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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to the Reverend Samuel Gasking
[27 June 1913]
Very Illustrious and Very Dear Brother,
I hope you were not unpleasantly surprised by the line I found myself obliged to take on Saturday with regard to Mr. Wedgwood [James Ingall Wedgwood]. I am an extremely broadminded person and masonically inclined towards laxity, and my objection on technical grounds might have been overcome in any other instance. I therefore think it right for me to explain to you what is behind all this. A week or two ago Mr. Wedgwood boasted from the Chair of the Emulation Lodge of so-called masons that he had bought the APR [Ancient and Primitive Rite] and that the Rite should pass into the hands of Co-masons. This might have been passed over as being equivalent to the extension of the Rite, if this was all. But it goes much deeper. Co-masonry itself is being dragged into the worship of this coming Christ [Krishnamurti], who appears to be a person of few wits an low morals, as you will see by the enclosed pamphlet , which please return as I have no copy: and concerning which I may mention that the Court upheld the plaintiff's contention [for the return of his son, Krishnamurti from the hands of Annie Besant] in every point, in spite of the fact that he is a very poor man while Mrs. Besant is spending money by the bucketful to better the ends of justice. She is very anxious to have some respectable masonic authority to pass the impudent blasphemous claims upon; and she took advantage of our late lamented Sov[ereign] G[rand] Master's great age to wheedle him into various courses of action which no mason could approve. I am sure therefore that you as a Christian clergyman no less than as a mason will see the necessity of combating to the utmost this insidious attempt to capture our venerable Rite for purposes alike so foul and so ridiculous.
Saluting you B T N K T T E O.
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