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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Heinrich Tränker
Feb. 22 [1925]
The enclosed Manifesto has been worded so as to meet the situation caused by the glamour which has been cast by the Masters around the personality of the author. This has been necessary in order to prevent any premature manifestation of Their plans or any assumption of authority on his part before They had completed his initiation.
It is important to observe that his interest in Occult Science did not begin until after the death of H.P.B. [Helena Petrovna Blavatsky]. He always held her in absolute reverences as a genuine messenger for the Masters and would have nothing to do with any of her successors on the express grounds that they were entirely faithless to the essence of her teaching. His views on the subject have been partially published in an edition of The Voice of the Silence, supplement to Vol. III, No. 1 of The Equinox, Detroit, 1919. He wrote his notes very much on H.P.B.'s own principle of outraging the timid but a careful perusal should satisfy you of his full right to judge the matter.
His fundamental position is this: That whereas such works as Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine might conceivably have been compiled by scholarship, The Voice of the Silence offers indefeasable evidence of intimate initiated knowledge impossible to express in the labguage of reason, and also of the sublime inspiration unmistakable in character.
The time has now arrived when it is no longer possible for those who sent forth H.P.B. to allow her message to fade out in theoretical studies or even in personal attainments. There is one organized body of Adepts, and only one, in Europe, which can offer convincing scientific proof of its hierarchical succession for the past four centuries, and that body has chosen the author of the Manifesto for its head. In his letter of acceptance he states his views as follows:
We ∴ put it to you that the author of the Manifesto is the legitimate successor of H.P.B. The fact that he has never compromised himself with any branch of the Theosophical Society is highly significant. You will notice that your own movement has been very accurately times to meet his manifestation but it is never any use in any movement to attempt to go back to primitive conditions for however pure and sublime may have been the original impulse, the conditions are no longer the same. The planet gas been thoroughly leavened by the mission of H.P.B. But from that work there has sprung no fruitful plant. It was never the intention of the Masters that Theosophy as such should conquer the world, for the time had not yet come for the proclamation of the Law of the New Aeon. The more carefully you consider this matter the more clearly will the plan of the Masters become apparent to you.
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