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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to William Wynn Westcott
49 Rue Vavin Momtparnasse, Paris
25.7.08 [25 July 1908]
Dear Sir and Brother,
I have received letters from a Mr. Cadbury-Jones on your behalf. He omits to explain his intervention or to produce any proper authority; and in any case I cannot admit that the matter at issue can be settled by any third person.
Permit me to recapitulate:
1. You are or were in possession (or rather in charge) of the Cipher MSS. on which the orders of R.R. et AC. and G.D. [Golden Dawn] were founded.
2. These Orders were and are being exploited by swindlers and worse—I need only mention Madame Horos.
3. By preserving the secrecy and inaccessibility of these [Cipher] MSS. you render possible these crimes, and consequently make yourself their accomplice.
4. It is within my personal experience that the [Cipher] MSS. do contain, although in a hidden manner, the veritable formulae of initiation.
5. The guardianship of the honour of initiates has passed into my hands, and I am determined to vindicate it, and justify the confidence which has been placed in me, whatever the cost to myself or to others.
6. I therefore demand that you should make a clear statement of fact as to how the MSS. came into your hands, and that the MSS. themselves, prefaced by such statement, should be deposited with the Trustees of the British Museum. Or, if you have parted with them, that you should inform me how and when; and to whom you have entrusted them.
7. Thus I trust both to establish their authenticity
8. And to secure the knowledge for genuine students.
9. Failing this, I intend to publish a complete statement of the whole transaction form the day of Sapiens Dominabitur Astris [Anna Sprengel] unto now, as I may best establish it from the documents in my possession and the witnesses at my disposal. I shall do this entirely without malice, with strict truthfulness, and with the intention of enlightening the general body of students, both as to the existence of the true formulae, and as to the vile uses to which even they may be prostituted. I shall give you then as now every opportunity of presenting your own side of the case, not only as to the matters now in dispute between us, but as to the forgeries of which your colleague has accused you.
10. If this course of action be displeasing to you, you will only haveyourself to blame. I play fair, with all my cards on the table; I have no personal feeling whatever in the matter, or anything to gain in any way. It is because of (not in spite of) these circumstances that I am perfectly determined to have my own way in this matter. And in order that Non Omnis Moriar [William Wynn Westcott] may perceive that I do not write without authority, I have caused this letter to be supervised and approved by those whom he must recognize and to whom he must bow, unless his grade of 7°=4° is even more nominal than has hitherto been supposed.
I am, dear Sir and Brother,
Yours very truly,
Aleister Crowley
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