Eton and Oxford Kisumu , Kenya Nancy
On Edward’s death
record at the Highland Inverness , it records he was a
‘mining engineer (retired)’. The death was registered by Edward’s brother
Patrick two days later on Thursday
10th November 1960 .
MARY VERITE GRANT
The Mrs Mary Grant,
cousin of Edward Errick Grant, whom he was accused of assaulting, is the same
Mary Verite Grant, also Loraine, born Friday 23rd January 1914, for
in an article by Alex Main for the Aberdeen Evening Express of Friday 28th
April 1961 (p. 7), it states that ‘Mrs Mary Verite Loraine’ is the ‘daughter of
the late Mabel Love, the musical comedy actress, a Gaiety girl.’ It goes on to
describe Mary’s home: ‘The white stone mansion said to have been the scene of
black magic orgies when owned by the Prince of Black Magic, Aleister Crowley’
had become ‘too costly to have a housekeeper looking after me, and she’s
exceptionally good, but a place of this size needs a man running it…Mrs Grant
says that it will break her heart to leave Boleskine but she still has the
memory of that fateful night last November when her second cousin, Major Edward
Grant, shot himself in one of the bedrooms. In the little bedroom facing out
the loch, where the Major took his life, she said: I miss him terribly. After that
night I had a serious nervous breakdown and was in hospital for a time, but I
don’t want to spend the rest of my days in a sick bed. I want to make a
completely fresh start. Mrs Grant then spoke reticently of her war-time
exploits. She said she was an underground organiser, for resistance groups and
many times led escaped British soldiers over the Pyranees.’ The rest of the
article goes on to say she ‘declined to name the man she says she is to marry’
and that the ’47 year old former London society beauty’ was ‘selling up her
32-roomed mansion Boleskine House, Foyers, and says she has started proceedings
for divorce from her husband, Captain Anthony Loraine, former captain the
Queen’s Flight. Local people have linked her name with an Inverness-shire man,
but he said today, it’s not me. From her country home, overlooking Loch Ness,
Mrs Grant repeated I do not want to reveal the name of my husband-to-be at the
moment. But we are building a house near Beauly. It should be ready by the time
my divorce comes through. Twice-married Mrs Grant – resorted to my maiden name
when my husband and I parted – says, she cannot continue to run Boleskine on
her own. Mrs Grant’s husband, Capt. Loraine, was a friend of the famous
airwoman, the late Amy Mollison. He is senior Captain in BOAC and after flying
DC7C’s went on to Boeing 707 jets last year. During the last war he was three
times co-pilot of Mr Churchill’s aircraft over the Atlantic …’
It then goes on to mention that Anthony is a ‘cousin of Sir Percy Loraine,
one-time British Ambassador in Rome Atlantic
while Eden Bermuda , which he captained. While captain Loraine was on
that Bermuda flight, his wife, at that time
referred to a Mrs Mary Loraine – reported that she had been robbed of valuable
furs.’ (9)
THE SAUSAGE SCANDAL
Boleskine House was up
for sale ‘with some fishing rights on Loch Ness’ in January 1961. In March
1962, Mollie Loraine, having recently parted from her husband, Dennis Henry
Loraine, went on holiday to Scotland with her new partner, Peter Rolte Johnston
(once a van driver for R.V.S. ‘Royal Victoria Sausages’); Mrs Loraine had been
looking for a place to fatten pigs for their company Royal Victoria Sausages
and they saw the enchanting Boleskine House was for sale and the following
year, Boleskine House was bought by Dennis Henry Loraine. Mollie ‘demanded that
the huge circular bed in the main bedroom be left.’ [Daily Express. Thursday 1st
December 1966, p. 2] Dennis Loraine, (10) Managing Director of Cadco
Development Ltd. Company and Managing Director of the Royal Victoria Sausage
Company, ‘whose food processing projects at the new town of Glenrothes in Fife,
had been the subject of a board of inquiry, was a confidence trickster. He even
persuaded the film actor, George Sanders (1906-1972) who had a terrible head
for business, and his wife, Benita, to invest in their sausage enterprise,
Cadco as a Director and guarantor, and he eventually lost hundreds of thousands
of pounds.
Mollie (or Molly) and
Peter were both Managing Directors in their Highland Weaners and Fatteners Ltd.
