Speaker 1: This is Jay Dyer from Jays Analysis. You're listening to
Esoteric Hollywood. Esoteric Hollywood is where I deconstruct the biggest
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This is your host, Jaydyer of Jasonalysis dot com. Today,
I have with me Professor Richard Spence of the University
of Idaho. Professor Spence has a PhD in Modern Europe
and Middle Eastern history, and he's written some really relevant books.
I think to listeners and readers of Jays Analysis, you're
going to find this material fascinating and quite revealing, really,
because there's a lot of meat that's in Professor Spence's book.
I've had a chance to make a good way into
his book Secret Agent sixty sixty six, which deals with
Aleister Crowley and his connection to British intelligence and the
much debated issue as to whether or not he really
was an agent, was he working for someone else?
Speaker 2: Who knows well?
Speaker 1: Rich Professor Spence has done some work in this arena
and it's really good. I've also been told he has
another book that he's co authored with Walter Bosley, Empire
of the Wheel, and this is going to be a
fiction piece, as I understand, coming out soon. And Professor
Spence also did a piece on Riley Ace of Spies
and so this is.
Speaker 2: A trust No.
Speaker 1: One, The Secret World of Riley Sidney Riley, which you
can actually find that at Amazon as well. And if
you've ever seen a suspies I believe with Sam Neil,
then you'll know what we're talking about here.
Speaker 2: Professor Spence, how are you today?
Speaker 3: I'm great?
Speaker 2: How are you doing well? Doing well?
Speaker 1: I'm glad to be in contact with you. So I've
got some notes here. First of all, I guess, if
you don't mind, what prompted your interest in such a
crazy topic as Crowley's relationship to British ineligence.
Speaker 3: Well, it actually, like so many things do, I came
to that by looking for something else, right, There's a
lot of serendipity in this kind of stuff, and especially
in this sort of research. So you started looking for
one thing and you come across other stuff, and the
challenge is to recognize what you've found, because very often
you're so focused on the one thing that you're looking for,
you can ignore it. Only later do these things have significance.
So it actually goes back to the book that I
was working on back around two thousand on Sidney Riley,
and Riley kind of summoned up. He spent most of
the First World War period in New York, engaged in
various activities, and those activities brought him into contact with
various people connected to, let's say, the German intelligence apparatus
and the British intelligence apparatus and the Russian intelligence apparatus.
And I had heard these stories. I wasn't particularly interested
in Crowley at that point. Keep in mind, he's not
really on my radar, but I knew that Crowley was
in New York at the same time, and that he
had later claimed to have connection to British intelligence, which
would have meant, if that was true, that he and
Riley would have been in contact with the same people,
not necessarily with each other, but with the same people.
So I was kind of curious about it. And I
was riding off to the National Archives in Washington, and
I was requesting various old files out of something called
the Military Intelligence Division. So a little bit of history
there people tend to think today that American internal securities
in the hands of the FBI. Well back in nineteen
seventeen nineteen eighteen, the period I was looking at the FBI,
which was then just the plain old BI, the Bureau
of Investigation was a very kind of marginal small organization
or the Department of Justice. And what actually took over
during the wartime period nineteen seventeen nineteen eighteen to really
handle most of internal security was a branch of the
US Army, something that became called the MID or the
Military Intelligence Division as such, it pretty much ceased to
exist by the nineteen forties, but then it was pretty important. Now.
The thing about it is that the MID files, because
they belonged to a defunct organization, are all declassified and
are available at the National Archives. And that's kind of
exceptional because most intelligence records, even going that far back
today are not readily accessible, and these were, and they
one of the things they is they had this neat, little,
you know, nineteen seventeen model of you know, having little,
you know, index cards for all of their suspects, and
all of that's been microfilmed, and it's a wonderful resource
for that period of time in terms of what American intelligence,
encounterintelligence was interested in. So I wrote, I wrote, asking
for the files or if there were files on a
certain number of individuals, and I just sort of threw
Alistair Crowley's name in there, just to see whether he
came up. We did, and it turned out there was
a file, not a very big file, a little one,
and so I got it and I went through and
most of the stuff and it was not terribly interesting
or revealing. But one of the things that did show
is that in nineteen eighteen, the mid was interested in him,
and they were interested in him because he had had
contact with known German operatives in the US. That was
quite true. He was in association with Medeo. In fact,
he had been most prominently before the US under the
war writing articles for a New York magazine called The Fatherland.
And if that sounds vaguely like it could be a
pro German publication, we're absolutely right it was. And not
only was he writing for the Fatherland, but he was
writing what can only be described as scurrilous anti British propaganda.
And so the later accusations that Alistair Crowley spent the
First World war, not doing his bit whatever that might
have been in England, but in New York writing anti
British propaganda for a known German propaganda outlet, The Fatherland
was true. But Crowley would later claim that, well, you know,
I did this really under the auspices of His Majesty's government.
You know what I was doing was wasn't real propaganda.
It was propaganda meant to look so ridiculous and over
the top that it actually discredited the Germans as opposed
to help.
Speaker 2: Them of provocateuring basically kind of.
