Confessions of Aleister Crowley

491 ....Soars through the boundless blue to greet Apollo: ....I call my love by name. Remote and hollow The rocks re-echo me: "Hilarion!" How pure and beautiful the body is Lapped in fatigue's caressing ecstasies! ....For then the soul is free to leap above it, To soar, to dive, to seek and find his mate In the dominion of the uncreate, ....And lastly --- to return to it, and love it! This was my last adventure. I returned to New York by short stages and resumed the anchorless tossing. The one new feature was my affair with Stuart X. The next act was the appearance of Ananda K. Koomaraswamy, the Eurasian critic of religion and art, with his wife, Ratan Devi, a musician from Yorkshire, who had fallen in love with him and filched him from his first wife. He soon got sick of her and took refuge in India, but finding it a continual nuisance to have to send her supplies, wrote her to join him. It had been suggested, with the secret hope that the climate would rid him of his incubus. She made the journey in charge of his best friend, a wealthy Punjabi, whom she promptly seduced. After a series of violent scenes in Bombay, the half-breed accepted the situation and all three travelled together for some time in the hills. Ratan Devi possessed a strange seductive beauty and charm, but above all an ear so accurate and a voice so perfectly trained, that she was able to sing Indian music, which is characterized by half and quarter tones imperceptible to most European ears. His idea was to bring her out to New York. He introduced himself to me, knowing my reputation on Asiatic religions and Magick. I invited them to dine and to pass the evening at my apartment, so that she might sing to the tamboura her repertoire of Kashmiri and other Indian songs. I was charmed and promised to do all I could to make her a success. {773} I introduced them to several influential people and wrote a prose poem about her singing for Vanity Fair. She and I lost no time about falling in love. This suited her husband perfectly. The high cost of living was bad enough without having to pay for one's wife's dinner. All he asked was that I should introduce him to a girl who would be his mistress while costing him nothing. I was only too happy to oblige as I happened to know a girl with a fancy for weird adventures. He was anxious to rid himself of even theoretical responsibilities and therefore proposed a divorce. I agreed with a yawn. Details never interest me. Meanwhile, she had made her debut and scored a superb success. This had never occurred to her husband, who, being unable to appreciate her supreme art, hardly took her singing seriously. In fact, her success was largely due to my assistance. I taught her how to let her genius loose at the critical moment. However, to her husband, only one thing mattered at all. There might be money in her. Right about face! He wriggled out of the divorce on various puerile pretexts and then pulled out the pathetic stuff, and pleaded with her to come back to him. She was the only woman he had ever loved, etc., ad nauseam. These manoeuvres were conducted at the top of their voices. It was a series of scolding matches and epileptic fits. I had a gorgeous time! what annoyed them both more than anything was my utter indifference to the whole affair. My position was that if she chose to live with me, she could. When she wanted to get out there was the door wide open. But I wouldn't lift a finger for any purpose whatever. The situation was complicated by her becoming pregnant. This changed my attitude. I still refused to interfere with her will, but now I was prepared to make any sacrifice necessary to insure her welfare and that of our child.