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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Charles Stansfeld Jones
33 Avenue Studios. S.W.
Feb. 11th 1913.
Care Frater,
The Chancellor of the A∴A∴ desires me to say that he is very pleased with your letter of the 26th ult.
Your work appears to have been highly satisfactory. He has no hesitation in passing you to the grade of Neophyte, and is sending under separate cover the necessary documents.
It will be necessary to explain to you the position of Frater P.A. [J.F.C. Fuller] Frater P.A. was a probationer, who was entrusted with purely secretarial duty of issuing forms in the name of his Neophyte. He never became a Neophyte. He had done no work, and was absolutely ignorant of all the important knowledge, which is that derived from experience. I do not here speak of spiritual experience, but of the mere details of the difficulties in the practices. He had, therefore, no business whatever to be giving instructions. Even had he been a Neophyte this would have been wrong. The Probationer is supposed to choose exactly those practices which appeal to him. At the end of the year it will be evident from his records that certain practices are more suitable for him than others.
Please note these points, in case any Probationers are entrusted to you.
As a Neophyte, you have certain tasks to accomplish which must be properly carried through, not only because they are steps on the Path, but because it is necessary for you to have an absolutely complete knowledge and experience of all practices, in order that you may be able to help those under you whatever their difficulties may be.
You should get control of the Astral Plane by performing the practices in Liber O, and you should get results as good or better than those recorded in the Temple of Solomon the King in [Equinox] No. II, and you must send in your record at the end of seven months.
We do not intend to set you any more definite practice. The aim of the Order is to train Adepts, and self-reliance is one of the Principal conditions. It is quite true that by a course of careful nursing certain results might be hastened, but these would be entirely wasted if the student was thereby induced to depend upon his superiors. Similarly you might very easily get Samadhi by sticking to one particular kind of work, and it may seem to you that the broadening of your base may imply a corresponding loss of height in your apex, but time is of no importance as compared with thoroughness, for one thing; and for another your progress depends more than you perhaps suppose upon the amount of help that you are able to give the others. It is not sufficient for our ambition merely to produce a number of brilliant successes. We wish our Body to be a body of Servants of Humanity. A time will come when you will obtain the experience described in the Fourteenth Aether. You will become a Master of the Temple. That experience must be followed by that of the Thirteenth Aethyr, in which the Master, wholly casting aside all ideas of personal attainment, busies himself exclusively with the care of others. You cannot read the Fourteenth and Thirteenth Aethers too carefully of too often. You should reflect that even the high aspiration set before you,—the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel, turns out ultimately to be but a step on this sublime Path.
I am, for the Chancellor of the A∴A∴
Yours fraternally,
O.M.
P.S. In response to your offer to assist the work of the Order in any way that you can, we are sending you a dozen copies of Book 4, which you will please distribute to any suitable people. There is a probationer in Vancouver,—H. Sheridan Bickers [Horace Sheridan-Bickers], Editor of some paper dealing principally with Real Estate (the name of which I have forgotten). He usually writes under the name of "Yorick". Some good might be done were he to review a copy of this book.
P.S. With regard to the Neophyte Form: you fill in the date yourself, chose a new motto, and send the sum mentioned (see Task of a Neophyte, Section 0). The Ceremony of Initiation will be given on the next occasion of your visiting England.
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