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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to American Friends
Chelles, S. et M., France.
June 1, 1924 e.v.
My friends:
Your cruelty and injustice wound me to the heart, were it not that I feel that you know not what you do, but I fear that you mean well.
Entertaining? Too bad. Interesting? I weep. It is true that the book [The Diary of a Drug Fiend] is a rubbishy pot-boiler, scribbled in 27 days, 12 3/4 hours, in long hand, by my trained monkey [Leah Hirsig], ("Lala", in the book) but despite that it is immensely serious. It is not a great novel nor the shadow of one, but it is a literary and philosophical document of quite first rate importance. I have recently read it myself, several times; and I find it improves on acquaintance.
You being a group of artists I wish first of all to impress upon you that the trance states described are entirely accurate. Possibly they are out of keeping with such commonplace people as Peter and Lou; and worse, they give the real experiences very familiar to me through spiritual and magical methods, of which drug ecstasies supply more simulacra. Why do I urge this? Any why especially to you? Because such experiences tend to destroy the inhibitions of genius. Briefly, I claim to be able to create first-rate artists from practically any human material, by a strictly scientific method of training, wholly unconnected with drugs or dogmas.
In short, my work in the world is to Proclaim and Establish The Law of Thelema in public, and in private, to train anybody who offers to be Prophet, Priest and King in the New Aeon of that of Horus the Crowned and Conquering Child, who has superseded Osiris, the Slain God.
One glance at my practical difficulties. The Publication of The Drug Fiend let loose a storm of persecution. (You will have observed that I foresaw this in the book itself.) I was assailed as a White Slaver, Drug Trafficker and addict, Jail Bird, Cannibal, etc. There is no remedy in English or American Law against such insane accusations if one is a poet with neither time nor money to defend oneself. (Even so, they dared not attack me till assured that I was over 1000 miles away, ill, and temporarily under economic stress.) The result has been to jeopardize the very existence of The Abbey at Telepylus (Cefalu, Sicily). (In the spring of 1923, a Three Months' Serial of double page Sunday Features was widely syndicated in the United States of America. You could doubtless deluge yourselves with these ravings, by applying to the International Feature Syndicate if you wish to debauch your intelligence. The hard fact is however this: There is nothing whatever in my system of training or in our mode of life at any Abbey of Thelema which would bring us into conflict with the law of the country. But our perfect freedom from sexual obsession, quarreling, jealousy, and similar normal factors of life of the herd, excites the most venomous frenzy in the average observer. Success demands the protection of seclusion, secrecy, wealth and influence, and you must have a reasonable free country to live in. As a wealthy, if eccentric Englishman, in a remote medieval Sicilian fishing village, I was undisturbed until Mussolini's brigands Ku Klux Klaned the country and indulged their beggar-on-horseback spleen by wanton persecution of all civilised individuals or institutions.
It seems to me necessary to repeat the Cefalu experiment in a less barbarous country, on a larger scale, and with proper strategic dispositions for protecting oneself against busy-bodies and witch-finders. I am now busy arranging for this.
I should like to know whether you would be interested in cooperating. If so, may I make the following suggestion:—
1. That you select a delegate from your group to visit me this summer for the purpose of learning the full scope of my plans. It is quite impossible to communicate them by writing—misunderstanding is inevitable with the best will in the world and the greatest intelligence. For one thing it has been necessary to invent a new language based on mathematical symbols and amplified by traditional symbols of moral ideas drawn from the wisdom of all countries and all ages. (I have spent most of my life in reading the classics of China, India, Egypt, Greece, etc., and in exploring the remotest parts of Asia and Africa, in order to obtain first-hand knowledge of all systems of self-development and spiritual attainment. I have separated the essence of these doctrines from their dogmatic, racial and climatic accidents, applied a strictly scientific method of analysis and synthesis and harmonized the whole into a perfectly elastic yet perfectly rigid method.) Further, the full development of these envisages a fundamental reconstruction of society whose essence is the acceptance of The Law of Thelema as the Canon of Ethics. This revolution being in the inmost spirit of man, it doesn't involve any alteration in the laws or customs of any people except so far as they may be in conflict with the self-evident moral right of every man and woman very much as expressed in the original Constitution of the United States before Captain Becker, Mr. Anderson and their kind destroyed it.
(Please observe that I do not attack Rockefeller, Morgan, the late Mr. Wilson or others of that type. So far as they have caused evil, I should destroy their power by the simple process of removing men and women from under it. The power of the money Lords has no virtue save as they have persuaded the people that money is the only thing worth having. I free men by releasing them from their own false ideas of what they want. "Every man and every woman is a star." If all the stars were persuaded by the Press and Pulpit that their sole business was to get to Andromeda at whatever cost to themselves or inconvenience to others, there would be the same mess in heaven that we now see on earth.)
2. That you undertake the study of my serious writings. Most of these can be obtained from Professor Norman Mudd, 37a, Tressillian Road, Brockley, London, S.E. 4. (Circumstances have conspired to make most of my book very difficult to procure. Occasional copies are advertised for sale in the United States at prices much exceeding that of publication. The best course is to ask Professor Mudd what books he can get for you.
I say my serious work. But I will ask you to understand that I am merely the representative of my Superior Officers and that all the best of my work is derived from Their Wisdom. The foundation of the whole is The Book of the Law, but while "the Law is for all", I hesitate to urge you to study it until the Comment is ready. In the past many people have erred gravely through misunderstanding this book, as is necessarily the case with a document of so tremendous and far reaching a character.
3. That you make up your minds to arrange in advance to migrate either in turn or altogether to the New Abbey of Thelema as soon as it is established. That is, prepare to wind up your present relations with society, for the time being with the idea that you should make ready to go back into the world as soon as you have acquired the Magical Wisdom and Power requisite, by means of the training, each in his own way, to execute his own True Will in the world. I want each of you to become, so to speak, the Abraham of a New Chosen People, the Buddha of a New Philosophy, or the Michael Angelo of a New Renaissance.
I am aware that the programme is gigantic, but the best of the many virtues of Americans is that they are not afraid of big ideas as such. I wish to remind you that in the life story of practically all the great men of the world of the First Order (I count Napoleon and the like as inferiors) there is a period of disappearance from society, usually extending over a number of years. This period was necessary to their training or initiation. I claim that by the scientific analysis and comparative study above mentioned I have been able to eliminate the unnecessary features which in the past hindered attainment, so that we can now produce the results of years in as many months.
I may be obliged to travel to various remote places in the near future but the above will be my address till June 21, after which it will be better to write to me c/o Professor Mudd. But there would be time for a cable to reach me here in case you met immediately and decided immediately to carry out at lease my first suggestion. I will not conceal from you that I should be glad if this came to pass. One of the first qualities of the greatest men and women is the seeing and seizing of the opportunity of a life-time in a moment without counting the cost or estimating the risk. All my life, when I have acted on this principle, I have succeeded beyond expectation, even when the failure of my least expectation was complete. When I have played safe, I have invariably lost all. The gods demand this quality from man as the first test of his fitness to exercise supreme power of the creative kind.
Yours,
Aleister Crowley.
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