Speaker 3: Kind of a provocateur. And that was one of those
things that was debated back and forth between you know,
this was simply Crowley, you know, trying to cover up
his past sins by claiming association. But in going through
this little mid file, there was, as there often is,
a little gem that appeared in it something I wasn't
looking for. The Americans knew about his German connections, and
they knew about some of his activities. He'd spent part
of this summer up in an Island and the and
the up in the Hudson River Valley, and that had
attracted their attention, and they were basically thinking about arresting him,
and they inquired because he was a British subject with
the British Consulate in New York. And I think this
is quoted in the book, but basically what the British
consulate said was to lay off. We know what he's doing,
and he is an he's working in a confidential manner
for the British government. So that was kind of surprising
because that was the first thing that confirmed that, at
least at that time, at least in nineteen seventeen, nineteen eighteen,
he was indeed in the confidence of the British government
and they knew what he was doing and they had
no problem with it. The other thing that was a
little and that sort of you know, led me to
write a short article which I appeared in a in
a journal I think Intelligence and National Security. No, a
Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence. Yeah, that's one of those
scholarly journals that nobody reads, but nevertheless that's where it appeared.
Speaker 2: I got a id read it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I wrote this up. I gave it the
title Secret Agent sixty sixty six because that sounded like
a good title, and it was one of those things
that again appeared in a journal which you wouldn't expect
a lot of people to read. But one of the
things that happened to it is that it was sort
of spread over the internet. He was one of those
things that people, by the way, quite illegally, I think,
sort of copied and pasted the article and spread it around.
And by the way, for me, that's a good thing. So,
just in case anybody has ever interested, academics as a
general rule, effects as far as I know, do not
get paid for writing scholarly articles. And therefore one of
the things that data is they got exposure to this,
and so I started getting feedback. I got letters, I
got emails from people, and most of them were saying, well,
you know, maybe you should really follow this further. You know,
maybe there's something there's more of a story to be
told here. Because if he was, as he later claimed,
working for the British government in America in nineteen eighteen,
then where out was that the only occasion or there
other occasions for this. So eventually I got con vinced
to do that, which caused me, by the way, to
put aside another project I had. But that's not unusual,
and so I said, well, okay, I'll look into this,
I'll try to expand the article. Maybe I can make
that bigger, maybe it'll turn into a book. And well
it did, And as one went through sort of went
back and just looked at the various episodes and associations
in Alistair Crowley's career, you know, beginning with his college
days in Cambridge and then going on through his association
with the Golden Dawn, his connection with the Oto and
Theodore Royce, all the way up to World War Two.
And one of the things that I found is that
all through his career he was continually coming in contact
and often fairly close association with people who were connected
to British intelligence.
Speaker 2: Right, so like Dennis Wheatley, presumably right.
Speaker 3: Dennis Wheatley, Maxwell Knight, even I think Gerald Yorke, a
guy named Robin Fine. I mean, every time you turn,
and part of this is simply investigating these people. And
you know, one of the things that for some reason,
it was never my intention, but with people like Crowley
and Riley and a variety of others, I always seem
to pick these these these figures who are in some
ways sort of semi mythologized by themselves and others, and
which also tend to well, in most cases, lie a
lot and and sort of invent various things about themselves.
But they're not but the other things that they're not
lying all of the time. It's always this sort of
combination of fact and fiction, but people who in many
ways sort of obscure who they actually are, and and
trying to piece together their activities. One of the things
becomes very important is not just following them, but then
always going off for these tangents to explore anybody they
come in contact with. I mean, is this a casual acquaintance,
is it someone who's you know, directly related simply to
to sort of personal activities or business activities or occult activities,
or is this someone who connects them to government toward
or intelligence agencies. And one of the things I found
in Crowley's case is that every time you turn around,
he was bumping into a spook, and way too often
for that to be coincidental. So this was eventually the
picture that emerged as I began to put these various
pieces together, that Crowley was not you know, he's not
an intelligence officer, he's not a full time spy, but
he was an asset. This is basically what agencies do
agencies and the really limited number of you know, official officers,
people who work and get their paychecks from SIS or
CIA or whatever it might be. The field agents recruit
and and run at sets. And Crawley, I think early on,
probably as far back as his Cambridge days, was sort
of spotted as a potential asset and then was exploited
on occasion for those purposes. And one of the things,
I mean, why would anybody pick I mean the question
you usually get is that, well, this was a guy
who was notorious, He had a bad reputation, he gets
nicknamed the wickedest man in the world. And therefore, why
would any intelligence agency want something to do with a
person so disreputable. His notoriousness and his bad behavior was
irrelevant to those activities. I mean, this is the whole
point in an asset. You don't recruit assets because they're
nice people. You don't even necessarily recruit them because you
can trust them. You recruit them for one reason only
that you can use them, that they have a utility.
So one of the things that Crowley, one of his
elements of his utility, was that he had connections through
his occult associations through his membership infringe Masonic organizations, the
OTO and elsewhere, to all of the various societies that
he belonged, he was then plugged into what could be
called the early twentieth century European occult underground, and that
in and of itself was is a kind of network.
