Book Review: Young Aleister Crowley and the Magicians’ Revolt by Lon Milo DuQuette and Jim Bratkowsky

This review appears in the new issue of Liberator, which you can download free of charge from the magazine's website.

Young Aleister Crowley and the Magicians’ Revolt

Lon Milo DuQuette and Jim Bratkowsky

Weiser Books, 2026, £14.99

The year is 1900 and a young Aleister Crowley – poet, mountaineer and Cambridge chess Blue – is keen to learn the mysteries of London’s leading occultists, but he arrives in this fashionable circle to find it riven by a power struggle. The old guard of MacGregor Mathers and his wife Moina, who were real historical figures, are being challenged by a new generation that includes W.B. Yeats, Maud Gonne and Bram Stoker.

Young Aleister Crowley and the Magicians’ Revolt began life as a screenplay, which at one time came close to being shot with the late Alan Rickman as the lead. Its frustrating history is set out in a preface and, perhaps because of that history, this novelisation sees an eminent British director describing, to a young American who is also in the movie business, the action of a film about Crowley he has long planned but is now too ill to make. This extended dialogue takes place at a wake held for Crowley after his funeral in 1947 at the Marylebone home of two more real figures, Sir Percy and Lady Frieda Harris.

Percy Harris held Harborough for the Liberals at a wartime by-election in 1916, but was defeated there two years later after his Conservative opponent received Lloyd George’s coupon. He returned to Westminster as MP for Bethnal Green South West in 1922 and represented that seat until 1945, becoming one of Sir Archibald Sinclair’s most important lieutenants. Frieda Harris, his wife, was an artist and follower of Crowley who painted his famous Thoth tarot pack. After Sir Percy’s death in 1952 she moved to a houseboat in Kashmir and made a modest income from writing and artistic projects. When Matthew Taylor (now Baron Taylor of Goss Moor), the former Liberal and Liberal Democrat MP for Truro, who was adopted as a baby, traced his birth mother, he found that Sir Percy and Lady Frieda were among his great grandparents.

But it’s not just the Liberal trivia that makes this book fun. Young Aleister Crowley and the Magicians’ Revolt, a work of fantasy that is firmly grounded in fact, paints an intriguing picture of an Edwardian London where men in wing collars and women in enormous hats believe the most extraordinary things. It’s a world not unlike the one G.K. Chesterton created in The Man Who Was Thursday.

An esoteric walk around Aleister Crowley's London

Lord Bonkers had no time for him, but Aleister Crowley has been crossing my path of late. So here's an esoteric walk across his London with John Rogers and Marco Visconti:

This walking tour weaves a web of mystery and magick through a portion of central London forever haunted by the man known as The Great Beast. Starting at Cleopatra's Needle on the Embankment we head up to Charing Cross, St Martin's Lane to Watkins Bookshop in Cecil Court which has been on the site for over 120 years. We then follow the magic thread to Henrietta Street in Covent Garden and from here drift across the Piazza to Freemasons' Hall - one of the most mysterious and beguiling locations in London. 

Our 'Crowley Crawl' takes us up Kingsway to Museum Street in Bloomsbury and the brilliant Atlantis Bookshop which "was established in 1922 by magicians, for magicians. It is the birth-place of modern witchcraft, with Gerald Gardner holding regular coven meetings in the basement of the Shop." It was also a favourite bookshop of Aleister Crowley. The final leg of our walk of mystery and magic takes us down Oxford Street, Kingley Street to Regent Street, ending at 93 Jermyn Street where Crowley lived for a period of time.

And not the reference to Frieda Harris.

John Rogers has a Patreon account to support his videos and blogs at The Lost Byway.

Finding our more about Frieda Harris and Aleister Crowley

"It's time to find out more about Frieda Harris," I wrote the other day of the woman who was the wife of one Liberal MP (Sir Percy Harris) and great grandmother of another (Matthew Taylor), an who helped fund the notorious Aleister Crowley.

A good place to starts is an article by Brianna Di Monda about Frieda and her partnership with Crowley published in Lapham's Quarterly.

She writes of Frieda's early life:

Growing up in a wealthy, middle-class family, Lady Frieda Harris was taught only the arts—drawing, music, dancing—and conversational French. Though women were benefiting from expanded opportunities in the late nineteenth century, Harris’ education prepared her only for a good marriage. It also likely readied her for a life of being a voracious autodidact. 