Company (registered in June 1963) which they ran from Boleskine House; a
planning application to the Inverness County Council was submitted for the
building of a ‘piggery’ at Boleskine in January 1963. In March of that year,
Molly Loraine gave an interview to the Daily Record [Saturday 9th March 1963 , p.
10] which asked if she was concerned about the reputation of the house being
haunted; the article says: ‘Is Mrs Loraine worried? Not a bit she says:
everyone told us hair-raising tales. It made me all the keener. It is such a
pretty place. Mrs Loraine is moving into lonely Boleskine House on the eastside
– the side most tourists never reach. It was the home of the black magician
Aleister Crowley…’ Molly lived at the house with her three sons: Damocles (born
1953), Tarquin (born1959), and Tristan (born 1962) – ‘They are sitting on the
steps of the room used by Aleister Crowley for practicing black magic… People
still talk in whispers: the evil that lurked there will not go over the
threshold. A former tenant shot himself and two others are said to have gone
mad because of what they saw and heard.’ The reporter goes on to say that ‘I
visited slender brown-eyed Mrs Loraine in the caravan behind the house in which
she is living while extensive alterations are being made. Two of her sons,
Damocles 9 and Tarquin 3 romped noisily as she told me: I do not think ghosts
have a chance here – I have not seen or heard a thing. Damocles goes to school
in the village and we gave a party for the children. They were all playing and
twisting in the haunted part of the house. I am sure any ghost would have been
scared away. Mrs Loraine a former air hostess and actress has two sons with
her. One-year old Tristan will join them later.’ Interestingly, the article
mentions that Boleskine House ‘has been transformed into an easy-to-run single
storey house. Two upstairs wings have been demolished’. Mrs Loraine said ‘The
house is not so lonely now. A pig fattening station is being built 100 yards
away and Mrs Loraine is organising local housewives in a plan to knit fashion
garments for sale. She is also connected with a film company which plans to do
location work nearby.’
It was a sad end for
Mollie, as an article in the Daily Express by Robin Turner [Friday 2nd December 1966 ,
p. 11] under the headline: ‘Woman in Cadco case says: Now I’m broke and all
alone’ in which the ‘housewife whose £180 butcher’s bill led to the Cadco
affair’ spoke [on Thursday 1st December] of her champaign life with
ex-husband Dennis Loraine, one of the key figures in the scandal’. It goes on
to say that ’33-year old Mollie Loraine’ is ‘bedridden in her barely furnished
flat and worried about where the next quarter’s rent – due today – is coming
from.’ She died the following year in 1967 in Hove , Sussex
Boleskine House became
a listed property on 5th
October 1971 and the original text description of the building
stated that it was ‘Begun late 18th century and continuously
enlarged until circa 1830. Now forms single storey, irregular 7-bay house with
projecting outer bays with truncated gables. Pink harled with ashlar dressings
and margins (some rendered).Present SE front probably re-cast from NW. Centre
projecting pilastered ashlar bay with entrance flanked by narrow side lights;
porch linked to outer bays by shallow loggia supported by slender Roman Doric
columns; deep continuous entablature. NW elevation; round-headed window in
gabled centre bay (probably former entrance) 3-window projecting bowed bays (to
right with modern alteration to one window) with bowed piended roofs in bays 2
and 6;outer bays with Venetian windows. Multi-pane glazing; long and short
channelled ashlar quoins. Symmetrical
pair ridge and panelled and wallhead stacks; slate roofs. East service
door masked by later single storey; single bay extension. Interior; long
corridor runs full length of house in SE front probably formed in earlier 19th
century; panelled arches and screens flanking centre entrance bay. Simple
plaster cornices to 2 public rooms with bowed bay windows giving to NW.’
HALBERT KERR
The next owner of
Boleskine House was Halbert James Haldane Kerr, who was born in Glasgow on
Tuesday 10th April 1917, the son of Halbert James Kerr, an assistant
manager born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1882; young Halbert and his parents went
to live in Montreal in June 1920 where he was educated and during the war he
served in the London Fire Brigade during the Blitz before transferring to the
Canadian Blackwatch; he was later wounded in active service and taken prisoner.
