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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Clifford Bax
Hongkong. S. China.
28.3.06
My dear Bax,
Your letter reached me here on my arrival from Burma via Yunnan-Fu with the wife [Rose Kelly] and child [Lilith Crowley]. We had a fine time—about 4 months on the road—that is why I have heard nothing of anyone since you left Bremen.
I certainly didn't expect to hear from you so late as this: but you have doubtless grasped the great principle that "one should work as if one had omnipotence at one's command and eternity at one's disposal".
So I've heaps of time to write to you and can do anything you wish. It is very easy to get all the keys (invisible and otherwise) into the Kingdom; but the locks are devilish stuff—some of them hampered.
I am myself just at the end of a little excursion of nearly 7 years in Hell. The illusion of reason, which I thought I had stamped out in '98, was bossing me. It has now got the boot. But let this tell you that it is one thing to devote your life to Magic at 20 years old and another to find at 30 that you are bound to stay a Magus.
The first is the folly of a child; the second the Gate of the Sanctuary.
It's no good, though, my writing indefinitely like this—only as a magical act can it be justified. (i.e. the Masters may operate the coincidence that it should fit the case.)
By rights you should get ordeals and initiations and things. A really good student can make it all up himself; and if he has really the wit to interpret all aright he needs no teacher.
Solve et coagula said some ass. This means Solve—Volatize the fixed by a firm resolve to interpret everything in life as a spiritual fact, a step on the Path, a guide to the Light. An old disciple of mine put it more clumsily thus: "Whatsoever ye do, whether ye eat or drink, do all to the glory of God".
I may add that in my own experience failure to do this has given me a bad time. Every time you interpret anything whatever materially you go a buster, worse than a motor-car smash.
I am in good form for the moment; so I don't believe at all that Clifford Bax wrote me a letter, but that the Gods suggested to me that perhaps I was a little selfish about my poor little scrap of knowledge.
This is not a joke or an affectation, but a fact; and its the completion of half of the Great Work. Coagula—fix the volatile—means that you had better find out for yourself. If you do, write and tell me—I haven't an idea.
So shall take some pretty drastic steps to discover.
Why I drivel on like this I really don't know. If you think my books would be any good to you, you are welcome.
Register magical letters, unless your soul is worth less than twopence.
Your fraternally
Perdurabo
To Mr. Hugh Gillies at Boleskine House Nr Foyers Inverness N.B.
Please send to Mr. Clifford Bax, Collected Works Vol 1. The Sword of Song. Orpheus. Goetia. Oracles. They have been paid for.
Boleskine.
Fill in your address and send this half-sheet. Give me a permanent address. Write me A. Crowley. Boleskine. Foyers. Inverness.
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