What did Aleister Crowley have against cats?
Crowley made a serious effort to get himself recognized as a poet after leaving Cambridge. Like most believers he lacked any spark of originality in his thinking, so he tried hard to pass as a “naughty nineties” satanist (like Enoch Soames) even though that pose was ten years out of date by the time Crowley caught up with it. In his “satanic” poems Crowley is carefully trying to be outrageous. Here is one of them: SLEEPING IN CARTHAGE The month of thirst is ended. From the lips That hide their blushes in the golden wood A fervent fountain amorously slips, The dainty rivers of thy luscious blood; Red streams of sweet nepenthe that eclipse The milder nectar that the gods hold good– How my dry throat, held hard between thy hips, Shall drain the moon-wrought flow of womanhood! Divinest token of sterility, Strange barren fountain blushing from the womb, Like to an echo of Augustan gloom When all men drank this wine; it maddens me With yearnings after new divinity, Prize of thy draught, som
