CROWLEY AND STOCKHOLM

 ALEISTER CROWLEY

AND THE

STOCKHOLM REVELATION

BY

BARRY VAN-ASTEN

 

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law

 

 

The significance of the years 1896-1898 in Aleister Crowley’s life often get overlooked for the more sensational aspects of his magical career, yet they are important years that help shape and develop the young romantic poet in search of himself and his spirituality. Important factors during the years 1896-98 can be seen as pivotal in setting Crowley upon the path he chose to tread for there is so much nonsense written about Crowley being wicked when in fact he was nothing of the sort, he did not commit murder or rape or abuse children, things which of course are really wicked and should be punished; in fact, the only breaking of the law he seems to commit is the act of passive sodomy in homosexual encounters during a time when it was repressed by hypocrites; thankfully the expression of physical love towards one’s own sex is no longer a criminal offence and in observing the past from our own point in time we can see how foolish and damaging the legal classification was. I should say it is to his great strength of character, mind and will that he did not become a deranged murderer under the oppressive, soul-destroying Christian atmosphere of the Plymouth Brethren to which his family belonged and it would have been a decidedly weak, dim-witted and characterless individual who did not revolt against such extreme and dangerous beliefs. Crowley was an enlightened individual who questioned everything in a time of dogged acceptance and it seems to me he would fit in rather nicely with the morality and behaviour of the present climate.

Since the death of his father, Edward Crowley on 5^th March 1887 the young ‘Alick’ seems to have become obsessed with the pursuit and committing of sins as his mother increased her sense of bigoted religious mania – ‘for a year or two after my father’s death my mother did not seem to settle down; and during the holidays we either stayed with Bishop or wandered in hotels and hydros. I think she was afraid of bringing me up in London; but when my uncle moved to Streatham she compromised by taking a house in Polworth Road. I hated it, because there were bigger houses in the neighbourhood.’ (1) ‘Bishop’ is Crowley’s uncle, Tom Bond Bishop, a ‘ruthless, petty tyrant’ and Emily’s brother who lived at Thistle Grove (later Drayton Gardens) in South Kensington. The house is a detestable place of hypocritical Christian morality morning, noon and night, and filled with pious pretence of the worst sort by the Bishop family members – Grandmother Elizabeth Bishop nee Cole (1808-1896), (she and her son John came to live with Aleister and his mother Emily later in Streatham), Aunt Ada, a teacher whom Crowley doesn’t seem to mind; John Bishop (1821-1900) and Annie Bishop (1824-1890), siblings from Grandma Bishop’s first marriage and prevalent among this wreckage is Tom Bond Bishop himself. Uncle Tom moved to ‘Glenorme’, a house in Polworth Road, Streatham and Emily also found a house there at number 7, Polworth Road (I have found here there in 1891 on the electoral roll); the young Crowley furnished a ‘laboratory’ here and made experiments, mixing chemicals like some apprentice alchemist and it was here of course that he experimented on removing the nine lives that a cat is supposed to possess by various methods of its destruction; and it is undoubtedly here that the young Crowley enjoyed one of his sweetest sins of all and made his ‘magical affirmation’ with the new parlour maid on his mother’s bed one memorable Sunday!

On Thursday 18^th June 1896 Crowley’s Aunt Ada Jane Bishop died in Wandsworth, she was fifty-four years old and Crowley’s mother’s favourite sister. Her death notice appeared in The Standard (Saturday 20^th June 1896. London. p. 1) which states her death occurring at ‘Glenorme, Polworth Road, Streatham’, the house where she lived with her brother Tom Bond Bishop (1839-1920). She was buried on Tuesday 23^rd June 1896 in Lambeth. Aleister attended the funeral and says that his mother ‘refused to enter the church during the service and waited outside in the rain, only rejoining the procession when the corpse repassed those accursed portals on its way to the cemetery. She stood by the grave while the parson read the service. It was apparently the architectural diabolism to which she most objected.’ (2) Crowley writes the poem ‘In Memoriam A. J. B.’ to his Aunt and the poem contains deep Christian sentiments and Crowley still has his faith in Christ – ‘as when the conqueror Christ burst forth of prison, / and triumph woke the thunder of the spheres, / so brake the soul, as newly re-arisen / beyond the years.’ (3) He goes on to invoke the ‘world immutable of sleep’ where ‘we see our loved one, and vain eyes desire / in vain to weep’ before tailing-off in familiar Christian symbolism –

 
‘Woeful our gaze, if on lone Earth descendent,
To view the absence of yon flame afar –
Yet in the Heavens, anew, divine, resplendent,
Behold a star!
 
