Bidspirit auction | CROWLEY ALEISTER: (1875-1947)

CROWLEY ALEISTER: (1875-1947) - CROWLEY ALEISTER: (1875-1947) English occultist, ceremonial magician & poet, a notorious figure whom, during his lifetime, was denounced in the popular press as ´the wickedest man in the world´. A rare A.L.S., Aleister Crowley , one page, 4to, Washington D.C., 10th May n.y. (1917) to ' My dear Mines ', on letterhead featuring the printed text ' Autograph vs. Holograph Reason indicated below '. Crowley writes a somewhat intriguing letter, most likely part of a subterfuge, in full, ' Could you sneak this letter (no longer present) into the post, do you think? It would be very useful to me if you could. I'll be here till Tuesday next; so if you want me, or to meet anybody, 'phone. '. The present letter would therefore appear to be a covering letter, originally accompanied by another, which it would seem Crowley was asking his correspondent to mail on his behalf, presumably so that the recipient would assume, from the postmark, that Crowley was somewhere entirely different to Washington. Some very minor staining at the head of the page, caused by light remnants of previous mounting to the verso, otherwise VG The curiously printed letterhead ('autograph' and 'holograph' essentially being the same) originates from an office that Crowley shared with Henry Stuart Clifford, a businessman who had employed Crowley to edit A Prophet in His Own Country: Being the Letters of Stuart X (1916). Given Clifford's eccentric character and the fact that he was a prolific letter writer, it would appear that the printed caption was his own, and that Crowley simply borrowed a sheet of the notepaper. Crowley spent the whole of World War I in America working as a Double Agent, employed by British Intelligence services to infiltrate and undermine Germany's operation in New York.