VARIETY
BLACK MAGIC AGAINST
WHITE: ALEISTER CROWLEY
VERSUS W. B. YEATS
The death a few months
ago of Aleister Crowley, Chief
Hierophant of the East and West,
Master of the Flaming Door,
Crowned and Conquering Child,
and Beast of the Apocalypse, seems
to
have passed almost without
notice. Yet in the old days men
and women lived in terror of his
evil eye, and responsible govern–
ments excluded him from one
country after another lest he bring
to bear upon their inhabitants his
hostile psychic ray. It became the
unpleasant duty of William Butler
Yeats to uphold the forces of white
magic against Crowley's black art
during the nineties, and now that
Crowley is dead the battle may be
recorded.
Both Crowley and Yeats were
members of a secret magical order,
the Hermetic Students of the
Golden Dawn; they evoked sym–
bolic and visionary forms througp.
incantations, they called up spirits
from the vasty deep, they sought to
penetrate the secrets of life and
nature. But when Crowley showed
a tendency to use his occult powers
for evil rather than for good, the
1049
adepts of the order, Yeats among
them, decided not to allow
him
to
be initiated into the inner circle;
they feared that he would profane
the mysteries and unleash powerful
magical forces against humanity.
Crowley refused to accept their
decision. He went to Paris, and
there persuaded the chief of the
Golden Dawn, a Celtophile magi–
cian named MacGregor Mathers,
to deputize him to wrest control
of the London temple of the order
away from Yeats and his friends.
Mathers furnished Crowley with
appropriate charms and exorcisms
to use against recalcitrant mem–
bers, and instructed him to wear
Celtic dress. Equipped accordingly
in Highlander's tartan, with a
black Crusader's cross on his breast,
with a dirk at his side and a skin–
doo at his knee, Crowley arrived
at the Golden Dawn temple in
London. Making the sign of the
pentacle inverted, and shouting
menaces at the adepts, Crowley
climbed the stairs. But Yeats and
two other white magicia.ns came
resolutely forward to meet him,
ready to protect the holy place at
any cost. When Crowley came with–
in
range the forces of good struck
out with their feet and kicked him
downstairs.
Crowley's defeat was not final.
Though he gave up his attack up–
on the Golden Dawn, he was soon
infecting London with his black
masses, and his bulging, staring
eyes corrupted many innocents.