(11)
Boleskine House was to
be opened as a ‘tourist mansion’ according to the Highland News of Thursday 28th
March 1968 (p. 1) under the heading: ‘Black Magic Mansion to be Tourist Mecca –
Boleskine House gets table licence’; it was to be opened in April 1968 by the
‘man behind the scheme – Canadian businessman Halbert J. Kerr’ who ‘scoffs at
the tales of black magic rituals and haunted corridors, where the infamous
Aleister Crowley is said by some to have practiced black magic and to have held
regular meetings with the Devil in a room known as “The Temple”. It goes on to
say that Kerr had been ‘granted a table licence for Boleskine House, where he
has spent the last year supervising modernisation. He has also acquired the
chair which Crowley London Canada Inverness
Courier. Tuesday 30th
April 1968 , p. 6]
During the summer of
1969, the experimental film-maker and Crowley
In May 1970, Mr Kerr
returned back to Boleskine from a nine month stay in Canada Friday 15th May 1970 (p. 7):
‘Sir – I live at Boleskine House, Foyers, although I have been in Canada Edinburgh
JIMMY PAGE AND MALCOLM DENT
In 1971 Boleskine
House was bought by Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page and Jimmy’s childhood
friend Malcolm Dent (1944-2011) who lived at the house to supervise the
restoration of the building. Malcolm P. Dent (who played the ‘Hermit’ figure in
the Jimmy Page sequence for the film ‘The Song Remains the Same’ shot in the
grounds at Boleskine House) was born on Friday 11th February 1944 in
Bridport, Dorset, and was brought up in Surrey; he came to Boleskine House at
the age of 23 with Jimmy Page in 1971 and met his future wife there and raised
a family there for more than twenty years.
In an article in the
Highland News [Thursday 4th February 1971, p. 8] titled ‘Boleskine
enters pop era’ it says that the house, which was ‘subsequently converted into
a private country hotel’ was ‘put up for sale by its Canadian owner, a Mr
Halbert Kerr, at a minimum asking price of £14,000. Jimmy, 25, who plays with
the progressive group Led Zeppelin, is at present abroad and it is not yet
known what his plans for the house are. On a visit to Boleskine some weeks ago
he told a couple who are acting as house keepers that he had a place in
Reading, but felt he would have more scope and freedom at Foyers.’
Malcolm Dent acted as
curator for twenty years at Boleskine and witnessed many strange phenomena:
“Most of the oddities occurred during upheavals in the house. I am not talking
about wallpapering, but structural alterations. Any time there was anything
major, it was almost as though the house didn’t like it. If we didn’t get on
with the job and get it finished, something would let us know about it. We
would be wakened during the night with heavy doors banging all over the place
and carpets and rugs being rolled up. It was though it was a reminder to get on
quickly and get the job over”.
On another occasion
Malcolm and some friends witnessed a “small porcelain figure of the Devil
[which] rose off the mantelpiece to the ceiling, then smashed into smithereens
in the fireplace”. The most horrifying
event though happened early one morning: “I was awakened in the wee small hours
and just knew something was wrong. I was petrified. Something outside the
bedroom door was snorting, snuffling and banging. It sounded like a huge beast.
I had this clear picture in my mind of what it looked like, but there was no
way I was going to open the door. I had a knife on my bedside table and I
opened the blade and just sat there. The blade was so small it wouldn’t have
done any good, but I was so frightened that I just had to have something to
hang on to. The noise went on for some time but even when it stopped, I still
could not move. I sat in bed for hours and even when daylight came, it took a
lot of courage to open that door. Whatever was there, I have no doubt it was
pure evil.” [‘Beware of the Beast’ by Bob King. Highland
News. Saturday 8th
February 1997 ]
THE
Jimmy Page, Malcolm
Dent and other inhabitants of Boleskine House campaigned against the proposed
plane to install 96 foot tall pylons along Loch Ness which would encroach onto
the Boleskine estate – four on the side of Loch Ness and one in the grounds of
Boleskine House with further pylons up the face of the hillside overlooking the Loch. Dent had
issued a circular letter to undertake a campaign against the pylons in 1971 and
a public inquiry was ordered by the Scottish Secretary Mr. Gordon Campbell in
January 1972. The inquiry was held at Inverness
on Monday 8th May
1972 .
In an article in the
Highland News [Thursday 18th November 1971, p. 4] under the heading:
‘The Laird in Jeans’ we read that ‘pop artist, Jimmy Page – spent the weekend
at Boleskine House to check on the progress of the opposition to the Loch Ness
“metal” monsters. It is feared the pylons would be an eyesore, damage amenity
and desecrate the beauty of the Loch and
surrounding landscape. So far, the Hydro Board has rejected alternative
proposals for burying the lochside route or hitching it on wooden poles. A
decision on a possible public inquiry is awaited from the Scottish Secretary,
Mr Gordon Campbell…’ It goes on to say Jimmy Page, ‘bought Boleskine House earlier
this year and hopes to make it his permanent home one day. He also has a home
near London
Other inhabitants of
Boleskine House who stood against the pylons was the artist Barrington F.
