Celebrating a Magical Battle

Time to commemorate a famous battle – and not just any battle but a magical battle – which took place on the 19th April in the year 1900. The location was Number 36 Blythe Road in the Olympia/Hammersmith area of West London and the battle – or 'astral siege' as it has been described – was an attempt to seize control of the premises of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, one of the leading ritual magic organisations operating in England at that time. On the attack was our old friend Aleister Crowley, who believed he was the right person to lead the Order. Opposing him was the Irish poet William Butler Yeats.

There was also an element of personal animosity between the two men: Yeats thought Crowley was a drug taking moral degenerate and sexual deviant. Quite an accurate character summary as it happens, while Crowley thought Yeats' poetry was rubbish. Not quite so accurate as later in life Yeats won the Nobel Prize for Literature for his poetry.

On the day of the battle Crowley showed up at the doors of the Golden Dawn’s premises dressed in a Highland kilt and the headdress of a priest of the Egyptian god Osiris. Yeats however had taken the precaution of hiring a 'professional pugilist' – in other words a boxer – to act as his bodyguard. Crowley took the hint and slunk away in defeat – and would soon after quit the Golden Dawn to set up his own rival magic order.

If you think Yeats cheated by hiring a heavy, Crowley actually hired two enforcers but they arrived late (their Tube train was delayed at Earls Court) by which time the battle had finished. And that was the battle of Blythe Road – Gandalf versus Saruman (or Harry Potter versus Voldermort) it was not. Today you can order a takeaway sandwich or a coffee from George’s Cafe, which occupies the ground floor of number 36, the former home of the Golden Dawn.