Crowley and Huxley: a trip in Berlin?
In 1977 International Times published ‘Sybarite among the Shadows’, a short story I had written based on Aleister Crowley initiating Aldous Huxley into the use of mescaline in Berlin in the 1930s. 1 For good measure, I spiced things up with a reference to Hitler using the drug. The story went on to be widely circulated, often without my knowledge. A doctored version appeared in Russia, and it was cited and quoted in books on conspiracy theory and occult Nazism, invariably presented as being true.2
The story was based on a couple of lines I had found in a book by Francis King called Sexuality, Magic and Perversion. So widespread had the idea become that the Huxley Estate felt impelled to deny it: “There is no evidence to support Francis King’s assertion that Aleister Crowley introduced Huxley to mescalin [sic] in Berlin in the 1920s [sic].” 3
Despite this, Huxley’s alleged and Patrick Everitt help provide an answer. Both offer tantalising evidence that if conscious expansion did not actually take place in practice, it was almost definitely explored in theory.