Coleby (1945-2014) who was born in Surrey; in 1977he was living at Foynes Field
Cottage, near Nairn and between 18th July to 16th August
that year, he was exhibiting his work at the Eden Court Theatre, Inverness with
fellow artist, Gordon Corrance (brother of the photographer, Douglas Corrance;
Gordon later became an art teacher). Coleby, along with his wife, the
Glasgow-born writer and poet, Fiona Macleod, lived at Boleskine as caretakers
for Page from November 1971 and Fiona, the daughter of a Hebridean father,
baked her own bread as she worked on her novel; she was also the mother of a
three-month old child at the time (November 1971).
Two senior North of
Scotland Hydro-Electricity Board officials visited Boleskine House on Thursday 30th September
1971 to explain the proposed development in detail; Page was not at
the house but Malcolm Dent was there to greet them. A few months later, on Wednesday 22nd December
1971 , over two-hundred people attended a meeting organised by Page
and Dent at Rose Street Hall, Inverness where
Page won the public over with his campaign. Malcolm Dent, who had been making
furniture at Boleskine House, raised 1500 signatures against the Hydro
proposals for the planned pylons.
Malcolm Dent’s
daughter, Uraina Dent, born Thursday 19th August 1971 also lived at
Boleskine House and attended Boleskine School in Foyers (she later married
Gavin Anderson at Trinity Church, Inverness in January 1994); and later,
Malcolm Dent’s son, also named Malcolm Dent, was born in Boleskine House around
1975, and he went on to play guitar in a band, like his godfather, Jimmy Page.
It seems Malcolm Dent, his wife and children, all loved living at Boleskine
House. He even assisted the famous Loch Ness monster hunter, Frank Searle
(1921-2005), in March 1975, giving him permission and towing his caravan to a
location on Boleskine land where his ‘Lock Ness Investigation Bureau’ could
watch for the monster undisturbed; unfortunately, the council had different
ideas and told him to vacate the land as he didn’t have planning permission.
Searle had been investigating the monster at the Loch since 1969 in a tent and
when he moved to Boleskine he’d already been five years at Dores and had two
tent sites on a Ballachladaich farm with permission from the farmer- at a
council meeting for Foyers on Tuesday 8th April 1975, councillor
Laurence Hasson objected to Searle’s application and it was rejected.
Jimmy Page only lived
at Boleskine House for a short time and during the restoration it is said that
Satanist Charles Pierce helped with the redecoration. Page also invited
film-maker and fellow Crowley
Jimmy Page and Malcolm
Dent had been in a six-year legal dispute since 1982 over the boundary of
Boleskine House with Drumalbyn Development Trust of 6, Queensgate, Inverness , who brought the civil action against them. The
row concerned a boundary fence which Malcolm put in place and being accused of
allegedly stealing land belonging to Boleskine Lodge, opposite Boleskine House;
the fence had taken in a small burn and a small piece of land and Page and Dent
argued that they had ‘sole and exclusive right to land round Boleskine Lodge…’
Somehow, legal documents lodged in legal process, had mysteriously vanished but
a photocopy of the document was accepted to show the exact boundary. The
Sheriff at Inverness Sheriff Court Inverness
Courier. Friday 26th
February 1988 , p. 7]
Malcolm Dent sadly
died on Saturday 15th
October 2011 at Inverness Highland Hospice; his private funeral
took place a week later on Saturday 22nd October.
THE MACGILLIVRAYS
Jimmy Page sold
Boleskine House, with its five bedrooms, 14 rooms and an orchard, in 1990 for
£250,000 (the selling agents were: Strutt Parker & Co. of Edinburgh) to
retired hoteliers Ronald and Annette MacGillivray who ran the residence as a
Bed & Breakfast. Ronald MacGillivray was born in Ibrox, Glasgow and he was
Chairman of the Clan MacGillivray International Association which began in
1999. Ronald Macgillivray, devoted husband of Annette and father of Morven and
Blair, died at Boleskine House on Tuesday 5th February 2002 after an illness,
aged 67 and the funeral service was held at Boleskine House at 1 p.m. on Monday 11th February 2002 .
