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Austin Osman Spare: Weird occult illustrations from ‘A Book of Satyrs’
11.21.2017
08:34 am
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In 1907, the artist and occultist Austin Osman Spare published his second volume of illustrations, A Book of Satyrs—or rather satires. Spare believed the word “satire” was derived from the Greek “satyr” as this was how “satire” had been once written in English hence his use of the word. As his biographer Phil Baker noted:

Spare liked the old spelling because the word evoked the goat-legged animal men, suggestive of lust, who pranced their way through the work of Beardsley and the 1890’s in general, overlapping with the era’s neo-pagan cult of Pan.

Spare was the teenage wunderkind whose work had been prominently exhibited in the British Section of the St. Louis Exposition and at the Paris International Exhibition in 1903. This led to some critics hailing Spare as “a genius” and describing him as the major hope for British art. A Book of Satyrs consisted of a series of “satirical pictures”—“The Church,” “Existence,” “Quakery,” “Intemperance,” “Fashion,” “The Connoisseur,” “Politics,” “The Beauty Doctor,” and “Officialism,”—framed by three other drawings—“Introduction,” “Advertisement and the Stock Size,” and “General Allegory.” The book allowed Spare to showcase his talent as he broke away from the influence of artists like Aubrey Beardsley, Charles Ricketts, and George Frederic Watts to forge his very own distinctive style of illustration. As Baker also notes:

Spare’s career was dogged by comparisons to Beardsley, and some of his earlier black and white work does have a Beardsleyish air, but the drawings of A Book of Satyrs is very different: Beardsley’s pictures are relatively easy to copy, because the genius has already gone into simplified design, whereas copying the obsessional penwork in A Book of Satyrs would be so much work as hardly worth the trouble.

The drawings were a critique of Victorian/Edwardian values—where money and power were all. The illustrations also marked Spare’s growing interest in spiritualism and the occult as writer Paul Newman notes:

Spare’s existence was a claustrophobic tunnel of self-exploration. And he did not think of the satyrs and spirits he drew as fantasies but as records of those he encountered in his daily life. “These beings,” a critic wrote, “live…in their horned horror in the drab streets south of London Bridge. The ribaldry and coarse revelry of the slums is due to the influence of these beings of the Borderland, [Spare] believes.”

Not long after the publication of A Book of Satyrs, Spare had an exhibition of work at the Bruton Gallery, 13 Bruton Street in London’s West End. Here he met Aleister Crowley, who introduced himself as the “Viceregent of God upon Earth.” Crowley pronounced Spare as a kindred spirit who (like Crowley) was a “messenger fo the divine.” It was the start of a brief but intense relationship (most probably sexual) that led Spare further into the world of the occult. Yet, as his involvement with the occult grew, his success as an artist faltered.

Recently, a friend sent me a present of a limited edition set of Spare’s illustrations for A Book of Satyrs that was published as a series of thirteen postcards—including the illustration “Pleasure” from the second edition—which I thought I’d share with you. A copy of the whole book can be viewed here.
 
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‘Pleasure.’
 
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‘Introduction.’
 
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‘The Church.’
 
More strange illustrations by AOS, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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11.21.2017
08:34 am
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Ornate erotic pipes to help enhance your post-coital smoke
07.19.2017
01:34 pm
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An antique erotic Meerschaum pipe.
 
Many of the sensual pipes in this post are made of Meerschaum—or as it is known in the world of geology, sepiolite. The material is found in many locations including the Black Sea, Turkey, Tanzania, and Africa and became quickly coveted by smokers in the early 1700s due to its porous nature. Meerschaum is still used to make pipes, and there are many resources online that sell hand-carved pipes of every description. For this post, I’ve assembled some rather choice erotic Meerschaum pipes and a few others that fall into the “titillating” category of implements you can use to light up your favorite smokable materials.

If you have visited Dangerous Minds’ Facebook page, you may recall that there is an image of a man taking a drag from a pipe in the shape of a woman’s leg. And I’m happy to share with you that I was able to track a few additional leggy-pipes out there on the Internet which I’ve posted below.

I’ve also included a photo of a Meerschaum pipe that is alleged to have once been the possession of occultist Aleister Crowley. The pipe is now part of a large, private collection owned by Meerschaum pipe enthusiast, Roy Ricketts. Everything that follows is NSFW.
 

 

 
More erotic Meerschaum pipes, after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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07.19.2017
01:34 pm
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‘Cook What Thou Wilt’ with these Aleister Crowley-themed kitchen utensils
06.02.2017
09:35 am
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Facing boredom in your food-life? Ever wondered what it takes to become “Wickedest Chef In The World”? Then why not try spicing up your culinary time—as well as your kitchen decor—with these Aleister Crowley-themed cooking utensils?

Sprung from the mind and will of Sheffield-based visual artist Stuart Faulkner, these hand-tooled (and strictly limited edition) sets of kitchenware are available to buy from the website of occult gift shop Airy Fairy, or directly from the artist himself at his website stuartfaulkner.com.

The spoons cost just a measly £6.66 (what else?) and the chopping board can be yours for only £23.

I myself am looking forward to getting stuck into Cook Of The Law, a compendium of The Great Beast’s favorite recipes which (rumor has it) was dictated by his spirit to the second most evil Brit of modern times, Gordon Ramsey…

Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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06.02.2017
09:35 am
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New witchcraft museum features occult artifacts once owned by Aleister Crowley
04.28.2017
12:28 pm
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Any discussion of Wicca in America must begin with Raymond Buckland. A disciple and correspondent of English Wicca’s acknowledged father Gerald Gardner, Buckland established America’s first Wiccan coven on Long Island in the early ‘60s. He literally wrote the book on Wicca, Buckland’s Complete Book of Witchcraft, along with dozens of smaller volumes. In 1968 (some sources say 1966), he established the USA’s first museum of witchcraft. Initially just a showroom in his basement, the collection grew and moved repeatedly, from Long Island to New Hampshire, to Virginia, to New Orleans. Sadly, in NOLA, the collection endured a period of neglect and damage.

