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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Gwendolen Otter
Collegium as Spiritum Sanctum Cefalù Sicily.
25 Aug '21 E.V.
Sweet Sister Gwendolen,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
K A M E R A D !!! Your Counter-Attack succeeded so well that I have been completely Belgiumied—Who would have guessed you had so much Schrreklichkeit? Really, really, the war must have knocked your critical judgment sideways. Sassoon's stuff is 'good'; but it is only good journalising, plus a touch of truth and a sense of reality which drive home the cleverness. But it isn't great poetry; it lacks the lyric exultation combined with the apprehension of the Inmost Truth of things which stamps the work of genius. It is the best type of Jewish achievement, but even Heine masters the Bull's-Eye. The reason is made plain by Weinninger. Te Jew is always aware of his inferiority, and so he hates the Universe. The genius knows himself to be God; Truth and Beauty are his own, and he rejoices in his creation, Nature, even when most acutely conscious of Sorrow.
I have forgotten crazy [illegible[ like Bosie [illegible] in this Paradise. But I am still working to save my England from herself; it is still at my heart to clean out the sewers of sexual suppression. The clogging has caused the putrefaction which has bred the pestilence. How I wish I and you were together in Work as we are in [illegible]! You will never be happy—I always think of you as the very saddest girl I know—until you find Yourself. And Yourself is not E.G.O. [Elizabeth Gwendolen Otter]; you must realize Yourself in an impersonal Self outside your personality, and apprehend Yourself by expression of Yourself in an Art-Form, in a Work which is the image of an idea. Why not the Work of exorcising the final phantom of "Sin" that haunts mankind, and tortures him with shame and fear?
Love is the law, love under will.
Ever yours, heart and hand,
The Beast 666
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