It's a network that crossed borders. It combined you know,
people in different countries, sometimes within the same country, but
in different countries, belong to these fraternal organizations, and usually
fairly secret fraternal organizations, which not always but in some
cases created this bond that transcended nationality, that transcended other factors.
And that was this network through which information, like all networks,
flow that Croley could tap into. And there was a
particular occasion again it's in the book, but it's during
coccurs during the nineteen twenties, and during the nineteen twenties
that's a kind of that whole decade is a sort
of low point in Croley's career.
Speaker 1: He was.
Speaker 3: Struggling on and off, mostly on with his heroin addiction.
Most of his financial ventures had fallen through handsome fairly
hard times and also had been pretty clearly early in
the twenties, put on the shelf by British intelligence. They
had sort of separated from him, I think partly because
of a snaffy that happened in Italy and Sicily around
nineteen twenty two, and that's where he was expelled by
the I think, and when Mussolini kicked him out. And
one of the little details you look at that is
the Italians going through there found various papers, and these
papers indicated to them that Proley was working for British intelligence.
I don't think the fascists were making that up. I
think that's exactly what it was that they found, and
that was a serious breach of tradecraft. The one thing
that you would never do is to leave stuff around
that would show a link between you and the government.
And that's where he screwed up, and they seemed to
have nothing to do with him. A few years later, though,
a question came up and it actually had to do
with some sort of I don't know what is referred
to when the report is sort of East Asiatic deviltry
or some sort of secret societies. It was something that
had attracted the British interest in China and the Far East,
and so the question came up as to, well, I
don't know who might know about these sorts of things,
and it was suggested that, well, you know, I kind
of get, almost apologetically, it's put forward, I kind of
its kind of reluctantly suggest this. But but Alistair Crowley
is probably the person who could provide some sort of
insight to these things. And you can, you can almost,
you know, read between the lines the distaste with which
that suggestion is made and with which it has received.
But then there's also this kind of tacit recognition that well, yeah,
I suppose he would be the guy if he really
had to. And then again was an example of where
it had nothing to do with him being liked or
trusted or admired or anything else, but whether or not
in a particular thing, a particular circumstance, he could be useful.
Now I have to add on this, I have to
backtrack a little bit and point out I always point
this out whenever I'm I'm asked to say anything about
Crowley in the book, just to make it very clear
where I'm coming from, and that's I am not a telamite,
I am not a croleite, I am not a follower
of any of his ideas. I have nothing against his ideas.
I am not an anti croleite. I tried to come
at this from as objective a viewpoint as I could,
you know, in re membory, in starting looking at the book,
my assumption here, well, obviously you know I didn't. My
assumption really to begin with, is that his association, well
it might have existed in the World War One period,
was probably pretty limited. I was perfectly prepared to find
nothing else, and I was somewhat surprised by the amount
of material I found. And much of that is simply
when you begin looking for it. You Knowziel saying, if
you're not looking for it, you're not going to see it.
But once you understood who these people were, he was
connected to how his travels, let's say, you know, in
the years before the First World War in southern China,
which just happened to be through the main opium growing
districts where there were British and French colonial tensions, how
that was or easily could have been more than a
kind of casual trip. I mean he was. And then
you look at even in his confessions where he'll say
he's stopping in and checking in with British consulates along
the way, you know, it all becomes sort of blatantly obvious.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you a question about the World War
One period. You mentioned in the book more or less
the possibility of the Lusitania, which of course provokes World
War One to bring the US in, And I was
it's funny you said that, because I just read this
section in Carol Quigley's Tragy and Hope where he kind
of hints around that actually there's a lot of suspicion
that points to the fact that perhaps the British Admiralty
themselves sunk that ship for the purpose of provocation in propaganda.
And you mentioned a new tidbit to me that apparently
Croley helped to convince Germans that this attack that they
should provoke the US in this regard.
Speaker 3: Yeah, part of his one of the things that he
managed to insinuate himself into New York was a kind
of semi official It was official, but a thing called
that what the Germans called the propaganda Cabinet. They didn't
really give very subtle names to these things. And one
of the key figures in it was the fellow who
I had mentioned before this New York magazine The Fatherland.
It was published by a German American by the name
of George Sylvester Viereck, a very interesting guy if any
of your you know listeners want to check into Verrek's
background both in both world wars. He is an active
German agent in the US. But Verrek then connected you know,
crole connected to Viereck that then connected into other people
within the German consulate, even to the German embassy in Washington.
And one of the things to remember is that for
most of the First World War from nineteen fourteen through
the middle of nineteen seventeen, the United States is a
neutral country, at least ostensibly. The Wilson administration may have
been pro allied in its heart, but the country was neutral,
and that meant that there was a real propaganda war
underway for let's say, the hearts and minds of the
American populace and to some degree of the American government,
the efforts to sway American public opinion. And the British
have a great advantage in this because they're dealing with
the you know, they have a language advantage, and overall,
German propaganda was more successful and more subtle in its
approach than was German propaganda. Now Curley showed up. It's
kind of think he actually shows up in New York
very early in the war. He shows up on Halloween.