Buckland has been an Ohioan since 1992, and two years ago, the collection returned to his Temple of Sacrifice coven, and is now going on display again, in a modest gallery in Cleveland. The Buckland Gallery of Witchcraft and Magick opens on April 29, 2017 in a room off of the Tremont record store A Separate Reality. (An aside—ASR should be a Mecca for punk, jazz, prog, and psych collectors. It’s owner, Gus Payne, has an incredible gift for procuring vinyl Holy Grails, and he’s a really swell guy, to boot.) The space has been a gallery before—a few years ago, under the name “Gallery Wolfy Part II,” it hosted a large exhibition of artwork by Half Japanese singer Jad Fair. That gallery was a white-wall space, but the Buckland incarnation is an intimate and inviting room in blood-red and exposed brick. The gallery’s curators Steven Intermill and Jillian Slane were accommodating enough to give Dangerous Minds some time with the collection. It features artifacts from a number of Wiccan luminaries, and even some possessions of legendary occultist Aleister Crowley’s.
 

Horned God Helmet - there’s a picture of this in The Complete Book of Witchcraft
 

Examples of Baphomet Talismans
 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Ron Kretsch
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04.28.2017
12:28 pm
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Read Aleister Crowley’s dirty, dirty 666-word sex poem ‘Leah Sublime’
02.07.2017
09:37 am
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Leah Hirsig photographed in front of a portrait of her done by Aleister Crowley. The painting was done at Hirsig’s request for Crowley to paint her as a ‘dead soul.’
 
Aleister Crowley published his poem Leah Sublime in June of 1920. The poem has been called one of the most obscene pieces of literature ever written by Crowley—or anyone else for that matter—in which he describes his sexual exploits with one of his “Scarlet Women” Leah Hirsig.

Born in Switzerland in 1883, Hirsig was a high school teacher in the Bronx before she and her sister Alma worked up the courage to approach Crowley—who was living in New York at the time—in 1918. Crowley and Leah had an instant, combustible attraction to one another and spent most of their first visit together passionately kissing. During the sister’s second visit to Crowley, he requested to draw Leah in the nude—something he had never done. It would be one of many times Crowley would draw Leah’s portrait including one occasion where the aspiring occultist requested that he paint her as a “dead soul.” Here’s more from Crowley himself on his early meetings with Leah as told by author Lawrence Sutin in his 2002 book Do What Thou Wilt: A Life of Aleister Crowley:

The “little sister” (Leah) reminded me of Solomon’s friend, for she had no breasts… She radiated an indefinable sweetness. Without wasting time on words, I began to kiss her. It was sheer instinct. She shared it and equaled my ardor. We continued with occasional interruptions, such as politeness required, to answer her sister in the rare intervals when she got out of breath.

 

 
By the time 1920 rolled around Crowley and Leah—who was now going by the mystical name of “Alostrael,” were routinely participating in obscene ritualistic sex romps involving, among other things, a goat, which helped Leah earn her “Scarlet Woman” title. She also played an instrumental part in the formation of The Abbey of Thelema in Cefalù in Sicily—an occultist utopia of sorts where Crowley’s followers could attend “The Collegium of the Spiritum Sanctum” (or College of the Holy Spirit), participate in rituals and other cult-like activities. As a testament to how vilified Crowley was, he was thrown out of Italy by Hitler’s sidecar, fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.  Crowley would eventually end his relationship with Leah, her allegiance to the Great Beast remained intact. She would later move to France where she supported herself working as a prostitute before moving back to the U.S., and marrying William George Barron with whom she had a child in 1925. Shortly thereafter Leah went back to her old job teaching school.

More after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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02.07.2017
09:37 am
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‘Aleister & Adolf’: Douglas Rushkoff on his new graphic novel, Crowley and magical warfare


 
Aleister & Adolf is a new graphic novel from Dark Horse Comics, the product of the creative pairing of media theorist Douglas Rushkoff—Professor of Media Studies at Queens College in New York—and and award-winning illustrator Michael Avon Oeming.

In Aleister & Adolf the reader is taken behind the scenes of the capitalist spectacle and inside the boardrooms where corporate-occult marketing departments employ fascist sigil magick developed by the Nazis during WWII in today’s advertising logos. A place where the war for men’s minds is waged with symbols and catchy slogans. It’s a fun smart read and you’ll be much smarter after you’ve read it, trust me. And Oeming’s crisp B&W artwork is perfectly suited for getting across some often difficult and tricky philosophical concepts. He’s a unique talent indeed.

Rushkoff recently told AV Club:

“Swastikas and other sigil logos become the corporate logos of our world. And given that we’re living in a moment where those logos are migrating online where they can move on their own, it’s kind of important that we consider the origins and power of these icons.”

Grant Morrison even wrote the introduction to Aleister & Adolf. I mean, how can you lose with something like this?

I asked Douglas Rushkoff a few questions via email:

Dangerous Minds: Where did you find the inspiration for Aleister & Adolf?

Douglas Rushkoff: It’s almost easier to ask where didn’t I find inspiration for Aleister & Adolf. The moment it occurred to me was when I was in an editorial meeting at DC/Vertigo about my comic book Testament, back in 2005. The editor warned me that there was an arcane house rule against having Jesus Christ and a Superhero in the same panel. Not that I was going to get to Jesus in my story, but the rule got me thinking about other potentially blasphemous superhero/supervillain pairings. And that’s when I first got to wondering about Aleister Crowley vs. Adolf Hitler.

But as I considered the possibility, it occurred to me that they were practicing competing forms of magic at the same time. And then I began to do the research, and learned that the premise of my story was true: Aleister Crowley performed counter-sigils to Hitler’s. Crowley came up with the V for Victory sigil that Churchill used to flash—and got it to him through Ian Fleming (the James Bond author) who was MI5 at the time.

