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Correspondence from Norman Mudd to Dutton
Tunisia Palace Hotel, Tunis
August 29. 1923
Messrs. Dutton,
Dear Sirs,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
I write you as the business and literary secretary of Mr. Aleister Crowley.
I am informed that you have acquired from Messrs. W. Collins the American rights of his "Diary of a Drug Fiend", that you have published it, and that it is selling very well.
I wish to inform you that he is just completing the revision to a new novel "The Net" [Moonchild] which is calculated to make a big hit with the American public. I give you the first offer of it.
There are enclosed herewith.
(1) a preliminary statement, (2) the author's synopsis by chapters, (3) specimen extracts.
These will serve both for your own information and for advertising purposes, and will, I think, decide you to publish it forthwith.
I offer the following terms.
a) 1000 dollars advance on account of royalties. b) 15% on all copies sold up to 5000. c) 20% on all copies sold thereafter.
If you agree to this proposition I will mail to you the complete work, finally revised, typed, and ready for printing, within ten days of receiving from you (care of my bankers, the Credit Lyonnais, Tunis) a cable "Agreed Net". I shall then expect to receive from you in due course formal papers of agreement and a check for the advance royalties.
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Aleister Crowley is known all over the world as the supreme authority on all matters connected with Magic—a subject in which constantly increasing interest is shown by the public.
He is the head of the A∴A∴, the most renowned and the most secret Order of Adepts in the world (The "Rosy Cross" and the "Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn" are only its junior branches). He is also the head of the O.T.O. the most important of the quasi-Masonic Orders of Magicians.
He has written more learnedly, profoundly, and voluminously on Magick and its kindred subjects than any other living writer in both Poetry and Prose.
Chiefly: Equinox Vol I-10 numbers, and Vol. III — 1 number [Equinox Vol. III, No. 1] (this last now quoted at $70!); Konx Om Pax; The Winged Beetle; Bagh-i-Muattar; 777 (Table of Comparative Symbolism: a complete key to all systems of Magick, Religion and Philosophy of all climes and Ages); Sepher Sephiroth (Dictionary of the Qabalah—thousands of "sacred" words arranged by their numerical value); The Psychology of Hashish; Sir Palamede the Saracen (Poetic account of the Adventures of Initiation); The Book of Lies—a collection of profound Magical Secrets, Aphorisms, Rituals etc.; Liber LXV Account of Initiation to Order of Rosy Cross ("inspired" prose); Liber VII Account of Initiation to Grade of Master of the Temple; some 70 or 80 books of technical instruction in various Magick and Mystical Practices; Liber 418 "Vision and Voice" of the "Thirty Aethyrs" (the most sublime visions ever recorded); Eliphas Levi's Clef des Grands Mysteres (translated); etc., etc., etc.
Mr. Crowley's poetry and prose are equally distinguished for the sublimity of their style, the vastness of the knowledge they display, and the intensity of their passion.
In this novel he has described from actual knowledge and experience the aims and methods of modern magicians.
The plot is itself founded on actual facts, and most of the episodes are taken from his own career.
This novel is certain of an immense success, especially if published this autumn, in view of the recent very wide publicity accorded to the author by the absurd "exposures" of him, his expulsion from Italy this spring—without reason stated, or accusation brought—and the popularity of his "Diary of a Drug Fiend", where the account of his Abbey in Sicily serves to introduce the public to the activities of the Magical Brotherhood which "The Net" describes fully and intimately.
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