@steemfest and I'm feelin that wild thunder in my bones already! I'm thrilled be have been invited to speak and am in awe of the organizing talents of all those involved. Lindo maravilhoso!
In 1930, Aleister Crowley, the British mystic and occultist who was known as 'the wickedest man in the world,' befriended Portuguese poet and loner, Fernando Pessoa. Pessoa was a writer, literary critic, translator, and philosopher who's considered one of the most significant literary figures of the 20th century, however, his genius went largely unrecognized until after his death. In addition to his many talents, Pessoa was passionate about astrology and the occult which led to his correspondence with Crowley, writing to him initially to correct errors he spotted in Crowley’s calculations. Crowley responded, warmly, in a letter to Pessoa that he signed “666.” It was later that year that Crowley decided to travel to Portugal to meet Pessoa in person, The result of which became a global mystery and scandal.
Aleister Crowley and Fernando Pessoa playing chess
Crowley arrived in Lisbon on September 2, 1930 accompanied by his assistant and lover, Miss Larissa Hanni Jaeger, also known as a Scarlet Woman (the latest initiate into his realm of sex magic). On September 18th, Pessoa received a letter from Crowley, that detailed an argument he had gotten into with Jaeger, writing that she had fallen into a formidable trance. In his essay, “The Magical World of Fernando Pessoa" Gary Lachman describes the following events:
“In September 1930, Crowley arrived in Lisbon, with his current Scarlet Woman. The couple quarrelled and Crowley’s girlfriend left the country, leaving a deflated Great Beast behind. Crowley then enlisted Pessoa’s aid in faking a suicide. Leaving a forlorn lover’s note at the Boca do Inferno (Mouth of Hell) – a treacherous rock formation on the coast west of Lisbon – Crowley implied that he had taken his own life by leaping into the sea. Pessoa explained to the Lisbon papers the meaning of the various magical signs and symbols that adorned Crowley’s suicide note, and added the fact that he had actually seen Crowley’s ghost the following day. Crowley had in fact left Portugal via Spain, and enjoyed the reports of his death in the newspapers; he finally appeared weeks later at an exhibition of his paintings in Berlin. Given Pessoa’s frail ego, it was more than likely a blessing that his association with the Beast was brief.”
Crowley's suicide note was addressed to Jaeger: “I cannot live without you,” he said in his diary. “The other “Boca do Inferno” [Mouth of Hell] will get me—it will not be as hot as yours.”
Boca do Inferno,"Hell's Mouth"
Aleister Crowley’s lost diary of his Portuguese trip and Letters from Fernando Pessoa to Aleister Crowley have been published online. In the copy of 35 Sonnets that Pessoa sent to Crowley in December 1929 (below), Gerald Yorke transcribed an extract of a letter from Crowley to Gerald Hamilton, dated 20 January 1936. The annotation is on the reverse side of the front cover.
Sonnet XVIII.
A poem by Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa
Indefinite space, which, by co-substance night,
In one black mystery two void mysteries blends;
The stray stars, whose innumerable light
Repeats one mystery till conjecture ends;
The stream of time, known by birth-bursting bubbles;
The gulf of silence, empty even of nought;
Thought's high-walled maze, which the outed owner troubles
Because the string's lost and the plan forgot:
When I think on this and that here I stand,
The thinker of these thoughts, emptily wise,
Holding up to my thinking my thing-hand
And looking at it with thought-alien eyes,
The prayer of my wonder looketh past
The universal darkness lone and vast.
If the opportunity presents itself...