One light the less, that steady flamed and even
Amid the dusk of Earth’s uncertain shore;
One light the less, but in Jehova’s Heaven
One star the more!’

 

Not long after the passing of Aunt Ada death again visits the Bishops to collect Crowley’s maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Bishop nee Cole (born 1809), who died on 4^th August 1896 in Wandsworth; she is buried three days later on the 7^th August in Lambeth. I believe this double tragedy occurring so close together instilled in Aleister, who still clung to Christian doctrines, the seeds of doubt which would germinate a year later through the various momentous steps upon the path to reality, such as in the following June 1897 when he realises in Berlin that he is not manifested upon the earth to play chess and perhaps some other ‘destiny’ is assigned to him and his illness of October 1897 when he experiences the Vision of Universal Sorrow; and again in December of that year when he visits his friend Professor Lamb and a tremendous outpouring occurs which in turn culminates days later in Amsterdam with the conflict of the spirit where the weakness of Christian belief ends and a new ‘law of the strong’ is born in the form of some idealised romantic Satan, the Satan of Milton, the bisexual Baphomet.

Since entering Trinity College, Cambridge on 1^st October 1895 for the Michaelmas term, Crowley has felt a sense of freedom which has been gathering apace since his father’s death in 1887; the old constraints and restrictions of the Plymouth Brethren have been cast to the wayside and a Herculean sense of self importance has grown in strength as he goes in search of sensual experiences, cleansing himself of the ‘mire of Christianity by deliberate acts of sin and worldliness’ as he says in his Confessions (p. 123)

After the Easter term ended on Wednesday 24^th June 1896 Crowley travelled to the Bernese Oberland; on the 14^th July 1896 he is climbing the Monch in Switzerland, the first guideless traverse of the mountain [see Crowley’s poem ‘A Descent of the Moench’ in Mysteries: Lyrical and Dramatic. 1898. The Collected Works of Aleister Crowley, volume I] He returns to Cambridge for the Michaelmas term which began on Thursday 1^st October 1896 and ended on Saturday 19^th December 1896; Crowley, who turned twenty-one on the 12^th October, travelled to Stockholm and he stayed at the Grand Hotel. It is in Stockholm that he says that he was ‘awakened to the knowledge that I possessed a magical means of becoming conscious of and satisfying a part of my nature which had up to that moment concealed itself from me. It was an experience of horror and pain, combined with a certain ghostly terror, yet at the same time it was the key to the purest and holiest spiritual ecstasy that exists.’ (4) John Symonds is incorrect in his ‘The Great Beast’ (chapter II: Father and Son) in assuming that Crowley’s ‘awakening’ is literally his waking from sleep in his hotel room in Stockholm to some significant spiritual realisation, such blatant nonsense gets repeated until it is taken as fact and so the truth, which oftentimes is in plain view, is all but ignored for the more ‘convenient’, lazy and wrongly accepted viewpoint. Crowley informs us himself what occurred, all be it in Crowley’s own indefatigable manner, in chapter twenty-one of his ‘Not the Life and Adventures of Sir Roger Bloxam’ written between 1916-17 – in the winter of 1896 Crowley is in Stockholm, he doesn’t know anyone (except the British Minister and his wife) and he is feeling a little lonely; on Tuesday 29^th December, he had been ice-skating for some three hours and felt tired, cold and hungry and quite frankly a little bored of skating. He attempts a skating manoeuvre, quite badly and falls down on the ice. A man steps forward amongst the skaters to his rescue and Crowley is glad to hear the English tongue. The man introduces himself as James L. Dickson – Crowley assumes he is Scottish due to his middle name, which ‘stood for something Scottish, Laurie, or Leslie, or Levy, I think’ he suggests, but James Dickson is a married man, a family man and Crowley with some sense of honour probably knows the name but does not want to bring shame upon him, for there was a definite attraction between the young Crowley, who was ‘comely and graceful, lissome’ and ‘playful as a kitten’ and the older man, James; and ‘the new friends talked of England, home and beauty’. Dickson dined with Crowley that night and the following night, Wednesday 30^th December, Crowley dined with Dickson, and the next day, New Year’s Eve, Dickson dined with Crowley once more and on the stroke of midnight when the old year dies away to become the new, Dickson seduced Crowley who was more than happy to fall into a new, strong sinful experience. Crowley tells us in the next chapter of ‘Roger Bloxam’ that he was a ‘trifle sore at the rudeness of the Scotsman [Dickson] for it was Crowley’s, the ‘sensitive maiden’s’ first time with a man; Dickson, he continues, had no ‘savoir faire’ and ‘he was restless, he fidgeted, he said nothing wise, or witty, or even graceful; and he withdrew finally with abruptness’. Crowley says in his Confessions (p.124) that it was an ‘isolated experience, not repeated until exactly twelve months later, to the minute.’ Crowley writes about the experience in his poem, ‘At Stockholm’ which he probably wrote soon after in January 1897 and was published in his ‘White Stains’ in 1898:

