Behind the Scenes Minis: Crowley and Cagliostro

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy Vee Wilson, and I'm Holly Fry. We talked about Alistair Crowley this week. UM uh yeah, so UM. I'm glad that for once, the name Alistair Crowley crossed my path immediately before October. Um, since previously I just never managed to like write him on the little October section of my podcast shortlist. Um. And then I checked with you to make sure that that was not gonna be I was not gonna be stealing a topic that you already had your heart set on doing, because I know sometimes each of us do. And then as I was researching it, number one, my knowledge of him was really minimal and mostly based on things people were scared of in the eighties, right, not like anything that he actually did. Um. And you know, I have more familiarity with some of the things that, uh, that he influenced later, like I know several people who practice wicca like that, and that that is something that like he had an influence on. But I just did not know a bunch about a lot of his other work. And as I was reading about the O t O. I was like, why does this sound so familiar? And then I remembered the podcast Oh No, Ross and Carry, in which Ross and Carry investigate various paranormal stuff, and they did an episode, two episodes actually about the O t O. The first one I think came out of and I'm not sure how much later the second one came out, and I took the opportunity to re listen to those while working on this. And if you would like to hear more about what it's like to, you know, participate in the gnostic math that the O t O does, Um, that is a podcast to listen to you. I don't remember off the top of my head whether whether that show has an explicit tag or not. If you have small I would actually just say it's probably not a children's show. That was how my mom described a lot of these things that she wanted to protect me from. That's not a children's show. I would say. The O t O episode of Owner, Ross and Carey not a children's show. Our episode on Alistair Crowley also probably not a children's show. Uh so yeah, I was like, Oh, that that explains it. That explains why all of these various rituals sound so familiar to me. I heard Ross and Carey talk about them. You have heard them described. Yeah, I had mentioned because he has been on my list, and I honestly when you were like, are you dead set on doing it? And I said, oh, thank rito, you go do it because there's it's so convoluted complex, and I have read enough about him that I was like, I'm never going to sort this back out. And I just remember telling you the Battle of Life Road is the funniest thing you'll ever read, and you were like, I haven't gotten there yet. Yeah. When you and I were talking about it, I was like, oh, this sounds great for October. And then I was like, Okay, let's let's do a little reading. I could feel that the expression on my face was one of absolute bafflement um the the whole time I was reading stuff, and I kept being like, I don't know if I'm going to be able to sort this out, but I also can't look away from it. So after spending basically an entire day with my eyes kind of wide looking at the various things that I was reading about the Battle of blythe Road and all kinds of different rituals that he was doing, and some of the some of his writing is frankly incomprehensible. I was like, I'm just gonna have to the only way out is through. Yeah, this is gonna go. So yeah, it's a it's a lot in a tangle. And every time I I mean I said in the episode, every time I thought I had found the strangest thing, I would find a different thing. I found out about him faking his own death or trying to fake his own death. Um, Like the morning that I finished this outline and I was like, here's yet another thing. Um, you know, if the I'm definitely a spy during World War One that was weird, faking his own death was weird. Um, there's all kinds of stuff that we just there's he did so much stuff. There's all kinds of stuff that we just didn't really even mentioned at all. We I I had been wondering because you mentioned his mountaineering expedition that went awry and that he ended up canceling. I have seen some write ups of that, but haven't followed them down the whole. That kind of just suggests that it was either his fault or that he abandoned a bunch of people. But basically he does not come out looking good in all of it. Was that your understanding yet? So, Um, there was a climber and four reporters who were killed in an avalanche. I was not able to find like just a really thorough exploration of all that in the time that I had available. I did find one account that said that he was able to hear them calling for help and didn't do anything about it. But one of the things about mountaineering at that level is that it's inherently dangerous. Um, And sometimes when somebody gets into trouble, if you try to go help them, you are also going to be in trouble. And so it was like I didn't feel like I could sort through that enough to know whether he was just really callous and irresponsible or whether it was the kind of thing where it was like, well, if we try to go get them, we're also going to die. And I don't I don't know the answer with that. Yeah, yeah, Um, I have thoughts and feelings about Alistair Crowley. Um. They on on Oh No, Ross and Carry, they have pretty definite feelings about him. Also, is it that rich kids need stuff to do