The Transplutonic rites of Eros

Part six: Williamson's initiation into Witchcraft

The cool steps lead down to a private annex of the Hotel Crystal, which has twelve cubicles, six on each side of the cubic room. The identity of their occupants are shrouded by fine white silken veils. The number twelve is, no doubt, of astrological import. The three priestesses of the Dairy, for that is what it is called, are dressed in equally translucent costumes. The centre of the room has an altar with a large golden bowl set on a tripod. Each cell has a novitiate, naked, male, tied by wrists and ankles in the manner of St Andrew to a crux decussata. A young Cecil Williamson, in his early twenties, is privy to the secrets of this rite. The young men of that age were soon to face another kind of death.

Dinard was a fashionable resort for the English in the 1930s, enchanted by the belle-époque villas built by an Anglo-American aristocracy. Hitchcock would base the house in Psycho on the style of these, and is commemorated in a statue on the beachfront. For the magician, it gives a sense of the psychic architecture and troubling undercurrents the place has invoked.

In the brief oxygen spasm of libidinous energy between the wars, cocaine was available from the chemist, as were preparations of laudanum and opium. A floating class of aristocrats and bourgeoisie refreshed themselves in a river of champagne, dalliance and oh-so en vogue occultisms and astrology. The last of the trans-Neptunian planets Pluto, named for the lord of the Underworld, had been discovered on May 1st and cast its baleful rays of sexual perversity over the decade.

Cecil Williamson’s entry to the world of ‘the high society bogey bogey business’ came earlier, when he entered the pay of Mayfair medium Madame Delahaye. The virgin Cecil stood blanch faced in his white eton suit, hair powdered with flour, and was required to give a yes or no answer based on a pre-arranged signal. It was she who introduced him to the intelligence business; the scrupulous amassing of scandal, rumour and incontrovertible facts with which to control the field of operations. Williamson would refurbish that account later when he seemingly confided to interviewers about what witches do. Williamson had been first picked out because of the white light Delahaye saw behind him, in which we might discern a Luciferian beatitude. She noted his propensity for silence approvingly too.

Delahaye would go on to be the astrologer of Christian Dior, consoling him when his sister was taken to Ravensbrück Concentration Camp that she would be returned alive. By whatever method the celestial intelligencer came by it, her prediction proved correct. High fashion has continued to batten on astrologers, tarot and ritualistic display ever since.