chapter 23 Mr. Crowley’s Honeymoon
MR. CROWLEY’S HONEYMOON
“Sir Francis, this is certainly a spectacular climax to the film. But we’re still left without a clue as to how and why Crowley will in the future become so infamous and influential?
We don’t have a hint as to why this colorful character might someday be seriously hailed as the Prophet of the New Aeon. ”
“Milo, my boy. Forty-five years of magical adventures lie ahead of Crowley before death brings down the curtain. The best we can hope for with our fairy tale is to properly bring our audience to the threshold of those answers. But I think you’ll enjoy the ending. Are you ready?”
“Of course, sir.”
“Good. Let’s begin with an exterior day shot of a lush tropical garden in Kandy, Ceylon. The sweet sounds of exotic birds fill the air. Crowley and Allan Bennett sit in meditation like side-by-side Buddhas. Bennett wears an ochre robe. Without opening his eyes, he speaks first.”
“I have taken the name Bhikku Ananda Metteya. It means ‘Bliss of loving kindness.’”
“Oh, Allan! Don’t make me ill.”
“I thought you’d say something like that, little brother.”
Crowley heaves a heavy sigh. “The whole Mathers thing was really discouraging. I’m not sure it really happened. I truly never intended to bring about the Golden Dawn’s disintegration. My initiations were real. The magic was real. If not for the people, everything would have been perfect!”
“Obviously it was something that needed to happen, and you needed to do it. I always suspected you are . . .” Bennett falls silent.
“In any case, Mr. Bliss of loving kindness, I’m chucking the world of magic and getting myself a normal life—golf, big game hunting, maybe write a cookbook or a novel, or more pornography.”
“Why don’t you stay here and—”
“And what? Give up things all day? I’m afraid you’re too much a holy man for me, Mr. Bliss of loving kindness. No, I’m going to Scotland to play some golf with my pal Gerald Kelly.”
“Be careful, little brother, or you’ll end up married.”
“That, my friend, will never happen to Aleister Crowley.”
“I do!” Crowley’s voice is loud and confident. The Scottish magistrate’s tiny office is empty except for himself, his wife, Crowley, and a beautiful young woman.
“And do you, Rose Edith Kelly, take Edward Alexander Crowley to be your lawfully wedded husband?”
“I do.”
Crowley and his bride exit the office arm in arm. Crowley looks at his watch. “Your train to London doesn’t leave for five hours, my dear. Let’s have dinner and a drink before we never see each other again.”
An hour later, the newlyweds find themselves in the dining room of Crowley’s hotel. He and Rose are both half drunk.
Rose refills Crowley’s glass with wine, then refills her own. She raises her glass to toast. “To my gallant husband, Mr. Edward Alexander Crowley—my knight in shining armor, who rescued this damsel from a forced marriage to a rich, boring American old enough to be her grandfather.”
They drink. Then it’s Crowley’s turn to toast. “To Rose, the sister of my good friend Gerald, who, now that she’s a properly married woman, can move to London and take as many lovers as her bed can hold [burp] unencumbered by her family or a jealous husband.”
They drink. Rose smiles playfully across the table.
“This is really very sweet of you, Aleister. I don’t know any other man who would marry a near stranger just to free her.”
“Call it a magical gesture.” Crowley gazes back across the table and sees, as if for the first time, Rose’s beautiful face. “You are a very lovely woman, Mrs. Crowley.”
Their eyes lock. Rose takes a sip of wine. “You know, dear husband, it would be uncourteous for a wife not to reward such a selfless gesture.”
Four hours later, Rose lies spent on top of Crowley’s naked body. Both are looking very satisfied.
“I believe you’ve missed your train, Mrs. Crowley.”
Rose kisses his chin. “I never want to go anywhere without you.”
Crowley confesses, “I can’t believe I’m saying this . . . but I never want you to leave.”
He rolls over on top of her and kisses her and bites her lip as he once did to Mrs. Horatio. Rose seems to enjoy it.
“Oh! The things I’ll show you. The places we’ll go. We’ll honeymoon around the world. I’ll ravage you under every exotic moon on the planet!” They kiss. “My god, Rose! I think you could make me prefer women!”
“Make way! Make way!”
A huge, muscular black man pushes through the crowded streets of Cairo. He wears a turban and is stripped to the waist. His oiled muscles glisten in the sun. He marches before an open carriage where sit Rose and Crowley. “Make way! Make way for Prince Chaio Khan and the Princess Ourada.”
Rose is a little embarrassed. “Really, darling.”