or this is what their life turns into kind of um uh, their read on him in a lot of ways is just being like just intentionally obscure and kind of laughing at future generations, like I'm just going to write the most ridiculous nonsense and somebody later is gonna have They're gonna spend their lives trying to figure out what I meant by this, because he used a lot of codes and things when when he was writing, and sometimes if you try to read it and you're like, this is not even sentences, I have no idea what this is going to try to be about. I also, frankly remember being between the ages of eighteen and and believing in all kinds of weird stuff that I don't believe in now that I have more experience and maturity under my built. And so even though I never went nearly to any kind of the extent that Alistair Crowley did in any of his mass like mystical stuff, I can see how a bunch of educated young men with access to purportedly mystical documents would believe that they definitely had for real magical powers that could sick a vampire on somebody. Oh yeah, I mean the whole thing is really like Uh, to me very much vibes like people who have only ever had validation in their life, presuming that the things that they believe themselves to be able to do must actually be real because they have never known anything else. Well, and it's also really clear that a whole lot of what he did specifically drew from while simultaneously rejecting his fundamentalist Christian upbringing. Um, Like, a lot of the symbolism he used was directly from the Book of Revelation. A lot of the things that he was talking about, we're connected to a lot of the things that are in the Book of Revelation, which having spent an entire year of Sunday School learning the Book of Revelation, it's a weird book. So uh so, like there's so much of it that, like, it has this whole context of him rejecting his own religious upbringing, also rejecting a lot of the more conservative, more aids that existed at the time. Um, all that kind of stuff. So it's it's a whole big tangle. I also, I mean again, I sound very dismissive, and I kind of am, but um, I find his story utterly just engaging at every level. But I don't hold a lot of stock in any of his claims. Um, that whole thing with his allegedly being a spy and then facing no repercussions. Yeah, my read is always like, not because he was a spy, because money makes problems go away. I don't know. That's the most least magnanimous read I can have on it. But yeah, yeah, there is a whole book on that, And the whole book on that was like, there's there's finite time that we have to spend on our episodes because we are doing a new episode of the podcast every week. So reading the entire book that was written about whether he was or was not a spy and exploring all that, like that was really beyond my ability, which is lie. Instead, I read some papers by the author of that that seems like a valid plan to me. Yeah, yeah, it's a lot um. There's also part of me that lives in such a state of envy. I'm like, imagine thinking you just thinking yourself that important all the time. That must be an amazing headspace to travel it. Yeah, I feel like that's a good place to wrap this. I don't have anything of that. Uh yeah, I mean it's It's one of those things where, um, if the sixties counterculture movement had not happened, he would certainly be not nearly as well known today, and at the same time, without his involvement, all kind of like Wicca might exist might not really uh, because like right, that is the trick, right, is that he did believe himself to be so important and did produce so much stuff that untangling what is his messed up understanding of a thing versus the actual legitimate roots of something is really difficulty. Well, and things like like Wicca also have multiple different influences, not just Alistair Crowley. This week we talked about Kostro Finally, he's been on my list for uh seven eight years etly it's uh. It's interesting because one of the reasons that I kept running headlong into this topic and then backing away from it for so long is that it's really hard to determine which tone you want to take when you tell his story, because if you, if you watch, I mean, even people who are very much scholars and historians talk about it, some of them will approach it much more from kind of the sensational stories of him where he claims to be you know, uh, potentially popping around time to witness various events or you know, any of those. So I kept finding myself going, should this be more sensational? Should this be more thrilling? Um? But I think for me, the best way to really look at him was to kind of peel it all back, and like I said, there are details that we couldn't even fit in there because there's a UM. I love that Catherine the Great hated him. I just loved it. I had similar a similar experience I think when trying to work on Alistair Crowley about uh, like what tone do we take with this? And I also liked that Marie shar Marie Handlin it thought he was a Charlottean, not Alistair Crowley Kliostro, although probably those two I do love that two women uh of immense power were like, yeah, no, I'm not sure about that. Uh you could scaattle. I had also discovered I did not mention in this episode because it would just be a list of longness. Um. In addition to the Duma work about him, Kliostro shows up everywhere. He shows up on TV and various things. There's even an