I’ve always wanted to do something about Crowley, but I’ve been afraid for a bunch of reasons. Making him something of a war hero, and contrasting him with a true villain like Hitler, became a way to depict him as something more dimensional than “the Beast.”

Did you think of the ending first? It’s a bit like a punchline, isn’t it?

Douglas Rushkoff: I didn’t think of the ending first. The first thing I thought of was to have a young American military photographer get sent to enlist Crowley in the magical effort. I wanted us to see the story through someone like us—someone more cynical, perhaps—and then get to have the vicarious thrill of being drawn into Crowley’s world.

Then, I decided I needed a framing story - just to show how relevant all this creation of sigils is to our world today. So I created a prologue for the story, that takes place in a modern advertising agency: the place where the equivalent of sigil magic is practiced today. I wanted to set the telling of the story within the frame of how corporate sigils are taking life on the Internet today. So the outer frame takes place in the mid-90’s, when the net was being turned over to marketers. The ending is pretty well broadcast up front.
 

 
Aleister & Adolph reminds me a lot of Robert Anton Wilson’s Masks of the Illuminatus—which I think is his best book—because it sort of forces its ideas into the reader’s head like an earworm that you can’t resist. Also Crowley is a character in that book, too, of course. Do you see it as a bit of a RAW homage?

Douglas Rushkoff: It’s a RAW homage in that the story has verisimilitude—it is told in a way where it’s absolutely possible for this all to happen. There’s no supernatural magic here; it’s just the magick of Will. There’s the black magic of the Nazis. But however extreme the Nazis, it was real. It’s got the reality quotient of Eyes Wide Shut or Apocalypse Now.

And that’s the understanding of sigil magic I got from Bob. It’s all very normal. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. Just that you have to participate in its perception. It’s just a different way of understanding the connections. So while the protagonist of the story starts off as a disillusioned atheist and ends up believing in magick as Magic, even Crowley (at least my Crowley) tries to convince him not to take it so literally.

I wouldn’t understand magick that way if it weren’t for Bob. It’s embedded in the fabric of reality. It doesn’t need to break the rules of reality to work. 
 

 
Are you aware of a recent trend among some alt-right types to organize acts of group 4Chan “meme magick”? Some of it’s just blatant harassment and bullying over Twitter, but there’s actually a sophisticated intent behind some of it. Pepe the Frog has become a hypersigil. I’m not being admiring of it—the idea that certain reichwingers would want start a magical war via social media is alarming to say the least—but the concept is a sound one magically speaking: They’ve figured out how to amplify their signal’s strength like a radio transmitter.

Douglas Rushkoff: There’s a real crossover between the alt-right and the occult. I knew a guy writing a book about it, in fact. And remember, it was one of Bush’s advisors who once explained that the future is something you create. And there’s an any-means-necessary quality to libertarianism that is consonant with chaos magic.

Plus, you’re talking about homespun propagandists inhabiting the comments sections of blogs and things. They’re not reading Bernays and Lippman. They’re waging hand-to-hand battle in the ideological trenches. A bit of NLP, rhetoric, and magic are what you turn to.

The interesting thing here is why the left does not use these techniques. It goes against our sense of what is fair. We know we’re “right” and so we want to win with the fact. Sigil magic feels like cheating on some level. So we have to ask ourselves, isn’t the full expression of our Will something we want to unleash? If not, why not?

This isn’t the freethinking/pansexual “Generation Hex” types who seemed to be on the horizon a few years ago, but rather like an evil skinheads contingent at Hogwart’s.

Douglas Rushkoff: Alas it is not. That’s partly because the freethinking pansexuals got a bit distracted by other things. And most of them worked alone. I don’t think there were nearly as many, either. That’s pretty rarified air. Back in the 80’s, there were more kids taking acid in the parking lot at AC/DC concerts than there were in the dorms of Reid College. And likewise - as a result of economics as much as anything - there’s more gamergaters throwing sigils online than Bernie Sanders supporters. Sometimes magic gets in the hands of people you’d rather not find it.
 

Photo of Douglas Rushkoff by Jeff Newelt

Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.08.2016
10:46 am
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Marc Almond sings Aleister Crowley
12.06.2016
02:57 pm
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Since I have already weighed in on the monumentally brilliant new 10 CD Marc Almond box set Trials of Eyeliner: Anthology 1979-2016 (spoiler: I loved it) I will just direct you to that, but I do want to say that several weeks later I am still deeply into it. If you are looking for something new to give your full attention to—especially if you’re a fan of, say Nick Cave or Scott Walker—then Trials of Eyeliner is the high quality rock snob box set of this Xmas season, hands down. Anyone picking it up who is barely familiar with Almond’s non-“Tainted Love” career is surely in for something… profound. As a long, longtime major major Marc Almond fan, I would almost envy the discovery of his genius via this one fabulous package and not doled out over the decades.

It’s 10 CDs and you can find it for around $75 on Amazon. It would still be a bargain at twice the price. I can’t say enough good things about it.
 

 
Anyway, when I posted about Trials of Eyeliner last month, there was one thing on it that I wanted to hold back on, and present later on its own to call your attention to it especially. One of the “deep cuts”—indeed one of the very deepest cuts of all—is Almond’s emphatic performance of one of the only songs known to have been composed (in this case co-written) by the Great Beast hisself, Mister Aleister Crowley.

The sheet music for this song, referred to in a footnote, was thought to have remained unpublished and lost. None of the major Crowley collections throughout the world had a copy, but in 1991, a copy was discovered.
 

 
“The Tango Song” was written by Aleister Crowley and set to music by Bernard Page. It’s a musical adaptation of Crowley’s poem “The Tango,” first published in The Equinox Vol I, No 9 in March of 1913 as part of a short play co-written by Crowley and Mary D’Este (the mother of the great madcap Hollywood film director Preston Sturges):

What is money to the bliss
Of the honey of a kiss?
What are rank and fame and fashion
To the ecstasy of passion?

