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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Charles Stansfeld Jones
Collegium ad Spiritum Sanctum, Cefalù, Sicily.
Dec. 15, 1921.
My beloved son,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
We have been very much relieved by your letters to Léa [Leah Hirsig] of the 24th., and to me of the 28th. Nov. With regard to the former—We didn't think you were rolling in money' but you said that you had some promised in case of emergency, which certainly exists. We have to pay 13000 lire on Jan. 1, and we have another debt of nearly 500 lire much overdue. We have no money in hand (daily food being bought on tick) and we have all put much too much strain on our constitutions. If Léa could get off to London, she ought to be able to arrange for us to have an income sufficient to keep us from actual hunger. I am not complaining—I think the Gods wanted to see whether I could endure the last extremity. And I am glad to say that I have been turning out my usual quantity of work despite practically continuous ill-health.
It would have been a great comfort to me if you had sent me frequent reports even of failures; but I don't know even, for example, if you have tried to do anything about my paintings. I have taken a fresh jump, by the way, and am doing quite a new kind of stuff.
I hope Soror Estai [Jane Wolfe] will be in New York early in January. I think she will be able to get things together, and I hope you will collaborate with her to great advantage.
I have been very anxious about Mrs. Ford, especially when letters sent to her were returned "Not Found." We could not help thinking that she had got cold feet. Russell [C. F. Russell] told us that Rubina [Rubina Stansfeld Jones] was returning in October; and I hardly need tell you that we could not help connecting that event with probable dissatisfaction on the part of such people as Mrs. Ford. (Don't get mad: I have to nag now and then!)
With regard to your letter to me—I wish you had told me more early what happened to Jones [Charles Stansfeld Jones] in the matter of Koresh. The theory seems to me utterly at variance with CCXX. (I don't know whether you have yet seen my recent additions to the Comment dealing with Cosmic theories.) But there is an overwhelming body of physical evidence, not only in one branch of science but in many, which makes the Koresh idea utterly ridiculous. Quite apart from the astronomical evidence, there are geology, spectroscopy, and many others which settle the question. To take one thing alone, the amount of heat radiated by the sun is quite incompatible with its being the size of a cannon-ball! Apart from this, the theory is intensely repulsive to me. The grandeur of the conceptions of scientific cosmography is destroyed by Koresh. Of course it is perfectly possible to start with the closed sphere as a postulate, and construct a geometry of the Universe to fit it. It would be no objection that such geometry violated every principle of common sense and every testimony of experience at every step. Poincaré has shown that our idea of space is merely a reflection upon the facts of muscular motion. In the Book of the Law, Nuit is explained as being, in one sense, an image of the conception of the totality of the possibilities of experience. It has been impressed upon me with overwhelming conviction that one of the principal guarantees of the Book of the Law is that it shows a knowledge of these discoveries which were mad subsequent to the time of its being written. If you have any arguments to offer with regard to Koresh, please let me have them. It would at least be useful to you to receive my reply.
I like your card very much; but you might very well, I think have printed some quotations from CCXX on the back.
I am glad you like my additions to Book 4 Part 3 [Magick in Theory and Practice]. There have been some more, which Soror Estai will let you have. There is also much new matter in the Comment. In revising it last month, I found that there was disproportionate attention to sex. This is not my fault; it is unfortunately the fact that false ideas on sex are at the bottom of most human misery. However, I have added a great deal on other subjects, which will balance things up.
You say you have not yet seen Mrs. Mc. Cormack. But what about other people? Did you find my friend on the Tribune? Have you done anything with Hanson? Have you offered Book 4 Part 3 to a number of publishers? I am convinced that we shall never do anything until we get a regular publisher of good standing to go right into the business, both as to getting rid of the old stock and producing the unpublished stuff. I have been pinning my faith on Mrs. Ford.
