The Beast of London:Oh, Mr.Crowley.

"Mr. Crowley, what went on in your head? Oh Mr. Crowley, did you talk to the dead? Your lifestyle to me seemed so tragic with the thrill of it all. You fooled all the people with magic. Yeah, you waited on Satan's call" - Mr. Crowley, Ozzy Osbourne

The London Fortean Society's recent talk about Aleister Crowley, City of the Beast The London of Aleister Crowley, was probably a bit too much for some. For others it was possibly not enough. Those who were already experts on Crowley or those, like one woman there, who make claims they wish to participate in group sex before offering themselves up as a human sacrifice!

Er, no thanks! For me the talk was pitched just about right. In truth I'm more interested in London and its various histories than I am in Crowley per se but I thought the two would make an interesting mix and the LFS rarely let me down. 

I was right. Philip Baker (who's also written about Dennis Wheatley, Austin Osman Spare, Samuel Beckett, William Burroughs, and absinthe) proved an interesting, authoritative, and amusing speaker and he wasn't even put off by the, admittedly quite funny, GPS announcements that someone in the audience's phone kept broadcasting to the upstairs room of The Miller pub.

Crowley, we learned, styled himself as the Great Beast, the Great Transgressor, the Wickedest Man in the World, or, quite simply, 666 and he'd lived a life of sex, drugs, and Richard Wagner but by the early sixties he was generally considered to be something of a joke, a bit of a bore.

When The Beatles included him on the cover of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (alongside Bob Dylan, Marilyn Monroe, Mahatma Gandhi, and Marlon Brando among many others) his star began to rise again. Or at least people became interested in him.

By that time he had been dead twenty years but that didn't stop film director John Waters revering him as a "filth elder" and others seeing him as "an icon of libertarian digression":- "do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" had been Crowley's motto and mantra.

Born in 1875, Crowley was, along with Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley, a product of the absinthe soaked 1890s. The next three decades saw him travel around such far flung destinations as China, India, Mexico, Egypt, and Tunisia and what he got up to in all those places would keep us in talks for a year so we didn't really touch on that. Baker was there to talk about Crowley's time in London - the 1930s.

Psychogeographically speaking, different parts of London had different nuances for Crowley and at one point he found himself living in what was known as Bedsitland (now near where Paddington station is) - an unruly area of poverty and vice. He also enjoyed the faded gentility and sexually ambiguous areas of Notting Hill, Bayswater, and Pimlico.

Despite being bankrupt ("I am what St Francis of Assisi calls fucked on the financial front" - AC), Crowley still tried to live like a gentleman and he still continued relationships with various 'scarlet women'. Soho and Hyde Park were important for Crowley as he enjoyed the 'hunt' for prostitutes. In his diaries, he'd write about these sex workers and particularly enthuse about the 'fat' and 'ugly' ones. One 'coloured girl' isn't even afforded the dignity of a name.

Railway stations, too, were good spots to hang out because there were both lots of prostitution and a transient population Crowley enjoyed the cosmic gloom in stucco squares near Victoria station and believed the now rather bland Shakespeare pub nearby was an important centre for sex magick. Although he was clear to point out that he was not into tantric sex and that he wanted real world change, not just a change of consciousness.

Not sure how his lifestyle was really affecting that but he seemed to be, mostly, enjoying himself. He'd hang out in the 'pleasure zone' area between The Strand and Piccadilly Circus where he became a regular at both the Cafe Royal and Oddomino's. He'd drink in The French House and Dog & Duck pubs in Soho and he'd drink a lot too.

Three triple absinthes before Burgundy, brandy, and some snails at L'Escargot. He seemed to enjoy his food as much as his booze and almost as much as sex. He was an early adopter of curry (then very rare in Britain) and he made his own spiced lentil and lobster (with ice!) version as well as another that contained chicken, chutney, almonds, and bamboo pickle. Mexican food too. Apparently 666 used to love a nice chili con carne.

What he was less impressed by was the first Nazi bombs to fall on London during World War II ("the entertainment value of these raids is rather low" - AC) although he did offer his services to the military in the fight against Nazi Germany. Well into his sixties, it's perhaps no surprise he was declined and by 1947 he'd moved to, and died, in Hastings.

In a roughly forty-five minute talk I'd learned a reasonable amount about Crowley and, perhaps, even more about the London of the 1930s (I've not even included the bits about Christopher Isherwood, the Whore of Babylon, Constance Lambert, Peter Warlock, and Anthony Powell's novel Casanova's Chinese Restaurant). For which I thank both the London Fortean Society (nice to catch up with Dewi, Scott, David, Tim et al) and Philip Baker.

On the way to the pub I'd heard that Sajid Javid, Rishi Sunak, and Bim Afolami had all resigned from Boris Johnson's rotten, cruel, corrupt, and criminal government setting in place a chain of events that would see him insincerely and without an ounce of humility announce his retirement in less than forty-eight hours. I wondered if Aleister Crowley would have put this down to the power of magickal thinking and then decided - nope. He'd probably be too busy soliciting women in train stations, glugging back absinthe, and putting ice on his curry.