Chorus:
Give me dancing!
Give me wine!
Bright eyes glancing—-
Yours in mine!
Kisses sucking
Up my breath—-
Give me passion!
Give me death!

Were the town of Paris mine,
Its renown should drown in wine
I would pay the land of France
For a day and night of dance.

Dreams entrancing float above
Music, dancing, wine and love.
Sober sinks the sobbing breath;
Smiles the sphinx of sleep and death.

More after the jump…

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Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.06.2016
02:57 pm
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Number 666: The Aleister Crowley issue of Flexipop!


 
I learned many things during my recent conversation with David Tibet (Current 93 and related projects) and Youth (Killing Joke, the Orb, the Fireman, Brother Culture, Pink Floyd, et al.) about their fabulous new album as Hypnopazūzu. One of these was that during the early 80s, a British pop magazine had, at Tibet’s urging, numbered its final issue 666 and put Aleister Crowley on the cover. Tibet had written the cover story, too, about the Beast and his influence on pop musicians.

Both Youth and Tibet seemed to think the magazine in question was Smash Hits, but in fact Flexipop! was the one that employed Mark Manning/Zodiac Mindwarp as art editor and concluded with the Crowley issue. Though I wasn’t there, Flexipop! seems much hipper than Smash Hits from my vantage point: Every issue came with a flexi disc, and alongside the shit (and not) pop stars of the day, they profiled quality bands like the Birthday Party, Pigbag, Motörhead, Bauhaus, and Killing Joke (Youth dropped his pants in the pages of No. 19).

Having reached the kabbalistically significant number 32 with their second-to-last issue in June 1983—featuring both Killing Joke sans Youth and Brilliant, Youth’s new band with Jimmy Cauty—Flexipop! made a daring editorial decision at its perch atop the Tree of Life. For the cover of their valedictory number, instead of Paul Young or Sting, they took a chance on this fresh-faced, golden-voiced up-and-comer with a song in his heart and an Enochian key on his lips.

More after the jump…

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Posted by Oliver Hall
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09.29.2016
08:28 am
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Stained glass windows of Aleister Crowley, Serge Gainsbourg, Johnny Cash, JG Ballard & many more


 
In 2010 and 2011 the English artist Neal Fox executed an utterly gorgeous series of stained-glass windows in imitation of the iconography of saints found in cathedrals all over Europe. The series included Johnny Cash, J.G. Ballard, Hunter S. Thompson, Albert Hofmann, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Serge Gainsbourg, Aleister Crowley, William S. Burroughs, Billie Holiday, and Francis Bacon.

Now, it’s perfectly possible that you will see these images and think, “Wow, those paintings in the stained-glass style are awesome.” So it’s important to emphasize that these are not paintings, Fox actually created the stained-glass windows themselves—in fact, he worked with traditional methods “at the renowned Franz Mayer of Munich manufacturer” in order to produce a dozen windows, each using leaded stained glass in a steel frame and standing 2.5 meters tall.

Put them all together in a room, as the Daniel Blau gallery in London did in 2011, and you have “an alternative church of alternative saints.” Here is what that room looked like:
 

 
The Daniel Blau show was called “Beware of the God.” Alongside the well-known provocateurs and trouble-makers like Crowley and Hawkins is a figure that might challenge even the most astute student of antiheroes, a man named John Watson. Far from the complacent invention of Arthur Conan Doyle, this John Watson is the artist’s grandfather, described by his loving grandson as a “hell raiser” and “a World War II bomber pilot, chat show host, writer and publisher, who in his post war years sought solace in Soho’s bohemian watering holes.”

Quoting the Daniel Blau exhibition notes:
 

As traditional church windows show the iconography of saints, through representations of events in their lives, instruments of martyrdom and iconic motifs, Fox plays with the symbolism of each character’s cult of personality; Albert Hoffman takes a psychedelic bicycle ride above the LSD molecule, J G Ballard dissects the world, surrounded by 20th Century imagery and the eroticism of the car crash, and Johnny Cash holds his inner demon in chains after a religious experience in Nickerjack cave.

 
You can order prints of some of these images for £150 each (about $214).
 

 

 
Many more after the jump…

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Posted by Martin Schneider
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04.15.2016
02:27 pm
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Meet the wild child ‘Tiger Woman’ who tried to kill Aleister Crowley

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The other morning here at Dangerous Minds Towers (Scotland), while I sat sifting through the mailbag looking for presents and antique snuff boxes, m’colleague Tara McGinley popped a fascinating article in front of me about a wild “Tiger Woman.”

At first I thought this tabloid tale was perhaps about the woman who had inspired Roy Wood to write his rather wonderful and grimy little number “Wild Tiger Woman” for The Move. As I read on, I realized this story of a rebellious singer, dancer and artist’s model was unlikely to have been the woman Wood had in mind when he wrote his famous song.

No, this particular “Tiger Woman” was one Betty May Golding—a drug addict, a boozer, and a dabbler in the occult. She had a string of lovers, worked as a prostitute, had been a member of a notorious criminal gang, an alleged Satanist, and had once even tried to murder Aleister Crowley. This was the kind of impressive resumé one would expect from the original “wild child.” Not that Ms. Golding would have given two hoots for any of that:

I have not cared what the world thought of me and as a result what it thought has often not been very kind… I have often lived only for pleasure and excitement.

You go girl!

Betty May was born Elizabeth Marlow Golding into a world of poverty and deprivation in Canning Town, London in 1895. The neighborhood was situated at the heart of the city’s docks—an area described by Charles Dickens as:

...already debased below the point of enmity to filth; poorer labourers live there, because they cannot afford to go farther, and there become debased.

