Aleister Crowley - Part II

In 1934, Crowley was declared bankrupt after losing a court case in which he sued the artist Nina Hamnett for calling him a black magician in her 1932 book, Laughing Torso. Mr. Justice Swift was in disbelief of the things he heard throughout the trial, especially coming from someone who claimed to be the greatest living poet. However, Patricia "Deirdre" MacAlpine approached Crowley on the day of the verdict and offered to bear him a child, a son named Aleister Ataturk. She sought no mystical or religious role in Crowley's life and rarely saw him after the birth, "an arrangement that suited them both".

During World War II, Ian Fleming, British author and Naval Officer, and others proposed a disinformation plot in which Crowley would have helped an MI5 agent supply Nazi official Rudolf Hess with faked horoscopes. They would then pass along the false information about an alleged pro-German circle in Britain. The government abandoned this plan when Hess flew to Scotland, crashed his plane on the moors near Eaglesham, and was captured. Fleming then suggested using Crowley as an interrogator to determine the influence of astrology on other Nazi leaders, but this plan was rejected by his superiors.

He had experimented with several types of drugs, but became addicted to heroin after being prescribed morphine for his asthma and bronchitis many years prior. His addiction influenced his 1922 novel Diary of a Drug Fend, but but the fiction presented a hopeful outcome of rehabilitation and recovery by means of Magickal techniques and the exercise of True Will. At the time of his death he was addicted to heroin, his narcotic of choice. Aleister Crowley died of a respiratory infection in a Hastings boarding house on 1 December 1947 at the age of 72. Ironically, his doctor, Dr. Thompson, died exactly twenty four hours after his death. Newspapers claimed Crowley put a curse on him after he refused to continue his opiate prescription.

Frieda Harris supposedly reported him saying, "I am perplexed" as his last dying words, though she did not see him at the very end. According to John Symonds, a Mr Rowe witnessed Crowley's death along with a nurse, and reported his last words as "Sometimes I hate myself". Biographer Gerald Suster accepted the version of events he received from a "Mr W.H." who worked at the house, in which Crowley died pacing in his living-room. Supposedly Mr W.H. heard a crash while polishing furniture on the floor below, and entered Crowley's rooms to find him dead on the floor. Patricia "Deirdre" MacAlpine, who visited Crowley with their son and her three other children, denied all this and reports a sudden gust of wind and thunder at the moment of his death. According to MacAlpine, Crowley remained bedridden for the last few days of his life, but was in light spirits and conversational.

Even though Aleister Crowley has passed on, his teachings have continued to influence modern Thelemites.


Source/Photo: Wikipedia

Comments

Anonymous said…
Le Docteur Thomson est mort 18 heures après !

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