Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to the Occult Review

[Undated: circa June 1910]

To the Editor of the Occult Review.

Dear Sir,—With reference to the editorial remarks in the May number of the Occult Review I am asked to point out in the first place that the ceremonies of evocation are not put forward as representing final wisdom, but to show what the hero of a story used to do when he was a boy. Apart from this, however, there is a type of mind which gets its best results by a dynamic rather than a static concentration. Few western minds are capable of forcing themselves into the dreary discipline of the East, and for such a person ceremonial magic, with all its illusions and disappointments may prove the shortest way. It is, moreover, no essential part of the question to show that ceremonial is absurd. It is easy to laugh at the wig of a judge, but the point is that he can send you to penal servitude, which is no laughing matter, and the test of a method is whether it works or no. I find few persons who really understand the nature of ceremonial magic complaining that the results are unsatisfactory. Bar Mathers [MacGregor Mathers].

I am, Sir,

Yours obediently,

Aleister Crowley.

124, Victoria Street, S.W.

[I did not suggest that the methods of ceremonial magic failed to produce results. What I questioned was the value or ultimate utility of those results.—Ed.]