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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to James Gilbert Bayley
Ex Monte Abiegnus
An XXI Sun in Cancer, Moon in Cancer [22 June 1925]
Care Frater L.O.V.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Thank you very much for your letter dated 11/7/25.? I congratulate you on the possession of the magical power to discover the amount of money in my possession.
But I am sorry to have to tell you that (for once) the Intelligences who serve you seem to have made what is poetically termed a bloomer. For the fact is that I have not "had a fair amount of money in my possession recently.
Certain Bb∴ [Blessed Brethren] have spent certain sums on certain parts of the Great Work on which you and I are engaged: which is quite a different thing.
If I had had any money at all of my own, I should at once have sent some to relieve O.P.V. [Norman Mudd] in his abominable distress. I was not, as you were, in a position to help him in the most valuable way without it costing a single penny.
Also, I cannot just at the moment ask the Bb∴ who have been helping the Work to put up even so trifling a sum as £5 for what might seem to them a matter of minor importance.
Now to a more serious matter. You say: "The report you have heard regarding my family and myself is a lying report."
I thank you for confirming its accuracy in such detail. I had hoped that O.P.V. had exaggerated the situation.
You know, my beloved young Brother, that you can't expect to throw dust in the eyes of One who neither slumbers nor sleeps, but watches over your welfare constantly with the most earnest love.
As any student of quite elementary psychology would tell you, the violence of your denial is the most convincing proof of the truth of the statement which you wish me to disbelieve.
Had the report been inaccurate, you would have written laughingly: "Poor old O.P.V. has got a bug in his brain about my family. It's all nonsense: we get along like brandy and soda"—or words to that effect.
Instead, you explode. You write rudely and irritably to me, who am entirely innocent of the matter. That is perfectly clear proof that my letter hit the mark, that it touched you on a very sore spot, that it awoke your conscience. I know now that you know that you are doing wrong.
As O.P.V. says, you have been badgered and bullied until you are like a tormented bull in the arena; you charge blindly at anything, every time you are goaded beyond your patience to endure.
I warn you officially that you are near the state of mind in which a man suddenly bolts with a strange woman, or sees red and murders somebody—perhaps somebody quite inoffensive and in no way responsible for his agony—on some absolutely trivial provocation.
I inform you officially that the last time I had to write a letter like this it was to warn a man that if he persisted in a certain line of conduct he would go insane. He replied defiantly, and a month later I had news that he had been removed to a lunatic asylum.
In your case, I do not see anything so terrible at all imminent; but I do see this, that you have only two courses to avoid trouble.
1. You can determine to be master in your own house. (H.G. Wells has a quite good story "The Purple Pileus" which gives the psychology.)
2. You can walk out and start a new life in a less unfavourable environment.
The question is: have you the manhood to take either course? You must at least face the fact that people with really large experience of the world have no illusions about you. Yours is a very simple and very common case. You are a wage-slave with sensitiveness enough to feel your degradation, and aspiration enough to despair of yourself. You lack the hardness (which in many men is callousness) to protect your finer feelings from the hourly outrage to which they are subjected; and you lack the will-power (which in many men is brutal aggressiveness) to hack through the obstacles to the realization of your aims.
I knew there was something very wrong from the fact of your not sending in a magical Record. You hang on to the Order as your one hope, which It indeed is; yet you fail to comply with Its first regulation. It needs no Hidden Wisdom to divine that your work is being held up by obstacles which you are ashamed to admit, even to yourself or to Us.
Do not think that We undervalue your loyalty, or esteem lightly the work you have done of goodwill and service. It is in fact just your merit which entitles you to receive a long letter like this from me personally, written with my own hand after dictating 777 (new edition) for about 8 hours.
I want to point out, again officially, that those who arrange Ordeals seem to have taken very special pains with your case. They won't allow your test to be interfered with by my kind-heartedness. That is why I have never been able to give you any material token of goodwill or gratitude, strongly as I feel both of these.
I don't mind telling you that I have had a very guilty conscience about you. I knew you were not in opulent circumstances, and I wanted badly to repay you. But behold! Last November, though I had no money available to send you—all I was living on was a friend's—a certain Holy Man of the Desert presented me (as One even holier than He!) with 6 boxes, each containing 10 kilograms of the finest dates. I thought instantly of you: here is a chance (I said to myself) to show L.O.V. that at least I am not wholly unmindful of his great kindness. Alas! the Railway would not accept dates addressed to England. Well, that was easy: I would send them to a friend in Paris, asking him to forward the box to you from there. So I said, and so I did. Oh no! smiled the Gods, and smashed the box to smithereens on the platform of the Gare de Lyon! I am getting a little less stupid than I used to be about interpreting Their licks: so I understood you had to be left alone to carry out your Work for the Order without lust of result . After all , you haven't had to go through 1/ 10 of what all the rest of us have. Look well to it, then, that you don't lose all the ground that you have conquered by ignoble surrender or senseless irritation at the very moment when Victory approaches smiling to crown our brows with laurel!
Err not in understanding: the Ordeal of my last letter, and of this letter, is appointed not without Supreme wisdom. You will not be allowed to pass out with us into Triumph unless you exhibit the adequate and right reaction to this test. Nevertheless, fear not; Love under Will can bring you through. Thou hast no right but to do thy will. Do that, and no other shall say nay.
93 93/93.
Fraternally ever,
TO MEGA THERION 666
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