I congratulate you on Kaminsky and the others; but why not go ahead on new lines? It seems to me that you have a marvelous opportunity for reviving the Rites of Eleusis, or perhaps putting on The Ship, or establishing the Gnostic Mass. We have got to work to some extent through the regular art forms. I am convinced that you could make a tremendous success of a thing like The Ship. If you did, it would be not only money in hand, but a market for other things of the same kind. I suggest, in particular, a public recital of "Aha!", done in dramatic form by yourself and a young male disciple. It could be staged splendidly with simple dignity; and being quite an original type of entertainment, would be taken seriously by the general public, which is inclined to distrust too obviously occult modes of presentation. If you could only get a small hall or theatre, and fit up the stage as a temple with dim rich lighting, have Marsysa and Olympas in A∴A∴ robes, and get Kaminsky and others to fill out the programme, it ought to go well. I know you are doubtful about your elocution as regards poetry. In that case, get some one else to do it for you—it would be better in a way for you to appear merely as the Mysterious Figure in the background.
You will not find Poincaré's French difficult. But anyhow, why not take the opportunity of improving your knowledge? (Get a French-speaking friend to read it through with you.) I knew a man, a very poor, very low-born, and very busy man at that, who learnt Russian solely in order to be able to read Dostoiewsky in the original.
The books have been sent to you, as I think I told you before. You should have got them by now.
I appreciate your sarcasm about the Comment on the Book of the Law. When I said that I considered your work over, I meant that you had already justified yourself. But I did also mean to express a doubt as to whether you were equal to make new interpretations of the Book, where correlations with general knowledge is in question. You are really a "pure fool" in such matters. You have what I may call a personal holiness and innocence which hinders you from taking common-sense views of common-sense affairs. It seems to me as if you had not succeeded in establishing right relations between the highest mystic experiences and the business of every day life. You are shrewd and competent in ordinary things, and you are sublimely lucid about the Qabalah. But when you bring them together, they clash—at least, so it seems to me. I think you will succeed in harmonizing the extremes in the course of time; but it made me very anxious when I found you apparently applying the Qabalah in an arbitrary way, and allowing mystical conclusions to lead you to practical absurdities. I am thinking of you’re a-cause article in this connection.. Your essay was all right from the standpoint of the initiate; and what you wrote can be used by initiates as the basis of a strategic plan, but in uninitiated eyes, your remarks were rubbish. (Ball tells the story of the director of an Insurance Co. who asked the actuary how he made his calculations. The actuary began an explanation involving ∏—the other interrupted to ask what ∏ was; and when told, exclaimed, "But, my dear sir, what on earth has the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter got to do with the number of people alive at the end of a given time?") This does not imply that I undervalue your Qabalistic attainments in themselves—your essay on 31 is the most important document in the mathematical proof of the praeter-human origin of CCXX; and a summary of your investigations would be extremely useful to me.
O.T.O.—Reuss [Theodor Reuss] is furious (poor old boy!)—I enclose you a copy of his last letter to me, and of my reply. It is just as well to be independent of Germany. Reuss's charters have never done any one any good so far—I only accepted them as a formality, to save myself the trouble by referring inquirers to headquarters. But he has always worked in a hole-and-corner way, scamping the rituals. I have to thank him for one thing only, which is the bare formula of the elixir; and this he himself failed to apply. He only claims two successful experiments in his whole career, and I have no evidence that the results were not due to coincidence. All the detailed knowledge about the method is due to my own research.
Well, never mind about Fatty [Arbuckle]! But I understand that he was framed up (I didn't want a dossier, merely a few cuttings, & the upshot.)
You will see my essay on IAO in an additional note to B[oo]k. 4-P[ar]t. 3.
I apologize about the dew-drop. The truth is that we could not find your original remarks on the subject in the files of the correspondence; and, as I was desperately ill and desperately busy, I left the question unanswered. I will look through your letters once more and if I can find it, drop you a line.
Love is the law, love under will.
Thy sire,
The Beast 666.
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