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The Banned Lecture GILLES de RAIS to have been delivered before The Oxford University Poetry Society By ALEISTER CROWLEY on the Evening of Monday February 3rd, 1930 PRICE SIX PENCE Pablidby PR. STEPHENSEN, 41, MUSEUM ST, LONDON, WiC
GILLES DE RAIS Long ago when King Brahmadatta reigned in Benares, a gentleman whose Christian names were Thomas Henryyou may possibly have heard of himhe was no less a personage than the Grand- father of the great Aldous Huxleyonce found himself threatened by a predicament similar to that in which I stand tonight. He had been asked to lecture a distinguished group of people. What bothered him was this : what assumption was he to make about the existing knowledge of the audience ? He adopted the sensible course of asking the advice of an old …
…n the course of Alchemical and magical experiments, a matter of 800 children ? I submit that, a priori, this sounds a little improbable. Gilles de Rais was the lord of a district whose population could not have been very extensive, and even in that age of slavery, dirt, disease, debauchery, poverty and ignorance, which seems to Mr. G. K. Chesterton the one ideal state of society, it must have been a little difficult to carry out abductions and murders on such wholesale principles. Whenever questions arise with regard to black magic or black mas…
… penalty. I do not think that I have left out any verifiable fact. I think that all the rest amounts to speculation. The real problem of Gilles de Rais amounts, accord- ingly, to this. Here we have a person who, in almost every respect, was the male equivalent of Joan of Arc. Both of them have gone down in history. But history is somewhat curious. I am still inclined to think that there aint no sich animile. In the time of Shakespeare, Joan of Arc was accepted in England as a symbol for everything vile. He makes her out not only as a sorcere…
…cturestakes very much this popular view of medicine and pharmacy in Pickwick. I think, then, it is not altogether unfair to assume that Gilles de Rais was to a large extent the victim of Catholic logic. Catholic logic: and the foul wish- phantasms generated of its repressions, and of its fear and ignorance. He wanted to confer to a boon on humanity ; therefore he consorted with the learned ; therefore he murdered little children. I think it is about time that somebody got after J. B. S. Haldane. It is too late to do anything more to Ridley and…
…er muddy, half an hour later) has almost certainly been kidnapped by the Jews for purposes of ritual murder. The main accusation against Gilles de Rais is therefore just this general accusation against anyone in Christendom who exhibited any desire for know- ledge. Only, in his case, it was concentrated and exaggerated to fantastic lengths by some factor or other on which I feel it useless to speculate. The
…rn blind and had to describe an elephant. Spiritually fortified by these simple meditations, we may apply their fruits to the problem of Gilles
…f which we hear so much and see so little. I dont propose to inflict upon you the M.C.H., and demonstrate that the life and opinions of Gilles de Rais were inevitably determined by the price of onions in Hyderabad. But I do think that in ap- proaching a historic question, we should be very careful to define what we meanin our particular