 
At Stockholm
 
We could not speak, although the sudden glow
Of passion mantling to the crimson cheek
 
Of either, told our tale of love, although
We could not speak.
 
What need of language, barren and false and bleak,
While our white arms could link each other so,
And found red lips their partner’s mutely seek?
 
What time for language, when our kisses flow
Eloquent, warm, as words are cold and weak? –
 
Or now – Ah! sweetheart, even were it so
We could not speak.

 

Tobias Churton in his ‘Aleister Crowley: The Biography’ published in 2011 gives Dickson’s full name in chapter three on page 29 as James Lachlan Dickson (also see his note 7 on page 432 which gives Dickson’s profession as  ‘Cotton Spinner’s Agent’, attributed to William Breeze). Along with ‘At Stockholm’, a romanticised poetic version of the encounter which may have actually meant little to Dickson in Crowley’s ‘White Stains’ is another curious poem written as a tribute to the first man to become sexually intimate with Crowley at this time:

 
To J.L.D. *
 
At last, so long desired, so long delayed,
The step is taken, and the threshold past;
I am within the palace I have prayed
At last.
 
Like scudding winds, when skies are overcast,
Came the soft breath of Love, that might not fade.
O Love, whose magic whispers bind me fast,
 
O Love, who hast the kiss of Love betrayed,
Hide my poor blush beneath thy pinions vast,
Since thou hast come, nor left me more a maid,
At last.

 

If James Lachlan Dickson is indeed the man concerned, and there is no reason to believe he isn’t, he has the ‘Scottish-sounding’ middle name and his work would have given him the opportunity of travel; but what can be found of this James Lachlan Dickson? well, he was born on 1^st January 1855 at Portsea Island in Hampshire [the night of his seduction of the 21 year old Crowley was the eve of his 42^nd birthday], the son of David Dickson, a draper who employed three men, born in 1820 in Scotland (he died on 1^st February 1865 in Portsea) and Isabella Ann McMillan, born 1820, who were married in Medway, Kent in 1848 (5). James L Dickson was employed as an agent for a cotton spinners and manufacturers and he married Birmingham born, Mary Ann Cattell (1863-1923) on Thursday 16^th February 1888 in Camberwell. The wedding took place at St Paul’s Church, Herne Hill in Camberwell and Miss Annie Cattell is the neice of Mr. William Bennett, the respected proprietor of the Half Moon in Dulwich. The bride’s father gave her away and of the four bridesmaids, two were James Dickson’s sisters, Charlotte and Maria; his brother David was best man (6). In 1891 they are living in Portland Place, Beckenham, Kent and ten years later they are in Lambeth. James and Mary had the following children: James Thomas Dickson, born 1889, William Arthur Dickson, born 1890, Sidney Edgar Dickson, born 1893 and Constance Irene Dickson, born 1897.