After she left school, her interest in mysticism—incited, perhaps, by her mother reading her light texts about Buddhism at a young age and her father’s membership in the United Grand Lodge of England (England’s governing Masonic lodge for the majority of Freemasons)—carried her far beyond her traditional schooling. She read widely about alternative belief systems and became involved in theosophy and, briefly, Christian Science.

Above all, Harris committed herself to painting, which she also used as a springboard for further spiritual involvement. As an artist, Harris exhibited her work in prominent London galleries. There are rumors that she was a co-mason, a form of Freemasonry that admits female members, for whom she painted surreal Masonic trestle boards, the graphic teaching devices of Freemasonry. Her 1926 illustrated book Winchelsea: A Legend—which chronicles Dionysus’ imagined adventures in East Sussex—also reflects her interest in classical mythology and mysticism.

And then of her marriage to Sir Percy:

When Frieda married Sir Percy Harris in 1913, her husband encouraged her continued artistic pursuits. “My wife is an artist and a good one,” he wrote in the postscript of his 1948 memoir, Forty Years In and Out of Parliament. “She takes her art seriously, in fact works at her painting seven days a week and generally twelve hours out of the twenty-four. When, however, critics discover she is my wife she is immediately written down as an amateur and accordingly disparaged.” 

Frieda in turn supported Percy’s ambitions in Parliament: she joined his election campaigns, entertained their guests, ran his household, and involved herself in politics as a militant suffragist while he advocated for progressive legislative reforms. Their marriage was built on friendship and mutual admiration, but their relationship barely survived the years Frieda threw herself into painting an improved tarot deck.

That tarot deck was painted for Crowley, whom she first met in 1936 - by then he looked nothing like the satyr in my earlier post. He proved a demanding client - you can read all about their collaboration in Di Monda's article.

Despite that:

The two remained devoted to each other until the end of Crowley’s life in 1947, and Harris was named a co-executor of his will. She hosted a wake in his honor at her home in London.

And we know that she helped fund Crowley's living expenses for a time, which is what occasioned my earlier post.

Di Monda says that by the time Crowley died, Frieda and Sir Percy maintained separate London residences, though they still socialised and took holidays together.

And finally:

After Percy’s death in 1952, Frieda moved to a houseboat in Srinagar, in Kashmir “in search of a God,” making a modest income from writing and artistic projects, such as ballet designs. In a 1958 letter to a friend, she wrote that she still longed for Crowley, “who was so damned clever and without limitations.” She died four years later.

As you would expect with someone who dealt with esoteric subjects, Frieda's art fetches high prizes - I rather covet her book on Winchelsea. But you can buy a pack of her Tarot cards for a reasonable price.

Armed with them, a headscarf and golden earrings, I shall set myself up as fortuneteller and tour the local village fetes:

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.

Matthew Taylor's great grandmother funded Aleister Crowley, 'The Wickedest Man in the World'

Liberal England takes a deep breath: Matthew Taylor - that's Baron Taylor of Goss Moor, who was Liberal and then Liberal Democrat MP for Truro and then Truro and St Austell between 1987 and 2005 - was adopted as a baby. (His adoptive parents were the screenwriter Ken Taylor and his wife.)

In 2008 Matthew traced his he traced his birth mother, Margaret Harris. She was the daughter of the prominent New Zealand businessman Sir Jack Harris, and the granddaughter of the former Liberal chief whip Sir Percy Harris.

Sir Percy sat for Harborough between 1916 and 1918, and for Bethnal Green South West between 1922 and 1945.

His wife was an artist and, as I blogged long ago, she designed a Tarot pack for Aleister Crowley, who called himself "The Beast 666". The press preferred "The Wickedest Man in the World".

Reader's voice: Of course we remember all that. So what's new?

I've come across a review of a review of a biography of Crowley on the Lion & Unicorn blog. In it, Simon Matthews writes:

In the 1920s Crowley enjoyed an income of £10 a week, approximately £2,600 now, or £135,000 p.a. Declared bankrupt in 1934 (occupation: explorer) he still managed to keep up appearances, giving talks, including one at a literary luncheon at Foyles and being paid a weekly retainer of £2 (roughly £400 now) by book illustrator Freida Harris, wife of Percy Harris, Liberal MP for Bethnal Green South West. This allowed him to reside in a serviced flat in Hanover Square.

