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Correspondence from George MacNie Cowie to Aleister Crowley
14 Glenisla Gardens, Edinburgh.
8 Feb 15.
Care Frater
I had yours of 23rd Jan on Saturday. You will have got a previous letter which I had posted the day before. Also a cable. F[iat] P[ax].
He damned around for a hell of a time on getting the request to find the Arabic original and translate it, the poor devil has his hands full enough and it's like the impossible tasks the princesses in the Fairy Tales get given them by the cruel stepmothers. By time and by dint of making oneself a nuisance one could do it. It's the paucity of time that is the difficulty. I've been going to the advocates in my lunch hour—Saturday I managed to get off for a good hour or two—the people were inclined to be ungracious at first, but on Saturday one of them asked, since I was interested in alchemy, did I know Ferguson's Bibliotheca Chemica? It turned out to be a huge catalogue of a chemical and alchemical library formed by a Glasgow doctor and is really valuable owing to the numerous notes and cross references. I had got a Geber in case there was any clue to be found. No, but turning to this catalogue I found three pages of references to the Smaragdine Tablet, noting various authors by whom it is quoted and giving the same original as Gardner mentioned, a Nurnberg book of 1541. No clue to, or mention of any Arabic or other than Latin original. The advocates do not possess this rare book and the British Museum is the only likely place. So I have written there to see if they possess it, or can trace any Arabic verse version, M.S. or otherwise.
I must find out what became of Dr Young's library. It must have been a prodigious collection, pity if dispersed.
The Dee book is Monas Hieroglyphica. It was printed at Antwerp in the pre-Kelly days. I've not been able to look it up again. Being in Latin I couldn't tell if it was any good or not. (Not knowing Latin is a serious handicap)
Do you know the Isaic tablet of Cardinal Bembeno. I was curious to see it and took advantage of the advocates to unearth it. They have Pignorino [?]. Is it of any importance? Personally I cannot discover any meaning in it. It is made up of Egyptian figures with a sort of Greek flavour about them and apparently refers to the Zodiac. There is a very curious and mysterious hermaphroditic figure in the same book, which probably you know of.
[The remainder of this letter is missing.]
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