“… When the French poet Charles Baudelaire wrote “There is then a sublime country where bread is called cake, and is so rare a delicacy that it may beget war between brothers”, he was most certainly referring to the growing rivalry amongst a couple of newbie Crowley bibliophiles. Although “Tool’s” early European tours gave Danny (and I) a great opportunity to hunt for the works of the Beast outside of the USA, with the exception of London, there was usually but one of these ‘delicacies’ to be had in any given foreign city visited. Case in point: On a day off in Paris, after visiting a few tourist attractions (besides diesel fumes, rotting vegetables, and exotic spices), we decided to check the efficacy of a recently prepared Abramelin square that had been soaked in ‘pomegranate’ juice (what did you expect – a plenteous rich Elixir Rubeus?). Between sudsy glasses of Kronenbourg 1664 in sun-dappled cafes and pavement brasseries, we braved pigeons, bicycles, ham & cheese baguettes and children licking kaleidoscopic sugar-sticks on the noisy, crowded boulevards, all the while keeping our eyes peeled for any promising occult bookshops. Neither the reek of sewers nor the transitory scent of perfume was going to prevent us from scoring on that hot late afternoon. Actually, with a little diabolical assistance (the substitute El. Rub.), I thought we had a pretty good chance of a significant find in this city of hermetic preoccupations and former masses of vain observance. What with the scarlet and sable of dabblers in the occult arts, the sulphurous aureole of poisoned chalices, the blood and honey of slain black lambs, and centuries of sacrilege and heresy, if not goety from mold-empurpled leaves, surely there’d at least be a copy of “Little Poems in Prose.”
Besides, everyone knows that it was in a Paris hotel in the late 1920s that Crowley and his assistant (his magical son, “McAleister”) performed a ritual to summon the satyr-like deity Pan. During that long night, screams, howls, and loud bangs terrorized certain followers of the Beast who were awaiting the outcome of the dangerous rite in the room below. With the arrival of dawn, these junior disciples knocked repeatedly on the bolted door. After getting no answer, they had little choice but to break it down. Entering the destroyed makeshift temple, they were horrified to find the naked body of McAleister lying dead on the floor. Slumped in the corner was Crowley, mumbling incoherently, his magical robe having been slashed to pieces. It would take six months of being confined to a private lunatic asylum before he recovered any semblance of sanity. At least that’s how the “gibbering wreck” story is usually told, having been recounted in numerous publications and bandied about on the Internet for years (with further embellishments). Unfortunately, its origin is the Dennis Wheatley novel, The Devil and All His Works, and is fairly typical of the Crowley legend as is swallowed by the gullible. Truth be known, this ritual didn’t even happen in a Paris hotel. It was in the boudoir of a lady-friend. McAleister was only playing possum, and it took Crowley less than two weeks to recover while in the metal hospital (for which he didn’t pay the bill).
What isn’t a sensationalistic invention, however, is that several Crowley titles were printed in Paris, including “too hot to handle” works of pornographic verse like “Snowdrops from a Curate’s Garden”, the birthday ode lampoon of Queen Alexandra (Shanghai!), and his magnum opus, “Magick In Theory And Practice.” And as you might recall, Danny and I were on a quest to find one of these (having stopped for another foamy amber treasure under one of those quaint café umbrellas). After an hour or so without any likely prospects, finally there appeared on the arcane horizon a bookshop of possible sufficient ‘blackness’ (despite dingy, many-colored calico curtains). With my mouth tasting of noxious tar wagons and tropical azure, I nevertheless had images of the Green Lion swallowing the sun as I entered and walked across the polished wooden floor. What gold transmuted from straw would we find here? What spirit of a rose from its ashes? What violet medicine of medals distilled via spagyric apparatuses?
