Lea Hirsig (April 9, 1883, Trachselwald

Trachselwald

Trachselwald is a municipality in the administrative district of Emmental in the Swiss canton of Bern.- History :The name of this municipality means "Drechsler-Wald" and was first mentioned in 1131...

, Canton of Bern – February 22, 1975) was a Swiss-American notably associated with the author and occultist Aleister Crowley

Aleister Crowley

Aleister Crowley , born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, astrologer, mystic and ceremonial magician, responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. He was also successful in various other...

.

Early life

Hirsig was born into a family of nine siblings in Trachselwald, Bern, Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

. However, they moved to America when she was a child aged two, and she grew up in New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

. Growing up in the city, she taught at a high school in the Bronx.

Occultism

She and her older sister Alma were drawn to the study of the occult, and this interest led them in the spring of 1918 to pay a visit to Aleister Crowley, who was living at the time in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan. Crowley and Hirsig felt an immediate and instinctive connection. Leah asked him to paint her as a "dead soul" and in fact Crowley painted several portraits of her.

In 1919, after seeking out Aleister Crowley due to her interest in the occult

Occult

The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...

, she was consecrated as his Babalon

Babalon

Babalon—also known as The Scarlet Woman, The Great Mother, or the Mother of Abominations—is a goddess found in the mystical system of Thelema, which was established in 1904 with English author and occultist Aleister Crowley's writing of The Book of the Law...

 or, "Scarlet Woman", taking the name Alostrael, "the womb (or grail) of God."

Leah had previously been married to Edward Hammond, by whom she had a son, Hans Hammond (13 Nov 1917-Oct 1985).

She then helped found the Abbey of Thelema

Abbey of Thelema

The Abbey of Thelema refers to a small house which was used as a temple and spiritual centre founded by Aleister Crowley and Leah Hirsig in Cefalù, Sicily in 1920....

 with Crowley in Cefalù

Cefalù

Cefalù is a city and comune in the province of Palermo, located on the northern coast of Sicily, Italy on the Tyrrhenian Sea about 70 km east from the provincial capital and 185 km west of Messina...

, Italy.

Soon after moving from West 9th St. in Greenwich Village New York City with their newborn daughter Anne Leah nicknamed Poupée (born February 1920 and died in a hospital in Palermo 14 October 1920), Crowley, along with Leah Hirsig, founded the Abbey of Thelema in Cefalù (Palermo), Sicily on 14 April 1920, the day the lease for the villa Santa Barbara was signed by Sir Alastor de Kerval (Crowley) and Contessa Lea Harcourt (Leah Hirsig). The Crowleys arrived in Cefalu on 1 April 1920.[90] During their stay at the abbey, Ms Hirsig was known as Soror Alostrael, Crowley's Scarlet Woman, the name Crowley used for his female sex magick practitioners in reference to the consort of the Beast of the Apocalypse whose number is 666.

Of her time there, Frater Hippokleides (2003) writes:

At the Abbey, Hirsig was instrumental in guiding Crowley, the Prophet of the New Aeon

Aeon (Thelema)

In the religion of Thelema, it is believed that the history of humanity can be divided into a series of Aeons, each of which was accompanied by its own forms of "magical and religious expression"...

, to a deeper understanding of the Law of Thelema

Thelema

Thelema is a religious philosophy that was established, defined and developed by the early 20th century British writer and ceremonial magician, Aleister Crowley. He believed himself to be the prophet of a new age, the Æon of Horus, based upon a religious experience that he had in Egypt in 1904...

. At a time of despair, Crowley wrote, “What really pulled me from the pit was the courage, wisdom, understanding and divine enlightenment of the Ape herself. Over and over again, she smote into my soul that I must understand the way of the gods… We must not look to the dead past, or gamble with the unformed future; we must live wholly in the present, wholly absorbed in the Great Work, 'unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result'. Only so could will be pure and perfect.

Crowley wrote one of his most confronting poems, "Leah Sublime", (which has been called "alarmingly obscene") in her honour. In Leah Crowley he found an ideal magical partner. He called her vagina "the Hirsig patent vacuum-pump".

After Raoul Loveday died from drinking contaminated water at Cefalù, his widow Betty May began to spread a story about Hirsig claiming that at the Abbey of Thelema a he-goat was induced to copulate with her.

With Crowley, Leah had a daughter, whom they named Anna Leah (Poupée) Crowley. She was born on 26 Jan 1920 in Fontainebleau, France. She died on 15 Oct 1920.

Hirsig's role as Crowley's initiatrix reached a pinnacle in the spring of 1921 when she presided over his attainment of the grade of Ipsissimus, the only witness to the event.

By June 1924, while Hirsig—the Scarlet Woman—stayed loyal to Crowley during money troubles and painful surgeries for his asthma symptoms, the two of them found their relationship was suffering. She wrote in her diary that his "rasping voice so jarred me that I wanted to scream." After a few months Crowley broke it off, presenting her with a new "Scarlet Woman" by the name of Dorothy Olsen.

But this did not lead Hirsig to abandon her commitment to Thelema. Her diary from this period reveals her continuing devotion to the Great Work, her renewal of her magical oaths, her ongoing invocations of Ra Hoor Khuit, and her consecration of herself as the bride of Chaos. In 1925, when Crowley asked her to serve again for a period as his scribe and secretary, she readily accepted; she was ready to give her assistance when it was necessary to the furtherance of his magical work and to the promulgation of the Law of Thelema. As Crowley wrote in his diary during the Cefalù period, “She loves me for my work… She knows and loves the God in me, not the man; and therefore she has conquered the great enemy that hides behind his clouds of poisonous gas, Illusion.”

After Crowley

Hirsig spent the winter in Paris, France. There her financial problems continued, although Crowley biographer Lawrence Sutin rejects the assertion of earlier writers that she worked as a prostitute. She continued to work for Crowley and the promulgation of Thelema for at least three years.

She later married William George Barron, with whom she had a son, Alexander Barron (4 Dec 1925-?)

On March 13, 1926 Alma Hirsig, the sister of Crowley’s ex-Scarlet Woman Leah Hirsig, more commonly known as Mrs. Marian Dockerill, published her expose on Aleister Crowley, on 'Oom the Omnipotent' Pierre Bernard (yogi)

Pierre Bernard (yogi)

Pierre Arnold Bernard was a pioneering American yogi, scholar, occultist, philosopher, mystic and businessman; he held a notorious reputation as a con man, seducer and philanderer....

 and others in a series of articles which began running on this date in the New York Journal, titled "My Life in a Love Cult, A Warning to All Young Girls".

Hirsig later rejected Crowley's status as a prophet, while still recognizing the Law of Thelema. Ultimately she returned to her work as a schoolteacher in America. John Symonds, "Crowley's most hostile biographer," claimed to find rumors of her converting to Roman Catholicism.

In popular culture

The role of Leah Hirsig was played by Natalie Hughes in the Robert Garofalo documentary film "In Search of the Great Beast" (Disinformation Company, 2007)

Marta Timon portrayed her in the Carlos Atanes

Carlos Atanes

Carlos Atanes is a Spanish film director and writer.Born in Barcelona, Spain, Atanes has written and directed many works since 1987, using different genres and techniques . In 1991, he shot The Marvellous World of the Cucu Bird, which has been followed by another experimental works as El Tenor...

film "Perdurabo" (2003)

Lynn Mastio Rice portrayed her in the Vincent Jennings film "Abbey of Thelema" (2007)