To get an idea how deprived and “debased” this district was—Canning Town even today “remains among the 5% [of the] most deprived areas in the UK.”  Plus ca change…
 
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A typical London slum 1909.
 
When Betty was just an infant, her father left the family home, leaving her mother to support four children on a pittance of 10/- a week—roughly the equivalent of $1.50. The family home was a hovel with no furniture and no beds. The family slept on bundles of rags, cuddling together to keep warm.

Her mother was half-French with beautiful olive complexion and almond eyes. The struggle proved too much for her and Betty was sent off to live with her father who was then residing in a brothel. Her father was an engineer by trade but he preferred to spend his time drinking, fighting and thieving. He was eventually arrested and sent to jail.

In her autobiography Tiger Woman, published in 1929, Betty described herself as a “little brown-faced marmoset ... and the only quick thing in this very slow world.” She earned pennies by dancing and singing on the street.  After her father’s arrest, she was passed from relative to relative eventually staying with an aunt who described her as “a regular little savage.”

One of her earliest memories was finding the body of a pregnant neighbor hanging from a hook. The woman had caught her husband having sex with her sister.

Her face was purple and her eyes bulged like a fish’s. It was rather awful.

Eventually Betty was sent to another aunt who stayed out in the country in Somerset. Here she attended school but soon the teenager was in trouble after having an affair with one of her teachers.

I can hardly say, in the light of what I have learnt since, that we were in love. At least perhaps he was. Certainly I was fond of him.

When their illicit relationship was discovered, Betty was given an ultimatum.

There was a great deal of fuss and it was made clear to me that unless the ­friendship came to an end it would be the schoolmaster who would be made to suffer.

After a rather tearful scene with my aunt I was packed off with a few pounds.

 
01gybetps.jpg
Betty in her gypsy dress.
 
Arriving in London in 1910 Betty could only afford one outfit:

...but every item of it was a different colour. Neither red nor green nor blue nor yellow nor purple was forgotten, for I loved them all equally, and if I was not rich enough to wear them separately ... I would wear them, like Joseph in the Bible, all at once! Colours to me are like children to a loving mother.

With her exotic looks and green eyes, Betty looked every part the gypsy and was later known for her song “The Raggle Taggle Gypsy.” The novelist Anthony Powell described her as looking like a seaside fortune teller. Betty also delighted in her costermonger background:

I am a true coster in my flamboyance and my love of colour, in my violence of feeling and its immediate response in speech and action. Even now I am often caught with a sudden longing regret for the streets of Limehouse as I knew them, for the girls with their gaudy shawls and heads of ostrich feathers, like clouds in a wind, and the men in their caps, silk neckerchiefs and bright yellow pointed boots in which they took such pride. I adored the swagger and the showiness of it all.

 
001cafer.jpg
The Café Royal in 1912 as painted by artist William Orpen.
 
At first, Betty worked as a prostitute before becoming a model, dancer and entertainer at the hip Café Royal.

The lights, the mirrors, the red plush seats, the eccentrically dressed people, the coffee served in glasses, the pale cloudy absinthe ... I felt as if I had strayed by accident into some miraculous Arabian palace… No duck ever took to water, no man to drink, as I to the Café Royal.

The venue was the haunt of Bohemians and artists—Augustus John, Jacob Epstein, the “Queen of Bohemia” Nina Hamnett, heiress Nancy Cunard, William Orpen, Anna Wickham, Iris Tree and Ezra Pound.

Betty’s flamboyance and gypsy attire attracted their interest and she had affairs with many of the regulars. She modelled for Augustus John and Jacob Epstein. Being an artist’s model was a grey area that often crossed into prostitution. Many of May’s contemporaries in “modelling” died in tragic circumstances—either by their own hand or at the hands of a jealous lover.
 
01augjoboat.jpg
The artist Augustus John looking rather pleased with himself.
 
Betty’s life then took the first a many surprising turns when she became involved with a notorious criminal gang.

In 1914, she met a man she nicknamed “Cherub” at a bar who took her to France. Their relationship was platonic but after a night of drinking absinthe Cherub attacked her:

He clasped me round the waist, pinning my arms… I struggled with all the strength fear and hate could give me.

With a supreme effort I succeeded in half-freeing my right arm so that I was enabled to dig my scissors into the fleshy part of his neck.

Betty escaped to Paris where she met up with a man known as the “White Panther” who introduced her into the one of the ciy’s L’Apache gangs. She later claimed it was this gang who nicknamed her “Tiger Woman” after she became involved in a fight with one of the gangster’s girlfriends. When separated by the gang leader she bit into his wrist like a wild animal.

Now part of gang, Betty became involved in various robberies and acts of violence—in one occasion branding a possible informer with a red hot knife. This experience led her to quit Paris.
 
01whitepant.jpg
Apache gang members or hooligans fighting the police in 1904.
 
To be honest, Betty’s autobiography reads at times like a thrilling pulp novel and without corroborative evidence seems more like fiction than fact.

Returning to London, Betty resumed work as a singer and dancer. She sought a husband and found two suitors: the first died after a mysterious boating accident; the second blew his brains out one fine summer’s day. Betty eventually married a trainee doctor Miles L. Atkinson, who introduced her to the joys of cocaine.

I learnt one thing on my ­honeymoon—to take drugs.

Atkinson had an unlimited supply of cocaine via his work with the hospital. The couple embarked on a mad drug frenzy. They fell in with a den of opium smokers. May’s drug intake escalated to 150 grains of cocaine a day plus several pipes of opium. She became paranoid—on one occasion believing the world was against her after ordering a coffee at a cafe and the waiter served it black. She decided to divorce Atkinson, but he was killed in action in 1917 while serving as a soldier in the First World War.

Betty then met and married an Australian called “Roy”—not believed to be his real name—who weaned her off drugs by threatening to beat her if ever he caught her taking any. However, she divorced Roy after catching him having an affair.

