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Correspondence from MacGregor Mathers to Marcus Worsley Blackden[1]
87, Rue Mozart, Auteuil, Paris.
April 26th, 1900.
This is NOT a private letter!
C.[are] et V.[ery] H.[onoured] Frater "Ma Wahanu Thesi,"
I have received your letters and recognize that both in them and in your recent action there has been much more precipitation than discretion, and while admitting from what I know of you that your intent has been to act rightly, I none the less condemn the manner of such action and the liberty of speech in which you have dared to indulge regarding what I have thought fit to do and to command to be done. The only excuse I see in your favour beyond what I have already admitted is that in the midst of a current of absolute mania which appears to be acting in the London Second Order, you would seem to have somewhat of sanity left.
To that quality in you therefore, I address the rest of this letter. And I am not writing thus with the purpose of insulting you, but rather of endeavouring to aid you to arouse yourself to a clearer comprehension of your environment.
(a) Your remarks re the matter of "Sapere Aude" [William Wynn Westcott] not being desired to lead by certain members of the Second Order are difficult to reconcile with the FACT of "Demon Est Deus lnversus" [W.B. Yeats] having asked him to lead them should they succeed in shaking off my authority; as well as with S.S.D.D.'s [Florence Farr] having implied or expressed such an idea as she believed S.A. to have received an Epitome of the Second Order working from "Sapiens Dominabitur Astris" [Fraulein Anna Sprengel]. I would advise you on another occasion to be more certain of your premiss major before risking an enthymeme to me.
(b) You appear to discern no perfidy in "S.S.D.D.'s" making public a letter of mine to her of which every line bore the meaning of a privileged communication, neither do you seem to see any error in the malignant hurry with which she endeavoured to place either "Sapere Aude" or myself, or both, in a position of public humiliation, notwithstanding the many kindnesses she has received in the past from us both and especially from "S.A."
(c) As regards mistakes in the Order Knowledge it does not appear to have struck these would-be critics that the subject was beyond their criticism. But I admit that I have committed one great though unavoidable fault, which is this: in giving these persons so great a knowledge I have not also been able to give them brains and intelligence to comprehend it, for this miracle the Gods have not granted me the power to perform. You had better address your reproaches to the Gods rather than to me, unless some spark of returning wisdom can make you recognize in such "critics" the swine who trample the Divine teachings underfoot.
You say "am I to understand that there is never to be any truth and light let in upon our Order?" I tell you there has been too much truth and too much light let in upon these rebellious children of clay, and it has blinded them!
(d) For my Envoy [Aleister Crowley]—I sent him as my impersonal representative, wherefore I selected a man in whose fidelity I could trust (a very rare factor in the London Second Order), who, being the latest admitted, was without influence gained therein by seniority or grade; and still further to mark his impersonality in this matter, I distinguished him by a symbol, and not by a name, and advised him further to wear a mask of Osiris as laid down in [Ritual Document] Z, should the same be necessary; so as completely to separate and distinguish between his individuality and the office with which I had invested him.
And I may remark that to term the Highland Dress a "masquerade" is hardly even English good taste when the blood of the Highland Regiments is reddening South African earth; though in my opinion shed in a mistaken quarrel and in the wrong cause.
How difficult it seems for many of the London Second Order to comprehend that I am neither to be bought, bribed, persuaded, tricked, bullied, frightened nor ridiculed into any line of action that I do not see fit to take! Could they only have understood this, the present difficult position in which they have voluntarily placed themselves would not have arisen.
Yours still fraternally,
Deo Duce Comite Ferro, 7°=4°, Chief of the Second Order.
1—Marcus Worsley Blackden was a member of the Golden Dawn.
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