Leah Hirsig (April 9, 1883 – February 22, 1975) was an American schoolteacher and occultist, notable for her magical record diary, The Magical Record of the Scarlet Woman, which describes her experiences and visions as an associate, friend, and victim of occult writer Aleister Crowley. She was the most famous of Crowley's "Scarlet Women".
Early life
Hirsig was born into a family of nine siblings in Trachselwald, Canton of Bern, Switzerland. However, they moved to the United States when she was a child aged two, and she grew up in New York City. Growing up in the city, she was taught at a high school in the Bronx.
Interest in occultism
Hirsig 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 Manhattan neighborhood of Greenwich Village. 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, she was consecrated as his Babalon or, "Scarlet Woman", taking the name Alostrael, "the womb (or grail) of God." Leah Hirsig wrote in her 1921 diary: "I dedicate myself wholly to The Great Work. I will work for wickedness, I will kill my heart, I will be shameless before all men, I will freely prostitute my body to all creatures".
Hirsig had previously been married to Edward Hammond, by whom she had a son, Hans Hammond (1917-1985).
Abbey of Thelema
Hirsig helped found the Abbey of Thelema with Crowley in Cefalù, Italy.
Soon after moving from West 9th St. in Greenwich Village New York City with their newborn daughter Anne Leah nicknamed Poupée, 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 magic 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, to a deeper understanding of the Law of Thelema. 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 found an ideal magical partner. That he called her vagina "the Hirsig patent vacuum-pump" is a misattribution due to a similar contemporary poem "Re Leah Sublime".
After Raoul Loveday died from drinking contaminated water at Cefalù, Mary Butts reported in one of her journals about Hirsig of an unsuccessful attempt to induce a he-goat to copulate with her at the Abbey of Thelema, emulating an ancient pagan ritual (an account corroborated by Crowley himself in an unpublished passage in one of his diaries).
After the Abbey
With Crowley, Leah had a daughter, whom they named Anna Leah (Poupée) Crowley. She was born on 26 January 1920 in Fontainebleau, France. She died on 15 October 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.