Tobias Churton - Aleister Crowley: The Beast in Berlin: Art, Sex, and Magick in the Weimar Republic

I dedicate this book to Spiritual Artists
of sound and vision everywhere.
They know and understand.

ALEISTER CROWLEY

THE BEAST IN BERLIN

Yet again, Tobias Churton shows a unique ability to combine an approachable writing style with scholarly research and the result is an authoritative book on Crowley, the artist, a person who deserves to be re-assessed rather than be relegated to the dustbin of history.

SANDA MILLER, PH.D., RESEARCH FELLOW, HISTORY OF ART, SOUTHAMPTON SOLENT UNIVERSITY

Tobias Churton has done it again! Exhaustively exploring the Beasts sojourn through the kaleidoscope of cultural tumult that was the final years of the Weimar Republic, Churtons astute eye and clarity of composition provide the lucky reader with a riveting view into what was a hotbed of sex, art, and politics. Churtons gifts at conjuring a fascinating and profound study from myriad sources are in evidence as usual, painting an engaging portrait of the Magus of the Aeon and the milieu in which he moved.

FRATER PUCK, ORDO TEMPLI ORIENTISU.S. GRAND LODGE AND HOST OF THELEMA NOW!

Whether Quantum Magus, Berlin Artist, lover, or spy, Churton brings Crowley to life like no other biographer. He truly gets him... You dont so much read this book as you live it, the noisome Beast in Berlin, our own beast within. Churton brings us the first serious and comprehensive study of Crowleys remarkable Berlin period.

STEPHEN J. KING (SHIVA X0), GRAND MASTER, ORDO TEMPLI ORIENTIS

A remarkable account of Baphomet in Berlin, full of fascinating new information on Crowleys decadence and discipline as a Berlin Boy as Germany spiraled down into its apocalyptic picnic. Tobias Churton has uncovered much that is new and marvelously expands on and clarifies that which was already known. A wonderful evocation of the darkness becoming visiblea truly Manichan history.

DAVID TIBET, FOUNDER OF CURRENT 93

Aleister Crowley: The Beast in Berlin is magic! Churton opens box after box of secrets in a dazzling display of research, erudition, and insight. Aleister Crowley is revealed in all his jaw-dropping splendor, plus warts. A genius forced to suffer fools, able to transcend misfortune, an adventurer in the worlds of art and war. His wisdom is both light and deep; the book is thrilling.

VANILLA BEER, ARTIST

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Like many of us, this book is a child both of circumstance and mystery, its maturity the fruit of love and care demonstrated consistently by its close family and friends.

The immediate circumstance came in the form of a request from Fremantle-based fine art dealer and historian Robert Buratti to contribute to a catalogue designed to accompany his Aleister CrowleyThe Nightmare Paintings (Palermo Collection) exhibition in Australia in 2012. Robert enabled me to fulfill my desire to uncover more of the truth behind Aleister Crowleys OctoberNovember 1931 Porza exhibition, when seventy-three of Crowleys original paintings were exposed to Berlins public amid the last lightsif not ritesof the revolutionary Weimar Republic. My study Making an Exhibition of Himself: Aleister Crowley in Berlin 19302 ignited the fuse that exploded into Aleister Crowley: The Beast in Berlin. However, as readers will discover in the final chapter, I would be staggered to discover that the authentic seed of this book had been planted many years before, when Berlin was a coarsely divided city.

Long before Robert Burattis kind invitation to think about Crowley the Artist, Heinz Reinhoffer (a Berlin resident since escaping from Trier in the 1970s) shared my interest in the links between Berlin, Crowley, and spiritual revolution. It was Heinz who first opened a door on Berlin for me in February 1983. That Berlin, like the great city of Crowleys experience, has now all but vanished; Heinz, thankfully, has not. His pure, austere point of view on life is heartfelt, not always welcome, and not infrequently true. His soul with its special vision of nature lives in the foundations of this book.

Thanks to acquisitions editor Jon Graham at Inner Traditions, a long-forgotten seed swiftly germinated; friends gathered to help. William Breeze saw the point and warmly encouraged the project, providing rare unpublished material from the OTO archives. I had the feeling that this material had been preserved for just such a work as this, so many years in gestation. William Breeze read the manuscript, checking its accuracy without gainsaying the authors interpretation of distant events and obscure motives.

Christopher McIntosh, a resident of Bremen, with his customary modesty and generosity, brought freely to the feast his expertise in German language, history, and esotericism. I am deeply grateful for Chriss early comments on the scope of the book, for his help in researching Alvo von Alvensleben and the PORZA Associationand for his translation of Bertha Buschs letter of forgiveness and censure to Karl Germer written in 1932: one of those moments when you stop to realize fully, in the course of a biographical work, that we are privileged to witness the authentic testimony of real people, whose feelings transcend the time in which they were first felt and communicated. Biographers do not have the last word; life does.

Writing this book has been a time machine experience. Parachute me into the Berlin of 1931, and I am sure I would have no difficulty finding exactly where to go, what to look out for, and where to get a decentor indecentbed for the night! Critical in giving me such a three-dimensional, vivid sense of the times and the city has been the guidance and patient assistance offered by Frank van Lamoen, now assistant curator of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Twenty-seven years ago, when we first met, there was no department of Hermetic Studies or Western Esotericism at Amsterdam University; there was Frank van Lamoenand he worked for Joost Ritman, the Guvnor of Hermetic-Gnostic-Rosicrucian book collecting and study at Mr. Ritmans Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, Bloemstraat, Amsterdam. Frank and I first met in Amsterdam in January 1986; I called him brilliant then. No dimming of his star has occurred in the years since. Marvelous it is that mutual professional interests in Modern Art and Esotericism have brought us together again on this beautiful project: raising the Titanic of the Berlin of 193032. It was Frank who rediscovered the pictorial genius of Albin Grau in the Saturn-Gnosis journal, and much else of value to this book.

England still secretes her remarkable men and women, or makes great men and women secrete themselves. Beneath the veneer of our nation of shopkeepers exists a different picture, a spiritual body joined by veins and arteries and muscles unseen and unvalued. The media reigns over us, and it is a hard rain. Occupying his own vital place in the spiritual organism is musician, poet, Akkadian and Coptic scholar, known to the world as David Tibet, a man of distinctive and very well-informed outlook who has long seen the spark of light in the Old Sinner (Crowley). I am deeply grateful for Davids permitting me to view his own collection of Crowleys art and for allowing me to exhibit photo reproductions of the oroginals in this book. I cherish fond memories of his warm generosity when my family visited him in Hastings in October 2012, close to Crowleys last billet on Earth.