New O=II contributor Frater Orpheus posted this amazing trove of material on his FB feed a few days ago in commemoration of the death of the Prophet of the Lovely Star:
On November 19th 1947, Crowley sensing the end was approaching sends out his last telegram to all… it simply read
GERMER:
PERDURABO BORN 49 YEARS AGO. THERION SENDS DEEPEST LOVE HIGEST BLESSING YOURSELVES AND THELEMITES, THE UNIVERSE.
Then on December 1st 1947 e.v. Aleister Crowley quietly passed away in Hastings at 11:00am. Patricia MacAlpine, who Crowley lovingly referred to as “Deidre” was by his side. She reports that at the moment of his death there a sudden gust of wind, “the curtains blew-out across the room and there was a great peal of thunder”… which she believed was the Gods greeting him. He was cremated just four days later in Brighton. By all accounts, Louis Wilkinson brilliantly read Crowley’s Hymn to Pan and a selection of excerpts from Liber AL and the Gnostic Mass; (those which Wilkinson found most fitting to the occasion and later published as The Last Ritual). Deidre and Crowley’s son Ataturk were in attendance.
During the last few months of Crowley’s life Frieda Harris would visit him and she records her impressions in a series of dramatic sketches – I’m including a couple of these images along with a few other related documents which capture this moment.
There is footage of Deidre sharing this story here at 42:52…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsm6WI5i7p0
Images:
1) Frontis to The Last Ritual
2&3) Two of Frieda Harris’s sketches
4) Crowley’s last telegram
5) Grady letter to Germer discussing AC’s death
6) Telegrams announcing AC’s death
7) The last picture