The ‘so long desired, so long delayed’ sexual encounter with James L. Dickson is not the first account of a man attempting to seduce Crowley for he tells us in his Confessions that the ‘brother of the Dean of Westminster (he subsequently became a missionary and died at Lokoja) had been taught that if he couldn’t be good he should be careful. While he was actually in charge of me his conduct was irreproachable, but after giving me up he invited me over to his mother’s house at Maze Hill [Greenwich] to spend the night, and did his best to live up to the reputation of his cloth. I did not allow him to succeed, not because I could see no sin in it, but because I thought it was a trap to betray me to my family. Just before he left for Africa he invited me again, prayed with me, confessed to his offence, excusing himself on the ground that his elder brother Jack, also a missionary, had led him astray, and asked my pardon.’ (7) He is a little more explicit in his ‘The World’s Tragedy’ (1910) under the chapter ‘Adolescence’ and delights in his intention to send a copy of the volume to the ‘Very Reverend Armitage Robinson Esq., M.A.D.D., Dean of Westminster (8) for though I suppose he knows how his missionary brother Jack seduced to sodomy his missionary brother Fred, he may still be ignorant of how that brother Fred (one of my tutors) attempted to seduce me in his own mother’s house at Maze Hill. This came a little later; and I knew exactly what he was doing, as it happened. I let him go as far as he did, with the deliberate intention of making sure on that point.’ This occurred in the early 1890’s when Crowley was in his teens and at the hands of various tutors chosen by his Uncle, Tom Bond Bishop; it shows his early inclinations towards bisexuality and his acceptance of his feminine side. ‘Jack’ is the Reverend John Alfred Robinson M.A. (1859-1891) (9) and ‘Fred’, Crowley’s tutor, is Dr. Frederick Augustine Robinson (1870-1906) (10), both became missionaries in Africa. Frederick, of Guy’s Hospital, went to Likoma Island Mission, South Africa in 1891 when Aleister was around sixteen years old.

Before the Lent term began on Friday 8^th January 1897 Crowley was in Copenhagen, and he wrote the poem ‘Astray in her paths’; it is only days since he left the arms of James L Dickson, whose ‘gaze is still on me’, in Stockholm and the poem reaches new heights of passion, mingled with a spiritual inner light, far beyond ordinary mortal conceptions – ‘because we love, / are not of earth, but, as the immortals, stand / with eyes immutable; our souls are fed / on a strange new nepenthe from the cup / of the vast firmament. Nor do we dream, / nor think we aught of the transient world, / but are absorbed in our own deity’.  The poem continues until he reaches some great understanding:

 
‘But now I turn to thee, whose eyes
Blaze on me with such look as flesh and blood
May never see and live; for so it burns
Into the innest being of the spirit
And stains its vital essence with a brand
Of fire that shall not change; and shuddering I
Gaze back, spirit to spirit, with the like
Insatiable desire, that never quenched,
Nor lessened by sublime satiety,
But rather crescent, hotter with the flame
Of its own burning, that consumes it not,
Because it is the pure white flame of God.
I shudder, holding thee to me; thy gaze
Is still on me; a thousand years have passed,
And yet a thousand thousand; years they are
As men count years, and yet we stand and gaze
With touching hands and lips immutable
As mortals stand a moment;…
The universe is One: One Soul, One Spirit,
One Flame, One infinite God, One infinite Love. (11)

 

Following the end of the Easter term on Thursday 24^th June 1897 Crowley went to St Petersburg to learn Russian for the Diplomatic Service which he had chosen as his career and on his return he broke his journey at Berlin to attend a chess conference and upon entering, Crowley, who was a prolific chess player, was ‘seized with what may justly be described as a mystical experience. I seemed to be looking on at the tournament from outside myself. I saw the masters – one, shabby, snuffy and blear-eyed; another, in badly fitting would-be respectable shoddy; a third, a mere parody of humanity, and so on for the rest. These were the people to whose ranks I was seeking admission. “There, but for the grace of God, goes Aleister Crowley,” I exclaimed to myself with disgust, and there and then I registered a vow never to play another serious game of chess. I perceived with praetor-natural lucidity that I had not alighted on this planet with the object of playing chess.’ (12)