I love this part. He shows up on Octoberber thirty first,
nineteen fourteen, and he arrives by the way on the Lusitania.
Now that Lusitania won't meet its destruction for about another
six months, but he shows up in the fall of
nineteen fourteen. And he presents himself once he gets to
New York as an Irish nationalist, and you know which
he's not. Aliser Crowley was not Irish by any description.
I don't think I ever visited the place. But he sort
of invented this whole pseudo Irish background for himself, which,
as far as I could determined, was absolutely uninteresting and
unconvincing to any of the real Irish nationalists in New York.
They seem to have had virtually nothing to do with him.
But instead he was able to sell himself to the
Germans in New York. And then there are other reasons
why he was able to do that, as someone who
could be useful to them in providing a kind of
insight into the Anglo Saxon mentality. So one of the
things that he's trying to convince them of and seems
to have been successful, is that, well, you know, the
Americans are sort of childlike, they don't have much real
acquaintance with the rough and tumble of world politics. And
therefore there's two ways you can approach them. One is
that you can try to mollify them and to try
to you know, please them. The other is you can
just kind of scare the hell out of them, just
show them how tough you are, right, and this is
this is part of the idea that, you know, one
of the things you have to do in wars, you
just have to show your determination, and that seems to
have sort of missed with an idea that was already
sort of current in German war propaganda is that, you know,
we simply want to convince our enemas as to how
powerful and tough and ruthless we would be. And therefore,
you know, the destruction of the Lusitania, which was you know,
again very polarizing, it was a huge black eye for
the Germans. Even though this is an interesting thing. In
a review by an American court looking over the decision
was that because the Lusitania was carrying war contraband, in
other words, because its cargo holds were full of war
material l which was deliberately placed in a passenger ship.
You know, you can look at it two ways. Either
it was placed there in order to encourage an attack
upon a liner or to use the liner as a
cover for bringing in this. But then in that sense,
because it carried war material, you know, the whole submarine
sinking from a distance might be questionable, but the Germans
didn't least have some reason to attack or seize the vessel.
And this is later one of the things that the Germans,
you know, would would say that well, you know, this
was this was something that was legitimate, you know, I mean, yes,
it was a passenger liner, but it was a passenger
liner being used for military purposes. And they even struck
a medal to commemorate it, in other words, to show
that they were in fact proud of this. And this
isn't something that you can solely sort of tack up
to the influence of Crole, but Croley's influence with the
propaganda cabinet in New York. He was even invited to
their meetings and you know played into this. You know what,
the idea with any sort of good propaganda is that
you don't convince people to do something they don't want
to do or wouldn't have thought of. You convinced them
to do something they're inclined to do to begin with. Yeah,
and so he was able to provide that that push
another thing, you know, the meetings of the Propaganda Cabinet.
One of the things is that British intelligence in New
York eventually was able to tap their phone line, which
meant they had to figure out what telephone was and
they had to get someone into the room in the
building and do that. And I would somehow strongly suspect
that Alister Crowley was the person who set that up
because he was the only British operative who was there
at the meetings. He could have identified everything about it.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you this because it makes me think,
even though this is a World War One period, there's
a very similar kind of mirrored event that after the
same pattern that occurs prior to World War Two, where
in Craig Cobble's book on Ian Fleming's Secret War, as
well as Philip Knightley's book Second Oldest Profession. They both
discussed Ian Fleming and Bill Donovan basically being connected to
what's going on in New York like you're talking about,
because as I understand, it was William Stevenson, yeah, in Trepid,
who had an office in Rockefeller Center, and they were
basically involved in convincing Roosevelt and others. That it was
Donovan working at the behest of Stevenson to convince Roosevelt
and others of the need for US involvement in this war.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'd actually recommends there's another book on that whole issue.
It's by Thomas mal mhl it's called Desperate Deception British
Covert Operations in the United States nineteen thirty nine to
forty four, and it's a pretty interesting book because basically,
I FDR was from the World War One period, and
I think it's fair to say that he was pro
British thoroughly and pretty much. His administration allowed British intelligence
to do whatever it was. It damn well pleased exactly.
They could, you know, fort American neutrality laws and get
away with all kinds of things. And that was even
more so in the Second World War period. So there
was close collaboration between the two and you got Sir
William Stevenson Donovan. Another guy who's pivotal in the First War,
but who also if you look closely, crops up sort
of an auxiliary role in the Second World War is
a fellow of the name of Sir William Wiseman.
Speaker 2: Yes, and a right.
Speaker 3: Wiseman is one of these guys that you know, if
I get around to it, I want to do a
biography of because I don't think that has ever been
done thoroughly. It leaves in an article form. William Wiseman
is an interesting figure both in British intelligence and even
He later becomes a partner of the qune Lobe Investment
Bank in New York. He becomes an executive at Paramount
Pictures ing. One of the things he does at Paramount
in the thirties is that he uses his influence on
the Paramount board to encourage making films that portray the
British Empire in a positive light and discouraging the production
of films that would not portray the British Empire and
a positive light. So if you look at things like
Lives of a Bengal Lancer Gunga Din, a variety of
other films. Wiseman, both in paramount elsewhere, was using He
spent much of his career even in business, as what's
called an agent of influence, and an agent of influence
is certainly someone who has never officially connected with that.
