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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Norman Mudd
Nefta
Oct. 30/23 e.v.
Care Frater,
93
Yours of Oct. 25.
I assume you have a copy. I agree unreservedly on your remarks about money matters and will abstain entirely from any interference. I shall drop the Graph proposal. Alostrael [Leah Hirsig] now says that 300 fr[ancs] a week may not be quite sufficient. I should make it 500 to keep her mind easy.
I need not explain my past conduct at present. You have not quite understood it. It is partly that I think aloud, so to speak, and get rid of distractions by discussing them.
I do not want you to do any special work. About the Hag [The Confessions of Aleister Crowley], however, I understood you to say all along that this book was to be my magical weapon and part of III—39.
As to the Comment, let me alone till after the third occultation of Herschel, providing C. if possible before Nov. 14 as requested in my last.
Your Page 3—my attitude to the people is not understood by you at all. I have completely reconciled I—3, II—24, 58, 59, 60 etc. with I—11, 31, II—25, 45, 48, III—8 etc.
You must not mix up my private morality with my public policy. You have not seen me in command of an expedition! Other considerations apply.
Your conclusion 2 & 3—I agree to 2 but have used other ways faute de mieux as a guarantee of good faith. I cannot see any passage forbidding such methods unless III—11, 42. I will consider these carefully. But what about I—34, 35, 36? Of course the "Law id for all" (does not mean necessarily The Book of the Law is for all. At the same time I am utterly against secret MSS or even Pass Words etc. unless strictly temporary like the P[ass] W[ord of the Equinox]. Such things always leak out with the worst possible results. Nor is it possible to correct a book which is in the British Museum.
Where do you get your ideas about the "canons of secrecy and silence"? I—10 does not apply. The guards to the secret knowledge are automatic. People obtaining it unlawfully and misusing it smash themselves, but cannot hurt the Aeon.
Your conclusion 4—Direful judgment and great misses do not apply to this matter.
Your 5—I agree generally but expect open attack on slave creeds. Chap. III implies such action throughout. Verses 8, 9, 11, 17, 18, 26, 28, 32, 33, 42, 45, 46, 51-55, 71.
Your conclusion 6—I quite agree in one sense that 666 is essentially Tiphereth, the heart, also the King. That is my inmost formula, to be mankind.
Once again, do not confuse my personal tenderness with my ideas of government.
My idea of Thelema as a state might be summarized somewhat thus:
I sweep away bureaucracies and democracies with their petty restrictions. I plan to elevate mankind by encouraging the unfit to destroy themselves (drink, drugs, infection and Christian virtues). The Kingly qualities should make for survival and reproduction.
I agree entirely about the Germans.
Murray [Adam Murray] should have come on from Cefalu bringing various necessities of which Alostrael encloses a list. Her policy is to put every newcomer through the ordeal of personal contact with me. If he comes out sane he is a King. (Your own excitement in sending the telegram was what alarmed me. You showed the tendency already in South Africa and in your Tunis Ordeal. There was nothing in your message requiring verbose agitation.)
You should send your present view of my work to Fuller [J.F.C. Fuller], telling him that I am now prepared to act in a Kingly way and fulfil my mission as AL lays down. I think this should reach him. He knows the importance of AL. If he agrees get him to join me at once to prepare strategical plans.
Your Special Statement. A 1. I agree definition. 2. I agree. 3. True, but I think "quickly" means "in a lively manner." 4. I partly agree and an approaching the Secret Chiefs specifically to clear up any misunderstanding.
B 1. True. It has been my Magical Formula to do my prophetic work without deeming too eagerly to catch the promises. I regard the events as tests of my Will, Courage and determination to act in doubt as though my faith were perfect. 2. I deny this; but of course am eager to prophecy in the right away. 3. I cannot see this in AL and doubt whether your view of psychology is confirmed by history. I wish I had a good history of Mohammed's methods from the start. 4. I agree theoretically but regard myself as having been tested. I think I had to be rendered proof against the frightful danger of success. (Observe Mussolini's [illegible] to the Vatican). Read Browning's "A Soul's Tragedy" again. I don't want Ogniben to know a 25th leader of revolt.