In October during the Michaelmas term of 1897 Crowley fell ill and he was ‘forced to meditate upon the fact of mortality’ consumed by the ‘futility of all human endeavour’. What is the purpose of life and the continuity of the individual spirit? A successful career does not automatically impose greatness upon a person and eternal respect and devotion – ‘I did not go into a definite trance in this meditation; but a spiritual consciousness was born in me corresponding to that which characterizes the Vision of the Universal Sorrow.’ He goes on to say that he was ‘not content to be annihilated. Spiritual facts were the only things worth while. Brain and body were valueless except as instruments of the soul.’ (13) He had been restricted by the demands of Christianity in his youth and since entering Trinity the freedom became meaningless without substance – ‘I had never given myself wholly to chess, mountaineering or even to poetry. Now, for the first time, I felt myself prepared to expend my resources of every kind to attain my purpose.’ (14)

Late in the October term of 1897 he also became acquainted with Herbert Charles Jerome Pollitt who was to become his lover.

On Tuesday 7^th December 1897 Crowley called at the house of his friend Dr. Charles George Lamb (1867-1941), the Cambridge lecturer and engineer who entered the university in 1891. It must have been a strange and extraordinary meeting that wild, windy night in December and Crowley must have been in great distress at his spiritual dilemma which had increased since his Vision of Universal Sorrow in October and in need of a friendly ear and advice from someone he respected and trusted. He writes rather perplexingly as an introductory to his poem ‘Aceldama, a Place to Bury Strangers’ of 1898, that it ‘was a windy night, that memorable seventh night of December, when this philosophy was born in me. How the grave old Professor wondered at my ravings! I had called at his house, for he was a valued friend of mine, and I felt strange thoughts and emotions shake within me. Ah! how I raved! I called to him to trample me, he would not. We passed together into the stormy night. I was on horseback, how I galloped round him in my phrenzy, till he became the prey of a real physical fear! How I shrieked out I know not what strange words! And the poor good old man tried all he could to calm me; he thought I was mad! The fool! I was in the death struggle with self: God and Satan fought for my soul those three long hours. God conquered – now I have only one doubt left – which of the twain was God? Howbeit, I aspire!’ (15) What transpired that night had a lasting effect upon Crowley and it would be interesting to know more about the part Charles Lamb played in his momentous conversion from Christianity to the occult!

After the Michaelmas term ended on Sunday 19^th December 1897 Crowley travelled to Amsterdam, and he purchases a small, red notebook in which he writes eight sonnets and several rondells and songs in pencil; The sonnets are: ‘Love me or leave me’, ‘Your love is light’, ‘To pass through the pale streets’, ‘I, who am dying for thy kiss’, ‘He, who seduced me first’, ‘A sailor’s kiss is branded’, ‘Did you speak truly?’ and ‘The old, dark evening’. The sonnet ‘He, who seduced me first’ undoubtedly refers to James L Dickson whom Crowley encountered almost a year ago to the day –

 
He who seduced me first I could not forget.
I hardly loved him but desired to taste
A new strong sin. My sorrow does not fret
That sore. But thou, whose sudden arms embraced
My shrinking body, and who brought a blush
Into my cheeks, and turned my veins to fire,
Thou, who didst whelm me with the eager rush
Of the enormous floods of thy desire,
Thine are the kisses that devour me yet,
Thine the high heaven whose loss is death to me,
Thine all the barbed arrows of regret,
Thine on whose arms I yearn to be
In my deep heart thy name is writ alone,
Men shall decipher – when they split the stone.

From the rondells and songs (six in total) is a strange poem, ‘The Red Lips of the Octopus’:

 
The red lips of the octopus
Are more than myriad stars of night.
The great beast writhes in fiercer form than thirsty stallions amorous
I would they clung to me and stung. I would they quenched me with delight.
 
