Leah Hirsig photographed soon after taking
the magical name Alostrael in 1919
O ma Lady Babalon / O ma beauté, ma divine ...
I. Opening Remarks
As we discussed in part one of this post, the goddess Babalon features prominently in Aleister Crowley's philosophy, magical practice, and, indeed, his love life; for Babalon can conveniently take the human form of an attractive young harlot and these Scarlet Women are naturally inclined to seek him out as the (one and only) living embodiment of The Great Beast as their lover [1].
Crowley designated several of his mistresses with the title Scarlet Woman whom, he believed, would play a crucial role in helping him invoke the coming age known as the Aeon of Horus (whilst also satisfying his own perverse sexual appetites).
As Crowley writes in The Book of Thoth (1944):
"She rides astride the Beast; in her left hand she holds the reins, representing the passion which unites them. In her right she holds aloft the cup, the Holy Grail aflame with love and death. In this cup are mingled the elements of the sacrament of the Aeon". [2]
Just to be clear: when Crowley refers to the elements of the sacrement, he is referring either to a mixture of female sexual fluids and semen, or, alternatively, menstrual blood (the effluvium of Babalon) and semen; hygrophilia is arguably the kinky secret at the heart of sex magick.
II. Leah Hirsig (1883 - 1975)
Leah Hirsig is arguably the most famous of Crowley's Scarlet Women.
In part, that's because she stood by (and put up with) Crowley for the longest period of time compared to the others and in part it's also because she was the one who kept a detailed written record of her experiences in the role and her relationship with him [3].
Hirsig was born in Switzerland, but her family moved to the United States when she was two-years-old and so was raised in NYC. Interested in occultism from an early age, she decided in the spring of 1918 to pay a visit to the Beast himself who was at that time living in Greenwich Village.
The two felt an immediate connection upon meeting and before long he was not only painting portraits of Hirsig - often as a dead soul, at her request (as seen in the photo above) - but had decided to consecrate Leah as his new Scarlet Woman with the magickal name Alostrael. This name, meaning the womb of God, indicated how Crowley saw her role developing (i.e., as a broodmare) [4].
Hirsig certainly embraced this new role with gusto, writing in her diary:
I dedicate myself wholly to The Great Work. I will work for
wickedness, I will kill my heart, I will be shameless before all men, I
will freely prostitute my body to all creatures.
Part of killing her own heart presumably meant learning to forget about her old life and agreeing to move with Crowley to Sicily where they established the Abbey of Thelema in April 1920, in a rented house [5]. More than just a pretty face, Sister Alostrael was instrumental in helping Crowley organise life at the Abbey and help him reach a deeper understanding of the way of the gods.
Crowley, who rarely acknowledged the contribution of others, confessed that Hirsig had rescued him from a period of depression and self-doubt, enabling him to see that it was vital not to "look to the dead past, or gamble with the unformed future" but live in the actual present and be "wholly absorbed in The Great Work" [6].
When other members of Crowley's magickal family proved themselves not up to the mark by dying [7], Leah remained 100% devoted to him and to her desire for a life that transgressed all boundaries; a desire which led her, for example, into an unsuccessful attempt to copulate with a he-goat as part of an ancient pagan ritual.
Not even Crowley's financial problems and poor health could dent her faith in him, although she did note in her diary that his rasping voice following surgery to try and alleviate his acute asthma symptoms got on her nerves to the point that she wanted to scream.
Again, so touched was Crowley by her committment to the Thelemic cause and personal loyalty to him, that he wrote a charming love poem entitled 'Leah Sublime' in her honour: click here. She was, it seemed, the perfect partner and the most crimson coloured of all his Scarlet Women.
Nevertheless, Crowley being Crowley, by the summer of 1924 he was growing tired of Leah and felt it was time to move on and find himself a new woman for the role ... enter Dorothy Olsen [8].
Despite Crowley's terminating their romantic relationship and then essentially abandoning her [9], Hirsig continued with her magickal studies and practices, deciding that if she were no longer able to be consort of The Great Beast, she would make herself the Bride of Chaos instead. And just to prove that she bore Crowley no ill will, Hirsig readily agreed to serve as his secretary the following year.
However, in 1928 her older sister Alma published an amusing exposé of the American Tantric occultist Pierre Bernard, of whom she had been a keen follower, taking the opportunity also to shit on Crowley [10]. One suspects that Leah was secretly complicit in this, as she later rejected Crowley's status as a prophet and brought his Beasthood into question (albeit whilst still affirming the Law of Thelema).