But their job is to represent the interests of their
government through business, through social contacts, not in anything that
would be called spy. They're not really involved so much
in gathering information. They're involved in spin. I suppose that
would be one way to put it. And so you
find Wiseman was the head of the New York station
from nineteen sixteen to about nineteen nineteen of what was
then called m I one C in M I one
CE with what would be later known today as six
which by the way, for your listeners, is really the sis,
all right, the Secret Intelligence Service. And and he again,
do you have one of these things of agencies that
masquerade publicly under a name that's not their real name.
But he ran that, and he ran it very efficiently,
and he was in fact the fellow who was controlling
all of these operations at the British Consulate in New York,
and therefore ultimately is the person that Proley would have been,
if not working under then working under the auspices of
I think the guy that actually was managing Crowley in
that period was Wiseman's number two, an equally interesting character,
but the name of Norman Thwaites, and I think he
can come up with a more English name than that.
But Norman Thwaites, again was connected. He had prior pre
war connections to American newspapers. He in fact had been
the personal secretary to Joseph Pulitzer. He had worked in
the New York World. He had all kinds of connections
in the American press, and you better believe used every
one of those to push British propaganda during the war.
The other thing that's interesting about Norman Thwaites, which I
didn't realize at first, is that he had a long
and deep interest in the occult.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, and that's you know, and.
Speaker 3: Then there's that kind of connection. I mean, this is
one of the weird things that came out of the way.
One of the things I really didn't expect is that
is this crossover, this kind of intermingling of what could
be called the occult or esoteric societies and intelligence organizations,
and again it's one of those things that comes up
far too often to be just incidental or coincidental. And
to me, what that began to suggest, and something I
sort of continue in various branches of research to look at,
is the way in which not just an individual like
Proley could be used as an asset, but in which
entire organizations can be used as an asset.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Actually, my book will be coming out in a few
months and it deals with that very topic, in part
in relationship to Hollywood. So there's a lot of those
same tie ins that we find in the Hollywood sphere,
which you just pointed out with Wiseman.
Speaker 2: And there's of course, many of the.
Speaker 1: Figures in MGM were part of this pro British propaganda
set that included Hitchcock and some of the other moguls
at the top of MGM in the forties and fifties.
And of course Noel Coward would figure into this. Just
give me not no Coward, but uh, the author of
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Speaker 2: Well, what's his name? He was also British intelligence. My
mind just went blank.
Speaker 1: But the author of the Kids' stories and excuse me, yeah, yeah,
but yeah, so that these tie ins are are fascinating,
like you said, and it makes me think of the
quote that you put in the book from Curly's Moonchild novel,
which roughly hits at this point where I'm gonna paraphrase,
he says something to the fact of, you know, the
investigation of this spiritualism makes for good ground in terms
of espionage.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's one of those things that can be used.
Is it kind of cover for this? And I suppose
in a way that goes back to something I'd mentioned
earlier about what you know, why considering his his notar
notorious and even negative attributes, would he be used Well, again,
he's he's useful. And but also with something that pointed
out to me is that you know, there are there
are various kinds of professions that you can often which
are sort of perfect for a spy or someone engage
in intelligence, and those are often things like reporter, missionary,
or explorer. Okay, And what all of those have in
common is that reporters, missionaries, and explorers all can have
some ostensible reason to be somewhere that no one else
would be in remote areas, and also asking questions of
the kind so well of those are commonplace. I mean,
where would someone who is a kind of professing you know,
occultist come in. Well, one it interests they can also
go into a territory, a territory again of secret associations
that wouldn't otherwise be visible. But also somebody must put
was that, you know, the very thing that would make
someone argue that this guy couldn't possibly be a spy
because he's to this or that is precisely the thing
that recommends him for that. The idea that one would
on the surface discount this is a recommendation that that
would would be used. And and I think that went
into it as I think his reputation became something that
became a burden that he that he spent probably about
the last couple of decades of his life really trying
unsuccessfully to correct. And I have to say that while
I'm no follower of Crowley, and I you know of
his ideas, but one of the things that I sort
of emerged from from working for this is that I
think his reputation for evil was a bit overdone, sure,
and I think that was that was part of a
kind of persona and character which he carefully created and
which he enjoyed, but which is which was in many
ways a kind of character. And that's one of the
questions I was left with, is that where is the
real person at.
Speaker 2: This That's what I was going to ask you was
you know, I'm not in any.
Speaker 1: Way a scholar of Crowley. I've read a couple of
the books to get an idea of what his thought was.
And you know, I could already see, just from a
kind of a cursory glance of reading over a couple
of books, that I think he had a pension for showmanship. Yeah,
you know, that was a big part of it, and
that would tie in directly to the possibility of espionage
work and covert work and that double life, you know,
kind of I think matches up to his persona that
you talk about in the Book of saying that, you know,
him claiming to have an anarchistic mind and an aristocratic heart.
