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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Norman Mudd
May 27/24 e.v.
My beloved son,
It would be really helpful now you are buying businesses by the dozen if I could have that weekly 1/4 lb. of My Mixture. This Tabac Bleu is getting on my nerves. Either see Dunhill's manager personally, explain how my illness etc. has temporarily knocked things out and restore credit or purchase the stuff independently. You remember how it came weekly by registered letter.
My matchless elasticity is still on the blink. The first few days here were heavenly pure rest with a spring of young ideas welling up but I have got into somewhat of an Apophis period. I am too well to rest and too tired to work. Mild distraction like reading pleasant letters, talking to new people, or browsing light literature is my immediate need. There is none of the last: Can you get cheap editions of Detective stories—especially the man with the Club Foot series and send them along. Nothing by Whitehead or I blast you with a deadly and hostile current of will on the spot.
Your idea about Oxford is A.1. There was a dramatic scene in the Isle Marquis the other night—A drunken Amer[ican] lawyer named Jones (the Planet seems to stink of them!) had stood a snail supper and started to try to quote from the Ode to a Nightingale. I fixed him with my glittering eye, the snailful host was still; and recited the passage beginning.
"Ho boy bring wine, black wine in jars of jade."
The effect was devastating perhaps even devasting which I take to be an intensive form of the well-known verb. When he got his breath back, he sprang to his feet and spouted a long tirade that he wouldn't fall down and worship me. I naturally roared with laughter and suggested that our utmost requirement was common-sense conduct and perhaps a few more snails.
I mention this because I don't want you to miss the World's Tragedy lyrics. The point is that the matter is so outrageous that by forcing people to accept the lyric we win the battle for free literature once and for all.
L.O.V. [James Gilbert Bayley] seems to be on finely.
Your plans for Estai [Jane Wolfe], are also quite O.K.
Achad [Charles Stansfeld Jones]—I think you'd better stick some more pins into the pig's bladder which he takes for his head. I.N.R.I. is all right but why? There is not a single original thought in it. It is indeed very good, but why? Because matter and manner are both conveyed faithfully from either me or Mathers [MacGregor Mathers]. And note that he does not print ads. of our stuff in this last. He seems eaten up with personal jealousy; Egon+1, and he cannot see that that is what is preventing him doing any good work of his own. Aleister Crowley simply obsesses him. He fails to realize "Every man and every woman is a star", Qabalistically, as my mother remarked of some one when I was about 2 years old, "He only thinks of No. 1" which has therefore disappeared. There is no Achad there, there is either a half crazy Charlatan as in "The Ever-Coming-One" or a mere Ribbon clerk offering second hand goods of ours.
Probationer forms presumably all in Cefalù should be retrieved at once.
Very glad about finding Gaunt [Guy Gaunt]—Feilding [Everard Feilding] letters, also about Hammond.
Your own state seems A.1. now you've stopped thinking about your deepest instincts about Truth and Honour.
About money—While not altogether displeased at receiving it I want to know that I am giving more than full value for it somehow or other.
The Radclyffe [Raymond Radclyffe]—Kempler—Hunt [Carl de Vidal Hunt] combination seems promising apart from the Aumont [Gerard Aumont] efforts more or less settled already. R[aymond] R[adclyffe] might easily talk T.W.E. [Tommy Earp] into putting up the capital for a really big bang.
Will answer the Americans.
Fraternally
666 per 31-666-31 [Leah Hirsig]
P.S. With regard to our policy of construction, we had better start and Order of THelemites beginning with men of Earth and promoting as occasion dictates. The main thesis is this: Do what thou wilt supplies a formula of social reconstruction, a third party to the Capitalists and the Reds. You can for example say to a rich man "You have got rich under the present system but you have also acquire the risk of having your throat cut into the bargain as in Russia". To the Red you say "You are right in your general idea that every man should have a chance but totally wrong in starting from the material end". Prove to him from history that no revolution has succeeded without a spiritual idea behind it. (The Encyclopaedists for 1789, Marx for Russia). Further Russia is unstable because Marx had no real constructive spiritual idea. I suggest you drawing up a short set of rules for membership. In the beginning each member should propagate the Law as best he can, especially by correspondence, so as to start new ventures in distant parts. Arrangements for meeting, newspapers and such propaganda would come later when a given centre had sufficient numbers.
Each member would be kinked with headquarters directly and be under a rather loose obligation to act on instructions. We should not establish a "system" in any centre till its elements were complete. There must be no intercommunication between Members or Systems. Entrance fees and subscriptions should be voluntary or rather we should judge what any given man ought to contribute.
Each new member must furnish a dossier; so that headquarters may judge how to employ him. He should further turn in a Magical Record every month of the Work he has done for the Order.
Initiation should follow membership as a reward for good work. The initiate will be branded with the Mark of the Beast, a scar of sulphuric acid on brow, breast and right palm.
Note that the secrecy comes in the Organization, the method of government. Our overt object, which is the real one, is a re-constitution of Society aimed at averting the catastrophe of Bloody Revolution. Funds will be used as may be explained to enquirers, to carry out the programme of AL. Their advantage comes in their insurance against revolution. They can be organized for defence or enabled to flee for refuge according to circumstances. We might for instance have one town with 10,000 members who would form a force ready organized to assist the authorities in maintaining order. In another town we might only have 3 and they would be warned and got into safety when the smash came.
I know well how vague and impractical all this sounds, but it is precisely your job to express such ideas in regular shape.
On no account will orders be given which would infringe the law of the country where they are to be carried out. Our whole object being to establish a just and strong law, our first principle must be for law as such however unjust.
666.
For the last 20 years I have been maturing a plan for saving Civilization. The struggle for life between the Capitalist and the Red has become constantly more acute and is now being brought to a crisis everywhere. Even England, the stronghold of conservative ideas, is almost ready to follow the example of Russia. The one hope of avoiding a conflict which would be finally fatal to Western Civilization——lies in a spiritual revolution. The essence of the Formula is in the Words "Do what thou wilt", but these words need interpretation which is given by the rest of the book from which they are taken. This book is itself very obscure and extremely dangerous requiring a comment by me as the result of 20 years study of the text.
I want the opportunity of explaining as fully as possible the nature of the plans I have formulated.
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