Continuing with her career as an artist’s model, Betty sat for Jacob Epstein and Jacob Kramer, who she claimed painted her as the Sphinx.
 
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Jacob Kramer’s painting ‘The Sphinx’ (1918).
 
Her notoriety grew after the publication of a book Dope Darling by David “Bunny” Garnett, which was based on Betty’s life as a coke addict. The book told the story of a man called Roy who falls in love with a dancer Claire at a bohemian cafe. Claire is a drug addict and prostitute. Roy believes he can save Claire by marrying her. Once married, Roy gradually becomes a drug addict too.

In the book, Garnett described Claire as being :

...always asked to all the parties given in the flashy Bohemian world in which she moved. No dance, gambling party, or secret doping orgy was complete without her. Under the effect of cocaine which she took more and more recklessly, she became inspired by a wild frenzy, and danced like a Bacchante, drank off a bottle of champagne, and played a thousand wild antics

But all of this was by way of a warm-up to her meeting the Great Beast.
 
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‘Dope Darling’ by David Garnett.
 
In 1922, Betty met and married the poet Frederick Charles Loveday (aka Raoul Loveday). This dear boy (aged about twenty or twenty-one) was an acolyte of Aleister Crowley. With a first class degree from Oxford University and a book of published poems to his name, Loveday was utterly dedicated to Crowley and to his study of the occult.

Crowley first met Loveday at a dive in London called the Harlequin. He liked Loveday—saw his potential and claimed he was his heir apparent—but he said this about many other young man that took his fancy. He was however reticent in his praise for May—describing her as a “charming child, tender and simple of soul” but impaired by an alleged childhood accident he believed had “damaged her brain permanently so that its functions were discontinuous.” This condition was exacerbated by her drug addiction—though he was complimentary in her strength of will in curing herself.

Crowley believed he could save Loveday from the “vagabonds, squalid and obscene, who constituted the court of Queen Betty.”

In his Confessions, Crowley recounted a typical scene of Betty “at work” in the Harlequin:

In a corner was his wife, three parts drunk, on the knees of a dirty-faced loafer, pawed by a swarm of lewd hogs, breathless with lust. She gave herself greedily to their gross and bestial fingerings and was singing in an exquisite voice ... an interminable smutty song, with a ribald chorus in which they all joined.

 
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Aleister Crowley
 
Crowley moved to Sicily where he established his Abbey of Thelema at Cefalu. He wanted Loveday—and to a lesser extent May—to join him there. However, Loveday had been ill after an operation and several friends including Nina Hamnett warned him off going. But Loveday was determined and the couple traveled to the Abbey.

Arriving there in the fall of 1922, Betty and Loveday were soon party to various sex magic rituals under Crowley’s direction. On one occasion, Betty chanced upon a box filled with blood soaked neckties. When she asked Crowley what these were, he replied that they had belonged to Jack the Ripper and were stained with the blood of his victims.

Crowley may have tut-tutted about Betty’s sexual hi-jinks with other men in the club, but he didn’t seem to mind all the fucking and sucking that went on at the Abbey. Betty was unsure about Crowley. She was intrigued by the occult and her superstition kept her belief from wavering. But she never fully trusted him.

Everything came to a head after a black mass where Crowley commanded Loveday to kill a cat and drink its blood. Crowley claimed the cat was possessed by an evil spirit. Loveday beheaded the cat and greedily drank its blood. Within hours he fell ill and died, on February 16th, 1923.

Betty blamed Crowley for her husband’s death and swore revenge—deciding to kill him.
 
More on Betty May and her life of sex and drugs and the occult, after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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03.04.2016
12:52 pm
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Kenneth Anger unveils unseen occult art masterpieces by Marjorie Cameron and Aleister Crowley


 
Underground film legend Kenneth Anger has seen a huge wave of interest in his work since his acclaimed “ Magick Lantern Cycle” films became widely available to a new generation on DVD over a decade ago. The now 88-year-old director and author has made several new films in recent years, venturing into music with the Technicolor Skull project, and even the world of fashion, shooting a campaign for Italian fashion house Missoni and producing a limited edition reproduction of the iconic rainbow “Lucifer” baseball jacket from his film Lucifer Rising. Archival prints made from high resolution frame scans from his movies sell for top dollar in art galleries in New York, Paris and Tokyo.
 

 
And now, Anger is branching out into the world of retail, debuting a hybrid pop-up art gallery/store at the Art Los Angeles Contemporary art fair. Produced in collaboration with Anger’s longtime associate Brian Butler, the Lucifer Brothers pop-up shop will be selling original art, as well as some reasonably-priced signed limited edition prints, Kenneth Anger tee-shirts and the above pictured Lucifer Rising baseball jacket.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
LOS ANGELES, CA 1/28/2016

The Lucifer Brothers pop-up art gallery and store is the culmination of Kenneth Anger’s lifelong obsession with the occult. In 1955 Anger was the first to revisit Aleister Crowley’s former temple in Cefalù, Sicily. With the help of Alfred C. Kinsey, Anger painstakingly restored Crowley’s otherworldly murals which spilled across the inside walls of the villa, removing layers of whitewash to reveal the nightmares underneath. Prior to this Anger connected with Marjorie Cameron, the widow of famed JPL rocket scientist and occultist Jack Parsons, casting her in his classic film Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome in 1956. Recently the art world has taken great interest of Cameron’s body of work, with her esoteric art—or what remains of it—included in the popular museum exhibit “Semina Culture: Wallace Berman & His Circle” and in recent solo career retrospectives of her work in Los Angeles and Manhattan.

After attending the Cameron exhibit at MOCA and a follow up showing at Jeffrey Deitch’s gallery in New York, Anger lamented that Cameron’s most powerful occult works remained unseen. Through his web of arcane connection’s Anger now unveils Cameron’s monumental life-sized portrait of a demon entitled “Blue Prophet” which was inspired by visions Cameron experienced during her marriage to Jack Parsons and her part in the infamous Babalon Working ritual that included Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.