Crowley teases her. “It’s always wise to maintain a low profile while traveling abroad. Wait until you see where we’re sleeping tonight.”
Two Arab guides relax and chat before the campfire near the Giza Pyramid complex. Four camels rest nearby; one shakes its head slightly, and we hear tinkling bells.
“He calls himself Prince Chaio Khan—the great beast, and he calls his woman Princess Ourada—the Rose,” says one of the guides. They both laugh.
“Crazy English,” he continues. “He thinks they will spend the night inside.” He stretches out as if to try to sleep.
His partner adds, “They will come out any moment now.” They laugh again.
Deep inside the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid, Rose looks bored and a little uneasy. She holds a small candle and paces back and forth around the open sarcophagus. Crowley is lying unseen inside.
She tries to say something, but the echo is distractingly loud. She quiets her voice a bit. “Really, darling, must we stay in here all night? It’s not exactly romantic.”
Crowley’s voice rises from within the sarcophagus. “What could possibly be more romantic? How many Kelly women can say they honeymooned in the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid? Humor me, darling. It’s only a few hours before dawn . . . I want to dream here.”
“Can’t we go back to the hotel and dream?”
Still unseen inside the sarcophagus, Crowley teases her. “Don’t tell me my Princess Ourada is a hot-house flower. This is a very special place, you know. Magicians say this pyramid is the navel of the universe. Egyptian priests used to initiate candidates right here in this chamber.
“They sealed them for days in this very sarcophagus. When they finally raised the lid, the poor bugger inside was dead, or mad as a hatter . . . or . . .”
“Or what?” Rose asks with a tinge of fear in her voice.
Crowley quickly sits up and finds himself face to face with Rose, who now stands very near the edge of the sarcophagus. Crowley is wearing a loose and poorly wrapped turban. “Or . . . he emerged more than human!”
Rose is actually startled. She jumps back a bit, nearly dropping the candle. She bonks Crowley on the forehead with the palm of her hand, loosening his turban even more.
“More than human? Don’t be absurd! Let’s leave this place.”
“Not absurd at all,” he answers as he attempts to straighten his turban. “No one is truly human unless he’s striving to be more than human.”
Crowley bounds out of the sarcophagus. He takes the candle from Rose and places it on the edge.
His turban completely unravels and falls down over his face and shoulders.
He removes it and clumsily wraps it around her neck like a scarf.
He then removes his jacket and tenderly puts it over her shoulders. They kiss.
She turns around to allow her husband to embrace her from behind. She smiles a somewhat irritated smile but cuddles cozily in his arms.
She pouts. “You and your magic. You say you’re done with it, but it’s all you talk about. Why don’t you wave your wand and make time move faster so we can leave this dreadful place?”
Crowley smiles and grinds his body provocatively against her backside. “I am waving my wand.” He kisses her neck.
She closes her eyes with pleasure. He then bites her on the neck.
“Ouch! Damn you and your serpent kisses.” Still enclosed in his arms she turns around to face him.
“No, really. If you’re really a magician, show me something magical besides your wand.
Entertain your bride with some magic. Show me those fairies you told me about.
Show me those fairies that live in the air. ”
“Sylphs. They’re called sylphs. They’re not fairies, and they don’t live in the air. You and I live in the air. The sylphs are the spirits of the air itself. They’re elementals. Undines are water elementals, Salamanders are—”
She closes his mouth with a kiss. “You can’t, can you!? Such things don’t exist at all.”
He becomes irritated. He releases her and steps to the chamber entrance where his walking stick and two knapsacks can almost be seen in the candle light.
“Sylphs are as real as the air we breathe.” He picks up his walking stick as if he were preparing to leave.
“I don’t believe in your magic,” Rose tells him.
“I don’t believe in magic either,” Crowley says sadly.
“What do you believe in?”
He turns to face her and glances for a moment at the tiny candle on the edge of the sarcophagus. He approaches Rose but stops about six feet away from her.
“I believe in Myself. I’m a magician. And because I’m a magician, everything I do is magic.”
Raising his walking stick he pushes the candle into the sarcophagus plunging the chamber into absolute darkness.
“Please . . . darling . . .” Rose pleads. “I was only—”
“Don’t move,” Crowley tells her. He is in deadly earnest.
“I am.” His words echo, and a dim blue light suddenly illuminates his forehead.
Despite the darkness, Rose can actually see that he is holding his walking stick vertically in his right hand.
It has become his magic wand. He holds it pressed against his forehead.
Keeping the wand vertical, he draws his hand down to his groin level.
The light follows—illuminating his body with a vertical line.
“The Kingdom . . .”