It's time to find out more about Frieda Harris.

Aleister Crowley's Tarot deck and the Liberal Party

Embed from Getty Images

Aleister Crowley - known to the press as 'the wickedest man in the world' - was an occultist, esoteric philosopher and much else besides.

This is a card ('The Fool') from his The Thoth Tarot. That was a Tarot deck painted for him and to his instructions by Lady Frieda Harris.

She was the wife of Sir Percy Harris, Liberal MP for Harborough from 1916 to 1918 and for Bethnal Green South West from 1922 to 1945.

And in 2008 it was revealed that Matthew Taylor, then the Liberal Democrat MP for Truro and St Austell, was the great grandson of Sir Percy and Lady Frieda. Adopted as a baby, he had traced his birth mother and discovered this connection.

Matthew was first elected as a Liberal for Truro in 1987 at the by-election that followed the death of David Penhaligon.

HIs mother, rather wonderfully, heard both Matthew and Sir Percy speak in the Commons.

Nora Logan and Maud MacCarthy

Last summer I reported my discovery that Nora Logan, daughter of my hero J.W.  "Paddy" Logan, Liberal MP for Harborough  from 1891 to 1904 and 1910 to 1916, had been a suffragette and had gone to prison for her beliefs.

My original source was a debate in Hansard and the story is confirmed by her appearance (as "Norah Logan") on a Roll of Honour of Suffragette Prisoners 1905-1914 held by the Women's Library at London Metropolitan University.

So I set out to discover more about Nora Logan. It has nothing to do with the fight for women's suffrage, but I have made an interesting discovery.

The Sydney Mail for 12 February 1898 carries a story about Maud MacCarthy, a 13-year-old Australian violin prodigy who was then living and playing in England. Its writer ("Leipsic") says:

I have been privileged by her father Dr. Charles MacCarthy, to see a letter which is singularly interesting, which will grow in value year by year, and which is a perfect revelation of the writer. It is 200 pages long, this wonderful letter, arid was begun on September 2 and finished on November 5, 1897, and it is Maud MacCarthy’s record of her days during that period sent to her father. 

With the letter are three copies of a magazine, “ For Father, from the Editress.” The editress is Miss Maud MacCarthy, and the magazine is entitled “Maud’s Journal, a Monthly Magazine - Art, Literature, the Drama, &c." The imprint is “Nora Lgan, East Langton Grange, Market Harborough.” 

Miss Logan is described in the letter as “my greatest girl friend,” and she is the little daughter of the M.P. for Market Harboough. “ Maud’s Journal” is a record of Maud’s doings and views, of her visits to crncerts and picture galleries, of her little London garden, books she reads, and so on, with her views of them ... 

This is how she announces the journal to her father :- " I keep (for fun) a journal called ‘ Maud’s Journal.’ Nora Logan, my great friend, has a printing machine and prints it for me. She does not do it very regularly - in fact, though it is now nearly the middle of September, she has only done the March and April numbers."

And what happened to Maud MacCarthy? Wikipedia is your friend:

In 1905 she was forced to give up her ambitions as a concert soloist by the onset of neuritis and went to India as a companion of Annie Besant, where she studied Indian music, collecting manuscripts and instruments, learned Indian singing and also studied Indian mysticism. She returned to England in 1909 following the death of her younger brother. In 1911 she married William Mann, a fellow Theosophist and they had a daughter, Joan, in 1912. 

The marriage was short-lived, as Maud soon met and fell in love with the composer John Foulds in 1915. Despite strong opposition from family and friends, Maud and John Foulds left their respective spouses and lived together from 1918 onwards. They had two children, John Patrick (1916–2009) and Marybride (1922–1988). They finally married in 1932. She compiled the text for his World Requiem which was performed at the Albert Hall on four consecutive Armistice Nights between 1923 and 1926 ... 