Other works by Australian artist Rosaleen Norton (aka “The Witch of Kings Cross) whose powerful paintings are seldom encountered in the US, British occultist Aleister Crowley and Anger himself will be made available to the public for the first time.

Kenneth Anger is lauded as an influential experimental filmmaker, actor, and author of the infamous Hollywood Babylon gossip books. His films, which include Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954), Scorpio Rising (1964) and Lucifer Rising (1980) have inspired filmmakers as disparate as Martin Scorsese, David Lynch and John Waters.

The Art Los Angeles Contemporary event—and the Lucifer Brothers pop-up gallery—opens this evening. On Saturday January 30th at 3:30pm Anger will make a special appearance onstage at the ALAC Theatre, which will be set up at the Barker Hangar at the Santa Monica Airport, where the fair is being held.

I saw Kenneth at the opening of the Marjorie Cameron retrospective at MOCA in the museum’s annex at the Pacific Design Center in 2014. Ken’s normally quite gracious and a lovely guy to converse with, but that night he was PISSED OFF, alleging that the museum was exhibiting something that was stolen from him in the early 1960s, a rare first edition of Aleister Crowley’s Book of Thoth, which is worth several thousand dollars today. All 200 original copies of that lavishly published Moroccan leather-bound edition of The Book of Thoth were signed and numbered by Crowley’s hand, and although the book was being displayed locked under glass, Anger was positive that he knew exactly what number this particular book was and demanding that the case be unlocked to prove that it was his stolen property. He even brought along an FBI officer as his guest to the event! I don’t know what ultimately became of the situation, but it was an interesting evening to be sure. I’ve always wanted to see Anger get, er, Anger-y and even at his age, his performance didn’t disappoint.

The press release makes mention of “what remains of it” regarding Cameron’s art. Cameron herself destroyed nearly ALL of her paintings and sketchbooks, burning them in an act of “ritualized suicide.” What you can see below, in Curtis Harrington’s extraordinary portrait of the artist, Wormwood Star, is perhaps the sole surviving documentation of that work (outside of the astral plane…). I don’t think more than two of the pieces seen onscreen below still exist. Maybe only one of them.

So very few pieces by Marjorie Cameron have survived—some smaller watercolor paintings and some pencil sketches, one large oil painting that the late Curtis Harrington had owned—and so the one that Anger is unveiling at his Lucifer Brothers pop-up gallery, titled “Blue Prophet” (see above) is a real coup for the Art Los Angeles Contemporary fair. I’ve seen this large watercolor in person, twice, and it’s a truly weird and mind-bending thing to behold. Most of her work is on the small side, but this one is about the size of a door and at least 2x to 3x larger than most of Cameron’s extant work that I’ve ever seen. To my mind, it’s one of the very best ones.
 
Continues after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
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01.28.2016
12:38 pm
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Fire destroys Aleister Crowley’s former home Boleskine House

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A fire has destroyed much of Boleskine House, the former home of occultist Aleister Crowley and later Led Zepplin guitarist Jimmy Page. Firefighters were called to the house situated on the banks of Loch Ness at 13:40. hours GMT today, after flames were spotted engulfing the historic building.

A member of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Services told BBC News:

“A large part of the property has already been destroyed by fire and crews are concentrating their efforts on the west wing of the building.

“Crews in breathing apparatus are using four main jets to tackle the blaze and the incident is ongoing.”

 
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Aleister Crowley bought Boleskine House in 1899—then named the Manor of Boleskine and Abertarff—as he considered the building in the ideal location for carrying out the “Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage” from the grimoire The Book of Abramelin. Crowley said the building fitted the necessary requirements for the rite to work:

...the first essential is a house in a more or less secluded situation. There should be a door opening to the north from the room of which you make your oratory. Outside this door, you construct a terrace covered with fine river sand. This ends in a ‘lodge’ where the spirits may congregate.

For Crowley, Boleskine House was a “Thelemic Kiblah,” a “Magical East” where he could do his thing. The intention of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage is to invoke “one’s Guardian Angel.” The rite takes six months of abstinence and celibacy to prepare for. It is claimed that during the ritual Crowley was called away on an emergency to Paris—leaving the rite unfinished and causing a strange, monstrous disruption to the loch.

...the spirits he summoned got out of hand, causing one housemaid to leave, and a workman to go mad. He also insinuates he was indirectly responsible for a local butcher accidentally severing an artery and bleeding to death. Crowley had written the names of some demons on a bill from the butcher’s shop.

Some have said these “demons” are also responsible for the Loch Ness monster.
 
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In 1970, Jimmy Page bought Boleskine House—which was then in considerable disrepair. Page was fascinated by Crowley’s ideas and had the property renovated—though he rarely stayed at the house. He sold the property in 1992.
 
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In 200, BBC Scotland produced a documentary on Boleskine House Aleister Crowley: The Other Loch Ness Monster, which traced the occult history of the property and the story of the infamous unfinished ritual that unleashed evil forces.
 

 
Via BBC

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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12.23.2015
05:18 pm
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Happy Birthday Aleister Crowley!
10.12.2015
02:50 pm
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Happy Crowleymass, everyone! Aleister Crowley, thee Great Beast 666 was hatched from a dragon’s egg on October 12, 1875. The eccentric English mage, poet, painter and gourmet rice chef would be 140 years old today if, um, he could like live forever or something…

As somewhat of a noted Crowley buff, I’m often asked “Where is a good place to start reading Aleister Crowley?” and this is a difficult question to answer because, in truth, you have to read, pretty much, all of it to make sense of any of it. Going down the Crowley rabbit hole is comparable, I think, to being a scholar of James Joyce because achieving a proper understanding of the subject takes years of study, decades even (and then what are you going to DO with all that arcane knowledge, anyway, smartass?). But one source that I will point curious folk to is the late Tim Maroney’s excellent “Introduction to Crowley (in Five Voices)” which I published in my Book of Lies anthology back in 2004.

