#36: The man who helped the devil fake his own death
Fernando Pessoa, Part 2
When Rhody and I fell in love, we started out as friends. I started to think maybe I’d fallen when I (a vegetarian by then) drove across town to help them make a beef pot pie. Reader, I took a bite of it and everything.
As the years pass, I can’t help but maybe think some of my crushing came, not from a love of cooking, but our shared interest in ouija boards and ghosties.
On one of our date-not-dates, where we were pretending friends always ogled each other, we made a ouija board by hand on a sturdy piece of cardboard. Putting your own energy into it, we’d both heard, made its power stronger. We turned out all the lights in his bedroom, lit some candles, and summoned god dang ghosts.
Now, fourteen years later (almost to the day), even if I haven’t busted out the markers and made a homemade board in a decade, the occult still has my heart. And so today we’re dishing about Fernando Pessoa’s whirlwind friendship with the king of twentieth-century western occultism himself, Aleister Crowley.
We’ll cover…
💌 Fernando' Pessoa’s spiritualist practices,
💌 Aleister Crowley’s occult following across the pond,
💌 the time Fernando Pessoa helped Aleister Crowley fake his own death,
💌 and just why people were so obsessed with the occult back then.
On y va, friends!
🌜Pessoa - occultist, horoscope extraordinaire
(Last month we went hard on Fernando Pessoa’s life. If you aren’t familiar with Pessoa’s heteronyms, background, and massive body of creative work, this article’s a prime place to start.)
Fernando Pessoa was no doubt a singular flavor of weird. Between crafting 75 heteronyms to write under, his rather reclusive personality, and his massive trunk of unpublished writing scraps found after his death, I can’t point to many figures in history like him (except maybe our girl Emily Dickinson).
The occult drove Pessoa’s understanding of the world. His most commonly used heteronym was Alberto Caeiro, a character Pessoa crafted as a pastoral poet and teacher of paganism. Caeiro’s list of acolytes included several of Pessoa’s heteronyms - including Pessoa himself.
As Pessoa delved into the occult, he drafted his more beloved heteronyms’ astro charts, like Caeiro:
And here’s the astro chart for Caeiro’s acolyte, Ricardo Reis1:
Pessoa even did one for the most famous heteronym of all: himself.
Over the decades, Pessoa and his heteronyms’ devotion to paganism only grew. In the 1931 letter we discussed last month, remember what Pessoa, writing as heteronym Alvaro de Campos, said:
My master Caeiro was not a pagan: he was paganism. Ricardo Reis is a pagan, Antonio Mora is a pagan, I am a pagan; Fernando Pessoa himself would be a pagan, if he weren't a ball wrapped inside2.
And in the early 20th century, if you were a pagan in Europe, there was one man and one man only you’d do anything to cross paths with:
Aleister dang Crowley.
👹 “The Wickedest Man in the World”
Let me get this off my chest off the bat: Aleister Crowley, in my humble opinion, was a dick. The more I researched him, the less I liked him. He once said that democracy was an “imbecile and nauseating cult of weakness… utterly false and vile3.” He was a known anti-semite. And despite his very liberal views on sexuality, he viewed women as “moral inferiors4.”
Would I want this guy over for dinner? Hell no. But between his legacy as an occult leader and his past as both a mountaineer and British spy, he is no doubt a fascinating dude to read up on.
By 1904, Crowley was already gaining traction among European occultists. In the early 20th century, his religion Thelema was gaining regular followers and media fanfare, and many scholars today tout Thelema as the precursor to modern-day Satanism5.
Thelema’s devotees wielded magical practices to communicate with beings on higher planes, and sex was central to the Thelema beliefs; “sex magick,” they said, shifted a magician into the prime mindset for magical and earthly success. And Crowley was keen to practice with all kinds of folks. Like almost everyone I write about for some reason6, Crowley was yet another chaotic bisexual. A fascinating match for fellow bi boy Fernando Pessoa, who is rumored to’ve never slept with anyone.
Politically, Crowley called himself an aristocratic communist7, which pairs nicely with the ironic views in Pessoa’s short story “The Anarchist Banker.”
These shared beliefs between them, perhaps it was only a matter of time before the stars aligned and Crowley and Pessoa met.
