Household Gods: A Comedy

By Aleister Crowley

Household Gods is an early 20th-century dark comedy play following the lives and lust of Cassus and Alicia. Excerpt: "ALICIA. Wait, and you shall surely see Part of the secret that ensorcells me. See all these bosses! It is not As if a Titan smote himself into the earth, And was caught into her, made one with her?"

• Language: English
• Publisher: Good Press
• Release date: Nov 20, 2019
• ISBN: 4057664168955

Aleister Crowley

Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) was an English poet, painter, occultist, magician, and mountaineer. Born into wealth, he rejected his family’s Christian beliefs and developed a passion for Western esotericism. At Trinity College, Cambridge, Crowley gained a reputation as a poet whose work appeared in such publications as The Granta and Cambridge Magazine. An avid mountaineer, he made the first unguided ascent of the Mönch in the Swiss Alps. Around this time, he first began identifying as bisexual and carried on relationships with prostitutes, which led to his contracting syphilis. In 1897, he briefly dated fellow student Herbert Charles Pollitt, whose unease with Crowley’s esotericism would lead to their breakup. The following year, Crowley joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a secret occult society to which many of the era’s leading artists belonged, including Bram Stoker, W. B. Yeats, Arthur Machen, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Between 1900 and 1903, he traveled to Mexico, India, Japan, and Paris. In these formative years, Crowley studied Hinduism, wrote the poems that would form The Sword of Song (1904), attempted to climb K2, and became acquainted with such artists as Auguste Rodin and W. Somerset Maugham. A 1904 trip to Egypt inspired him to develop Thelema, a philosophical and religious group he would lead for the remainder of his life. He would claim that The Book of the Law (1909), his most important literary work and the central sacred text of Thelema, was delivered to him personally in Cairo by the entity Aiwass. During the First World War, Crowley allegedly worked as a double agent for the British intelligence services while pretending to support the pro-German movement in the United States. The last decades of his life were spent largely in exile due to persecution in the press and by the states of Britain and Italy for his bohemian lifestyle and open bisexuality.

Book preview

Aleister Crowley

Household Gods

A Comedy

Published by Good Press, 2019

[e-mail]

EAN 4057664168955

Table of Contents

Cover

Titlepage

Text

CRASSUS, a barbarian from Britain.

ADELA, his wife, a noble Roman lady.

ALICIA, a servant in the house.

A STATUE OF PAN.

A FAUN.

HOUSEHOLD GODS

Table of Contents

THE SCENE is at the hearth of CRASSUS, where is a little bronze altar dedicated to the Lares and Penates. A pale flame rises from the burning sandal-wood, on which CRASSUS throws benzoin and musk. He is standing in deep dejection.

CRASSUS.

Smoke without fire!

No thrill of tongues licks up

The offerings in the cup.

Dead falls desire.

Black smoke thou art,

O altar-flame, that dost dismember,

Devour the hearth, to leave no ember

To warm this heart.

I see her still -

Adela dancing here

Till dim gods did appear

To work our will.

The delicate girl!

Diaphanous gossamer

Subtly revealing her

Brave breast of pearl!

Now - she's withdrawn

At dusk to the