In 1929, while living in the East End of London, they met a young man at a local social event whom they commonly referred to as 'The Boy'. A quiet yet powerful figure who worked at the local gas works, his real name was William (Bill) Coote. 'The Boy' almost instantaneously began to channel a group of beings known as 'The Brothers' who gave profound spiritual teachings through him for the next 26 years. 

Maud returned to India with John Foulds and William Coote in 1935 where 'The Brothers' continued their teachings through 'The Boy', making a profound impact on thousands of people in search of spiritual meaning. John Foulds died suddenly in 1939, and Maud married 'The Boy' in 1942.

She founded an ashram and published poetry under the name Tandra Devi. She took the name Swami Omananda Puri after her husband's death when she took sannyas (or renunciation of worldly life).

It was under this name that she published her autobiography of her experiences with 'The Boy' in the The Boy and the Brothers (London: Gollancz, 1959). A second book was posthumously published as Towards the Mysteries (London: Neville Spearman, 1968) which further expanded on The Brothers' teachings and message.

Maud MacCarthy died in 1967. Those interested in connections between Liberal MPs for Harborough and mysticism are referred to the career of Frieda Harris. The wife of Sir Percy Harris (who sat for Harborough between 1916 and 1918) and the great grandmother of Matthew Taylor (as was revealed a few years ago), she was a friend of Aleister Crowley and provided the designs for his Tarot deck.

Sandy Bruce-Lockhart's Liberal connections

The New Statesman website recently called me "the family historian of British politics". So I would be failing in my duty if I failed to note these connections.

Sandy Bruce-Lockhart, the Conservative politician who died on Thursday, was the great nephew of Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart. R. H. Bruce Lockhart (as he is better known) was a British agent in Russia during and after the Revolution and (or so the legend goes) was the lover of Moura Budberg. And she is Nick Clegg's great great aunt.

Better than that, according to R. H. Bruce Lockhart's Wikipedia page he was a friend of the occultist, Aleister Crowley. Crowley was also a friend of Frieda Harris (she painted a set of Tarot cards for him), the wife of Sir Percy Harris. Sir Percy was Liberal MP for Harborough 1916-8 and Bethnal Green South West 1922-45. As was recently revealed, he was also the great grandfather of Matthew Taylor, the current Lib Dem MP for Truro and St Austell.

I wrote about both the Budberg/Clegg and Harris/Taylor connections in a House Points column in March.

Matthew Taylor's great-grandfather was Liberal MP for Harborough

This has to be the story of the day - or of any day - given my love of trivial connections. Except that this one is not trivial at all.

This morning's Times revealed that Matthew Taylor, the Lib Dem MP for Truro, who was adopted as a baby, has traced his birth mother. It turns out that she is the granddaughter of Sir Percy Harris, who was a prominent Liberal MP.

Sir Percy was first elected to the Commons for Harborough at a 1916 by-election. There was an official truce between the parties, but he had to overcome strong opposition from Thomas Gibson Bowles, an Independent candidate backed by Lord Northcliffe and the Daily Mail.

Like Charles Masterman, Harris was identified with the social reform wing of the Liberal Party but remained loyal to Asquith because he did not trust Lloyd George and his machinations with the Tories. The result was the he failed to receive the Coupon in Harborough in 1918 and the seat was lost to the Tories for the first time since 1891.

Sir Percy returned to the House as MP for Bethnal Green South West in 1922 and was to hold the seat until 1945, by which time he was the last Liberal MP left in London. When the Liberals ran Tower Hamlets in the 1980s canvassers reported meeting old people who still voted Liberal "because of Sir Percy". I have also heard it suggested that beer flowed freely on election day when he was the candidate.

Matthew finds himself a member of an interesting family. Sir Percy's wife Frieda was an artist and associate of the notorious Aleister Crowley. Just as interesting is Percy's son - Matthew's grandfather - Sir Jack Harris, who is still alive at the age of 102 and has recently published his memoirs in New Zealand. I wonder if he remembers the Harborough by-election of 1916?

Families do have an amazing way of rolling back the years. In a second Times article on the story, Matthew writes of his birth mother:

She has visited us twice and when I was Liberal shadow chancellor she sat in the Commons for the first time since she watched her grandfather speak as a little girl, to see my response to the budget.

And now I understand why Lord Bonkers has always taken such an interest in Matthew's career. I wonder what other stories he has not shared with me?