🔮 A brief and spooky friendship begins
The duo became acquainted after Pessoa came across 1929’s The Confessions of Aleister Crowley. When Pessoa noticed an error in Crowley’s horoscope, he reached out to Crowley offering corrections.
From early on in their correspondence, Pessoa’s fan boy energy for the occult celeb oozes off the pages. They were conspiring on a time to cross paths, and Pessoa’s usual ~aloof~ vibe was replaced by an endearing eagerness:
If… any month of these first three of the year will serve your time and intention, I should very much prefer to meet you here in March – at any time within March. I shall not leave Lisbon at all in that month, and I have both the present month and February taken up by matters, of no importance in themselves… which I should not like to be clogged with when listening to you. Apart from this, astrological reasons would counsel me to suggest March…
Furthermore, there is a vague possibility that I may have to go to England in the end of February. If so, I would inform you in full advance and… you would be spared the trouble of coming to Portugal.
My own opinions of Crowley aside, Pessoa’s schoolboy willingness to shuffle his timetable is surprisingly cute, reminiscent of how any one of us might’ve reacted when the It Girl in high school invited us to a slumber party.
Pessoa again showcases his willingness to origami his schedule to Crowley’s whims a month later:
Care Frater:
My writing you so late implies only that not till the very verge of yesterday was it certain to me that I would not go to England. I shall not leave Lisbon – unless for an occasional short voyage to Evora, from which four hours can recall me – until the middle of the year, and even then I may not leave8.
If, therefore, you wish to come over, or think it within Fate to do so, you have but to give me a slight advance notice and I shall be here to see and hear you.
My astrology is in slight arrears, but I hope to have your
horoscopenativity rectified in no more than a few days.Yours fraternally, Fernando Pessoa9
By September 1930, Crowley made his way to Portugal - and the two resident weirdos got even weirder.
⚰️ Playing dead
Throughout his life, Crowley had a string of significantly younger girlfriends to “practice sex magick” with (yikes). Free-spirited young women were dazzled by his cult-like magnetism and supposed prowess in a dynamic we’d now definitely call grooming. And every young woman who wound up dating him shared one nickname: The Scarlet Woman.
When Crowley came to Portugal, he brought his latest Scarlet Woman along - Hanni Jaeger, a German-Californian artist who bonded with Crowley over a mutual love of painting10.
I can’t find much on Jaeger or any images of her art, but I do know that Crowley nicknamed her The Monster, which makes me love her immediately.
In September 1930, Jaeger and Crowley arrived. And Pessoa’s recluse nature reared its head. Despite Pessoa’s eagerness in letters, he was reticent to interact much face-to-face with Crowley. We’ll never know exactly why. Maybe Crowley rubbed Pessoa the wrong way; it’s known Jaeger made a good impression on him11. Or maybe Pessoa, an anxious man, got nervous about seeing this occult hero face to face (can relate).
Whatever it was, Pessoa got squirrelly, and the two men only interacted face-to-face a handful of times:
August 30th, Pessoa received the couple on the Lisbon pier.
September 7th, a whole week later, Pessoa, Jaeger, and Crowley had lunch.
September 9th - allegedly - Pessoa attended a ceremony to witness another Portuguese poet’s induction into Crowley’s occult order. Pessoa was entranced by Jaeger, again, writing a poem about an unnamed blonde woman the next day that ended with these lines:
“Wish, when do I board? O hunger, when do I eat?”
Crowley and Pessoa didn’t hang out again until the 18th - and when they did, it wasn’t a lighthearted social visit. Crowley arrived in a tizzy: Jaeger was missing. She had a history of suicidal tendencies, he said, and he didn’t know if she was okay. After a night of “sex magick” that had gone terribly awry - Jaeger had some sort of emotional attack that led to the hotel manager intervening - Crowley awoke to a vague letter from Jaeger, his beau mysteriously absent.
Crowley and Pessoa went to the cops to file a report and seek out any word on Jaeger’s well-being. After a few likely anxious days, they got word that she was returning to Germany sans Crowley.
And Crowley, jilted and dramatic as all get-out, enlisted Pessoa for a little retribution: faking his own death.
Or so the story goes. But evidence from Crowley’s diary suggests he’d already mulled the idea over weeks prior on the 12th, when he first saw the cliffside aptly named Boca do Inferno (Mouth of Hell). These unforgiving cliffs were a popular spot for taking your own life, and in the rough waters, the bodies were often never found. Weeks before falling out with Jaeger, Crowley pondered faking his death for another motive: nabbing a divorce from his estranged wife12.