atom that called count Castle of Kliostro. That's a loop on the third if anybody follows that, and he's, uh, it's it's not exactly him, but it's you know, there's clearly there have been a lot of characters based on Caliostro over the years, and so to pluck all those apart just becomes a list making exercise. So I didn't bother to do that. But if you do an internet search, you're going to find plenty. One of the things I was struck by in doing this research was how we have certainly all of us talked about, I mean as a society, not just on this show. You know that that lure of a group saying I will offer you everything you've ever wanted, and how powerful that can be to get people to really buy into your ideology. And in his case, right, he was offering them everything like eternal life and health, spiritual life and health, and tons of money. Right, We're gonna get the alchemy machine going, and we're just gonna churn out golden diamonds for everybody like it. Just I can see where desperate people would completely glom onto it, even as I sit there and go, oh, why why did you believe in him? We both mentioned that we wanted to talk about what I'm calling but don't believe to be Lorenz's betrayal. Yeah, I'm like that he coerced her into sex work. Yeah, for all that time and generally was doing a bunch of crime. And I'm like, your wife testified against you, you get what you get? Yes, well, and my thing too. That is another thing that is um characterized a little bit differently by different people. Um. I did watch one lecture where the lecture was saying that you know, at that point he probably had syphilis that had advanced to the point that it was affecting his behavior, um, and that he had grown unpredictable, and like she kind of did it to get out of that. And I'm like, she had a lifetime of that, even if he was in his alleged right mind before that, she had a lifetime of madness to live through, like I wouldn't. That's again my take on it, obviously, but yeah, I I literally you know, when I read some early kind of quick the quick biographies that don't go into the fact that he was trafficking her around Europe to gain favor and you know, job postings and whatnot, and they very much are kind of like, oh, and then his wife turned him in, And I'm like, did you not talk about the sex conversion because you're too dainty or is it just too uncomfortable and thus you're not considering it in the danue mall of the story or do you not really know about that or do you not think it's horrible? Yeah? Fourteen. Yes, I know age meant different things at different points in time, but that is still very very young. Yeah, and I would say also still today, Like I can only speak about like the criminal justice in the United States. I don't live anywhere else, but I know that here in the US, the idea that someone having been trafficked and abused, uh, and then eventually enacting some kind of violence on their trafficker and abuser, like that continues to be something that that comes up in court, um with with people not wanting that evidence to be admitted, even though like it's a critical context to all of that. So I feel like this is sort of a variation on that same theme from centuries ago. Yeah, I mean it really is. It's like he's the blueprint for every power hungary weasel who just treated people like property, right, Uh, and didn't seem to have any conscience about it, which is very But what's really weird is even in and again some of this is because they were written hundred years ago, but even in the texts where they're pretty frank about what was going on and they do kind of condemn it, they are still like, but he really really loved her, And I'm like, what even if that's true? Boy, do I not care? Well? And it becomes a bigger, right, theoretical question of like what does love mean? And you know, everyone's definition may be different, but mine is, you know, treating someone with respect and when they don't want to do something, you don't coerce them into doing it. That seems like a pretty basic rule to have for someone you love. And she clearly there were lots of instances where he was like, no, you have to do this, you have to do this, it's the only way we're going to get out of this situation, or it's the only way we're going to get any money, or like he put all of the onus on her when she was legitimately again remember raised very very um conservative religious, she was legitimately concerned for her immortal soul, and he was like, no, no, do it, do it? Do it? Do it? Do it? Do it. It's like that's just cruel. So that is not love in my book. Anyway, I have feelings about Keliostro's wife, and I hope someone writes a marvelous play or film about her and her alone from her perspective. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I hope buy all the tickets. Sorry, that was it not the funnest. But I will say this, My favorite phrase that we came across was in that quote describing his his seance and just the phrase lustral waters. I wanna, I don't know what. I want to make a cocktail named that. I don't know, but I'm doing something and it's going to be spark light so cool. That's that's my upbeat. Ending to this discussion, Happy Friday. I hope everybody has a good weekend whatever is on your plate. Feel free to drop us a note or a history podcast at I heart radio dot com and we'll see you soon with more episodes. Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows, h