Back in the United States, married and with a son, Hirsig resumed her earlier career as a schoolteacher and some say she even converted to Roman Catholicism. Whatever the truth of this, she lived a long (and one hopes happy) life, before dying in Switzerland, aged 91, in 1975.
Whatever one might think of Miss Hirsig, at some level one has to love her and admit she was an extraordinary woman.
Portrait of Leah Hirsig by Linda Macfarlane
(Acrylic on canvas board 24 x 25 in.)
Notes
[1] In The Law is for All - a series of commentaries upon The Book of the Law - Crowley is at pains to point out that whilst he alone is The Great Beast incarnate, the Scarlet Woman is a role that can be played by any young lovely he cares to designate as such and is thus replaceable as need
arises. This suggests, does it not, that male chauvinism plays a part in Thelema and that sexism is central to sex magick.
[2] Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth (Ordo Templi Orientis, 1944). This text is a short essay on the Egyptian tarot and was first published in The Equinox Vol. III, number 5. The so-called Thoth Tarot was a deck conceived by Crowley and painted by Lady Frieda Harris between 1938 and 1943. Crowley would sometimes refer to Leah Hirsig (presumably with affection) as the Ape of Thoth.
The lines quoted appear in Crowley's description of the card Lust (associated with the Thelemic concept of Babalon) and it highlights the the merging of the carnal and spiritual aspects of the Scarlet Woman.
[3] See for example The Magical Record of the Scarlet Woman (1924). This text by Hirsig gives a unique insight into her life with Crowley at the Abbey of Thelema. It was serialised over four issues of The Scarlet Letter (a journal published by the Scarlet Woman Lodge of the Ordo Templi Orientis) in 1993-95: click here.
[4] Hirsig had a daughter with Crowley, born in January 1920, whom they nicknamed Poupée. Sadly, she died nine months later in October of that year.
[5] The Abbey of Thelema founded by Aleister Crowley and Leah Hirsig in Cefalù
(Sicily, Italy) in 1920 was intended to be a kind of spiritual training centre; those who attended were expected to study Crowley's writings, practice yoga, carry out certain rituals, and help with the domestic chores. In devoting themselves to The Great Work they would discover their True Will.
[6] Aleister Crowley, quoted by Frater Hippokleides writing in a biographical entry on Leah Hirsig on the website of the US Grand Lodge of the Ordo Templi Orientis: click here.
[7] Such as Raoul Loveday, a 23-year-old Oxford graduate and poet who perished from acute enteritis after foolishly drinking from a contaminated water source, although his wife, Betty May - a singer, dancer, and model well-known in London's bohemian circles - held Crowley responsible, claiming that Raoul had been forced to drink the blood of a sacrificed cat as part of a ritual (Crowley denied this).
When May returned to London, she gave an
interview to the Sunday Express, which had been running a series of articles attacking Crowley for some time. Eventually, rumours of the goings-on at the Abbey reached Mussolini's ears and he demanded that Crowley and company leave Italy at once.
After Crowley's
departure, the Abbey was left abandoned and local
residents whitewashed over Crowley's murals. The building still stands, but is now in poor condition.
[8] Dorothy Olsen (1892 - 1963) was a young American woman travelling in Europe when she first met Crowley, immediately capturing his attention. After Hirsig renounced her title as the Scarlet Woman, Crowley gave Dorothy the gig. By the time she was abandoned in turn by Crowley two years later, Olsen found herself significantly poorer, pregnant, and addicted to drink and drugs.
[9] Leah was forced to fend for herself after Crowley and his new Scarlet Woman ran off to Tunis and she lived for a period in Paris, where she is alleged by some to have worked as a prostitute in order to pay the bills.
[10] See My Life in a Love Cult: A Warning to All Young Girls (1928), although written by Alma Hirsig, it was published under the pseudonym Marion Dockerill.
Pierre Bernard (1875 - 1955) was an American yogi and mystic, known to the public as The Great Oom or The Omnipotent Oom. So closely was Alma Hirsig associated with Bernard that he named her as the High Priestess of Oom. Despite accusations made against him, Bernard remained popular with upper-middle class women and the high society of New York throughout the 1930s.
Readers might be interested to know that The Magical Diaries of Leah Hirsig, 1923-1925: Aleister Crowley, Magick, and the New Occult Woman, ed. Manon Hedenborg White and Henrik Bogdan is due for publication by Oxford University Press in September of this year. Click here for details.
