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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Charles Stansfeld Jones
33 Avenue Studios. S.W.
August 27th 1914.
Care Frater,
I left over your letter of July 11th. to give myself more time to consider the matter. I do not quite know what you are to do with your correspondent. He has not got the mental apparatus to criticize intelligently what he heads, though probably he has his share of natural shrewdness. He may have quite a lot of capacity for the work, but you and I (having been educated) are ill-equipped for dealing with him. Our own intellectual processes have been so sophisticated by sham learning that we fail to comprehend his standpoint, while on the other hand he is overwhelmed by the words he reads, and very often fails to get the sense. In the case of the Lion Skin, the important points are two:—
1. It should be a skin.
2. It should be something belonging to a Lion.
If he wants to economise he should say "Lion equals Teth equals Serpent" and Buy a Serpent Skin, though again he would do much better to kill his own serpent. What strikes me more than anything is his capacity of his getting hold of the wrong end of the stick. He talks economy, and yet he is talking of having a pentagram printed in three colours, when the whole point of the thing is that you should do it yourself. Again, his lonely place, 20 miles away, is all very well for the operation of Abramelin, but for one who is merely learning it is absurd; he is not likely to get any results until he has done 50 operations as you very well know. The best thing about him is his good will, and this ought to pull him through. I should suggest that you would do wisely to keep him simple as possible. His practice must be preferred to his theory, and he must be kept off the great danger of being swamped by words. He comes of the class which is moved by rhetoric, and is inclined to believe anything because he sees it in print. In his case it is much better for him that he should not see print. You ought to insist that he should never take anything for granted or believe anything because you tell him so, or because anyone tells him so. Get him to make simple experiments and lead him on gently. If you can see him personally at any time I should try him on the Astral Plane, and of course you should hint to him that he needs badly the elements of general education. Until he has got this I am afraid that even such a simple treatise as the Book of Lies might prove misleading.
I am,
Yours fraternally,
Perdurabo.
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