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Correspondence from N. J. N. Foreman to Aleister Crowley
142 Fletching Road, Clapton. London E. 5.
15th Feb. 1926.
Dear Sir,
I am much obliged to you for your letter, to hand this morning.
Briefly my position is this:—
My first "spiritual" environment was a horrible one—that of the Plymouth Brethren. There is no necessity for me to go further into details. Suffice it to say that—in about my 16th year I faced the thing out and ceased to "believe" in Xtianity. I regret to say that—owing maybe to an inner cowardice—I failed to cast the thing right out of my life. There was still a part of me that half-believed in the "taboos" of that cult.
For a number of years my chief help was a small library of cheap "New Thought" books. It was a long time before I met an exponent of that or any more or less liberal school.
Then—it must have been sometime in the summer of 1913 I went for a walk with a copy of "The Occult Review". The Editor was dealing with the work of a Mr. Crowley and quoted a few lines from "Aha". Never shall I forget the impression they made on me.
"All thoughts are evil. Thought is two: The seen and the seen. Eschew That supreme blasphemy, my son, Remembering that God is One."
You will—of course—appreciate that I knew nothing of "occultism" proper at this time. I was still studying "New Thought" books with perhaps a book or two of Ramacharaka's (Atkinsons) "Yoga Philosophy".
To pass on quickly, in 1915 I acquired a copy of the Equinox containing "AHA" but owing the size of the book I had to leave it behind when I went to France.
In those days "Light on the Path" was my guide and friend and from that I learned that—I quote from memory, as I never look at the book now—"Each man is to himself absolutely the way, the truth, and the light, but he is only so when he grasps his individuality firmly and by the force of his awakened spiritual will recognises that this individuality is not himself".
There's the rub. My New Thought reading helped me to a better intellectual viewpoint, but I didn't find the Divine, as they did with such facility. Always upon the Temple steps, but never inside. But worse was to follow.
I suppose it was about September 1918—at any rate I was home from the war—that I fortuitously came into contact with an Eastern Master, who called me "his brother" and subsequently "initiated" me. We fell apart. I also met Dr. Steiner [Rudolph Steiner] who also failed to help me. The net result of the last ten years being—owing to circumstances beyond my own control, perhaps not is that I am a damned sight farther from finding Adonai than I was say on the day I first saw that couplet in Aha.
Recently I read the "Diary of a Drug Fiend" from which I perceive that you can help me, and I venture again to ask you to do so.
As I do not know which symptoms you as a physician of the soul would attach importance to, I will say no more but will await your questions.
I am Sir
Yours truly
N. J. N. Foreman
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