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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Norman Mudd
50 rue Vavin Paris VIe
Apr. 20/24 e.v.
My dear O.P.V.
93.
Thanks for report. That is exactly the sort of thing I need.
Letter to Otto Kahn—Avoid carefully asking for money. The idea is to get him interested in the social reform possibilities of Thelema. (See P.S. about avoiding smash)
Your report of the gossiping old cats in London is more amusing than alarming. Of course they take advantage of the Big Lion being sick; and of course when he is not sick, but as the proof, they never breathe a word of the kind.
You express yourself very badly when you say they regard me as "wholly untruthful, dishonest, unscrupulous". They don't think at all. Once I get into a position to be written up by the Press as the persecuted martyr living the Christ-life on a perpetual Calvary etc. etc. they will all go about town like peacocks announcing that they are my oldest friends who always believed in me and stuck to me in my worst adversity. That is the moment when they will have a real opportunity of regarding me as ungrateful, for I shall continue my career of telling the truth about everything. You can always prick their bubbles by challenging them to point to one single false statement of mine.
My Hierophantic Task. You instructively feel, as he does, that contact with me would smash J.H.D. [James Douglas] to bits. He would fall from the Great Napes Needle of his self-conceit because he would disobey my orders at the critical moment thinking he knew more than the Master (Cf. Kangchenjunga 1905, Trifthorn 1898 etc.( True, dear lad. Your friendship for J.H.D. induced you to protect him by appealing to my good nature to refrain from performing the Hierophantic Task. You have merely shifted the responsibility on to your own shoulders. It is now your business to "drag down his soul to awful torment."
For years I have said vaguely that I could not hope to begin to do anything with a man until he had become an Atheist. (I don't mean a born Atheist, I mean one who has won to that Eminence through frightful struggles). Expand this slightly. You can't expect to get Thelemites (unless born since 1904) without disintegrating the corpse of The Dying God by T.N.T. I charge you therefore to do this to D[ouglas]. When he has lost his placidity and his job and been through a period of such spiritual and physical misery as you have yourself known, I can begin to build him up. Get busy.
(Incidentally, that will destroy your own complex of preserving the corpse D. against the Ghoul Crowley. Let the dead bury the dead but come thou and follow me.)
Re O.P.V. I think I have smashed you pretty thoroughly, mostly unconsciously of course. I have sympathized deeply all the time, A.C. doing his utmost to neutralize 666's work. You are not quite ready for me to begin to build you up, because of your "deepest instincts of honour and truth" which are really fetishes of your Victorian respectability. It would be amazing that you can be so blind if I were not equally blind myself most of the time.
Your notes on the Jews are interesting as evidence of your bitter need to escape from concentration on the task I have set you. My Blau [Joel Blau] Letter solves the problem. 666 is to train the Antichrist. Never mind the mangled muddle of mellifluous monotones.
I completely fail to understand your allusion to letters written by me "to of for G.C. Jones [George Cecil Jones]——— butting in behind all your backs." I wrote to Jones on your bombshell about Cefalù; but since then have written neither to or for him. I have not addressed D. Lamb on any subject since 1921 or 2. I think these people, except Lamb, whom I believe to be honest and friendly are plain liars. The only suggestion I can make is that some question arose during the conference of some letter I had written long ago.
I want to tell you one other important thing. I regard all these people, all England with rare individual exceptions, as moral cowards with all that that implies. Sir Richard Burton had an experience precisely similar to mine. So had Christopher Columbus. So had Darwin. Their instinctive dread is of a man who dares the unknown. Omne ignotum piro terribili; and such a man may bring it to their door at any moment. The whole history of Science illustrates this. Science is now tolerated—after a fight of centuries—because Science has been at pains to prove that (on the balance) it has benefited mankind. I, bringing, as I do, new knowledge of the unknown, and obviously the mark for fear, horror and persecution. "In proportion to men's fright, expect that fright's revenge", quoth politic old Machiavelli!
A.I.'s [Eddie Saayman] treachery and suicide [his marriage] is your business, he being your twin. You were wrong about his thesis. The most blundering bungled nonsense would have served his turn provided only that he got the one thing over: that he had grasped, and was trying to express, a new theory of the nature of number. He should have stuck to that "though naked and dying in the streets of Oxford". As it is, he has dished himself completely. He has deserted us in the face of the enemy; he ought to be shot: and will be. He cannot expect us to take any interest in him when he has deliberately turned his face away from us to go whoring after strange women. His one hope is that Jean may love him sufficiently to resolve to leave him (leaving Oxford of course) until he has kept his pledged word. There is a chance of happiness for both of them together on this basis—the only chance. She can do one thing only beyond this; that is, pledge herself to cooperate wholeheartedly in his Work with us—vindication etc. Of course, looking forth upon men and telling them this glad word Θελγμχ.
About your own spiritual state. You will not stick to the opinion of AL about me but use your own judgment of my actions. Your abusive letters are extremely funny especially when they are true, for then they are supremely false. You should go into partnership with Austin H [Austin Harrison] as the next most brainless biped. Your ideas of my psychology are supremely absurd. (Nothing about me can be true which contradicts AL.)
