I, Crowley: Almost the Last Confession of the Beast
by Snoo Wilson
An exclusive extract

Scabrous, irreverent, arrogant, ridiculous, charming, I, Crowley is the most fun you’ll have with a British novel all year. Forget state-of-the-relationship addresses and post-colonial self-abuse, it’s a natural for the thinking man’s Booker Prize.

Giles’ three aunts had a ghostly parallel with my own three aunts, who the influenza epidemic carried off at the end of the Great War: nothing showed more clearly the passage of Neptune, that anaesthetic, dreaming transmuter into fiery Leo than the fact that the epidemic carried off more people than had been killed in the whole of the war. The three aunts left me legacies, which I used to secure the lease on the Abbey, but there was nothing left after that, and in spite of Frank’s scorn, I kept thinking about Collins, the book publishers, and the idea for a novel.

I confess it is very difficult for me to get myself to the idea of ‘selling’ anything. My father sold beer, and beer engines, but being a teetotaller himself, he believed that drinkers went to hell. Thus the trade, though lucrative, was quite separate from the rest of his thinking. Not so the hapless writer, who has to spin his wares from the very Founts of his Being. I came down from Cambridge a young man who had the misfortune of never having had to count his wealth: suffice it to say it would have bought me over seven million IX° with the famed ‘tuppeny uprights’, ladies of the night who famously plied their cutprice trade round the unlit corners under Waterloo Bridge. I had enough in other words, a lifetime of love. Naturally I threw this largesse away, and then, when it was gone, I did what any Beings have done whose message is for mankind. I looked to others to support me.

When I returned to Europe at the end of the Great War, Neptune smiled on me -- never trust that watery smile! -- my aunts were carried off, one by one, as peremptorily as if they had been in the fifth act of a Jacobean tragedy. Neptune in Leo accomplished what Graf Von Zeppelin had failed to do, and lo, all my aunts were dust.

It left me a little money, and I immediately applied it to The Work, but I have never had any experience of keeping money -- in fact, since I am Ipsissimus and a magus (against my better will and judgement I have to say) it is fitting that my followers should provide the wherewithal. But -- and it is a large but -- when one’s followers are such a wretched crew, 80 in the end, it falls to the most able to be breadwinners.

It was clear I would have to create an impression in the book trade, in order to secure a realistic advance. In order to make myself known to the world of commercial fiction, it was necessary to impress them with a magickal event. Being magickal it would also contain the core of my being, which had complete contempt for their flaccid outpourings. I woke up one morning with the perfect stratagem that would gain me the full attention of the commercial publishing world. I would make all their books disappear.

My planned formed, I went into one of the many bookshops in the Charing Cross Road. The shop was stuffed, floor-to-ceiling with novels. There was a hunchbacked, goggle-eyed creature behind a desk, with glasses which made his eyes look like a newborn piglet’s. He was slowly selling whatever drivel the public were persuaded to purchase from the packed shelves. But the day had hardly begun and there was no one else in the shop.

‘I’m Aleister Crowley’ I announced, dispensing with Thelemic greetings, to obvious infidels. ‘You will have heard of me.’ Piglet-eyes snuffled, and moved some brown wrapping paper and bits of string around his desk.

‘Ah yes. You’re the magician.’

‘I am indeed a magician. A very good one.’ I said.

Piglet-eyes cocked his head dreamily. If I could hypnotise anyone, I could do it to this specimen of humanity.

Pretending to check the time, I started to swing my fob-watch on the end of its chain. I have the trick of hypnosis -- it is no more, I could teach anyone with competence the trade in five minutes. I instinctively made the watch swing at the rate his brain required for complete subjection to my authority.

‘I suggest you would like to see a trick’ I said. Piglet-eyes grunted. He had fallen so fast, so far into my power that it was extremely amusing.

‘You will not remember this watch, but you will remember what Aleister Crowley did when he came into your shop.’

‘Aw’right’ Piglet-eyes grunted. He really did grunt. Like Circe, I could turn humans into swine.

‘Now when I click my fingers once, all the books on your shelves are going to disappear.’ I clicked my fingers once, and Piglet-eyes stopped grunting, and looked round in amazement. He could see his shelves bare. The fact that I knew they were still groaning with Arnold Bennett, H. G.Wells, that windbag G. B.Shaw, and other literary mountebanks made no difference. Under my spell, he suddenly could not see them.

‘Can you see any books?’ I asked.

‘No I can’t.’ He became worried. ‘You’ve made them disappear.’

‘Yes I’ve taken them away.’ Piglet-eyes started to riffle in his papers.

‘Did I give you a receipt?’ He asked, worried.

‘Stop.’ I used the voice of command.’ When I click my fingers again, you are going to wake up, and all your books will be here. ‘ Piglet-eyes looked at me. His face was a mask of incomprehension and misgiving. I clicked my fingers, and Piglet-eyes’ shoulders visibly relaxed as his books swam into view again and settled on the shelves, just as a customer opened the door.

‘Don’t forget to tell everyone what happened’ I said. ‘Oh -- and tell them as well, I’ve given you a new name -- ‘Little Porker’.

In a week, the story of my cleaning out the complete contents of the book trade, and then restoring it was all over London. In a month, I had my commission for a novel entitled Diary of a Drug Fiend. Sustained by cocaine, I was able to dictate to Leah at the rate of 5,000 words a day: mindful of the public execration of The Rainbow I did not touch on any IX° Operations. This was not from any false modesty. Lawrence’s last novels, trash no doubt are banned for the wrong reasons, but banned all the same. In the roaring twenties, I could not afford the penalties of mounting an full frontal assault on sexual hypocrisy. I thought it would be tactical to take the money, and use the book for an advertisement for my own Abbey, where those who wished to learn more about Thelema could visit. How utterly, utterly wrong I was. After a promising start the book was banned, and Collins have never risked reissuing it.

© Snoo Wilson and Mandrake, 1997. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission.

I, CROWLEY: SOFTCOVER, 252 pages, ISBN: 1869928-490, £9.99 can be ordered directly from Mandrake, at P.O. Box 250, Oxford OX1 1AP (UK).