Although the proprietor didn’t wear a Phrygian cap, Sanka, and a tourmaline ring seemed promising. Let ’s have a look at those worm-eaten grimoires and dusty alchemical tracts – their moldering pages copiously illustrated with a mythical zoology, abstruse glyphs, and occult heraldry. Where were the peacock tails, emblematic paintings of the mystic marriage/conjunctio, and resplendent phoenixes? Further exploration of the place revealed no alchemical menagerie. Not even a tiny back room containing the revolving wheel of the zodiac, celestial-astral liquid in copper vessels, flaming athanors, cucurbites, or the prism of sorcerer’s bottles filled with the frozen flow of silver. Our pockets were filled with francs and bezants, and we damn near had the effluvium of Babalon tucked in our wallets. If nothing else, that ought to put us in a privileged position in the multiverse. Wait a minute. We weren’t in pursuit of hidden knowledge. We were after rare Crowley first editions. Undaunted, it was up the scala philosophorum (nothing being at eye level) to peruse antique tomes of esotericism. What the hell? They were in French. Discovering the supreme secret through a book’s opacities was one thing, but in French!
With all this unreadable arcana (even “the Language of the Birds” would have been preferable), we thought about heading to a store across the street to see if there might be anything of interest among the new age schmaltz. But then Danny spotted something in a locked glass case. Alas! Lying there was a grubby copy of Crowley’s 1906 Gargoyles. With its blue/grey cloth boards stamped in red, this wasn’t one of the scarcer issues printed on vellum, but being limited to only 300 copies, it was still considerably rare. As we tried to determine the price, the owner uttered something in broken English about “metrical composition.” When Danny asked for my opinion, all I could think to say was something to the effect that “In common with non-waterspout grotesques, it was only of decorative usefulness.” Of course, with its “Strangely Wrought Images of Life and Death” on pages with untrimmed edges, I desperately wanted this ‘ordinary’ edition for myself. At the current exchange rate, the price was the equivalent of $650.00 in US dollars. Even so, Danny decided to buy it – francs being merely ‘Monopoly’ money.
How synchronistic was this, though? Earlier, we had entered the great portal of what Victor Hugo called “that page of a conjuring book written in stone.” That’s right – Euro Disney. Sacrebleu! No, judging by the gilded statues blackened with candle-grease, we’d actually taken the Metro to Notre Dame Cathedral – that magnificent example of medieval architecture whose flamboyant Gothic imagery, according to some, openly displays the secrets of alchemy’s Great Work. Though not that well versed in the phonetic cabala of the mysterious Fulcanelli, or of the esoteric interpretation of others with a profound knowledge of alchemical lore, we’d spent the better part of the day admiring its sculptured allegorical representations of hermetic enigmas. Along with curious medallions ornamenting the Central Porch, there were stained-glass windows whose multicolored facets symbolically transmitted the science of energy transformation. And with the pillars, buttresses, spires, arcades, and tympanum, were Byzantine dragons, tarasques, chimeras, salamanders, and menacing gargoyles – gargoyles perched over the imposing edifice and peering down from grey slate rooftops. Other than stopping for a Royal without cheese and several beers, we’d come directly from a structure encrusted with a bewildering array of grotesques to the Parisian occult bookshop with its rare copy of Crowley’s Gargoyles. Synchronistic, indeed, wouldn’t you say?
Although I was extremely confident about finding one of the 2 copies that were bound in red morocco, the worst thing about not using my Visa to purchase the copy of Gargoyles was that, later that evening, while at nightclub in the sparkling Champs-Elysees, my card was charged close to $1,400.00 for a single bottle of “Old Viscosity.” (What did you expect, Montrachet or Richebourg?). Next time, if I want to get ripped off along with others of the tourist variety, I’m going to stick to crenellated boutiques, karaoke dungeons, or mingling with hermetists at the golden arches of McDonald’s. And instead of pomegranate juice, occultly permeating my Abramelin talisman will be the menstruum of the lunar current. Oh well, as we say in L.A., C’est La Vie…”
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