Aleister Crowley feels rather quaint from the perspective of the early twenty first century. Horror films and heavy metal has left us rather jaded, negating the shock value of Satanism, the odd Daily Mail child abuse panic aside. Crowley’s apparently genuine belief can seem rather endearing to the modern reader; the credulity of his biographer is possibly less so.
Tobias Churton’s new biography of The Beast attempts to position Crowley as a Great Edwardian, focussing on his shadowy secret service work and his early mountaineering exploits, as much as his Magick experiments. Regrettably, he also seeks to resurrect and reappraise Crowley’s bloody awful poetry, giving undue attention to his doggerel verse.
The most interesting elements of the book focus on Crowley’s youth, and his very English form of rebellion, encapsulated in the tale of his tutor seeking to expand young Crowley’s horizons: ‘He took the 15 year old to Torquay, opening him up to the joys of drinking, smoking, card games and girls’. Churton vividly portrays Crowley’s stifling Puritan upbringing, making a career as a notorious Satanist seem a natural reaction to a childhood with the Plymouth Bretheren.
In many ways, Crowley is a typical middle class rebel, with a style molded by Shakespeare and the King James Version. His innovation, such as it was, was to apply a modern, scientific rigour to ancient invocations and rituals. This allows Churton to interpret his work as a form of psychological experiment, aiming to break open the doors of perception. He is also linked to the fin de siecle decadents who sought to create an aesthetic which functioned beyond normal morality, and highlighted the glory of the individual.
Unfortunately, Churton is keen to imbue Crowley with undue significance and perception. A list of things Churton claims Crowley predicted includes (but is not limited to) the special relationship between the USA and Britain, both world wars, the rise of the European Union, the Great Depression and the Soviet Union. He also credits Crowley with inventing Churchill’s ‘Victory’ gesture as a form of Occult war on Nazism, and somehow using his ‘powers’ to influence Rudolf Hess’s flight to Scotland. More ludicrously, he suggests that Crowley invented the Loch Ness Monster, and even that Nessie was ‘a manifestation of Crowley’s potent penis’. Other examples of Crowley’s occult prowess read like the diary of a lonely 15 year old, particularly his descriptions of Crowley’s solitary sessions of ‘left-handed sex magick’.
This apologetic attitude displayed by Churton fails to convince the reader. Early in his career, Crowley was involved in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, with the likes of WB Yeates. As the group fractured, Crowley was accused of being a Government spy or double agent. Churton argues that Crowley acted as a ‘human zeitgeist’, capable of giving his body to one cause, and his mind to a conflicting cause – a convenient excuse for hypocrisy or betrayal. Later, he presents Crowley’s decision to engage in a four month trek across China with his partner and new born child in tow as a valid exercise in ‘ridding himself of reason’, with scant regard for his unfortunate companions.
Although Churton is a academic specialising in esoteric religions and beliefs, he is mercifully brief when presenting the reader with the mumbo-jumbo of Crowley’s magick. Unfortunately, he is prone to supposition and conjecture when dealing with historical sources, always attempting to put the best spin on Crowley’s dubious and self-interested actions, and making much of possible coincidences.
The latter stages of the book present a portrait of Crowley as an increasingly marginalised and irrelevant old man, struggling desperately for any hint of publicity he can muster, although Churton is at pains not to describe him in these tones. Despite the biographer’s best efforts though, the elder Crowley is not charming, appearing to the modern reader as a bitter and frustrated old misogynist.
Writing Crowley’s life is a difficult prospect for a biographer; there is a fascinating narrative of rebellion, mountaineering, intriguing, espionage and provocation, weighed down with tedious nonsense about ancient Nile gods, and the subject’s off-putting attitudes towards women, the poor, and anyone who disagreed with him. Chruton’s book attempts to cover all these issues in similar detail, strectching the reader’s attention to breaking point, whilst his apologist tone really got my goat. Far too many of his enthusiastic claims were met by a raised eyebrow, or derisive snort towards the end. Maybe Crowley does deserve a modern re-evaluation, at least the young Crowley might. However, this is not the book to do it
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