James M. Bratkowsky - Aleister Crowley - Revolt of the Magicians

OTHER WORKS BY LON MILO DUQUETTE

ACCIDENTAL CHRIST
ANGELS, DEMONS & GODS OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM
ASK BABA LON
BOOK OF ORDINARY ORACLES
THE CHICKEN QABALAH OF RABBI LAMED BEN CLIFFORD
ENOCHIAN VISION MAGICK
THE KEY TO SOLOMONS KEY
LOW MAGICK
MAGICK OF ALEISTER CROWLEY
MY LIFE WITH THE SPIRITS
TAROT OF CEREMONIAL MAGICK
UNDERSTANDING ALEISTER CROWLEYS THOTH TAROT

LON MILO DUQUETTE & CHRISTOPHER S. HYATT, PH.D.

ALEISTER CROWLEYS ILLUSTRATED GOETIA
ENOCHIAN WORLD OF ALEISTER CROWLEY
SEX MAGICK, TANTRA AND TAROT
TABOO: SEX, RELIGION AND MAGICK

First Edition

OROBAS
PRESS

2072 Garden Lane, Suite B
Costa Mesa, California 92627-2114

Copyright 2011 by Lon Milo DuQuette and James M. Bratkowsky

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system not known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the authors, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.
For further information email: lonmilo@gmail.com.

ISBN-10: 1-45659-979-8
ISBN-13: 978-1-45659-979-9
E-Book ISBN 978-1-4392-7915-1

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2011904070

Cover by: Jason Fedusenko

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the authors imagination or are used fictionally. Although certain characters and organizations are inspired by historical events, their characters and behavior as presented in this novel are purely fictionalized. This novel is not associated with or endorsed by any organizations whatsoever.

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Love is the law, love under will.

AUTHORS DISCLAIMER

The authors wish to make it perfectly clear that this is a work of fiction a fantasy in fact. We wrote it to be interesting and thought provoking; but first and foremost we wrote it to be entertaining and fun. Many of the main characters of our story (including our protagonist, Aleister Crowley, our antagonists, MacGregor and Moina Mathers, and supporting characters, W.B. Yeats, Maude Gonne, Annie Horniman, George C. Jones, Allan Bennett, Florence Farr, Bram Stoker, and Wynn Westcott) are indeed historical characters of note who lived and breathed and populated the generic milieu in which our story takes place. Some of them, at times, may have actually interacted with each other in situations perhaps not too dissimilar to how we have presented in a few scenes of our story. That, however, is where all similarity to objective reality and empirical history concerning these individuals ends.

In the hundred years since the scenes in which most of our story unfolds these individuals and their names have become (to the small but enthusiastic subculture of the western magical tradition) legends magical archetypes fairytale caricatures bearing little or no true resemblance to the flesh-and-blood individuals. The authors are confident that the reader, having been thusly forewarned, will be able to glean truth from fantasy and enjoy this fairytale and its characters unencumbered by doubts about its historic veracity.

Lon Milo DuQuette & James M. Bratkowsky
Los Angeles, California

CONTENTS

The funeral had been the strangest any of us had ever attended. The tiny cemetery chapel was let for only an hour and stood almost empty. I counted only fifteen mourners. We were joined by three members of the press, eager to squeeze one last drop of scandalous blood from the turnip of Englands most notorious black magician. Unlike the life of our departed guest of honour, the brief ceremony was quiet and respectful. Louis Wilkerson read Hymn to Pan, my favourite of the old mans poems; three others said a few words, and then that was that. Predictably, the next days newspaper headlines couldnt have been more inaccurate or lurid:

ALEISTER CROWLEY, WORST MAN IN THE WORLD, DIES.

CREMATING GREAT BEAST DESECRATED BY BLACK MASS.

It seemed hardly a fitting goodbye to a genuine holy man, the Logos of the Aeon, Prophet of a New Age. But then, perhaps it was perfect.

I returned to London by train with Lady Harris, who invited me to stay at her home in the city for the few days that remained before I sailed back to New York. I eagerly accepted. It is not every day a Hollywood hack is invited to unpack his toothbrush at the home of the artist-wife of an influential Member of Parliament. I was especially keen to attend the lavish Curry Wake that Lady Harris was to host the next evening in honour of our departed Master. He did so love his currythe hotter the better. However, it was the guest list of this most esoteric of soirees that made my mouth waterone guest in particular. It would be perhaps my one and only chance to meet and interview the legendary film director, Sir Francis Bendick.

Bendick was one of only a handful of British film makers to resist the lure of Hollywood throughout his long and distinguished career. He was a bona fide genius who helped give birth to the industry at the turn of the century. He would go on to elevate the silent medium from inane shorts and melodramas to serious literary theatre. He wrote, directed, edited, and occasionally appeared in the films that continually reinvented the state of the art. Most remarkably, he worked his magick throughout the bloody madness called the Great War. His propaganda efforts for King and Country were irresistiblepowerful, poignant, and breathtakingly honest. For this he was knighted by George V during the exuberance of the Roaring Twentiesa time when sound was giving a voice to Bendicks genius of touching souls in a darkened theatre.

Only a handful of extraordinarily discrete individuals knew that Bendick was also a secret disciple of Aleister Crowley, and had been since 1907. He knew more about Crowley and his work than any other living human being. That he could keep such devotion a secret from his studio, his colleagues, and three wives for over forty years was a testament to godlike magical prowess. Ill health and the need for secrecy had kept him from the funeral, but nothing short of death would keep him from Lady Harriss Crowleys Curry Wake.

Bendick and I had two things in common. We were both ceremonial magicians; and we were both in the movie businesshe at the end of his glorious and historic career, and I at the beginning of mine. Meeting him and having the chance to pick his brain was the reason I asked the studio for a month off for research. He was the reason I travelled at my own expense to dreary old England in the damp December of 1947; he and my own ambition to produce a proper movie about Aleister Crowley, the man I considered the most important, the most colourful, and the most misunderstood holy man of the twentieth century. If all went well, Sir Francis Bendick would help me write it.

The Harris town home was located at Number Three Devonshire Terrace Marylebone High Street and was a testament in stone to the eccentric nature of its owners marriage. Its exterior was modest and understated, a fitting faade for a Labour Party MP. The interior was altogether different. The rooms were large and curiously warm; furnished (as if by order of the MGM prop department) with antique clich perfection. The walls, however, were bereft of the oversized and stodgy portraits of ancient ancestors and horses one might expect in such homes. Instead, they were festooned with Lady Harriss abstract paintings of mystical and Masonic themes, a few of which, I confess, I found to be nothing short of disturbing.