Christabel Aberconway - A Wiser Woman?

from

A WISER WOMAN? A BOOK OF MEMORIES

Hutchinson of London, 1966

(pages 44-47)

Perhaps this is the moment to confess that once, and once only, I made an experiment in Black Magic.

Somewhere I had read, I think in Maurois' biography of Disraeli, that when asked what he did about enemies, Disraeli replied, 'I write their names on a piece of paper, which is their body: I put this slip of paper into an empty drawer, which is their coffin, I do not open the drawer for a year; by then, invariably, they are dead.'

In a moment of passionate dislike of someone I wrote her name—on a slip of paper and followed Dizzy's instructions. Within a fortnight she became ill—severe influenza, high temperature; four days later out from the drawer came the slip of paper; four days after that 'she' was up and being as tiresome as ever. So it seems that my will is more feeble than my power.

But enough of that ugly incident: for now my mind turns to poor old Aleister Crowley, who was reputed to be the arch-priest of Black Magic, and who believed whole-heartedly in the power of the closed drawer.

One evening during the six years' war, I arrived with Cynthia Jebb at a flat in Hanover Square where Cynthia was living and where, she had told me, in a flat below, old Aleister Crowley lay all day on a divan bed, groaning and moaning.

That afternoon I had gone to Phillips, the wonderful jewellers in Bond Street, and had borrowed from them every pentacle, every cross, every magic jewel they possessed, to wear for that night. Presently Cynthia and I arrived in Aleister Crowley's flat. He was wearing only a dressing-gown and looked old and shabby, and in his eyes I saw no dominating magic. While Cynthia talked to him I looked round his room, and saw on a shelf a beautifully bound book. I lifted it down and opened it. Crowley gave a shriek: I turned round holding the book in my hand.

He shouted: 'If you look in that book, that book, you will die.'

Perhaps the crosses and other magical jewels loaned to me by Phillips gave me the courage for I heard myself saying:

'Yes, yes, Mr. Crowley, I shall die, and so will you; we all owe God a death; but I shan't die because I have opened this book.'

I looked through the book, which was an elaborate manuscript, with a gold-leaf illumination on every pornographic page; boring, I thought. I then replaced it on the shelf. Soon afterwards Cynthia and I left: I was glad to leave.

About a fortnight later I received a letter from Aleister Crowley saying: 'You are not dead! So you are one of the Elect. Will you come and have luncheon with me, and afterwards I will read to you in the language of the Angels? I shall ask a friend to be our chaperon.'

Of course I accepted the invitation. And this is what the friend, Louis Marlow [Louis Wilkinson], wrote later in a book which followed his Swan's Milk. Marlow, in this book, was Dexter.

'Crowley's magic had in it,' Dexter said, 'the quality of motive-force, of Oriental ecstasy; no one who had seen him when he was under religious inspiration could doubt that. One such occasion, during the second war, that Dexter described to me, was when Crowley, after he and Dexter had been lunching with Lady Aberconway, took them back to his rooms in Jermyn Street and read aloud to them from an enormous Magical Book which he supported on his knees. What he read was in a strange language, a language unknown. It was of a singular vibrant beauty and power. Christabel Aberconway sat on the floor by his chair with the unwitting grace and ease possible, in such a position, only to a woman of natural-born and fulfilled beauty. Her lovely eyes were large with an emotion that Dexter shared. "What is that language?" she asked. "It is the language of the Angels." Crowley replied. Dexter was impressed, but he could not help reflecting on what an admirable subject the scene would have made for a cartoon by Max Beerbohm. "Aleister Crowley reciting to Lady Aberconway in the language of the Angels." '

Poor Aleister, people still believe he had magical powers. I wonder! Anyhow I will undertake that my magic will do down his magic any day and anywhere—but, as he is dead, this is an unfair wager, and should be postponed to eternity. Yet, even if I am right in thinking that Aleister Crowley was an old fraud in whom I could not believe, other frauds have completely deceived me.