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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Charles Stansfeld Jones
Collegium ad Spiritum Sanctum, Cefalù, Sicily.
January 8, 1923.
My beloved son,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Yours of December 15th. Thanks for sending me a second copy of "Q.B.L." To what address did you send the first? I should like to make enquiries. I can't see your argument about the serpent at all. The head of the serpent, which is the alphabet, that which precedes by undulations (of sound), is naturally Aleph and his tail Tau. Having climbed up the Tree, his head is of course between Kether and Chokmah. You must recognize that the traditional attribution is implied throughout in Liber 418. (See p. 144 Equinox 1-5) from the Crown itself spring the three great delusions, and indeed everywhere. The tasks of the Grades correspond to the regular attribution. Interchange Aleph and Tau, all becomes nonsense. Parzival joining Yesod & Malkuth!
Please send me the Crystal Gazing as soon as it appears; also your Parzifal [The Chalice of Ecstasy] book.
Please order a copy of the Diary of a Drug Fiend. I simply haven't got the money to send you one myself. It is important that you should have it, partly because it gives a good description of our life in the Abbey [Abbey of Thelema] and partly because it should set you right about me.
I am going to tell you very frankly that I think you are making a very great mistake. I do not accuse you of disloyalty, but you do seem to try to make a distinction between your work and mine, contrary to the statute in that case made and provided: "Let there be no difference made among you between any one thing & any other thing; for thereby there cometh hurt." For another thing, I think you are having your leg pulled. You mention the case of C.F.R. [C. F. Russell] as if it were a bad advertisement for my methods. I do not know what he is writing to you, but I take this opportunity of quoting what he has been writing to me and my replies. The course of work here is not more strenuous than the student choses to make it, but you will, I am sure be pleased to learn that people are brought to the brink of the Abyss in one way or another, from the start. You would be amazed if you came here and saw what miraculous progress was made by the most unlikely people. We have learnt how to handle them much more efficiently & smoothly than we were able to do at first. I again urge you to induce one or more of your people to pay us a visit. I wish, of course, that you could come yourself. It would be a dazzling revelation to whoever came, and you ought not to be without this knowledge. For one thing it would completely destroy the tendency in you to criticize my methods. You should remember that it is now over three years since we met in the flesh, and much water has passed under the bridges since then. I am a very different man indeed in my practical life from the . . .
[missing page???]
. . . felt sure your Psychomagian Society would be a fizzle. You can dress yourself in Coué's old clothes and persuade the unthinking that you are a well-dressed man, but you will not impress the sculptor or even the tailor. In religion it does not pay to be an artful dodger: the matter is too serious. Opportunism implies insincerity. Read Abramelin again—"Would it not be an extravagant idea to demand from the wild beasts the permission to go hunting?"
I have constantly advised you to make a stand, and be ready to die by the colours: You are always trying to prove to me how independent you are of me, and I am obliged to confess that you seem to me, on the contrary, to follow my ideas much too closely. I should prefer to be at odds with you provided that the occasion was your assertion of an absolutely original idea with which I could not agree. But you seem to me to waste your time on unimportant points like this about the serpent. How many people are there in the world altogether who know anything about the subject at all? I (on the other hand) have managed to turn England upside down. I took the burning question of the hour and applied the Law to it. I did it in a perfectly legitimate and respectable way, yet I succeeded in evoking the utmost enthusiasm and malice on all sides. Don't think I am boasting of my success—I am merely rejoicing that the Law strikes home to the hearts of men. I ask no other vindication of my life's work—"go on, go on, in my strength; & ye shall turn not back for any!"
Love is the law, love under will.
Your affectionate sire,
The Beast 666.
P.S. Thanks for your note on the 17th Aethyr, and for your New Year's cards. I should like chapter and verse in respect of the alleged quotation from Lao-tze. It is entirely unfamiliar.
Please transmit my paternal benediction to R.S.J. [Rubina Stansfeld Jones] and Dédé [Deirdre Stansfeld Jones], and to all those in Chicago who are with you. Please think over what I have said about visiting this Abbey. I don't see how it could possibly do any harm and it might be the means of strengthening the magical bond between us. "There is no bond can unite the divided but love", and is not Achad Ahgbah?
PP.S. If you want to make a really nice present let me have 100 of those cards—only blank—for me to use as post cards.
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