So even even in him as an individual, there's this
kind of double persona that that seems to go back
to that on the one hand, stricture in the Plymouth
Brethren sect and the fundamentalist kind of moral absurdities of
that sect, and then and then his desire to kind
of go to the pendulum swing opposite end of the
spectrum with the you know, the libertarian licentiousness of you
know what he what he wanted to oppose in his upbringing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's you know, a shrink could have a field
day with him. Yeah. And you know, you mentioned the fact,
you know, he's raised in what we would the day
call a Christian fundamentalist household, and it's immersed in this.
And you know, as much as he seemed to go
against everything that that stood for, I mean, you know,
and I think in his rejection to sort of conventional morality,
that was him, you know, simply enjoying himself in a way.
But the interesting thing is that his father, his father
died when he was fairly young, I think about the
age of ten or eleven, but he was quite close
to his father, or you know, maybe because of that
separation he idolized him in that way. But the family
was fairly wealthy. They had made their money off of
the Crowley ales, They had part of the money from
a brewing empire, and his father also invested in real estate.
But one of the things that did is that it
left his father, Edward Crowley the ability to go out
and preach. His father wanted was a preacher, he was
a lay minister. And if you look in terms of
what his son does in a different way, you know,
preaching a very different faith, you might argue one that
contradicted most of the principles. That's still what he becomes.
He sort of follows in his father's footsteps, and he
becomes a prophet. He becomes a dispenser of religious doctrine,
and is one of the things that really struck me
is that is has sort of rebellious as Crowley was.
I always had this my feeling about him is that
inside there was a a conservative English gentleman always screaming
to get out, or sort of just barely contained of that.
And I'm not even sure that that further deep down
there wasn't really a kind of Christian fundamentalist was screaming
to get out as well.
Speaker 2: So I was going to say, is the.
Speaker 1: I'm very familiar with the eschatology of that group and
what would later become kind of the Schofield Bible type
presentation of the different dispensations in terms of how there's
a kind of imminent millennialism involved in that group and
a heavy focus on John's Apocalypse of the Book of
Relation and the revelation of John. And what we see
there is that even into his later esoteric days, he
carries that fundamentalist view of even John's apocalypse to the
extent that he seems to think, presuming that he really
believes in his magical theories and whatnot, that he could
incarnate the last days, you know, that he could kind
of bring this about through his gnostic reading of John's apocalypse,
turning it into a kind of magical ritual where he
could you know, invoke this imminentized eschaton, so to speak.
And so, yeah, I think you're absolutely right that that
the he doesn't ever escape that the traditional conservative quote
unquote fundamentalist perspective, even in his later religious thought.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's assuming he believes these things.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's always the option that I've seen quotes
in some of his books where he says, you know,
you know, don't presume that all of this is real.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, that's that's always the sort of question about him,
is to what degree, you know, he's playing a role
to some degree, is his public persona, is this you know,
this this kind of devilish character that hegrees and he
enjoys that because it's shocked. I mean, he enjoyed shocking
people and horrifying people. Uh. And that that, you know,
might argue if if he had this, this kind of
idealized relationship with his father, it's pretty clear he had
a much more complicated emotional relationship with.
Speaker 1: His mother, who I think you mentioned first calls him
in a fit of fury the beast.
Speaker 3: The beast, and he and you know, his story is
he liked that, he sort of embraced it. So I
don't know, I mean, if you wanted to be very
it's far too simplistic, I guess, or it's just so
simplistic that it cuts to the heart of the whole thing,
is that how much of this stuff did he do
basically just to piss off his mother? I mean, And
what what new way can I horrify her? Because she
was still alive I think up until the First World
War period, and so you know, he had to deal
with her for for well into his adult life and
was to some degree even sort of depended upon her,
reliant upon her for money. And so that that's you know,
this is the man who idealized a father who died
early and who was you know, did things to horrify
his mother. You know, it can't be that simple, and
yet it's certainly that's that's an aspect that's there. But
you know, what happened is that in the other role
saying is that if you play a role long enough,
the role begins to play you. Yeah, And it's a
bit like I suppose in enacting, becoming type cast. You
you begin to play this role so that nobody can
think of you in any different way.
Speaker 2: But you're Gill again. You're never going to be Yes.
Speaker 3: That's it. You're never going to go and be anything else.
And you know, I guess in acting that that's kind
of a blessing and a curse. At least you've got
a recurring role you can come back to, but you're
not going to get anything else. And that's partly what
happened to him, I think, is that the wickedest man
in the world, which again someone I think Orchio bottomly
sort of attached to him, which again he sort of
embraced with Gusto. You know, he eventually found out by
the early thirties that this was also a huge limitation.