C 1. You recur to secrecy. Do please give your authority. You are wrong about my compassion. You have yourself accused me of hacking through moral hedges etc. Rest assured in any case that any official act of mine will be Thelematic. I have always been secret in such matters as are dealt with in I—10, 50. (I doubt whether the word "secret" is used in AL in its vulgar sense. I assimilated it to ideas in secretion.) (Note II—54. I was foreseen that I should need the long painful initiations with which you reproach me.)
D. I entirely agree. I wrote nearly 400 [4000?] words in 3 hrs. 25 min. I have avoided reading the Ms. I consider it vital to repeat the work for Chaps. II and III on the appointed days. There are, I think, 3 or 4 multitudes energy, fulfilment, another each occurs once only.
As already stated I agree entirely with your final remarks. (Do impress your view of the whole situation on N.S.F. [J.F.C. Fuller]. He is almost certainly waiting for a lightning flash of this kind. Impress upon him also that I do not urge him in any way to resume cooperation; but that if at any time I should discover that I need him I shall summon him authoritatively. And woe to him if he refuses to obey! At the same time, if in his judgment the time has come for him to volunteer, I shall be glad to see him and hear his proposals for establishing the Aeon.)
E. I have long since done this. You should understand that the sensitive poet side of me is my intelligence department.
F. I admit the Freudian evasions though not specially in III—10, 11. But I analyzed them and if any such remain in the text of the Commentary it is because I wished to conceal my views from the profane. Compare my statement in B[oo]k IV P[ar]t III [Magick in Theory and Practice] about sacrificing 150 male children per annum.
You cannot have it both ways—reproaching me for tattling and silence.
G. My views should already be clear from various remarks above.
I feel quite sure that I shall be in perfect shape by the Winter Solstice, provided my retirement is undisturbed.
Mrs. Marion K. Clark 1 West 85 St. New York City—I enclose summons for her. Your covering letter should make it clear that a real King can endure hardship and think it a joke. Her energy has been the bourgeois tradition that as long as you dress for dinner, and the Presbyterian minister smiles when you pass you are a great Adept. But her nature is real royal; and she can accomplish a tremendous work for the Law provided she has the contemptuous courage required to face the bourgeois. You can tell her that I made a mistake in not keeping my power secret and so avoiding abuse etc.; but I did this deliberately in order to familiarize myself with the conditions of the profane, as Peter the Great worked in a ship building yard in order to fit himself to be the greatest of Tsars.
I think that Aimée Gouraud (after all may quite well understand your programme.) She has bucked the bourgeois for years and glorified in her "bad reputation". But she should not submit to this. She should go all out to make the dirty dogs feel what dirty dogs they are. Furthermore, she must really understand the hangers-on who haunt her in the hope of swindling her sooner or later in one way or another are not free, high-minded, gentlemen but bourgeois without even the poor piffling virtues of the bourgeois. Let her learn to associate with people of her own kind and use all her resources to put the Kings on their thrones.
Do not shirk the fact that from my point of view you are a pure freak of nature. From the standpoint of stirps you are pure canaille (I say this without in the least forgetting Hanks in Salambo, of whom you remind me strongly) in which a very extraordinary personality and a quite first-class intellect have got entangled. Many of your social attitudes are due to a complex set up by this conflict.
(Do not mistake me about canaille. If you had a ducal pedigree from birth of chivalry it would be the same. Your shape and clumsiness are ochlotic. Your noble qualities resent being tied up with the ungainly instrument. I understand you very well in this matter. You are the alter-Ego of my Klopis incarnation. We are all liable to similar accidents.)
I break off because my meditations on your letter produced a strong impression that Alostrael who got last night spontaneously* a lunar vision of probably great importance should to-night make a direct attempt to get into immediate personal communication with the Secret Chiefs. (note that last night was the first vision of any value or interest whatever that she has hitherto obtained.)
93 93/93
To Mega Therion
666
*spontaneously—note. She started the vision without conscious intention or attempt to direct it. It was so strikingly clear that I looked up the heavens and found Luna risen on the cusp of Cancer indicating that she was in [illegible] in close touch magically with the actual forces of nature. I then indicated the proper course and she obtained a quite evidential vision and message. The main point was to teach her the overwhelming importance of the Mark of the Beast. (I want your opinion—Should Thelemites receive the Mark of the Beast tattooed (as the Desert Arabs do) on forehead, heart and right palm? See Apocalypse.)
P.S. One of the instructions given to Ouarda [Rose Kelly] in Cairo was as follows:—When asked who we worship, say 'The Sun'.
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