Comments
by
Aleister
Crowley: |
A person
in my position is liable to see Sherlock Homes in the most
beefwitted policeman. I did not feel that I was advancing in the
confidence of the Germans. I got no secrets worth reporting to
London, and I was not at all sure whether the cut of my clothes
had not outweighed the eloquence of my conversation. I thought I
would do something more public. I wrote a long parody on the
Declaration of Independence and applied it to Ireland.
I invited
a young lady violinist who has some Irish blood in her, behind
the more evident stigmata of the ornithorhyncus and the wombat.
Adding to our number about four other debauched persons on the
verge of delirium tremens, we went out in a motor boat before
dawn on the third of July to the rejected statue of Commerce for
the Suez Canal, which Americans fondly suppose to be Liberty
Enlightening The World.
There
I read my Declaration of Independence. I threw an old envelope
into the bay, pretending that it was my British passport. We
hoisted the Irish flag. The violinist played the "Wearing of the
Green". The crews of the interned German ships cheered us all
the way up the Hudson, probably because they estimated the
degree of our intoxication with scientific precision. Finally,
we went to Jack's for breakfast, and home to sleep it off. The
New York Times gave us three columns and Viereck was
distinctly friendly.
—
The Confessions of Aleister Crowley.
New York, NY. Hill and Wang, 1969. Pages 571-572. |
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