It meant that in the eyes of much of the public,
not just to mention officialdom, he was now this sort
of semi satanic character. No one was paying much attention,
and he was someone who desperately thought he had a
religious message or a spiritual message of some kind and
wanted to be paid attention to. And now found that
this had sort of limited the way that he was perceived,
and he made efforts he used his again. I mentioned
this in the book. He'd had friends in the press,
and he'd went through, particularly in the early thirties, this
effort to try to reconstruct himself. I suppose in the
eyes of the British public it was not successful. It
wasn't successful because there was so much bad publicity that
had come before that he had seemed to sort of
immerse himself. He was never able to watch that stink
off of himself. And the other thing is that that's
what people wanted to believe. Uh. And you know that's
one of the things that in in my work here
and elsewhere, that yeah, it's it's it's a very powerful thing.
I guess I could give you an example for the
other person I've written on Sidney Riley. There are lots
of story, you know. There's there's the whole Sam Neil
portrayal of Sydney Riley. And I hate to say it,
the real Sidney Orriley was absolutely nothing like Sam Neil.
All right, Uh, didn't look like him, didn't sound like him. Okay,
I mean that that's it. That is a great portrayal,
but it has nothing to do with the real person
or the other one. I think that you know, because
you were interested in Fleming and Bond, you'll find this
the constantly repeated mantra that Sidney Riley was some sort
of model for James Bond. Again, there's really not much
connection between the two. In fact, there's there's no connection
between the two at all, and he's not really a model.
But that's been so repeated so often that it is
absolutely feudle to argue against it. People will still believe that,
I think, no matter what you say. Another thing about
Riley is the idea which has been developed through the miniseries,
through most of the things written on him, even things
that I have written, is that he of course is
whether or not he was a model for James Bond,
he is a archetypal example of the British secret agent.
You know that he is an anti Bolshubit crusader. I
would reveal here that that is not true. That Riley,
through the latter part of his career was a Soviet
mole within British intelligence. Interesting that he never had any
fundamental loyalty to them, and then in fact spent most
of his latter years betraying them, which I think is
what a lot of the subsequent mythology about him is
to obscure. But that's I suppose another story.
Speaker 1: For another day, along the lines of the Campage five
type story.
Speaker 3: Well, it's I mean you there are all kinds of
you know in this let's say, in both the sort
of esoteric subculture and in the intelligent subculture. Everything has
sort of stood on his head. So I get maybe
to give another example of that. Kim Philby, I don't
know many of your listeners. Kim Philby was one of
the Cambridge Five, one of the arch traders in modern
British history. Kim Philby is the standard story, was recruited
by Soviet intelligence in the nineteen thirties, then rose to
very high position within six and used his position to
systematically betray British and other Western agents. And then eventually,
when he has run out his string in the early sixties,
he defects to Moscow and spends his last days there.
And this is and he's he's become this kind of
figure which many people had written elsewhere are fascinated in
because he is this archetypal trader. I mean, the question is, what,
why does someone who apparently has all the advantages that
someone could have and and and Philby didn't come from
the upper crust, but he certainly came you know, he
had advantages in terms of education, in terms of his access.
I mean, one of the ways that he was able
to rise in intelligence was who he knew that was
an you know, in the whole sort of networking hat.
And yet this man betrays everything. So you know what,
what's the explanation for Well, there's another story that doesn't
get as much, which I don't buy, but I but
I've taken into account that, well, maybe what Philby was
was really a very successful and very deeply hidden British mole.
Okay that he was he was a triple agent. That
he was someone who was a British agent who was
recruited by the Soviets. But what the Soviets never realized
is that actually he was still working for London.
Speaker 1: I think there had been a similar claim about the
Lord Rothschild that had the same situation. Worked yeah, yeah,
for British intelligence and then was he double oh maybe
he was a triple agent.
Speaker 3: Well, this is one of the things that's not unusual
to encounter. I mean again, it is something that you
know showed up in Riley. Riley's It's one de great
other works for everybody. I mean, he had connections to Germans,
he had connections to the Soviets, he had connections to
the British. He was in many ways fundamentally someone who
was just exploiting all of those contacts for his own benefit.
And that the problem with these people very often is
trying to figure out what their fundamental loyalty is.
Speaker 1: Right, even the nature of this kind of work, I think,
because it involves so much deception and compromise on the
part of the person involved, they're probably not going to have.
Speaker 2: Patriotic loyalties at a certain point.
Speaker 3: No sort of standard patriotic loyalties appear to be quite rare,
and I think in many of these characters. There's another.
This is, you know, another sort of spy I'm interested
in I've written a little bit about. Is a German spy,
a guy with the name of Kurt Yanke, who, among
other things, in his sort of you know bio, was
a US marine for a while, and then he was
an opium smuggler, and he was a saboteur. He did
all kinds of things and had a career that goes
all the way up through you know, both in the
US and then eventually into Germany, and then you know,
is at least ostensibly executed on Stalin's orders and in
nineteen forty seven. But but Yankee is another one of these
characters who works for everybody. He worked for the Soviets,
he worked for the Weimar Republic, he worked for the Nazis,
but he worked for the British. But he isn't loyal
to anyone. And he is one of these figures who
I cannot discern anything beyond his own sort of guile
and self interest, which he had loyalty. Now, going back
to Crowley, the one thing my sense of Crowley is
that he did have a fundamental loyalty. He's a little
bit different than these guys, and his fundamental loyalty was
to essentially traditional England, or to that identity, and it's
in the book. But he gives one sort of explanation
that there's these little things that I think that sometimes
reveals something about them. And he's he was once asked
by someone another British officialist, why a person like you
would possibly want to serve the king? I mean, you know,
a person like you presumably has no particular loyalty and crawl.