The MacGillivrays, who had no interest in the dark history of Boleskine, did
not encourage sight-seeing and claimed that nothing out of the ordinary
happened during their occupation of the house. Sometime after Ronald’s death
the house was sold.
One of the more
ludicrous articles following the Macgillivray’s departure from Boleskine
included this from the Aberdeen Press and Journal for Tuesday 11th January 2005
(p. 10) under the headline: ‘Exorcist called in to subdue bed of the Beast’.
The article goes on to say that an ‘exorcism is to be carried out on a “possessed”
bed once slept in by self-styled Satanist Aleister Crowley, who considered
himself to be the devil.’ More nonsense follows: ‘Guests at The Steadings Hotel
at Farr, Inverness-shire, are unable to sleep in the bed, claiming it rocks
violently…’ The haunted bed ‘was sold after his [Ronald Macgillivray] death and
ended up at The Steadings. Owner Andy Pavitt said guests had complained
regularly about “ghostly goings on” in the bedroom, including claims that the
bed had rocked violently. He has invited Kevin Carylon, who practices white
magic and believes in a universal force to get rid of the bed’s evil spirits.
Mr Carylon, who has performed special rituals at Loch Ness in an attempt to
save the monster from the clutches of Nessie-hunters, said “I have been asked
to do an exorcism on the bed as Crowley
After Ronald
MacGillivray’s death in 2002, Boleskine House was bought by the secretive Amsterdam
On Wednesday 23rd December
2015 a devastating fire caused severe damage to the house and much
of the interior was lost to the blaze. The roof had also partially collapsed.
The house and its land
was put up for sale in April 2019 for £500,000. It was bought by the Boleskine
House Foundation whose intention was to rebuild and restore the house and open
it to the public. Another fire, due to suspected arson, was reported on Wednesday 31st July 2019
which destroyed what was remaining of the original house’s interior and roof.
The restoration of the
house was completed in April 2026 and following an evening gala event on Friday 10th April 2026 ,
the house was open to the public on Saturday 11th April from 9 a.m. with tours of the house and
grounds and guest speakers.
Despite the turbulent
history of the house and fears that it would be irretrievably lost, it seems
the future of Boleskine House is in safe hands under the care of the Boleskine
House Foundation.
Diagram of the
ground floor (drawn roughly to scale)
- Side, servants and tradespersons entrance,
now a utility room.
- Site of the chimney for the kitchen
fireplace; presumably there is or was a fireplace in the room above also.
- The Kitchen. There is a door on entering
the kitchen to the left which is probably a pantry or storage place
beneath the stairs.
- On exiting the kitchen the cellar steps
are located to the left which descent into a small ‘wine’ cellar.
- Stairs ascending to the first floor and
bedrooms of the north-eastern wing of the house.
- Room in the north-eastern wing of the
house, now a bar area.
- Chimney and fireplace; there is presumably
a fireplace in the room above.
- Furthest room in the north-eastern wing,
now a snug-lounge area.
- Site of original fireplace and chimney,
demolished and not rebuilt. The house was transformed into a ‘single-storey’
building sometime before March 1963 when Mrs. Mollie Loraine mentioned
that the ‘two upstairs wings have been demolished’. Photographs of the
time also confirm this. In 1989, Jimmy Page had ‘carried out a series of
extensive improvements since buying the house in 1971 from the Canadian
businessman Mr Halbert Kerr’. Page was planning ‘extensive re-roofing and
other refurbishments to the south wing as part of a programme.’ [Led Zep
guitarist has big house plans.
- The Dining Room with its bow windows
facing out towards Loch Ness.
- Chimney and fireplaces.
- Drawing-Room. It is my opinion that this
would have been Crowley’s ‘gun room’ where he said he had his billiard
table, being probably the only room large enough for a billiard table and
space to play unhindered.
- Chimney and fireplaces.
- The Temple Room or ‘Oratory’ where
- The Door to the Terrace – originally a
window,
- The Library.
- Chimney and fireplace, presumably there is
a fireplace in the room above.
- Stairs ascending to the upper rooms in the
south-eastern wing of the house.
- W.C.
- Room in the south-east wing, possibly
- Chimney and fireplace, presumably there is
a fireplace in the room above.
- This window in the furthest south-eastern
part of the house was at one time a doorway; an early photograph of the
house shows the door distinctly and images of the ruins after the fire
also confirm this. Is it possible that this was
- Room in the south-eastern wing of the
house along with rooms 14, 16 and 20 consecrated and dedicated to the
Sacred Magic of Abramelin.
