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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to an Unknown Correspondent
[Undated: circa February 1924?]
Dear ——
(I am in honest doubt, which is worth half its creeds, as to what name [?] to employ).
Yours of Jan. 31. reached me at a moment when I have another doubt, whether I am losing my mind, being initiated, or entering second childhood. The stimulus of your letter helped to synthesize the analysed thoughts in question.
I adore you for your mysteriousness. What is "the Bermondsay Book"? The Bridgewater Book in Browning is the nearest I can get to it, and that is over 200 miles away. I am not an American professor to shoot a rocket at the moon.
I think you are a little unkind to Helen. It suggests that you cannot have fucked her, or alternatively that time has dealt with her more unkindly than any conceivable man.
About your coming to Paris. You don't really tell me anything definite. Are you an okapi or an armadillo? Your address is a mere convict indication.
I regret the moribund condition of the T[heosophical] S[ociety], my twin. Being a healthy animal, I can save her, if we can only undo the operation which divided us. If someone would get up and show these frébis [?] galeax without a shepherd that I have a crook and am not one, contrary to their previous experience, a really great movement might yet thrive. I stand for H.P.B.'s [Helena Petrovna Blavatsky] original principles, P-a-t pat. My Irish blood in the room is free of extra expense; but at the same time give me liberty or give me death.
It required many aeons of though to unveil the tremendous mystery concealed in your initials "L.C.C." which for me have always been associated with those sacred words which I indicate to you under the seal of the 777th degree and a separate fold.
I don't see so much sophism about it as sapphism. For the intercourse between Leadbeater [Charles Webster Leadbeater] and the Dynasty of Jesus Christ appears to me as worthy of the honourable name of Sodomy.
I congratulate C.W.L. [Charles Webster Leadbeater] on his latest Messiah [Krishnamurti], but personally—ah, well, after all I am not quite sure whether these matters are altogether suited to your exalted grade. But please never forget that I as a magician, i.e. a man of science, and that Leadbeater's story of the post-mortem adventures of H.P.B. are just plain lies. I had better mention right now that practically the whole secret about me is that I stand for the plain truth. Until reaching a quite unsuspectedly high type of trance recently I had really no idea at all of how a matter of that sort affects the [illegible] of human affairs. In one way or other for instance the fact is ultimately responsible for the whole of the persecution, misunderstanding etc. about me. (Even if I had the money or energy it would take me hours, nay, days and weeks, [illegible] to [illegible] the links of the chain which is [illegible] simultaneously in the [illegible] which I speak. Incidentally this experience is connected with my original [illegible] about my present doubt. My one hold on [illegible] is that the chain (so far) has not snapped—though what hold the links together is beyond my imagination to conceive. One can only say "other links" which leads to mathematical theories about the continuum with which I will not afflict you.
You interest me much from you evident habit of mixing with queer fish but do not forget that evil communications corrupt good manners.
Your information is very useful to me, and might be much more so. Part of my sincerity versus superficiality is that I can not callously put you to good use is such ways. I have to say to you like everybody else—"get rid of all this muck; get back to first [illegible] of common sense and science, and attend to business. There is too much at stake." You don't tell me your age, but you can't be very old; and messing around with these assorted nuts may find you a very dry and tasty raison at 50. Come to me that I may trample you under foot and press out wine for the Lord Dionysus.
I notice that you "have your moments of faith in numbers" or you know nothing about them. There is a science of numbers, but it is a science of necessity. If you take it lightly and see coincidence, in trivial attributions you will [illegible] of the true virtue and power of numbers and end with the regular symptoms of the early stages of some kind of lunacy.
Yes; when I wrote you to answer me by return mail I knew what I was doing. I am a Magician. I know, though Crowley does not, what I tell him, what is the matter with you. I [illegible] you know yourself enough to realize that if you had thought out a reply it would have never got posted. Similarly you judge [illegible] that you used to be [illegible]; and, speak as a world-famous sadist, I am the boy you require. I am hesitating as to whether you ought not to break absolutely with your past on all planes and join me once and for all. At least I offer you the option of so doing. That would mean walking out of Room 1515 on receipt of this letter and make a bee-line for Paris without consideration of any other sublunary [?] matter soever. To go home to pack a grip [illegible] probably lead to you eternal damnation.
It would take me a long while to explore a success so outrageously [illegible]. I shall not attempt to do so. "Enough of [illegible]! Be he damned for a dog."
That wistfulness is part of it. It is no good your doctor recommending you a sea-voyage. You have to be shanghaied. Consider this letter as the knock-out drops. If they work, the situation will become clear to you from the affect of the drug.
Observe that my own hesitation above is merely a symptom of my own weakness. I have no real doubt as to your proper course. I trust in fact that this incident may show me what rotten bad magick it is to treat the candidate gently. If he is good stuff he'll stand anything, and the more he [illegible] to stand the better for him. If not, all the [illegible] treatment in the world is [illegible] so much waste of time. Get a glimpse of yourself as you are. The Word will leap to your lips "Better Dead!". Stay yourself therefore with a steady hand and as deliberation. That is the one way of life.
Love
P.S. Cable when you expect to arrive.
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