I'm gonna have to paraphrase this, but I get it
fairly close. He goes, you have to understand that I
don't believe is Crowley talking. I don't believe for a
minute that the German kettle is any less black than
the English pot. Okay, And in other words, my loyalty
to England isn't because I think England is morally superior
to Germany. That has nothing to do with it. He goes, No,
my loyalty is that of Bill Sike's dog. I think
he's making a Oliver Twist reference there. You know, my
loyalty is that of a dog to its master. My
master may beat me and starve me, but nevertheless, he
is my master and I love him, and that to
me was kind of revealing, because you know, what he
was saying there was that my loyalty to England isn't
based upon the idea that is that England is on
God's side. And in one of the arguments, igains that
is that if that's what it was based on, if
my loyalty to my country or anything else is based
upon it because I think it has some sort of
moral superiority, well if suddenly I find out that's not true,
then my loyalty will disappear, because my loyalty is dependent
upon what I think is the kind of essential goodness
or morality of the situation as opposed to the thing itself.
And he goes, that's not it. I'm not loyal to
England because I think that England is better than Germany
or anything else, or that I think that people running
it are morally superior. I am loyal to England because
I'm English and that's what I am. And eventually you
have to decide what you are and what side you're on.
And that's one of the things that I think that
made him in a way why he was useful, because
he did possess that fundamental loyalty.
Speaker 2: Sounds like Socrates in a way.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe they're going to get rid of Socrates
and his friends are trying to spirit him away, and
he says, look, you know, the Athenian state gave birth
to me.
Speaker 2: I'm as child, and.
Speaker 1: I'm going to die at their penal sanction, and that's
just the way that it is, and that's the most
righteous course of action.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's He's a figure, which I won't
say entirely. By the time I had finished the book that,
you know, I had found him to be an entirely
redeemed and misunderstood character. I think he is misunderstood to
some degree, but that his own actions has something to
do with it, and his reputation for evil is somewhat
theatrically exaggerated. On the other hand, I think I have
to agree. I think it may have been Dennis Wheatley
or someone else who said that the two things that
he would never do concerning Alister Crowley was len him
money or leave him alone with his children, and I
don't think I would do either one of those. He was,
you know, he was a terrible businessman. His his relationships
with women were almost always disastrous. You know that there's this,
you know, I think sometimes we read well, you know
that every woman that Alistair Crowley, you know, who was
sort of drawn into his orbit, you know, committed suicide
or went insane. That's not exactly true, but some of
them did. Some became alcoholics. His first wife and another
one did end up in Colony Hatch insane asylum, and
another one who was also an alcoholic. Well, at least
he didn't stop being an alcoholic. At least one or
two more were probably drawn in the drug addiction through
their association with him. So there was certainly nothing in
his relationship with his scarlet women that usually helped them
in any way. I think it tended to be corrosive
and pro will be destructive to them. On the other hand,
the very things that sort of attracted them to him
to begin with, the things going on in them, is
that he didn't He didn't take a well balanced, confident
woman and turned her into an alcoholic, drug addicted show.
They were pretty much halfway there to begin.
Speaker 2: With, so kind of already in the Bohemian the train was.
Speaker 3: Already pretty well off the rails. In most of the cases,
and he simply drove with that much further. You know,
it comes out of the fact, again there's Curley and
what type of women are going to be attracted to him?
And those that tended to be attracted to the wickedest
man in the world often had issues. But a lot
of the cases are really you know, pathetic and tragic.
But I somehow suspect that generally they their lives would
would have been pathetic and tragic had he not come along.
But he certainly wasn't their savior.
Speaker 1: I go ahead, Well, you've met an interesting point, kind
of touches on what you mentioned earlier in the book
you talk about, is this this curious phrase that stuck
out to me where he talks about the secret Chiefs,
which of course ties into this Blovatsky great White Brotherhood mythology,
and used to point out that he's actually.
Speaker 2: Referring to the heads of in id or in my
six perhaps.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think he was talking about the heads of
the Admiralty Intelligence, the n I D. But it's one
of those cases where he makes these little cross references.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Again, the idea that uh, you know that the study
of the occult is this great preparation for secret service work,
or that the secret chiefs you know, either are or
must be like the heads of intelligence. I don't think
those things are accidental, and I think they were based
upon his actual observations of what went on between I
think he was making and I think they're they're sort
of revealing in a way. I mean part of one
of the things that he was functioning under. I mean
one of the questions that you know certainly came up.
It was coming much to me before.
Speaker 1: Is that well, you know, if you I've been listening
to Esselter Hollywood in my interview with doctor Richard Spence
covering his book Secret Agents sixty sixty six. If you'd
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