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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to James Branch Cabell
Tunisia Palace Hotel, Tunis
Sept. 4, 1923.
Dear Mr. Cabell:
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Your letter from Mount Lake gladdened my fainting soul. I was very anxious to have my essay published [Another Note on Cabell], because I felt that even your warmest admirers had not understood the spiritual importance of your Epic, as metaphysical and philosophical no less than moral.
I do not know the "Reviewer", and have not yet received the copies sent to me. The postal arrangements in Italy are unique.
I am glad you liked the essay better on a second reading. I am persistently handicapped by the fact that practically all my work requires repeated study; even in the lighter lines there are obscure allusions essential to full understanding, to say nothing of certain sly tricks of slipping in subtleties—somewhat on the lines of your own best work. I dare say you have yourself found in the past, great difficulty in persuading editors and publishers to print you, simply because they miss everything that doesn't shout at them. I hardly blame them; after all, their lives are spent in wading through morasses of slush without an idea to the square mile. They naturally lose hope and get out of the habit of looking for literature.
I have just had a lovely lesson. My new secretary accidentally enclosed an article by another man in a parcel of my Mss. It was not my style, and the contents utter rubbish. The editor, with unerring instinct picked it out and printed it, returning the rest with polite contempt.
I am looking forward eagerly to the promised "High Place". You give no hint of its contents, so all my feminine complexes are working over time till I get it.
Would I were with you in Virginia. I am stewing in Tunis, working myself to death completing my Autohagiography [The Confessions of Aleister Crowley]. It runs to 600,000 words and is hopelessly amorphous, but I think it should raise a riot. I certainly have lived all kinds of a life. It never struck me how strange an animal I am till these Memoirs supplied a Magical Mirror. The truth is far stranger than fiction, as somebody once had the perspicacity to remark. I concur—in the face of my friend Bill Seabrook's long serial of sensational sob-stuff in your Sunday papers:—"ASTOUNDING SECRETS OF THE DEVIL-WORSHIPPERS' MYSTIC LOVE CULT."[1]
What fools these mortals be!—
Yours ever in the service of
Love is the law, love under will.
Aleister Crowley.
P.S. Did you get my long letter with a yet longer memorandum enclosed in answer to yours acknowledging receipt of Liber Legis? Let me know. I am really eager that you should understand my point of view, and eventually wake up the world to the superb destiny which lies beneath the superficial sorrow and futility which form the tragedy of your Epic. You mustn't leave mankind paralysed by the apparent impossibility of attainment.
A.C.
1—This was the narrative by W. B. Seabrook that was serialized in a number of newspapers owned by the Hearst conglomerate in 1923. - Astounding Secrets of the Devil Worshipers' Mystic Love Cult - Part 1 - Astounding Secrets of the Devil Worshipers' Mystic Love Cult - Part 2 - Astounding Secrets of the Devil Worshipers' Mystic Love Cult - Part 3 - Astounding Secrets of the Devil Worshipers' Mystic Love Cult - Part 4 - Astounding Secrets of the Devil Worshipers' Mystic Love Cult - Part 5 - Astounding Secrets of the Devil Worshipers' Mystic Love Cult - Part 6 - Astounding Secrets of the Devil Worshipers' Mystic Love Cult - Part 7 - Astounding Secrets of the Devil Worshipers' Mystic Love Cult - Part 8 - Astounding Secrets of the Devil Worshipers' Mystic Love Cult - Part 9 - Astounding Secrets of the Devil Worshipers' Mystic Love Cult - Part 10 - Astounding Secrets of the Devil Worshipers' Mystic Love Cult - Part 11 - Astounding Secrets of the Devil Worshipers' Mystic Love Cult - Part 12
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