Ah! 19 April — anniversary of the day William Butler Yeats kicked Aleister Crowley down some stairs as they fought for control of the British branch of the not-at-all-ridiculous Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in the Battle of Blythe Road.
The Hermetic Order of Fabricated Nonsense was founded by a trio of late-19th century freemasons on the unreliable foundations of the Cypher Manuscripts — a collection of piffle, in code, of dubious origin about Qabalah, astrology, tarot, geomancy, and alchemy.
So, you’d expect Crowley to be involved. Yeats, too, was very into magic, but for reasons more related to the idea that mystical woo might explain life and the universe to him — whereas Aleister wanted to use it to amass power and influence.
Anyway, both were part of the Hermetic Order, and — according to Yeats (and Wilde) biographer Richard Ellman:
They fell out, though, because Yeats wasn’t keen on the dark magic that Crowley favoured — although Crowley apparently also saw “black, bilious rage” in Yeats and accounted for this with the hilarious words:
Everyone knew then and knows now that Yeats was, and continues to be, the better poet by some distance, although (in the words of Lawrence Sutin, in his Do What Thou Wilt — A Life of Aleister Crowley):
Anyway, they both wanted control of the London end of the Order of Mystical Eejits, so an epic struggle began. Or at least, Crowley broke in and changed the locks on their ‘temple’ — an upstairs room at 36 Blythe Road in west London.
This was on 17 April, not long after Crowley had got back from Paris where he’d been initiated into the Second Order of the Golden Dawn by its renegade leader Samuel Liddell Mathers, who supported his attempts to get control in Britain. London members of the Order, though, had voted to suspend Mathers’ authority. It was all a bit People’s Front of Judea, and Crowley was essentially this guy:
During his break-in, Crowley wrote ‘Perdurabo’ on the parchment roll of Second Order initiates. It was his (largely self-bestowed) magical name, and is Latin for “I will endure”. Reader, he did not. The stage was set for a final showdown…
Perhaps the most entertaining telling is Richard Ellmann’s in The Partisan Review of September 1948, a few months after Crowley’s death:
Mathers furnished Crowley with appropriate charms and exorcisms to use against recalcitrant members, and in- structed 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 skindoo 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 magicians came resolutely forward to meet him, ready to protect the holy place at any cost.
(The ‘skindoo’ he refers to is a sgian-dubh, a traditional Scottish weapon similar to a dirk, but while the dirk is usually a utility knife, its cousin is more of a concealed weapon for close combat).
Anyway, Ellmann continues:
Sutin’s account of the proceedings differs, suggesting that the hoofing may be apocryphal:
But when Crowley arrived at Blythe Road, inimical forces of a different order were barring the way: Yeats and a fellow Second Order member, as well as the landlord — a member of the Trades Protection Association which had blacklisted Crowley for bad debts and a constable. Crowley left promptly, without threats or altercation, stating that he would consult a lawyer. Later that day, the Second Order formally suspended Mathers and his few supporters and specially declared, with Crowley in mind, that only London initiates were proper members. The Vault-and the Order itself — had been retaken by the rebels.
And Ellmann may have been an award-winning biographer, but his article does end with the ominous words:
As Isabel Oakeshott won’t tell you, but should, single-sourced stories are not… notorious for their reliability. (Especially this source.)
Anyway, Crowley went off, not unbowed, because he wasn’t capable of being bowed, and continued his career as “the wickedest man in the world”. He may also have invented The Kubla Khan No 2 cocktail, whose ingredients of gin, vermouth and laudanum make the negroni sound like Schloer, and definitely wrote this book and drew the pretty picture which opens it:
Yeats, in 1919, wrote The Second Coming, which may contain a reference to Crowley in its last two lines:
…and 36 Blythe Road became a café:
If you want to know more, you could try this, from the Spectator last year, about what the Yeats-Crowley rivalry tells us about Putin’s favourite ‘philosopher’.
…or just this, which is shorter, and surely unimprovable:
