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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Cora Eaton
55 Avenue de Suffren, Paris, VII
December 14th, 1928.
Dear Miss Eaton:
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Just as we were successfully getting over the temporary set-back caused by Mrs. Bass's [Kasimira Bass] breach of faith, just as everything was going beautifully again and all arrangements had been made for a successful campaign, I am knocked on the head by a letter from Mr. Yorke [Gerald Yorke] explaining your latest mood.
You talk about business—and you are certainly very clever in extracting terms from Mr. Yorke, which are so very much more than generous that I find it difficult to find it difficult to find a polite word to describe it by,—and yet I get a long letter from Germer [Karl Germer] showing the utmost business incapacity.
The business can, I think, be put over with five thousand dollars. We wanted the extra $10,000.00 more as a sort of reserve than for any other reason, and to enable us to speed up the process. Instead of that, we get money in driblets, just sufficient to keep afloat and absolutely inadequate to undertake any constructive work. Every time that there is a shortage of funds, it causes a great expense, because all our affairs in hand have to be dropped. All my time has to be taken up with unnecessary matters. The whole situation has to be reorganized. You were told from the start that what we wanted was six months' work without worry. But by the dribbling in of small sums, all we are able to do is to worry without work, which is not a productive form of industry. How Germer can so misunderstand the situation as he does, I find it hard to explain, except that he appears to be in a very bad spiritual state.
In the meantime, the net result of Mr. Yorke's letter to me of this morning is to make it impossible for me to keep two important business appointments that I had today. If you cannot see the point of all this, please show this letter to the first business man you meet in the street and he will explain to you that unless a business can be kept steadily going until such time as it can pay its own way, it will never pay its way.
As far as I can calculate, if Mr. Yorke receives the $3,000.00 before the end of the year, we shall be able to carry on without serious inconvenience, and put over everything that is necessary.
But it is not the actual money that is wanted, but the knowledge that it will be here on a given date. I am expected in the course of the next forty eight hours to enter into two important contracts, both very profitable. But if I am in doubt as to what is going to happen in New York, I am simply unable to go forward, and the whole thing drops through, and our opportunity is wasted, and everything goes to the ground.
I write in considerable bitterness of spirit. The monstrous stupidity of the whole business is impossible to endure.
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours fraternally,
P.S. You may as well understand that counting on your positive promise to let us have the money before the end of the year, as is written in Germer's letter of November 16th, we have undertaken obligations which will involve us in absolute and complete ruin unless they are met.
666.
Miss Cora Eaton, 309 West 57th Street, New York City, N.Y.
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