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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Wilfred Merton
[on the stationary of The Equinox]
21 Warwick Road S.W.
23 - 5 - 09 [23 May 1909]
My dear Schmeichen [Wilfred Merton],
I am about to issue 'The High History of Good Sir Palamedes the Saracen Knight and his following of the Questing Beast'.
I have made the Arthurian legend of high mystic import on [illegible]-Zoroastrian lines. Each adventure of the knight is a mystic ordeal. The treatment is quite unconventional; there is no bawdiness at all, and I make Jesus Christ the deus ex machina. I tell you all this so that you may earn [illegible] and gold by publishing in the C.U.N.T. Press.
I'm printing 500 copies on h.m. [Hand-made] paper and will bind it in cloth; sell at 10/6: shall republish in Equinox in one or two year's time. There are 118 pp. I would suggest that I paid 1/2 the composition charge and the cost of taking moulds; you the rest: and that we share the proceeds.
Yours ever,
Aleister Crowley.
If you insist on seeing Sir Palamede's armour, the hide of the Beast, and the original MSS of Merlin's Magic Book, I shall retire with dignity from the magical contest.
A.C.
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