The red lips of the octopus.
They reek with poison of the sea
Scarlet and hot and languorous
My skin drinks in their slaver warm, my sweats his wrapt embrace excite
The heavy sea rolls languishly o’er the ensanguined kiss of us.
We strain and strive, we die for love. We linger in the lusty fight
We agonize; our club becomes more cruel and more murderous.
My passion splashes out at last. Ah! with what ecstasy I bite
The red lips of the octopus.

 

 

On Thursday 23^rd December 1897, while Crowley is in Amsterdam, he is on the threshold of one of the greatest spiritual conflicts of his life, for he has been walking the streets all day and watching the sun pass overhead and ‘fade away / to other streets, and other passengers, / see him take pleasure where the heathen pray,’; he is tired and weary and his mind is in torment. The day has been long and there is frost sparkling along the streets as he wound his way towards the docks; from the darkness of his inner sorrow he holds his silver crucifix in his fingers and contemplates ‘the wound / stabbed in the flanks of my dear silver Christ.’ Christ is alone and Crowley is also alone – he puts the crucifix to his mouth and kisses the ‘silver lips’ as if in farewell. He puts the crucifix away and his ‘feet must go / some journey of despair.’ He has come through the dark night of his soul which probably began at the home of Professor Lamb and found that which he had known all along and he must walk and ‘know never more the day and night apart, / know not where frost has laid his iron hand / save only that it fastens on my heart; / save only that it grips with icy fire / these veins no fire of hell could satiate; / save only that it quenches this desire. / Let me pass out beyond the city gate.’ (16) Two days later on Saturday 25^th December 1897, still in Amsterdam, he writes the poem The Nativity (also contained in the Amsterdam notebook under the title ‘Xmas’). In the poem we find the Virgin Mary at Bethlehem, in labour, where ‘each spasm is a holocaust’, and thrice she has ‘cursed the name of God’ and thrice she has ‘prayed that she may die’ until ‘she is delivered of the Christ’. (17)

While in Amsterdam Crowley had been writing furiously to his new friend with whom he fell deeply in love – Herbert Charles Jerome Pollitt, and on Crowley’s return to England, he met Pollitt at the Queen’s Hotel in Birmingham on Friday 31^st December 1897, exactly a year to the day on which he had spent the night in the arms of James Lachlan Dickson – the seduction repeated itself almost to the minute when Pollitt and Crowley became lovers and Jerome seduced him at the beginning of the New Year.

Back at Cambridge for the Lent term in January, Crowley moves from his rooms at 35 Sidney Street to 14 Trinity Street and he and Jerome are almost inseparable, Crowley taking on the role it seems as the dutiful wife; the relationship, which was one of the most profound in Crowley’s life, lasts just six months when Crowley terminated the friendship at the Bear Hotel in Maidenhead where the poet had gone seeking solace to write his poem ‘Jezebel’. Pollitt followed him there and no doubt some scene played out and so Crowley called an end to the greatest and noblest friendship he had ever encountered.

The pursuit of spiritual attainments still drove Crowley onwards and in November 1898 it took him to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and Abramelin and a new chapter in the life of Aleister Crowley, which would ultimately lead to the fulfilment of his destiny as the prophet of the new Aeon of Thelema.

 

Love is the Law, Love under Will

 

 

NOTES:

 

*Cabbalists among you may care to note that the initials J.L.D. – Yod, Lamed, Daleth: The Hermit, Virgo, Hand, the Secret Seed, 10 – Justice, Libra, Ox-Goad, 30 – Empress, Venus, Door, 4 = 10+30+4 = 44 Blood, the multiplication of 11, the number of Magick, by 4.

