|
Correspondence from William Wynn Westcott to W.B. Yeats
March 20, 1900.
Private, to the Committee on which Frater W .B. Yeats is acting.
Dear Sir, and Frater Yeats;
You and your fellows are in possession of a mass of most valuable occult science which you learned in the lodges of the G.D. [Golden Dawn] Hermetic Society.
Woodman [William Robert Woodman], Mathers [MacGregor Mathers] and Westcott [William Wynn Westcott] have put you in the way of obtaining this. You have each, before entering the Second Order expressed in writing your approval of that teaching, and have sworn to keep it, and the Rituals, Lectures and Proceedings all Secret from the world.
You cannot now turn back and say you did not approve the teachings we provided.
Speaking legally I find I cannot prove the details of the origin of the knowledge and history of the G.D., so I should not be just nor wise to bias your opinion of them.
Mr. M.[athers] may insinuate and claim the authorship because I cannot disprove him. How can I say anything now, because if I accepted this new story, then Mrs. Woodman would rightly charge me with slandering her dead husband's reputation, for he was answerable for the original history; and if I say M.'s new story is wrong I shall be open to violent attack by him and I shall have to suffer his persecution.
I must allow you to judge us both to the best of your judgment, and to decide on your responsibility.
I remain,
Yours fraternally,
W.W. Westcott.
|