The Portrayal of Aleister Crowley by the Press During His Life-time and Beyond; A Real or Imagined Fear?

How was Aleister Crowley portrayed by the press during his lifetime and after his death? Were the press reporting fairly and accurately on Crowley? Did they express the genuine concerns of a nation, or were they merely indulging in sensationalism to sell more papers? By examining the archives of various publications and comparing the coverage of Crowley against the coverage of other similar events (including theatre reviews and general news), we may throw some light on the matter.

            By establishing that the media (both now and in the 18^th century) was not purely reflective of society as Michael Wolff suggests in his unfortunately named essay ‘Charting the Golden Stream’ but instead, as Kate Jackson puts it “...an active and integral part of it.”, we can take this to mean that whilst newspapers reflected society back at its self, the same newspapers also exerted an influence by shaping how, and what, society thought.

Aleister Crowley featured regularly in the press of his day, and it would seem that for the most part, the attitude of the press towards him was one of benign bemusement but as Robertson points out in the introduction to Richard T Cole’s book The Un-Magickal Record Of The Great Beast 666;  

“Crowley played a dangerous game: he cultivated a devilish image that was useful for putting off fainthearts and attracting the adventurous and curious, but it backfired when the gutter press repeatedly shat on him.”

A review of Crowley’s The Rites of Eleusis, “...a series of seven public invocations or rites, each centered on one of the seven classical planets of antiquity.”  demonstrates how, as a playwright and director, he was perceived by the press; “...the only relief in a dreary performance was afforded by a neophyte falling off his stool, which caused mild hilarity among a bored and uncomfortable audience...” (Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LX, 1910) and “Mr Crowley says the end and aim of his rites is ecstasy. Somebody ought to tell him that ecstasy of any kind is impossible when your foot has gone to sleep.” (Ibid).

A bad review does not prove that the press dealt unfairly with Crowley. A review of Mr Charles Frohman’s Repertory, from a similar time as Crowley’s Rites, asks what good drama is: “Apparently, with Mr Frohman, it is to be an art of audacious, not to say iconoclastic experiment” (The Times, 1910,) and “There is much, however, that we venture to consider suspect and possibly harmful, harmful to the young dramatist and harmful to the drama as an art.” (ibid).

It is plain to see that the Victorians exercised (subjective) discernment with regard to the theatre, and if we look as far back as 1839, critics and artists alike were imposing their (subjective) opinions on the public, albeit about paintings in the following example. William Thackeray said of the French School of Painting “...the bloated, unnatural, stilted, spouting, sham sublime, that our teachers have believed and tried to pass off as real, and which your humble servant and other anti-humbuggists should heartily...endeavour to pull down”.

On July the 3^rd, 1915 Crowley and a group of people renounced their allegiance to England in a dawn ceremony at the foot of the Statue of Liberty. This event was covered in The New York Times approximately ten days after the event, and the report is amazingly detailed and even handed (New York Times, 1915) when one considers the political climate in which Crowley and the group were acting.

It appears that The Times (London) was far too busy reporting on the first World War because there was no mention of Crowley’s stunt from the 3^rd of July 1915 or the following ten days afterwards. However, there were plenty of headlines concerned with the war, including “The Battles of North Arras” (The Times, 1915) “Russians Captured by Italians” (Ibid) and “The Second Battle of Ypres” (Ibid).

In the introduction to Sand Robertson’s The Illustrated Beast - The Aleister Crowley Scrapbook, Colin Wilson suggests that throughout his life Crowley was “...in the grip of a ravenous, unsatisfied appetite for recognition...” and despite Crowley’s efforts, he remained relatively unknown by the British public, however  “...quite suddenly, he became a household name when the magazine John Bull [Wilson’s italics] dubbed him ‘the wickedest man in the world’, and ran headlines like THE KING OF DEPRAVITY, A HUMAN BEAST and A MAN WE’D LIKE TO HANG [Wilson’s capitals].” (Ibid).

The tactic of using shocking, attention grabbing headlines to lure potential newspaper buyers into purchasing is not a new one, and is a hallmark of journalistic practices employed several decades before Crowley’s birth. According to Joel Weiner’s Papers for the Millions, publications such as Lloyd’s Weekly (1842), the News of the World (1843) and Reynolds’s Newspaper (1850) had made “...breakthroughs in layout, particularly in the coverage of crime stories, which often feature crossheadings like “Execution” or “Confession.””.

In addition to the shocking headlines, there was also the belief that newspaper editors should have “...no objection to facts if they are also novel. But he (should) prefer a novelty that is not a fact to a fact that is not a novelty.” (Hearst, in Weiner). In the July edition of Action magazine (1953), there is a lurid feature on Crowley entitled ‘The Strange Case of the Man Who Founded a Sex Cult’ which includes such ‘novelties’ (for they were certainly not facts) about Crowley such as Hitler believing him to be a living god and Crowley exerting influence in America to the extent that the dollar bill was redesigned to include the eye of Horus in honour of him.

