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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Baron von Falkenberg
24 rue Lamark, Paris.
16 August 1924.
Dear Baron von Falkenberg,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Yours of July 23 duly forwarded to me here.
It is rather hard to answer your letter in detail simply because it does not represent well defined states of mind. Your attitude to the morons in your vicinity is quite correct. At the same time the complaint is in a sense a confession of weakness. I do not think you realize quite how essential it is to resume the heroic attitude pure and simple in the presence of such extreme baseness. You seem to be doping yourself with beautiful virgins and drink and other Anglo-Saxon ideas, which are repugnant to both Scandinavian and Celtic nobility. You seem to admit this in part of your letter and yet the admission does not sting you as it should. As the French say you pay yourself with words. You have 'beautiful associations' and 'beautiful souls'. It only makes it worse that such things should exist in an atmosphere of such contamination.
You must not consider the attendant circumstances of getting to London, or rather Paris, for London is near as bad as New York by all accounts. As long as you permit anything to hinder the execution of your Will, there will always be enough circumstance to stop you.
You have a fatal tendency to make excuses for yourself. Sometimes it is your unfavourable surroundings, sometimes it is your own virtue. Try to realise that the naturally best things in the world often get in the most horribly evil way. Anything that threatens to make you content even for a moment to try to forget the abomination and iniquity of Alabama is a death-trap for your soul. Above all, if you acquire the habit of postponing things in order to get them just right you will infallibly perish.
I think you should cut out Eleanor's father's [illegible] and [illegible] generally—even booze parties. As the post says:—
Come where the booze is cheaper; Come where the pot's hold none!
I have been engaged for some time in an important magickal operation. You come in in the following [illegible]. I enclose an open letter [An Open Letter to Lord Beaverbrook] which will be [illegible] as a packet in the course of the next few days. (This is the beginning of a very extended offensive). What I want is for you to get any possible publicity for it, and also to collect as much money as you can to enable us to put it over big. Success in in this matter should free us completely within a very short time, and that in turn will rest upon yourself and enable us to assist you much more practically than I can at present do. (The general idea is to repeat what we call "The Cefalů Experiment" on a much larger scale, and in a place nearer Paris. Once I am established in this way I should be able to ask promising people to stay with me while they are finding their feet in the new conditions.
Love is the law, love under will.
Birmingham, Alabama, Box 1901.
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