Let me give you one instance. I tell you that it is desirable for you to leave Paris before a certain date on account of Pilzer. You think that "abject." It is nothing of the sort. It is the necessary warning of the Intelligence Dept. that a certain unit may be threatened at a certain time in a certain way; and should therefore, if possible, be removed. That does not imply that the unit itself is composed of a set of cowards.
Think the above out thoroughly. Apply the general principle involved to other incidents; and you may see a great light. Mountain climbing and other dangerous sports offer a thousand analogies. It is because you have never done anything dangerous in the way I have done all my life that you miss my attitude. Leah [Leah Hirsig] amused me enormously the other day by mocking me for my extreme caution in rock climbing. Don't you see this? I have performed innumerable impossibly dangerous feats, I have never come to grief; exactly because I have provided against each danger knowing it well, with extreme caution. The opposite extreme is to be reckless and cowardly. You and other subordinates have frequently precipitated disasters just through missing the point of my instructions.
As soon as you learn to believe in me yourself you will compel others. You say Lamb etc. consider me untruthful. Challenge them to quote one single untruth. They will collapse. It is because fear compels them to pretend that I am otherwise. Jones lost his Libel case through not calling me as a witness. I should have blurted out Fenton's attempt to blackmail me; and he would have got big damages.
I want you therefore to carry out without too great delay and with great precision, the instructions about the S[unday] E[xpress]. Insist on seeing Feilding [Everard Feilding] who is accustomed to scarecrows, and be bold.
I don't know if the above helped your moral integrity. Personally, I can't see the difficulty. But you pledged yourself publicly—obtain the retraction of various obvious lies. Nothing else is necessary to start a violent reaction in my favour.
I think your moral resistance is mainly this: Altho you know that the S.E. story is all lies you also think you know points in my character which you disapprove. This is a mixture of ignorance and presumption. Who set thee to be a judge over us? Wilt thou kill me as thou killeds't the Egyptian yesterday? The root of your scheme of the Law Suit was an attempt to shift the responsibility of vindication back on me. I have just read a word in season. Even Oscar Wilde became kingly after he had been dethroned. "L'action de ma vie, put de condescendri à faire appel à la societé pour en obtemir aide et protection".
There is no objection to appealing to the S.E. to behave like gentlemen. After your effort, should it fail, it will be time to consider whether I should ask for that farthing damages.
"Who Art Thou" I will revise what I have written and forward all but last Cap. if it seems satisfactory. It can't be typed—that can't be helped; but remember that Shirley [Ralph Shirley] has a trick of mislaying important Mss. so I take precaution.
I have done no work for some days beyond letters. I was really very badly starved. The last few days of feeding up are doing wonders for me. For the last week I have hardly been able to concentrate my mind at all on anything like creative work.
We both feel that somehow the Magical crisis has been passed. With every reason to be anxious, despite the momentary relief, we are not so in the least.
93 93/93
P.S. Don't forget the definition of Magick "to cause change in accordance with will". The most important gap in your moral character is your acquiescence in revolting circumstances. Your difficulty in becoming indignant, your procrastination etc belong to this complex. The mathematician investigates nature and finds 2 + 2 = 4; the magician knows that and works to 2 + 2 = 5. This he does by creating the missing 1. Thinking over things won't help you at all. It will only add to your despairing acquiescence in 2 + 2 = 4. Black Magicians produce 2 + 2 = 5 by borrowing the 1. Gaining a temporary success, the creditor comes down on them at the most inconvenient moment and they smash. We, on the contrary, just now are the creditors, having been black-magicked out of our dues. When the moment comes, therefore we shall not only come into our own but smash the opposition badly. Part of your moral trouble is that you do not allow for the stupendous asset of AL. Our debtors have half persuaded you that they are wronged people! Clear your mind about this. It is the source of all your woes. Being born before 1904, you have, unknown to yourself, a resistance against AL of similar type, to mine. You have to be new born into the Aeon as I have been. Cap. III is becoming quite clear to me. However, leave AL alone at present. Let nothing interfere with your pledged and published word. That is your supreme test. You got it, I think, in order that you might pay off in a year or so of agony the debt of the Cambridge Betrayal.
P.P.S. Please send Raymond Radclyffe a copy of Tyrol [Songs for Italy] and the other Mus-so-li-ni Pamphlet.
P.P.P.S. Your incredible incompetence in Magick. The greatest Magus on the Planet gives you a Wand and Ring. You attach no value at all to them: you leave them about: you never try to use them. It was like giving the Rosse [?] telescope to a Hottentot. You should have used them to create yourself magically first of all. Then the interplay of the two would have worked miracles by the score.*
But there are some complete gaps in you—You will not be a man at all till they are filled.
666.
* Wand, Ring and Book. You had sense enough to pay a high price without haggling) are your 3 most valuable and only essential possessions. The first two, also, you 'bought without haggling' when you handed your savings to 93. 666.
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