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Correspondence from Norman Mudd to Albin Grau
Weida,
6 November, 1925, e.v.
Dear Herr Grau,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
I have just received from the Master Therion you letter to him (written in French) of 20.10.25.
He has asked me to put before you and the other brethren in Berlin the essence of our position with regard to Bro. Recnartus [Heinrich Tränker] and yourselves.
We fully understand that you should think of him as your spiritual father, and we sympathise very heartedly with your love and affection for him.
But it is a false love and a mistaken affection which should seek to deny the deep-seated faith which poison the highest truth of a beloved teacher—to minimise them, to hide them out of sight, or to disguise their real character.
A man who, knowing in his heart that a dear friend was suffering from the plague, should, on grounds of affection, pretend to himself, or to his friend, or to the world that the trouble was only a trifling attack of fever, would be a false and treacherous friend; and he would run the risk of becoming, in the eyes of God and man, a murderer.
That is why the Master Therion was sent to him.
It was imperatively necessary that this demon of dishonesty—lurking insidiously in the heart of the leader in Germany of the Great Work—should be driven out into the light of day, there to be killed, or, at least, rendered powerless for its further deception of others.
Therefore no possible purpose can be served by pretending that this demon is not a devilish and deadly enemy, but merely a harmless and excusable weakness.
You have all seen, I think, the damning statements of Herr Hopfer [Oskar Hopfer] and Herr Germer [Karl Germer].
Unless these charges are utterly unfounded—not merely in this detail on that, but essentially and radically false—then Frater Recnartus has been practising for years a mode of dishonest and treacherous falsehood which, though common enough among vulgar people, is absolutely fatal to one who has committed his life to the Work of a spiritual leader.
You have therefore to chose finally—Yes, or No—whether you will now be true brothers and friends to Recnartus, and insist on him facing and destroying his demon, or whether—for the sake of a little false and fleeting peace—you will help to push him one step further down the steep path which leads to utter spiritual death.
Now this is your position and ours with regard to Bro. Recnartus.
A spiritual teacher can only live in and by his truth: he cannot live a lie.
If he insists on holding in his heart, on his life, one dishonesty—no matter how small, or apparently 'unspiritual'—he becomes ever more corrupt, through his efforts to deny it, protest it, disguise it, and explain it away.
In a very short time the whole of his Work becomes poisoned in itself, and poisonous to others.
There is only one vital point involved in this debate: all other considerations are merely temptations, more or less subtle, to evade the one crucial question:—Is it true that Frater Recnartus is at present an honest man?
Is it or is it not true that, for years before he came into contact with the Master Therion, Frater Recnartus had fallen into the fixed habit of evading his just debts, in everyday material matters, towards his spiritual friends; of vampirising them by working on their devotion to spiritual objects; and of excusing himself for this vulgar business by claiming, openly or silently, that he was giving them priceless spiritual help in return?
That Brother Recnartus was not fully conscious of this inveterate sin is true.
Until the Pansophic Lodge shall have [illegible] this question aright, in the simplicity of truth, the question of union of the Pansophic Movement with the Work of Thelema cannot arise.
If, before it is too late, you can make the true decision in this matter, the real meaning of the Master Therion's visit to Germany, and of his whole Work with Frater Recnartus, can be made suddenly clear to you.
If not, it must remain to you impenetrably dark.
Love is the law, love under will.
Ever fraternally,
Omnia Pro Veritate
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