- Site of original chimney and fireplace;
the chimney was removed (along with the same located in the north-eastern
wing) during the tenancy of Mollie Loraine.
- The Long Corridor and the south-eastern
pylon, a boundary between the consecrated and un-consecrated part of the
house.
- The Front Entrance.
NOTES:
- Perdurabo. Richard Kaczynski. 2021 ed. p.
274.
- Are these the same ‘four revolving walnut
bookcases’
- Dorothy’s mother, Fanny Elisabeth Brook,
born Scott in
- Arthur Edward Priestley, born Saturday 30th
June 1888 was the youngest child of William Priestley, born 7th
August 1842, a corn miller and farmer with 298 acres who employed 7 men
and 4 boys; William married Elizabeth Looker, born 24th October
1846, in Huntingdonshire on 3rd September 1868. [in the 1881
and 1891 census they had 3 servants] They lived at the Manor House, Offord
D’Arcy and had five children: Fanny Edith Priestley (born 8th
May 1874),she married Edward George Saltmarsh (1870-1931) in May 1896 and
she died in Cornwall in October 1973; Constance Lily Priestley (born 2nd
August 1877), she died in October 1973; Percy William Priestley (born
September 1880) he died on 25th April 1935; Dorothy Annie Priestley (born 3rd
September 1883) she died in 1971 and Arthur Edward (born 1888); in the
1911 census Arthur Edward is a ‘corn miller’s assistant’. William
Priestley died on
- After leaving Boleskine, The Loweths moved
to Maidenhead in
- Walter Thorburn Simpson married Mary
Sinclair Pottinger, daughter of Robert Pottinger, late Inspector-General
of Hospitals and Fleets, on
- David Shirley Crighton Simpson died at
Stirling Royal Infirmary on
- John R. R. Fullerton, ‘Captain, late 19th
Royal Hussars’, married his first wife, Moira Faith Lillian de
Yarburgh-Bateson (born Bateson, 1898-1982) at St George’s, Hanover Square,
London on Friday 24th October1919; the marriage was annulled in
1923. Moira died on
- Mary Verite Grant also Loraine, died in a
house fire at her home, flat 1, 38,
- Dennis Henry Loraine was born Dennis Henry
Edwards in
- Halbert James Haldane Kerr returned to
Montreal after selling Boleskine House to Jimmy Page and was the owner of
an insurance claims office; he retired with his wife to St Patrick then to
North Hatley where he died on Sunday 4th June 2006; his funeral
took place a week later on Saturday 10th June at 2 p.m.
Halbert’s son, Andrew Halbert Kerr (by his first wife Heather Grant, whom
he divorced) was born in
THE POET RETURNS
By Victor B. Neuburg
The starlight lends me
raiment;
(How slowly old songs
die!)
A dream I give in
payment,
Of my dreams newborn
and shy.
A moonbeam lends its
burden;
(How slowly old songs
fail!)
A dream I give as
guerdon;
For all my dreams are
pale.
So through the dark I
wander;
How sweet the old
songs seem!)
All undisturbed I
ponder;
All palely still I
dream.
Beneath the stately
beaches
(How sweet the old
songs were!)
I mouth my silver
speeches
To make my own heart
stir.
Beside the curious
river
(How strange the old
songs are!)
I glide to watch the
shiver
On the water of a
star.
Under the night’s
grave splendour
(How far the wise old
songs!)
I murmur words as
tender
As a lover’s fancied
wrongs.
The strange, strong
songs I fashioned
(Those songs grown now
sold!)
Seem vaguely fair and
passioned,
Now my hot heart is
cold.
The starlight lends me
raiment;
My path a white
moonbeam.
A song I give in
payment,
For love I add a
dream.
[The Smart Set.
Volume: xliii, Number: 2, June 1914. p. 102]
THE FOUR ADORATIONS
The following
notations were found amongst the papers of ‘He who works in Silence to fulfil’
who is also known as Audrarep, their meanings are left to those who understand.
- Dawn: Adoration of Ra. The Star Ruby
Ritual. Purification. a) Liber AL I.
- Sunset: Adoration Tuum. XI: Pe (69) The
Summons & the Sacrament. The Mark of the Beast Ritual [The exchanging
of the Lion force etc.] – Pe to Pe. c) Liber
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