When it came to reporting on Crowley, there was no shortage of novel facts and certainly no shortage of novelties that were not facts but it was only after the death of Raoul Loveday at Crowley’s Abbey of Thelema in Cefalu, Sicily (and Crowley’s subsequent expulsion from the island by Mussolini) that the press truly turned on him. The Sunday Express used numerous eye-catching headlines to denounce Crowley (and presumably sell more papers into the bargain); these included “Aleister Crowley’s Orgies in Sicily” (Sunday Express, 1922) and “New Sinister Revelations of Aleister Crowley” (Sunday Express, 1923). The purpose of this piece is not to explore the truths or untruths behind the headlines but it cannot be doubted that headlines such as these would have had an impact on the public’s impression of Crowley.  This is confirmed by Robertson when he speculates that an average person’s earliest memories of Crowley were of “...the leering devil-worshipper, according to the lurid descriptions of his parents drawn from dimly remembered articles in the Sunday Express [Robertson’s italics] of long ago.”.

The press blamed Loveday’s death on drinking the blood of a sacrificed cat under the direction of Crowley – something he vehemently denied - and that Crowley was a very, very bad man. Crowley refuted the manner in which he has been portrayed by the press and blamed the entire situation on the newspapers and Betty May (Raoul’s wife); speaking of her in his autobiography ‘An Autohagiography: The Confessions Of Aleister Crowley’ he says “...an accident had damaged her brain permanently so that its functions were discontinuous, and she had not mended matters by taking to cocaine at the age of about twenty. After some years of addiction, she found herself using a quarter of an ounce or more daily. She suddenly took fright and cured herself by switching over, first to injections of morphia, and then to plain alcohol.”. He also claims that unscrupulous journalists had gotten Betty May drunk and convinced her to make up lies about the manner of Loveday’s death and activity at the Abbey. Crowley also claimed that the media had deliberately misrepresented the facts, knowing that he was too poor to sue for libel.

When it came to confusing the press (and people in general) Crowley didn’t help matters; on the nature of blood and human sacrifices he wrote in Magick In Theory And Practice that “A male child of perfect innocence and high intelligence is the most satisfactory and suitable victim.”. A foot-note to this statement reads “It appears from the Magical Records of FRATER PERDURABO that He made this particular sacrifice on an average about 150 times every year between 1912 E.V and 1928 E.V”. This would suggest that Crowley sacrificed approximately 2400 boys during this period. In actual fact ‘child sacrifice’ was a euphemism for a particular strain of sex magick but Crowley did little to clarify this. The fact that that he also claimed to be in contact with praeter-human intelligences and his work was therefore outside the sphere of ‘normal’ understanding and ethical practices should also be noted. It is hardly surprising that he was misunderstood by the press, who then in turn misinformed the general public.

To recap, this piece has demonstrated that in regard to Crowley’s artistic/theatrical pieces, the press were not particularly impressed, but the press were equally unfavourable with their reviews of other theatre produced at the same time. It has also been demonstrated that there was unfavourable press in existence even before Crowley was born. Therefore we can discount the idea that Crowley’s art was persecuted by the press – reviewers have, and will continue, to exercise their subjective opinion on art, the theatre and everything else in existence.

Regarding the reporting, or lack of, about Crowley’s renouncement of his allegiance to England; the New York Times article is very well-balanced and does not report Crowley in any kind of negative light. It merely records events but does not comment on them. Anyone reading the article could form their own opinions about the event (although it is possible that their perception may have already been coloured by previous news articles about Crowley and his behaviour). The Times in London was too preoccupied with reporting on the war to even bother with writing an article on the subject.

It has also been shown that the use of shock headlines to grab the reader’s attention (and thereby sell more newspapers) was already an established practice. But as suggested at the start of this piece, the press did not (and still does not) merely reflect society; it also influences, therefore the idea that the public’s view of Crowley was negatively influenced by the headlines of such publications as John Bull or the Sunday Express cannot be discounted.

If we also take into account that ‘novelty’ was also seen as being preferable to ‘fact’, it is neither a huge nor difficult step to conclude that the press made use of untruths about Crowley to sell newspapers.

Finally, we see that Crowley often made use of, what would have been at the time, offensive and outrageous metaphors. He did not make much effort to clarify the true meaning behind his ‘sleight of word’ and allowed people to arrive at incorrect conclusions about his work and his behaviour. He certainly did not do himself any favours in regard to how he was portrayed in the press.

Therefore it is only logical and sensible to conclude that admittedly the press could be unfavaourable to Crowley’s artistic endeavours but this was clearly not a personal attack; they just didn’t like his work. The press in his lifetime (and beyond) were guilty of using sensational headlines to smear Crowley and they also invented novel facts about him. However, in some instances, they reported in a clear and unbiased fashion.  Crowley, for his part, often wrote in an ambiguous manner which would have confused the average person, let alone a ‘news-hungry’ journalist.

Would it be too much to suggest that Crowley and the press were in a parasitic relationship whereby Crowley attempted to gain publicity and the press attempted to gain increased readership through the use of outrageous headlines and suspect ‘facts’?

Big thanks to Mogg Morgan for his suggestions for research on this piece.