Below, I discuss Uncle AL on the History Channel TV series, How Sex Changed The World. I had fun doing this show and I got to explain a general concept of sex magick to middle America! Good times! The Crowley segments starts around 19:30.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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10.12.2015
02:50 pm
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Watch the first silver screen portrayal of Aleister Crowley in 1926’s ‘The Magician’
05.22.2015
08:43 am
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W. Somerset Maugham based Oliver Haddo, the titular character in his 1908 novel The Magician, on Aleister Crowley, whom he had met in literary circles in Paris. It was not an altogether flattering portrait, and Crowley, writing in Vanity Fair as “Oliver Haddo,” argued that Maugham had plagiarized multiple sources in a scathing review of the book.

Almost 20 years later, Rex Ingram brought The Magician to the silver screen with the German actor and director Paul Wegener as the bloodthirsty Haddo. Crowley was living in Paris at the time, and he sought to prevent the movie’s French premiere by legal means. Richard Kaczynski’s definitive Beast biography, Perdurabo, mentions the incident in connection with Crowley’s student Gerald Yorke (the brother of the novelist Henry Green):

[...] Yorke kept AC’s pipe dreams in perspective: one such scheme involved Metro-Goldwyn’s film adaptation of Maugham’s The Magician, which was opening on the Grand Boulevard March 23. Since Crowley received no compensation as the model of Oliver Haddo, he filed an injunction against showing the film. However, when representatives from the film company offered to pay Crowley, he refused. “The lawsuit is a pretext for a business deal,” he explained to Yorke. “I’m holding out for publicity and power.” Crowley wanted a contract to produce a series of educational films on magick. Yorke was pessimistic about the scheme.

(In the event, Crowley got nothing. “I cannot say that I think you will get any damages from Metro-Goldwyn over The Magician film,” Yorke had warned Crowley. “Your reputation is too bad to be damaged by that.”)
 

Paul Wegener as Oliver Haddo: finally, an unbiased cinematic portrait of Aleister Crowley
 
“He looks as if he had stepped out of a melodrama,” the movie’s hero says when he first meets the sorcerer, giving the game away. Briefly: a diabolical sculpture crumbles in a Latin Quarter studio, crushing artist Margaret Dauncey’s spine. Her dashing lover, the famous surgeon Arthur Burdon, cures her paralysis with a scalpel. We first see Haddo in the audience at the operating theater, looking at the beautiful young quadriplegic on the table as if she were a hamburger. Poring over occult books in search of the secret of creating life, the magician has discovered an alchemical working that requires “the Heart Blood of a Maiden.” Can you guess whom he might have in mind for a donor?

There are many visual treats in store—among them a freak show and a snake charmer—but if you’re impatient or easily bored, skip to the 29-minute mark, where Haddo brings Dauncey under his spell, magically transports her to a rite of Pan, and awakens an unnatural lust within her.
 

 

Posted by Oliver Hall
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05.22.2015
08:43 am
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Aleister Crowley’s curried rice recipe
07.24.2014
04:37 pm
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English occultist Aleister Crowley wasn’t merely a poet, painter, mountain climber and the Great Beast 666, he was also an aspiring chef, his specialty apparently being lethally hot curries.

Here’s a passage referring to his “glacial curry” taken from his autohagiography, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley:

“The weather made it impossible to do any serious climbing; but I learnt a great deal about the work of a camp at high altitudes, from the management of transport to cooking; in fact, my chief claim to fame is, perhaps, my “glacier curry.” It was very amusing to see these strong men, inured to every danger and hardship, dash out of the tent after one mouthful and wallow in the snow, snapping at it like mad dogs. They admitted, however, that it was very good as curry and I should endeavour to introduce it into London restaurants if there were only a glacier. Perhaps, some day, after a heavy snowfall”

The exact method by which Crowley made his “glacial curry” has been lost to time, but if you’d like to make some magick in the kitchen tonight, The Master Therion’s recipe for his, I suppose infamous curried rice dish, “Riz Aleister Crowley” was found among his papers at Syracuse University in New York.

Unfortunately, The Great Beat didn’t list any actual quantities for the ingredients, but Nico Mara Mckay added the ratios, which can be modified to make any quantity

Riz Aleister Crowley (to be eaten with curry)

Ingredients
- 1 cup brown basmati rice
- sea salt
- 1/4 cup sultanas
- 1/4 cup slivered almonds(1)
- 1/4 cup pistachio nuts
- powdered clove
- powdered cardamoms
- turmeric powder (enough to colour the rice to a clear golden tint)
- 2 tblsp. butter

Steps
Bring two cups of salted water to a bowl. Throw in in the rice, stirring regularly.
Test the rice after about ten minutes “by taking a grain, and pressing between finger and thumb. It must be easily crushed, but not sodden or sloppy. Test again, if not right, every two minutes.”
When ready, pour cold water into the saucepan.
Empty the rice into a colander, and rinse under cold tap.
Put colander on a rack above the flames, if you have a gas stove, and let it dry. If, like me, your stove is electric,  the rice can be dried by placing large sheets of paper towel over and under the rice, soaking up the water. Preferably the rice should seem very loose, almost as if it it has not been cooked at all. When you’ve removed as much water as you can,  remove the paper towel.
Place the rice back into the pot on a much lower temperature.
Stirring continuously, add the butter, sultanas, almonds, pistachio nuts, a dash or two of cloves and a dash of cardamom.
Add enough turmeric that the rice, after stirring, is “uniform, a clear golden colour, with the green pistachio nuts making it a Poem of Spring.”
 

 
You can find larger, readable versions of Crowley’s original cooking narrative here and here.

Via Music is the Heart

Posted by Richard Metzger
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07.24.2014
04:37 pm
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