~ MICHAEL PHILLIP RAE ~
A Biographical Sketch of a Friend & Acquaintance of Aleister Crowley
Born in the tiny town of Caterham just south of London in 1895 this gentleman never amounted to much throughout his entire life. Although he married into a rich family from Montauk, Long Island he remained in England living a life of squalor. The first job Michael Rae ever took in his life was cleaning the barns at a local dairy. In reminiscing Mr. Mildermier, the owner of the dairy, has stated that "Michael was always content with simply being around the cows." (1) Unknown to Mr. Mildermier, Michael was an ambitious man. After years of struggling he finally moved up to the position of milkman, something of which he was very proud. He never seemed to aspire beyond this point. In regards to his pitiful life, his only claim to fame occurred in the summer of 1929 while attending the European Milkman Convention in Brussels. It was here that he was nominated and won an award for being the best milk distributor in the county of Buckinghamshire where he had recently moved. He was always very proud of the plaque and displayed it in his parlor as if it were a shrine. It is believed that he died a retired milkman in late January of 1946 although there is some indication that he was fired after thirty years of service. At the time of his death he left behind two children, Katherine 14 and William Louis age 19 by his wife who had recently divorced him. It is also rumored that he had an illegitimate child through an affair with a woman named Stella while he was in Brussels during the E. M. C. of 1929. (2)
Michael Phillip Rae first met the Great Beast, Aleister Crowley, in the summer of 1945. At that time Crowley was living at Bell Inn in Aston Clinton of Buckinghamshire. From surviving documents we have learned that Michael Phillip Rae was the man who delivered eggs and milk to Crowley's room once a week while he was staying at the rooming house. He was, in fact, Crowley's milkman. Unfortunately little survives of their early transactions but in 1994, while renovating Aston Inn, a stash of letters and bills were discovered "stuffed behind a waist high cabinet in the kitchen directly under a portrait of Winston Churchill." (3) There is little evidence as to who had actually put the papers there but they contained unpaid bills, some torn in half, along with letters back and forth between Aleister Crowley, Michael Phillip Rae and others. It appears from these letters that by October of 1945 Aleister Crowley was already in debt and had not been paying his bills for quite some time.4 Rae, obviously a friend, was trying to get Crowley to pay off his debt. had not been paying his bills for quite some time. (4) Rae, obviously a friend, was trying to get Crowley to pay off his debt.
The letters are extremely fascinating. Not so much due to the nature of the transactions regarding unpaid bills, but because Crowley and Rae appear to be discussing everything from the 'Elixir of Life' and homosexual Tantric rites to the XIº O.T.O., as well as the unpaid bills. In these letters we also learn that Michael Rae was a IVº member of the Ordo Templi Orientis with a Charter to Initiate into the Minerval Degree, although there is little evidence that he ever used this Charter. These letters also imply that Crowley might have had a brief homosexual relationship with Michael Rae which was even sanctioned by Rae's wife, (5) although later, according to court papers, she divorced him because of this very action. (6) Obviously the two were very close friends and shared more than just a casual acquaintance. What is ironic is that none of Aleister Crowley's biographers even bother to mention Michael Philip Rae. It is as if he never existed.
According to these letters we also learn that it was Aleister Crowley who introduced the witch Gerald Gardner to Rae's wife Katherine and that both of them shared a torrid love affair of mutual bondage together. Unfortunately it seems that Michael Phillip Rae was very upset over this affair and in a fiery letter to Crowley he wrote, "... I can not believe you! You gave out my home address to some crazy bearded lunatic who shows up at my door unannounced with whips and chains! He begged my wife to tie him up and discipline him in the name of some witchcraft goddess crap! I came home late only to hear 'Beat me, beat me, I've been a naughty little boy' coming from my kitchen." (7) Later Katherine and Gerald Gardner drifted apart. It seems this occurred shortly after Michael's death when she decided to move back to her family home in Montauk, Long Island. However, in a surviving letter from 1946, there is a rather interesting comment made by Michael's son, William Louis Rae, to Aleister Crowley. This letter was found in the library at The University of Montauk. (8) William Rae simply lets the Great Beast know that his "mother wants to know if you are still speaking to a Mr. Gardner?" Regardless if it doesn't say much, it does imply the possibility of fond memories still lingering in Katherine's heart and the desire to possibly contact Gardner, for old time's sake.
The last few months of Rae's life were tragic. He was forced to move out of his wife's home and into a dirty, little, one room attic apartment with no windows. With his marriage in ruins he lost his children, Winny (his one-eyed toy terrier), his car and was forced into an early retirement at Mildermier's Dairy due to the scandal of his homosexual affair with Aleister Crowley. Finally, an end came to this tragedy. He died suddenly of a heart attack in 1946 while reading a letter from Aleister Crowley. According to his landlady he simply grabbed his chest, collapsed and died. His last words were, "He found me!" (9) Sadly, only three people attended his funeral; his landlady Mabel Elizabeth Fulton, Aleister Crowley and a mysterious woman in black whose face was concealed by a long veil. (10) His ex-wife and children did not attend. He was buried in a pauper's grave, with no markings, in a seedy east London cemetery. Also, in January of 1946 the Great Beast, Aleister Crowley, moved from Bell Inn into an old boarding house in Netherwood, Hastings where he would die the following year.
NOTES
1. John Taylor, "Local Dairy is 75 years old this month," The Monthly Buckinghamshire News Vol.
MCXVIII No. 73, July 1935.
2. This is supported by Aleister Crowley's 1947 Diaries, "Mon. 26 {September} Saw Stella, she's
visiting London from Brussells. Clamado with her. He's now 17, naturally bald, bushy eyebrows.
He still thinks I'm his father ... damm Stella, hasn't she told him about the milkman Michael
Phillip Rae yet?" (Berkeley: A Pangenetor Parody No. 2, Nov. 1994), p.8.
3. The Milkman Letters (Berkeley: A Pangenetor Parody No. 1, June 1994), p.3.
4. Ibid., p.4. "You have not made a payment on your bill in almost four months." (Michael Phillip Rae in
a letter to Crowley dated October 28, 1945.)
5. Ibid., p.10. "Your comments regarding your wife wanting us to begin an affair are quite flattering."
(Aleister Crowley in a letter to M. P. Rae dated January 3, 1946.)
6. Magistrate Court, London Docket No. 239456-23, Katherine Rae vs. Michael Phillip Rae, January,
1946. Sadly, the divorce was granted on February 8, 1946 ... about two weeks after Michael Rae
suffered a heart attack and died. Because Michael Rae died before the divorce was officially
granted, Katherine Rae was able to claim his milkman's pension.
7. Milkman Letters, p.9.
8. Crowley's Missing Chapter to Magick Without Tears (Berkeley: A Pangenetor Parody
No. 3), Letter from W. L. Rae to Aleister Crowley dated December 9, 1946.
9. Milkman Letters, p.11. (Letter from Mabel Elizabeth Fulton to Aleister Crowley dated February
1, 1946.)
10. In an unpublished letter to Karl Germer dated March 3rd 1946 Aleister Crowley writes, "... and
it was a simple funeral. There was a woman, dressed in black with a veil covering her face. She
stood off in the distance just watching. She looked familiar but when I approached she quickly
walked away. I thought it might be Stella." There is absolutely no proof that it was.
(c) Cornelius 2003ev
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