Regardless of the motive, Jaeger’s departure sealed the deal, and a few days later, a plan was in motion.
On September 25th, Pessoa’s journalist buddy Augusto Ferreiro Gomes claimed he found a suicide note at Boca do Inferno:
I cannot live without you.
The other “Boca do Infierno” will get me - it will not be as hot as yours!
Hjsos!
Tu Li Yu
Pessoa and Gomes presented the note to the police, and Gomes, in on the shtick, penned an article on the alleged suicide.
Pessoa then did a few on-brand things to drum up buzz:
1. He told authorities he saw Crowley’s ghost around Lisbon.
Pessoa said he last saw Crowley alive on the 23rd, the day he was purported to have killed himself. But, Pessoa insisted to authorities, he saw Crowley’s “ghost” turning the corner outside Cafe La Gare the next day - then spotted him again crossing Duque da Terceira Square.
2. He helped the authorities interpret some of the occult references on the letter.
Pessoa told authorities “hjsos” must be a magical term, then claimed that Tu Li Yu was the name of a Chinese sage from ~3000 BCE that Crowley believed he was a reincarnation of. But Pessoa knew this all to be false; in fact, Ti Li Yu was a creative respelling of “too-de-loo.” And “hjsos?” An acronym: Hanni Jaeger, Save Our Souls. Not so magic, after all.
3. He pushed the story of Crowley’s suicide in different newspapers.
With Gomes’ help, Pessoa went ham for Crowley. In October, Pessoa approached multiple papers around Portugal with the story. The country’s news beat by and large bought it - which made Crowley’s sudden arrival at his own dang art show in Berlin a few weeks later all the more shocking13.
To this day, Boca do Inferno has a plaque commemorating the wild tale.
💀 The occult - everybody’s doing it
Why were people so obsessed with the occult back then? From the Victorian era and into pre-WWII days, folks became obsessed - obsessed! - with all things pagan.
Some of this craze had roots in Ancient Egypt. In the early 1900s, Ancient Egypt took England by storm - probably because artifacts stolen from tombs14 were displayed in museums around the country. The Average Joe who suddenly learned about this highly advanced ancient civilization was smitten, and suddenly, anything that touted ~wisdom of the ancients~ was treated like gold. Seances, spiritualist journeys, and talks of reincarnation were hits of the time.
The Industrial Revolution played a critical role, too. Almost overnight, new technology was available to laypeople, and we death-obsessed humans inevitably rigged the tech to hunt for proof of an afterlife. Cameras, for instance, were wielded by mediums and fraudsters alike for “spirit photography”:
And ectoplasm, a substance that supposedly would come out of mediums during a seance, was all the rage thanks to our ability to photograph the event. To me, this is probably one of the funnier 20th-century mediumship scams, and I often think about making a photo series of ectoplasm for fun:
But even more than technology or Ancient Egyptian artifacts, historians point to war as the reason we all became so occult-happy15. In the US, the trend spiked after the Civil War - see the Mary Todd Lincoln photo above. With such massive casualties, people turned to mediums and psychics to help them cope with loss and connect to the people they’d loved.
And after World War I decimated Europe, that trend - paired with the already budding occult fervor thanks to tech and pilfered ancient artifacts - skyrocketed.
This occult obsession never quite died out, and now that we’re facing a similarly explosive event in technological advancement, the quest for ghosties, horoscopes, and inter-dimensional communion is more alive than ever.
And sometimes, that means making homemade ouija boards on cardboard with your number one crush.
All my love and stamps forever,
Nikita, your snail mail sweetheart
(PS - do you have a spooky encounter with ghosts? You bet your sweet bippy I wanna hear about it!!!)
from the biography Do What Thou Wilt by Lawrence Sutin
Lol.
SO EAGER.
Same source as above - it’s a great analysis of the letters!
Truly a bozo amount of information from this article in Portuguese by Rita Cyprian at Observador.
Cannot stress enough how much Crowley bugs me! Petition for me to write a novel from Jaeger’s point of view?
I spent legit hours searching for any newspaper articles either from Lisbon or Berlin and came up empty; if anyone has a good resource for 1930s international papers, lemme know. The information is gleaned from all the sources above, but none of them have direct images or scans of the material.