 

1. The Confessions of Aleister Crowley. John Symonds and Kenneth Grant. 1969. p. 59.
2. ibid. p. 58.
3. In Memoriam A. J. B. Songs of the Spirit. 1898. The Collected Works of Aleister Crowley, volume I.
4. The Confessions of Aleister Crowley. p. 123-124.
5. David and Isabella Dickson had the following children: Isabella Ann Dickson (1850-1902), James Lachlan Dickson (1^st January 1855- 16^th August 1927), Sarah Dickson, born 1853, David Robert Dickson (1857-1927), Charlotte Agnes Dickson, born 1859 and Margaret L Dickson, born 1863. Interestingly, there is an article in The South Eastern Gazette on Tuesday 15thy November 1853 (p. 5) under ‘Coroner’s Inquest’ which states that on Tuesday 8^th November 1853, there is an Inquest at the Running Horse Inn, Sandling, before J N Dadlow Esq. coroner, concerning the death of a 17 year old woman named Emma Collins whose body was found in Spratt’s Mill pond, Boxley, on Monday 7^th November. She was found by Richard Waterman who with assistance retrieved the body. Isabella Ann Dickson, the wife of David Dickson, draper of Maidstone, said the deceased was in her service for six months and last saw her alive at 10.45 Sunday night in the kitchen; Emma was due back at 8 but didn’t get back till 10 and Isabella told her to go to bed (she slept in the kitchen due to Isabella having friends staying at the house). Miss Collins was a disruly girl and Isabella threatened to tell her father of her behaviour and the girl replied that she would not be a trouble to anyone much longer. She had been depressed due to a failed romance and two letters were found in her pocket from a soldier in the Hussars named Langford.
6. The South London Press. Saturday 25^th February 1888. p. 6.
7. The Confessions of Aleister Crowley. p. 72.
8. Reverend Joseph Armitage Robinson (1858-1933), Dean of Westminster (1902-1911).
9. Reverend John Alfred Robinson (1859-1891), born Keynsham, Somerset. Educated at Rossall School and Christ’s Church, Cambridge, matriculating 1877. B.A. 1881. M.A. 1884. Became a missionary, Hausa Mission. Died 25^th June 1891 at Lakoja, Nigeria, aged 32.
10. Dr. Frederick Augustine Robinson (1870-1906) – born 14^th June 1870 in Liverpool, Christened 11^th September 1870 at St. Augustine’s, Everton, Lancashire, where his father, Reverend George Robinson (1819-1881) was vicar. Entered Christ’s Church, Cambridge, 18^th April 1893; Guy’s Hospital, M.R.C.S. (Member of the Royal College of Surgeons, London), L.R.C.P. (Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians, London) 1892. Medical Missionary, Universities’ Mission to Central Africa, at Lake Nyassa. Medical Officer M.D.S.F., Labrador. District Surgeon at Nqutu, Zululand. Married Dr. Lillian Agnes Rogers Jenkins, L.R.C.P. Edinburgh, and late Indian Medical Officer (born in Tenby, South Wales, the only daughter of Rev. J. Rogers Jenkins) at St. Augustine’s in Durban, Natal 10^th May 1898. Served in the suppression of the Natal Rebellion, 1906. Died on 1^st October 1906 at Natal aged 36. Frederick’s father, George, married Henrietta Cecilia Forbes (1826-1919) in 1854 and they had thirteen children, eight boys, six of which entered the priesthood, and five girls. Frederick was also assistant surgeon at the Leicester Royal Infirmary and on Thursday 16^th February 1893 he attended the Leicester Town Hall trial of Richard James Glynn, 45 on a case of ‘unlawful wounding’ of Jim Smith on 4^th February, whose knife wound Frederick had examined; Glynn was pronounced not guilty and discharged. [The Leicester Chronicle and Leicestershire Mercury. Saturday 18^th February 1893. p. 6]
11. Mysteries: Lyrical and Dramatic. 1898. The Collected Works of Aleister Crowley, volume I.
12. The Confessions of Aleister Crowley. p. 140.
13. ibid. p. 124-125.
14. ibid. p. 125.
15. Aceldama. 1898. The Collected Works of Aleister Crowley, volume I.
16. The Goad. Songs of the Spirit. 1898. The Collected Works of Aleister Crowley, volume I.
17. Oracles. 1905. The Collected Works of Aleister Crowley, volume II.