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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Charles Stansfeld Jones
c/o Dennes Lamb & Pierce Gould, Chancery Lane, London, W.C.2.
[Undated: circa early February 1920?]
My beloved son,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Our Lady [Leah Hirsig], in a letter dated Jan. 15, says that you are surprised at my not having written. I wrote you five or six times between my departure and Jan. 12—probably Mr. Houghton stole the letters, or it may have been Mr. Burleson or for the matter of that, any one of a hundred million Americans.
Between Jan. 12 and Feb! I had a very strict vow of silence which ended in such a remarkable way that I can hardly do otherwise than enclose you a copy of the extract from my diary if I can get Léa [Leah Hirsig] to copy it.
But while talking of letter writing and such things, I have had no communications from you of any kind since I left. I never even received the "large letter" which Cooks told me had reached N.Y. from Detroit on the morning I left N.Y.
During my last visit to Detroit I cam to the conclusion that the people were all crazy and crooked in various degrees and proportions, and I must admit that it is my nature to lose interest in such people after a time. Europe is full of sane people, decent people, why should I pollute my mind by thinking of Detroit.
I shall be very glad to get away—I should be glad to see Mrs. Van Brunt or Russell etc. but in sand surroundings please. I was not until I stepped on the deck of the Lapland that I recognized what a terrible madhouse America is, and if there had been a tendency for that feeling to become dull; which there has not been. Our Lady's letters would have sharpened it.
I may state that I became very strong on the wing about non-attachment before I went into the silence. I shall hasten to answer any letters from you but as I said above, there have been none so far. I expect to be able to send you news of possibly some interest in the course of about three weeks.
Love is the law, love under will.
Thy sire,
666.
P.S.—I had hardly finished dictating the above when postman arrived with yours of no date but post mark Detroit Jan 28. This is good time for once as it came via Switzerland. I am very glad of all your news: Americans are shit—produce only stink and infection. I don't wish to depreciate in any way the noble work done by the Buddha, but I must say that he seems to have had a very primitive idea of impurities. However in his time America had not been discovered. I should like the details of Houghton's dirty trick for the book I am writing. If it is any dirtier than Ryerson's [Albert W. Ryerson] about the dollar 65 check, I certainly want to hear it. You are now, of course, a big boy and have won your spurs in several different fields. That removes my last anxiety about any thing soever. I will put you in touch with the Chiswick Press, which is about the limit of my ability to take any practical steps for the good of this stupid world at present. I am not in the least worried about the Equinox. If I permit myself to speculate it is that the excellent periodical in question is a sort of vanity of Crowley's and that what the A∴A∴ want is the carrying out of the instructions in the Book of the Law.
Any attention of which I may be capable will be given to that. I wish you could get hold of Fuller [J.F.C. Fuller]. He didn't understand things in the ordinary way but he had a very curious devotion to the Book of the Law and I think might be a useful colleague. I couldn't trace him in London but you might do so thro' the military authorities.
Is it really true that Lodge [Frank T. Lodge] is attacking me in public (as soon as my back is turned, of course). If you think such a cheap skate worth cooking au beurre voir, have a full sized photograph taken of that signed pledge form of his and circulate copies refusing to comment in any way. I think that would get him by what small portion that simpering bitch of his may have left of his balls. I am not in the least degree attached in the matter of Our Lady, as your filial solicitude naturally but erroneously led you to apprehend. The whole business is up to her and I'm the last person in the world to worry about it.
My beloved [illegible], I am in civilization with beauty on all sides—Non attachment, as the Hindoos have most properly pointed out leads to liberation. You are perfectly right about letting the Gods do some of the work and taking the strain off one's kidneys.
I should correspond with Hanson [William Hanson] direct. Try and get him to co-operate in a brotherly way with you. Russell [C. F. Russell] had better learn French if he thinks of coming here in September. If Mrs. Van Brunt feels like taking up the religious life, don't discourage her. There ought to be a regular Abbey of Thelema within a month or two. Keep in touch with Jane Wolfe—she may call on you early in June on her way to Europe and it may be necessary for her to rescue some of my things about which I wrote to her from New York and need your authority. The Manhattan storage failed to get my baggage on board the Lapland. As a result I have nothing with me but the few things I had in Detroit. If my books and papers are lost, it will be good for my non attachment.
Love is the law, love under will.
Everyone in Detroit can kiss your arse in my absence.
Thy sire,
666.
Question: Shall I abandon all Magical Work soever until the appearance of a manifest sign?
Answer: [I Ching hexagram] LII No symbol could be more definite and unambiguous. I had invoked Aiwaz to manipulate the Sticks; and, wishing to ask "What shall be the Sign?" got instantly the reference in CCXX to Our Lady Babalon: "the omnipresence of my body".
But this is not quite clear. I took it mentally as referring to the expected arrival of Our Lady, but it might mean a trance, or almost any thing. So I will ask the Yi, as my last magical act for the time being.
[I Ching hexagram] XXXVI I think this means the arrival of Our Lady. I have serious doubts whether the hexagram should not have been [I Ching hexagram] XI which would have certainly meant that. That I should doubt any thing is absurd. I shall know the Sign, without fail. And herewith I close the Record, and await the Sign.
666.
Feb 1. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Kindly read over the entry of 12 Jan with care exceeding. Now then: On Friday Jan 30, I went to Paris, to buy pencils, Mandarin, a palette, Napoleon Brandy, canvasses and other appurtenances of the artists dismal trade. I took occasion to call upon an old mistress of min, Jane Chéron, concerning whom see Equinox Vol. I, "Three Poems." She has never had the slightest interest in occult matters, and she has never done any work in her life even of the needle work order. I had seen her once before since my escape from America, and she said she had something to shew me, but I took no particular notice. My object in calling was multiple: I wanted to see the man with whom she is living, who has not yet returned from Russia; I wanted to make love to her; and I wanted to smoke a few pipe of opium with her, she being a devotee of that great and terrible God.
Consider, now; the Work whereby I am a Magus began in Cairo (1904) with the discovery of the Stele of Ankh-f-n-khonsu, in which the principal object is the body of our Lady Nuith. It is reproduced in colour in the Equinox Vol I No 7. Jane Chéron had a copy of this book.
On Friday afternoon then, I was in her apartment. I had obtained none of my objectives, and was about to depart. She detained me to show me this "something." She went and took a folded cloth from a drawer. "Shut your eyes" she said. When I opened them, they saw a cloth, four feet or more in length, on which was a magnificent copy, mostly in appliqué silk, of the Stele.
She then told me that in February, 1917, she and her young man had gone to the South of France to get cured of the opium habit. In such cases insomnia is frequent. One night, however, he had gone to sleep, and on waking in the morning found that she, wakeful, had drawn the copy of the Stele on a great sheet of paper.
It is very remarkable that so large a sheet of paper should have been on hand; also that they should have taken that special book on such a journey, but still more that she should have chosen that picture, nay, that she who had never done any thing of that sort before, should have done it at all. More yet, that she should have spent three months in making a permanent thing of it. Most of all, that she should have shewn it to me at the very moment when I was awaiting an "unmistakable sign."
For observe now, how closely the words of my entry of Jan 12 describe the fact. "The omnipresence of my body", and there she was in the last place in the world where one would have sought Her, and that by reason of a miracle three years old. Note too, the accuracy of the Yi King Symbol XXXVI for the upper trigram is of course the symbol of Our Lady, and the God below her on the Stele is the lower trigram, the Sun. All this is clear proof of the unspeakable power and wisdom of Those who have sent me to proclaim the Law.
Etc.
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