iving," but later, in a letter to
another member of the "Golden Dawn" observed: "I believe her and her
accomplices to be emissaries of a very powerful _secret occult order_
who have been trying for years to break up other Orders and especially
my work." Incidentally this lady, who proved to be a false S.D.A., ended
by starting an Order in collaboration with her husband, in which it was
said that certain rituals of the Golden Dawn were adapted to an immoral
purpose, with the result that the couple were brought to trial and
finally condemned to penal servitude.

Whether owing to this disturbing experience, or because, as Crowley
declared, he had "imprudently attracted to himself forces of evil too
great and terrible for him to withstand, presumably Abramelin demons,"
Mathers' reason began to totter. This then was the situation at the time
of his rupture with the Order, and the dramatic incident referred to was
the sudden appearance of Crowley in London, who, whether acting as
Mathers' envoy or on his own initiative, broke into the premises of the
Order, with a black mask over his face, a plaid shawl thrown over his
shoulders, an enormous gold (or gilt) cross on his breast, and a dagger
at his side, for the purpose of taking over possession. This attempt was
baffled with the prosaic aid of the police and Crowley was expelled from
the Order. Eventually, however, he succeeded in obtaining possession of
some of the rituals and other documents of the Golden Dawn, which he
proceeded to publish in the organ of a new Order of his own. This
magazine, containing a mixture of debased Cabalism and vulgar
blasphemies, interspersed with panegyrics on haschish--for Crowley
combined with sexual perversion an addiction to drugs--which might
appear to express only the ravings of a maniac. But eccentricity has
often provided the best cloak for dark designs, and the outbreak of war
proved that there was a method in the madness of the man whom the
authorities persisted in regarding merely as an irresponsible degenerate
of a non-political kind. To quote the press report of his exploits after
this date:

In November 1914 Crowley went to the United States, where he
entered into close relations with the pro-German propagandists. He
edited the New York _International_, a German propagandist paper
run by the notorious George Silvester Viereck, and published, among
other things, an obscene attack on the King and a glorifica