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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Jane Wolfe
[Undated: circa June 1922]
[dictated by Crowley and in the handwriting of Leah Hirsig]
516 [Jane Wolfe]
93.
Yours to Lea [Leah Hirsig]—June 4.
You're quite right about being prepared for some big event but quite wrong about the paying guest. There ought to be lots of people in Palermo who would enjoy the freedom of the Abbey [Abbey of Thelema]—that old painter to begin with.
Part of the training of The Abbey is to learn to do your work under any conditions.
I can't be sure of my movements but July 15 date depends on my getting a certain contract which would involve my coming down to you for a while. But as I said before, I am working for big things. I am in the current prophesied by the Yi and I must do my Will, however much I may want to do other things.
You do not yet understand what selfishness means and you misquote Browning. Also, do not concern yourself with the problems proper to a magus.
If you will kindly discover your True Will and do it and not bother me or yourself or any one else, your troubles will cease. You are in with the wrong lot of people. Decent folk do not notice the Hearst newspapers. If you were only in England to-day, you would recover your sense of proportion.
The tittle-tattle of loafers like Mary [Mary Butts] and Maitland [Cecil Maitland] does not get beyond the night-clubs in Soho.
Lea is wonderfully better, now she has got through her ordeal, and is working from morning till night and is not mixed up with the dregs of Montparnasse.
I have recovered my own proper point of view at the total cost of 82/6d for which I purchased my new magical weapon—white spats.
Please enter spats against the proper line in 777, column 41. It is for you to find out the feminine equivalent.
You have got once and for all to give up the idea of getting money out of people. What you must do is to act in such a way that they will hand it out.
I had to use my brains for the first time in 500 years last month in order to stay alive. You should be offering the story of your life in Cefalù to American Papers—that story is worth money—lots of it.
Draw up a synopsis of your adventures and try and sell it to magazines and lecture agents.
Send me a copy and I will see if I can sell it in England.
The absence of a certain man from London is delaying my sending for cash to carry on, but I hope to be able to do something more very shortly.
However, that is my business and I should do my damndest.
I have probably been prevented from sending you any before because of your moral attitude about it. As long as you hope that help will arrive from the Gods or any one else, the gods will continue to snigger.
Your great mistake was in coming to Europe at all without making adequate business arrangements. That is the kind of faith that prevents you doing your will.
I was simply held back from making money because I was waiting for Ninette [Ninette Shumway] or the Settlement or something like that instead of hiring myself out as a washerman which is the only thing I am fit for.
Of course, there are many other causes. I had to get through my initiation and so on. But the Gods make these gigantic combinations while our inferior minds can only grasp one detail at a time and we're lucky when they do that.
I am a hell of a good Guru for spending so long on this letter when I had other fish to fry. But you are important, after all and you would be already doing work of importance in the world if you hadn't got so clever at dodging it.
With my very best love to you all.
93 93/93
The Beast 666. per 31-666-31 [Leah Hirsig] as Scribe but not editor (I nearly had the ink-pot thrown at me for butting in.)
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