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My Relations with Theodor Reuss
[circa November 1925]
I came to great public notice in London in March 1010 E.V. when Mathers [MacGregor Mathers] attempted to prevent the publication of No. III of Equinox. In this volume as instructed by the Chiefs who had come to me in Cairo in 1904 I published the rituals of 5º=6o of R.R. et A.C. London talked for 9 days of Rosicrucians and my studio harangued by sole authentic Chiefs of that Order in great multitudes. Among these was Brother R.[euss] who tried to bully me into—well nothing in particular, I was simply bored and got rid of him. Some time later however he came to visit me again in an entirely different spirit, he was the Grand Master of Germany un Br.[other] Yarker [John Yarker] who had given me 90 - 95. R. claims that the O.T.O. combined all the secrets of all degrees soever. The reason for coming to see me was that I had published the Secret of the 9° in plain language in one of my books. I denied this and he then told me the Secret which was entirely new to me. He then took the book in question from my shelves and showed me to my complete astonishment that I had published it in the simplest words quite understandably. The passage in question had been written under inspiration derived from an important Magical invocation; but I had refused to accept it myself as of any value, hence I had forgotten what I had written. He now explained the great importance of this method of working. I did not take him very seriously but from time to time made experiments. My personal reaction against R. was always very strong, his overbearing aggressive manner was offensive. Although normally obliged to work with him I kept him at arms length and was careful not to compromise myself. His business in London seemed to me of a highly suspicious character. He had a number of accommodation addresses under different names. In his house were two women apparently sisters on called Mrs. R. and the other called Mrs. Wilson and also an English woman whose name was Mrs. Best. He described himself sometimes as R. sometimes as Wilson and sometimes even as R.W. He let it be clearly understood that his relations with all 3 women were conjugal. I felt reasonably sure that he was employed by the Prussian Secret Service as when the war broke out he left England coming among the personnel of the German Embassy. However, one of his principal [?] was a Sei [?] or attaché to the Russian Embassy in London and he rather gave me to understand that there was some political importance in his relation.
With regard to my experiments of the 9° I had a reaction also against this so that I did not even trouble to record them. It was only years later that I was suddenly struck by the fact that these sporadic workings had been almost unfailing and quite startlingly successful. Further experience confirmed my judgement in this point and in Sept. 1914 E.V. I began a systematic investigation of the condition of success on scientific lines and my records thenceforward is unbroken save for brief intervals to date.
Sucking further light from R. I learnt to my surprise that he had only carried out this experiment with success on two occasions in his whole life. Needless to say one cannot even admit success in two instances even accepting his statement of the fact.
R. was very uncertain in temper and in many ways unpredictable. In his last years he seems to have completely lost his grip even approving the . . .
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