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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Gerald Yorke
55 Avenue de Suffren, Paris, VII
November 26th, 1928.
Care Frater:
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
I must preface my letter by saying that yours of the 23rd seems to have been written in a rather nervous state. (Hunt [Carl de Vidal Hunt] has just been in, and spontaneously volunteered the same opinion.) I want to say, to begin with, that I cannot help thinking that it was a great mistake to tell Hunt that the £200 had come in. I do not mean that the matter is in itself important, but on general principles Hunt is our paid employee and has no right to know anything about our headquarters plans.
The cheque for £90 is, as I thought you would have know, quite useless. The way things are run in this country, it might with luck be cashed in four days, but it is just as likely to take ten.
The situation is briefly as follows. (I have already told you about the cheque for the tailor). On receipt of your telegram on Thursday I wired you, and proceeded to draw cheques payable on Tuesday morning for the rent, and some other small items. With my last week's salary and also my present week's salary, the total is about one hundred and forty pounds. These cheques will be presented to-morrow at the bank; and I think the best course is for you to have your bank telephone the Banker's Trust Co. to honour my cheques.
Germer [Karl Germer], by the way, writes that Cora [Cora Eaton] is sending the other $3,000.00 so that there is no cause for financial anxiety for months to come, even if nothing else turns up, provided that you trust me to use the money properly. Please understand that we have been thrown into this calamity entirely through Kasimira's [Kasimira Bass] defection. (But I don't regard this matter as hopeless. I have just had a telephone call which sounds promising, and I shall know more this afternoon.
You do not understand this question of accounts. Writing you would seem to be hopeless. There are so many points. But I will give you an example of the sort of thing. I have to pay for household expenses out of my salary. Now sometimes I give Regardie [Israel Regardie] the money to pay the concierge. Sometimes I but the things down town out of my own pocket etc.
However all this sort of thing is of no importance whatever in reality. It simply makes it difficult to keep track of items. You will understand perfectly well when Regardie explains face to face. It is quite possible to show you exactly how much money is spent weekly. It is the accounts between ourselves here that are complicated.
Do tell me who is old Stalleybrass!
Do number the sheets of your letters!
You next club me by postponing your visit. I sent Aumont [Gerard Aumont] his fare to come and see you on Saturday next. He can't alter the date of his visit; it is very difficult for him as a soldier to come at all. There is also the question of seeing a lawyer with regard to Kasimira; and I do hope you can come in time for that banquet on Friday night. Please telegraph that you can. With you there to buckler my shyness, I can make more useful acquaintances than Hunt could get in forty four thousand years.
About the publisher, I wish to impress it one you once again that the public is there, and merely needs to be advised that they can obtain my works. That is the solution of the whole problem in case it is impossible to persuade a publisher on this point. But I think it ought to be. It might be no objection to guarantee Kegan Paul to the extent of £200. But we can discuss this when you come.
Generally speaking, the publisher's opinion as to what the public wants is pure nonsense. The history of any really great success in publishing confirms this. Publishers are so stupid that even when, by some accident, they have hit a first-class success against their best judgment, they go to the author and say "Now please write us another exactly like the last."
When you say that it will take a minimum of five years to check my system, which is not mine at all but the traditional system expounded in the light of modern scientific thought, you probably mean five incarnations. You do not know; you cannot know; you cannot even imagine the constituents of the public. The people who will but this book perhaps at the cost of months of saving, are very often in all essentials the same public who think I am a cannibal. They will value the book very largely because they don't and can't understand it. This is a pity; but it is a fact, and from a business point of view it is a favourable fact.
I think it was a great mistake for you to put off Hunt form using my letters of introduction. I was not proposing that he should go to these people to raise money or even "a meal". It was all part of an elaborate scheme in my mind; and I don't know what curse I have involuntarily incurred, but I find that the people with whom I am trying to work cannot follow the workings of my mind, and they always manage to mess up my plans in some perfectly stupid way. I want you to realize that my mind is one which can formulate combinations in chess. Now suppose that I wish to explain to you why I make some move on the board. It would take me not only hours to do it, but, in order that you should ever be able to understand it, it would require months of severe study on your part. "God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform".
About the Abramelin incense. I had the idea that Hunt left a box of it on your desk when he left London.
About Aumont [Gerard Aumont]. It is better for us to see him personally. Before we advance him any money beyond the railway fare which I sent him, He has got to give us guarantees of his good faith by giving us an order to collect his manuscripts from his house in Tunis. We must have these in our hands before we do anything. I don't know how much he is bluffing, but we have got to call the bluff. Your letter to him puts the whole game in his hands!
I did not mean that I was waiting for six secretaries to make a start. I meant that, had I six secretaries, I could employ them all usefully. I am working like hell to get things done, and I am perfectly furious that I have to waste to-day and to-morrow (which I had mapped out for all sorts of things) in trying to rectify the confusion caused by your failing to telegraph the £200 as soon as you received my telegram sent last Thursday. The whole idea of this salary, and so on, is to enable me to work in tranquility for a number of months, and if I cannot do this there is no chance of success. I should have thought this was obvious. I give you a precise example.
I have a business appointment with a man down town this afternoon. If I succeed in getting him to see my point of view, it means thousands of dollars in the fund. Instead of this going properly, I have to do various things which are technically illegal, and might conceivably get me into serious trouble, in order to be able to get down town in proper condition. There are other matters almost equally as pressing which have had to be put off. Incidentally I have to write to all these people who very charmingly accepted these post-dated cheques to explain. All this takes time and causes intense worry.
I welcome you with enthusiasm to the mysteries of the Square and the Compasses. I hope you did not mind the little ordeal, and I thank you for passing it on!
I will explain this mysterious remark when you arrive.
Astarte sends you her love. She is having a hell of a birthday.
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours fraternally,
666.
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