[Ban on Aleister Crowley lecture at Oxford University – archive, 1930]
https://archive.org/details/GillesDeRaisTheBannedLectureByAleisterCrowley/page/n3/mode/2up
Mr. H. Speaight, secretary of the Poetry Society:
"I am writing to tell you that we have been unfortunately forced to cancel next Monday’s meeting of the Poetry Society. It has come to our knowledge that if your proposed paper is delivered disciplinary action will be taken involving not only myself but the rest of the members of the society. In these circumstances you will, I trust, understand why we have had to cancel the meeting."
Mr Crowley’s Statement:
“Perhaps the refusal to let me lecture has come because Gilles de Rais is said to have killed 500 children in ritual murder and in some way this was connected with myself, since the accusation that I have not only killed but eaten children is one of the many false statements that have been circulated about me in the past.”
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/04/aleister-crowley-lecture-ban-at-oxford-university-1930
GILLES DE RAIS
- Knight and Lord from Brittany, Anjou and Poitou
- Leader in the French army
- Companion-in-arms of Joan of Arc
Montague Summers believes he sacrificed around eight hundred children.
Gilles confessed, and was put to the stake on October 26th, 1440.
His estates and untold riches were left to Mother Church, who, wasting no time, added them to her list of material gains.
In the time of Shakespeare, Joan of Arc was accepted in England as a symbol for everything vile.
He makes her out to be a sorceress, charlatan, hypocrite, coward, a liar, and a common slut.
[Editor: She was canonized as a saint.]
There is no improbability that Gilles de Rais was addicted to black magical practices, for they were all Catholics.
At that time, absolute, abomination was at its height.
Grammar appears in the word "Gramarye", beloved of Sir Walter Scott and "grimoire", a black magical ritual.
Precious little knowledge filtered through Christianity.
It was against the interests of the Church.
In those times, it was much easier to suppress people and ideas than it is now.
Those who pursued knowledge were under strong suspicion of heresy.
No one was better aware than the Pope that knowledge was power.
In order to get the peasant folk going, there are only two things which you can play on—greed and fear.
It was not so easy to get them to go out and murder a lot of inoffensive people at the word, “Jump!”
I am in the same line of business myself.
I have candles made of infants’ fat.
I have feasted on rifled graves.
To learn to be a surgeon, you must have corpses to dissect.
The surgeon was, in fact, the body-snatcher.
Gilles de Raid was, to a large extent, the victim of Catholic logic.
He consorted with the learned and, therefore, murdered little children.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltPnXMu52p4
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