The Sunday Mail. Date - 31st March 1991
The conversation in the lounge of Boleskine House had been long and heated. The subject was the previous owner, Aleister Crowley, The Beast, Black Magician, and a man whose occult powers had enabled him to call up DEMONS and SPIRITS in that very house.
The argument, some time ago, was between Malcolm Dent, Boleskine's custodian for the past 20 years, and a visitor who believed in the occult in general, and in Crowley in particular. The spectacular ending to this to this debate is best told by Malcolm. "I was pouring cold water on certain things that Crowley was supposed to have done and my companion was taking the opposite view. "Eventually, the conversation died a death. Suddenly there were seconds of silence - neither of us could think what to say. "That’s When It Happened.
"In those seconds, a small porcelain figure of the DEVIL sitting on the mantlepiece rose up to the roof and then, at tremendous speed, smashed itself to smithereens on the fireplace. "We just stared at one another - and then I began to laugh. There was no doubt in my mind who was responsible. It was Aleister Crowley letting us, and me in particular, know that he's still a force in this house!"
It was at Boleskine, Crowley worked on The Book Of Goetia (Howling), which gives instructions on summoning spirits and demons. And it was thought to be so dangerous no one would publish it for years.
Aleister Crowley bought Boleskine in 1898, owning it until the 1920's. He died in Hastings in 1947, aged 72.
Born Edward Alexander Crowley on October 12, 1875, in Warwickshire, he was called Alick,which he hated and changed to Aleister, the Gaelic for Alexander, which he found romantic.
Malcolm said : " There is a claim that at birth Crowley was found to have four hairs directly over the centre of his heart from left to right in the exact form of a swastika which is an ancient mystic symbol."
It was his mother Emily who first called him The Beast, for even as a child she believed him to be the Devil incarnate. Crowley later called himself The Beast 666, the description given to the Antichrist in the Book Of Revelations.
After leaving Cambridge University, Crowley set himself up in a flat in Chancery Lane, London, where he started to practise the black arts and joined a society called The Hermetic Order Of The Golden Dawn and soon realised he had a talent for magic.
His first task was to establish contact with Aiwass, his holy Guardian Angel (his true self) for here was the key to the sacred magic of Abra-Melin, an Egyptian magician of ancient times whose teachings Crowley had chosen to follow.
Vital to the operation was the construction of an oratory, or temple, in a secluded place. The London flat was no good and, after a search, Crowley at last, in August 1899, found Boleskine House, in the hills above Loch Ness, midway between Inverness and Fort Augustus.
Malcolm said: "One of the first things he done was to consecrate the south-west part of the house to the occult. That included the dining room.
"It became his temple - and to him it was his most important room. "Crowley put a north-facing door into this room, which led onto a terrace of river sand - it's a flowerbed today. "And the spirits and demons Crowley was calling up had to enter from the north over the river sand."
To work the Abra-Melin magic was no simple task. The rituals of preparation take six months, starting in Easter and several hundred spirits, many extremely dangerous, have to be evoked to vitalise a talisman to be used as an instrument of power.
As laid down, Crowley built the door and laid out the terrace of river sand which ended with a lodge outside the door where the spirits congregated. This gave him some protection as the spirits, if thought too dangerous and uncontrollable could be banished before entering the oratory or temple. Inside the temple room, Crowley built a wooden structure lined with the mirrors he brought from London. Malcolm said : "During Crowley's preparations hosts of demons were attracted, some of which materialised. "Throughout the district a great deal of damage was done and local people made detours of several miles through Stratherrick to avoid the house." One day Crowley returned to the main house to find a priest in his study. He had come to tell Crowley that his lodge keeper, an abstainer for 20 years, had been raving drunk for three days, and had tried to kill his wife and children. Despite these local difficulties Crowley carried on. But he was only partially successful. He was to succeed fully a few years later abroad.
As I prepared to leave Boleskine I asked Malcolm : "What was the last unusual thing you’ve seen or heard?"
He said :" It was a couple of months ago and I was outside late on filling coal buckets. "There had been an upheaval getting the house ready for viewing and I had started moving some stuff. "Without warning, and in what I can only describe as a great booming voice, came "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"
"When I got back inside I was as white as a sheet. That scared me."
So whose voice was it?
Closing the door, Malcolm said :"I think we both know the answer to that!"
