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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Charles Stansfeld Jones
The House of the Juggler [Adams Cottage]
An XII
[21 October 1916]
Son,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Yours dated Sept 17.
Read Kipling’s noble and beautiful poem “If”, and that one of the late W.S. Henley which begins:
Out of the arse that covers me Black as the pit from hole to hole I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable pole.
Your trouble is a repression of the libido; the Oedipus complex and its surrogates have developed into the retroversion of sucking and loving, thus exhibiting you as presexually inhibited by infantile dementia praecox.
Excuse me; I’m reading Jung’s Psychology of the Unconscious. So should you, by the way; very useful to pave your path. Jung proves that the American girl says ‘poppa’ not only because she wished to commit incest with him, but because it reminds her of the sexual pleasure she obtains from breaking wind.
I always thought it was something of the sort!
Anyhow, I do perceive a duality in your mind. You should have fucked K. [Katherine Talbot] hard. I feel sure there’s a sex-dissatisfaction of some sort in you. I have thought so for long. You have a long way to go to complete emancipation. You have no idea how deep-rooted is our objection to doing what we really will.
I believe that if you let yourself go, and in particular broke the spell of the ‘evil mother’—pointed out as such in your Probationer’s Record when none of the circumstances of the case were well known—you would be able to externalize the very great power that is within you.
You were effective for a time, and got your illuminations and so on, mostly because you got sexually excited over K.
I won’t identify the Phallus and the Oversoul but I’ll say that when the Phallus begins to balk the whole being is so stimulated that the man becomes competent to make the transfer of consciousness.
(Damn this ruled paper! but I’ve used all the unruled there was in Bristol!)
I don’t like to advise on practical matters in detail from a distance. I need to ask a hundred questions.
The magical solution that cries to me is this. Technically, a master is bound to perform any exercise set by him to a pupil, if the pupil refuse to do it. I have often had to do this. Now Checkie was in your charge, so you might walk and preach from Vancouver to Austin, Texas, where you could help me with the formation of a branch of the O.T.O. You could leave your job to W.—or don’t they like him?—and he could take on R.S.J. [Rubina Stansfeld Jones]. I don’t like abandoning that splendid Lodge. It had an atmosphere.
If I had any money, I would either make you a grant, or take you on as a close at hand colleague; but I’m living, as I have had for nearly ten years, from hand to mouth. I have not had $100 at any one time all this year. I don’t worry. Money comes to me when I need it, not before. The ten years has given me faith in the power and will of the A∴A∴ to support me in this mysterious way. I haven’t a particle of doubt that Equinox III, 1, will appear on March 21, 1919 E.V. in undiminished splendour.
I expect to be in Austin, or Titusville, Fla, all winter; and my idea was to work N.W. in the Spring via L.[os] A.[ngeles] and S.[an] F.[rancisco] to you, and thence to Australia and so on. But really I don’t know. “Sagittae” promises all kinds of fun!
Now, the only real counsel I can give you is to work the IX° hard. Ask IT for “Light on the Path” I assure you the results are wonderful on all spiritual, mental, and physiological planes. And I believe you’ll get the knack of working material planes too; or why manifest in Malkuth?
Also, get rid of all bourgeois scruples. You may just as well use your ‘fascination’ (fascnum = 0) on countesses or chambermaids. The right woman or women can help a man’s career; the wrong ones should be dropped like so many scorpions. Arguments to the contrary are twelve years stale.
I’m afraid this letter is not very helpful. I should whip up the Lodge, pointing out that those not in good standing lose all material benefits; they may decide to throw good money after bad. If not, you are well rid of them. Drop them out; look for new people in a better class. Don’t summon the whole Lodge to initiations, except on special occasions; work with necessary officers only.
But I think all this letter is quite unnecessary; by the time you get it things will have straightened themselves out, I expect. They never let you down; and the sooner you can realize this in your subconscious, so that you cease to worry, the sooner will They cease to test you.
Love is the Law, Love under Will.
Fraternally,
ΘΗΡΙΟΝ
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