Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Mrs. Graham (Aelfrida Tillyard)

[Undated: circa late May 1913]

Dear Mrs. Graham,

The Palace of the World does explain what it's about. It is a well known title of Malkah, Bride and Father, it corresponds to the nature of the poem for Equinox II I think you said. You will find on page 19 the Lesser ritual of the Pentagram. This poem describes exactly what happens when you do the ritual. Possibly a note to that effect might suit your purpose. If I were to invent a name to describe the poem, that name would be a most formidable Qabalistic compilation. The sort of word that makes Abrahadabra look like 30 cents. I don't like Memnon because it is too Egyptian and the poem is not at all Egyptian in feeling.

I am afraid I cannot approve of removing the word "Some" from the "Goad" because it is intended to emphasise the vagueness of the goaded one.

Now then to business. Your remark is very good. What I object to in your literary style is that each sentence causes me to foam in about 1000 words. Of course, your record is not religious but it is scientific. Science will become religion in the end. Science is not religion because it is Nescian (that is a very good paragraph, please tell everybody). But of course I cannot agree that religion ought to deal with objective truth. To begin with I regard the distinction between subjective and objective as a limitation of knowledge. I give an illusion [illustration?]. Surely Berkeley was right with regard to the subjectivity of all estimates of knowledge. I am not arguing that his system will serve for a limited interpretation of the Universe. I say that it is unthinkable to me that I should be told to think anything but a thought. Whence, by the word God I can only mean my idea of God. It is quite true that this idea may be totally false and have no connection whatever with objective truth, supposing that there be such a thing. But I cannot help that. All I can do to increase in knowledge of God is to clarify, define, no, deepen. A religious reformer who attacks the theory that Vishnu has 99 arms complains of this small shopkeeper idea of him, insistent his arms, if carefully counted, come to 999. He has never really altered the facts about God. All that religious dispute comes to is that A's idea is different from B's. Revelation does not help us because that materially consists in correcting the ideas of A and B by those of C. Hence in practice in order to get a better idea of God, and it is totally unimportant whether that is truer as well as nobler, objectively, the true God must be the Demon of the Evangelicals.

I should say that these words were really meaningless. If you tell me an individual created the world, and placed men upon it with the seeds of evil in them, I cannot call that individual God, so long as I include the idea of God in my connotation of God. Of course I only state this dilemma in its crudest form. For to continue the sentence in spite of the hot weather, if you wish to make your idea of God nobler, the way to do it is to make your mind nobler, and in particular to cultivate that noblest part of it which you owe God.

Now, you and I, as more or less educated people, have an idea of God based upon mathematical and philosophical conceptions. We are quite beyond the Australian bushman and Rudyard Kipling, and I think we are false to ourselves if we hamper our idea of God by involving him in a geocentric theory. To anyone capable of pure thought it is simply disgusting to hear people squabble on the authenticity of manuscripts. It does not matter to me in the least whether the Gospel story is true in the police court sense of truth. If that story does not square with my highest ideas, so much the worse for the story. Let God be true and every man a liar is intensely immoral. So long as by the truth of God is meant the truth of statements [?] which are of unknown origin, which have certainly been tampered with both by ignorance and malice—statements which are in themselves revolting alike to good sense and good manners. There are Gnostic and Rosicrucian interpretation of many Christian dogmas such as the Trinity in particular, which appear to me extraordinarily helpful, but not because they approximate to objective Truth, but because the method of their presentation helps my mind to enlarge itself. Here then, and this is what I have been coming to on these pages, is only advance toward God as the evolution of the mind. Hence we must investigate the mind and discover its laws. We must then work in accordance with these laws to make the best of our minds. For example, the evolution of man is an obvious weakness and convinces us that it is possible to improve our control. Ultimately, as it happens, the mind is itself transcended, and our consciousness loses itself in a new region where such limitations of the mind as time and space do not obtain.

The next question is What is the Great Work? This is a very large question. The Alchemist said, Solve et coagula. Part I, make man God. Part II, make man God Man. Part I, Dissolve the Ego in God. Part II, Dissolve the Non-Ego in God. I am not sure that this is very clear. It is rather difficult to formulate the operations of Eternity in a few words. Fortunately, however, there is help at hand. In the official papers of the A∴A∴ the oath of a Probationer is to prosecute the Great Work, which is to obtain a scientific knowledge of the nature and powers of my own being. When he becomes a Neophyte, he swears to prosecute the Great Work, which is to obtain control of the nature and powers of my own being. He becomes a Zelator, and swears to prosecute the Great Work which is to obtain control of the foundations of my own being. He becomes a Practicus and swears to prosecute the Great Work, which is to obtain control of the vacillations of my own being. He becomes a Philosophus and swears to prosecute the Great Work which is to obtain control of the attractions and repulsions of my own being. He becomes a Dominus Liminis and swears to prosecute the Great Work which is to obtain control of the aspirations of my own being. He becomes an Adeptus Minor and swears to prosecute the Great Work which is to attempt the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. Such, in detail, are the elementary steps. Higher conceptions may be found in higher grades.

May 23.

With regard to your record, better not be quite rigid. The position's all right. The pictures are merely memory and imagination. The pain in head and heart should be the result of physical causes. You should not practice when unwell, unless you should come to the conclusion that these pains are sent in order to stop you, in which case you must take a high hand with them. But I should not do this unless every meditation is stopped by them over a long period.

The feelings mentioned on May 24 are very good as symptoms, but of course must be conquered.

May 25.

This is very good, the loosening of the consciousness entirely accompanied by astonishment. You ought to make it impossible for anyone to disturb you. For an invalid nothing could be easier.

May 26.

 Still good. The sensation in the palms and legs as if you might be getting stigmata.

There is nothing else to criticise in detail. On the whole record it is evident that you have a natural tendency to get into trances without very much trouble. I would like to bet that you would get Samahdi or its equivalent in the course of perhaps 3 months work, Maybe less. Your great danger will therefore be to accept the results of that Samahdi as truth. You cannot deny the thing itself, but because it is very much more real to you than (anything) in previous states of consciousness, you could and should deny the validity of the intellectual ideas connected with it.

If a savage is struck by lightning, but not killed, the experience is real enough, but it will be merely his intellectual ignorance which makes him ascribe his experience to the wrath of an offended deity. You will presumably attain the Vision of Christ, or rather of what you call Christ, and this will be an experience of unutterable bliss and glory. But having done this, you must read Arnold's Song Celestial Chap 11, and your intellect must tell you that the vision of the Bindu, which he calls Vishnu is identical with us [?this?].

You will find, by the way, in the Equinox IV, Temple of Solomon the King, very detailed records of meditations, as also in Equinox VIII, which should help you to recognise various symptoms which may occur. I am bound to recognise that your natural capacity for this particular type of work is a thousand times greater than mine is now or ever will be. This has not been altogether a disadvantage to me as the difficulties greatly assisted my material character and I am really quite afraid that your success will be so speedy that you will get a totally false idea of everything. You may assume that it is just as easy for everyone else, and the first Great Vision may seem to you to touch the limit of possibility, and prevent you going on. It is of vital importance to refuse to regard any experience whatever as good. What now appears to you as the Supreme Vision ought to be in a year's time a bar, an interruption, not merely as bad, but because it is a million times stronger, a million times worse than your present pictures of cathedrals.

I suppose the course of thoughts we think and the deceitfulness of riches of May week will be interfering with you shortly. Don't press matters. Your temptation is not to do too little meditation, but to do too much. However, what you do, let me know in say 3 weeks time from now. I shouldn't be at all surprised if you wrote sooner through having come to something.

Yours fraternally.

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