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Correspondence from Charles Stansfeld Jones to Aleister Crowley
P.O. Box 141, Chicago. Ill.
January 26th 1924 E.V.
Beloved Brother and Father,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law!
This is to acknowledge the receipt of your official letter of An XIX, Sol in Capricorn, written in Paris, in answer to mine of December twelfth 1923 E.V. I answered your other letter of December 28th., on January 17th., sending my reply care of Brother Mudd [Norman Mudd], Tunisia Palace Hotel. I do not know if this will be forwarded as I have since received other mailing directions from him, and in the meanwhile he was staying at another Hotel in Tunis.
In answer to your letter just received. I appreciate the much more dignified and courteous tone in which it is written. If I make the simple and sincere statement that the inner experience consciously felt at a certain Point in my Initiation, has led to the conviction that the Grade of 10º=1o was thereby conferred upon me; I trust you will not dispute my right to an opinion which subsequent events have so far failed to change. It is rather a matter between myself and the Supreme Being, and in myself I confess I am nothing.
You tell me you have “never had the slightest cause to suppose anything of the sort” and that the evidence in your possession is rather to the contrary. In this I suppose you mean that you have no “interior conviction” in regard to the matter, for it has certainly been brought to your notice on several occasions, as for instance, in Liber 31.
You have every right to your own opinion; proof, if proof there be, will come from within rather than from without. I think you err in supposing, as you sometimes suggest, that I tumbled into the Abyss through failure to fulfill the conditions of my Grade, but again you have a right to form your own judgment insofar as it affects the affairs of the A∴A∴
I think your attitude (as a 9º=2o) of being ready to take orders from a 10º=1o is a very proper one, except that I cannot conceive of a 10º=1o giving orders in the ordinary sense of the word. I think the action of a 10º=1o, as such, is from within outwards. His work is to instill Order, rather than to give orders. The Word is the means whereby an Idea is conveyed, and its potency depends upon it arousing a corresponding idea in the minds of those who receive it. The Idea comes from the Silence, even as the Light shines in the Darkness.
Suppose we refrain from further argument on this point, while remembering that between the Crown and the Barb of the Arrow is the Shaft of Work, and that Perfection abideth not in the Pinnacle, or in the Foundations, but in the ordered harmony of One with All.
If there is any suggestion I might make in regard to the harmonious working of the A∴A∴ it is that Order should not be lost sight of for a moment. It does seem that a successful issue depends upon this as much as anything else. Please let us try to meet in a harmonious spirit, and if you doubt my right to approach you as a 9º=2o, please descend to Malkuth where I am always at your service.
With best wishes for true success in all you may undertake and brotherly greetings to the brethren,
Yours as ever,
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