Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Lord Northcliffe

 

     

 

50 rue Vavin,

Paris VIe

 

 

Apr. 18, 1922.

 

 

Dear Lord Northcliffe,

 

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

 

I hardly venture to hope that you recollect our conference in New York three and a half years ago, on the subject of your destiny and that of Woodrow Wilson.

     

However, I am happy to be able to remind you that my judgment has proved just in every detail. The inherent strength of your character enabled you to weather the storm, while he, poor bubble blown by the malicious prank of schoolboy Fate, swelled and glittered for a few moments burst and sank forever to his original soft-soap-suds.

     

I am writing to you this second time about my own destiny—at the point whence it touches yours. My policy is a complete reconstruction of human society on the basis of the law "Do what thou wilt". It will no doubt be necessary to explain in detail the full purport of this law in a series of conferences; but I hope to assure your interest and acquiescence by paraphrasing it as follows: Every man (and woman) is destined to fulfil a definite and precise function in the cosmic equation; ethics depends on the discovery and execution of this function in each particular case.

     

The System is democratic for "Every man and every woman is a star"; yet aristocratic, for "no one star differeth from another star in glory".

     

It is religious; for out Book of the Law was dictated by a praeterhuman intelligence; yet scientific, for the proof that such was the origin of this Book is as cogent as those of mathematics, and of the same order.

     

I can prove that this Law is self-justified, and automatically adaptable to every individual, adequate to arbitrate all possible problems.

     

I have followed your career with extreme interest, fostered perhaps by my fancy of a certain slight personal resemblance in my self to you. But I hope to have the opportunity of convincing you that your matchless ability as a man of political, and my own as a man of spiritual genius and action, are complementary; that each can fulfil the other. All your successes hitherto have been failures, or rather, preparatory exercises; because you did not strike to the root of human action; all my achievements have been even more futile because I did not externalize my Truth in terms of thought. Together, I to divine, and you to do, we can make a new heaven and a new earth.

     

The acceptance of this Law will fulfil your own more than Napoleonic destiny by bringing to pass an Epoch on the earth. Empires are ephemeral. But to impregnate the human mind with a new and satisfactory principle of thought and action is to achieve permanent progress. The conquests of Caesar were neutralized by subsequent developments: they were superficial. But those of Buddha have held their ground till to-day, because he uttered a single word "Anatta" which involves a definite spiritual and mental development in those who accepted it. Similarly my own single word "Thelema" (Will) must direct the destiny of manhood for all time because it implies a fundamental ethical conception which applied with the proper technique, solves for each individual separately his personal problem, explains and justifies his spiritual equation. My work was to receive that Word; it is for you to utter it. You can do for me what King Asoka did for Buddha, with these advantages:

          

(a) We are contemporaries.

          

(b) You have a world-wide organization for research and promulgation ready to your hand.

          

(c) We have at our disposal an universal language—that of science.

          

(d) We live in a period when all the empirical rules of government have simultaneously broken down.

          

(e) Mankind generally is more or less conscious of the irreconcilable antagonisms between hitherto known systems of thought. The Law of Thelema by transcending these antimonies will satisfy all sections of society.

     

I ask you to give me the opportunity of explaining these ideas—and putting them into practise— by means of a personal interview. I can keep any appointment you may make, if sufficient notice is given, as I am uncertain of the date of my going to London.

 

Love is the law, love under will,

 

 

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