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William Butler Yeats about Conversation with William Wynn Westcott
[Undated: circa 6 June 1900]
I met S.A. [William Wynn Westcott] yesterday in a bookshop I asked him to send me enclosed statement as a story was going about that I had asked him to lead us.
I had some talk with him about 5°=6° [Adeptus Minor] matters, etc. I asked was there a Cypher MS [of the 5°=6° Ceremony]. He said not so far as he ever heard. He thought that D.D.C.F. [MacGregor Mathers] might have got it the ritual in some Paris library. D.D.C.F. had always told him that he had met a learned Frater in Paris & he may have done so (I gathered that S.A. thought the source was probably some library but that at the same time he was inclined to believe in the learned Frater). I asked if it came from Germany. He said "no" & added nothing came from Germany except somethings for him personally. I asked if these had been used in making the Second Order & he said "no—at least not by me" (I concluded from this that D.D.C.F. had so used them & also that SA. was afraid of confirming the statement that he had "received an epitome of the Second Order knowledge.") I asked about the Microcosm lecture & he said he concluded that D.D.C.F. made this up himself & added that it was not very difficult to get things when one was really working. Things had come to him which had made Mme. Blavatsky [Helena Petrovna Blavatsky] say "I thought nobody in Europe but myself could have written that." He added rather irrelevantly that he had written the ritual used for Neophytes by the Esoteric Section. I asked about the 10°=1°; 9°=2°; 8°=3°; 7°=4° system. He said that Kenneth Mackenzie had been told of it years ago in Germany & that it was confirmed by the numbers on the Cypher MSS. He was very cautious, very anxious, it seemed to me, not to appear to decry any claim D.D.C.F. might possibly make or have made & at the same time anxious that we should not think D.D.C.F. had done anything reprehensible. He wound up by asking me not to let it be generally known that I had met him.
D.E.D.I.
P.S.: I drew his attention to the use of the word "collegium", noted as the "domum" of the "Fama [Fraternitatis]", in the 5°=6° Ritual. I asked if there were other editions of the "Fama" which might contain the different word. He said "Yes a number".
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