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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Gerald Yorke
55 Avenue de Suffren, Paris, VII
December 20th, 1928.
Care Frater:
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Your letter of the 18th. I am really not surprised about that violent headache. We seem to be in the middle of a Magical attack,—about the worst there has been for a long while. We must surely be on the brink of some striking success. Everyone here has been ill in some way or another.
I think your idea of arranging the matter with Pickfords is a very good one. I should want to store the books elsewhere, in any case.
I have written to Clyde Criswell to get into touch directly with me about Mortaldello.
I have not received the ephemerides. What happened, I cannot tell.
I spent a very pleasant hour with Mrs. Freeman. I think Hunt [Carl de Vidal Hunt] tried to make trouble., but did not succeed. I fancy things will develop sooner or later in a favourable sense, but I want to talk to Mr. Freeman, not to her.
There is an emthymeme in your proposition about cynicism and sanity. I don't wish to be mistaken for Mr. G. K. Chesterton, but I do think it may be upheld that purely rational people are of necessity insane. The universe is not a rational universe. It is the mere mechanism which is rational, and one can no more observe it or conduct life on lines of pure analysis than one can do so in so comparatively simple a proposition as a game of chess. I was boring Regardie [Israel Regardie] only yesterday with a long lecture on this subject. A cynic might justifiably argue that a cash register itself operates business. I am reminded of Bloch and Normal Nagel who were so busy proving twenty years ago that there could never be another war.
Thanks for the Geomancy details.[1] We will have our maquette in a very few days.
About your guarantee, I wish you would write me a business letter stating the terms, so that I could put it before possible lenders.
Glad you got your clothes safely. We know now how to arrange these matters. The French Post Office is really unspeakable, both ways. They make all sorts of trouble about delivering things on totally incalculable grounds. I think I told you of some of my misadventures trying to cash a money order, and so on. The Post Offices do not seem to know their own regulations, and when they do they don't abide by them.
Yours of the 17th. This arrived this morning, a day after yours of the 18th. Another beauty of the French Post Office. I am of course putting the matter in the hands of the Ministry of the Interior and the Sûreté Générale.[2]
I must say that I gasped. The truth of the matter is that the rascal is quite desperate. By betraying everyone, he has lost everybody's confidence. That is your cynic in the last stages. It all comes back to him. I have always thought it was extremely stupid to tell lies which any one of common sense knows will not be believed in the first instance—or, if they are, are bound to be found out on the most cursory examination.
I admit that I was wrong about him. I thought he could at least do the job which he has always done, and I thought that he would do it because he must have known that we should look for results, especially as we told him so in the plainest possible terms. What he actually did was of course simply to pocket the money as if his uncle had given him a Christmas present.
Hunt was never playing a straight game at all. I don't yet know what it was, but I do know that it was crooked. I am going to tell you a story to give you an idea of the sort of thing that people seem to be able to think of.
A lady wanted to get into the movies. A man came to see me and engaged me as an expert to go down to her little villa at Barbizon, on the border of the forest. I was to direct the taking of the test film, and I was to have 1000 francs and my expenses. So far so good. But what he told her was that I was the director of a wealthy film corporation, and that not only would I engage her as a star, but I would rent her place at Barbizon to have part of the film taken there.
I don't know if this idea seems to you particularly brilliant or not. But to me it seems perfectly stupid, because there was a showdown within twenty four hours, and the whole thing came out, and everything was blown sky high. However that is the sort of thing that Hunt does. At my interview with Mrs. Corey, it seemed clear that Hunt introduced her on some false pretence or other. I don't quite know what. However we got on very well, and she then invited me to go out to lunch and see her place in the country last Friday. Then Hunt's manoeuvres started, and I really don't know what they were. The point was that Hunt had described Mrs. Corey to me in the grossest terms, which are quite unjustified, exactly as he did in the case of Mrs. Freeman, and I made it plain to him that I was not going to be a cats-paw in any crooked scheme.
I cannot imagine that Hunt would be so asinine as to attract the attention of the Sûreté Générale to himself.
I quite agree with you that we have to concentrate on Book 4 Part III [Magick in Theory and Practice]. I am going to refrain from any overt action unless actually compelled in defending myself.
I am very glad that you take the view you do about Kasimira [Kasimira Bass]. It is an abiding grief to me that she should have gone so terribly off the line. I sometimes wonder whether I have not been foolish of late years in taking the banishing pentagram as read. But there is something about ceremonial magick which reminds one of certain diseases. At a certain point they begin to cure themselves. A resistance is set up against going on with the practice. It is quite an irrational instinctive thing.
On this subject, the priestess of Voodoo [Maria de Miramar] has come out very strong. We have been doing a good deal of work despite ill-health. One of the things she has discovered, without any prompting on my part, is that there is some influence in my neighbourhood which hinders me from putting anything over. This corresponds exactly with the facts. Aumont [Gerard Aumont] jeered at the whole thing, when I told him, much more loudly than you did, and six months later he said to me that "if I see you across the street and wanted to cross it to talk to you, I feel very uncertain about getting there." But that is the situation that we have got to meet. Whether it is the opposition of these mysterious hostile forces or not, I cannot say. It may be some grave error in my working. I am going to conduct a careful examination into the business on original lines, and will let you know the result in due course.
At the risk of giving you a swelled head, I have to say that I am almost frightened at the progress you have made in understanding. Madam de Miramar, too, is extremely impressed by your capacity as a Magician. So am I, only afraid you will do too well too soon, and become fanatical. She talks about you all the time. I feel very satisfied about the whole situation in every respect. The things that bother us are accidents which pass at any moment. Realities are perfectly sound and perfectly satisfactory.
I won't bother about Hunt at all unless something transpires. I am having his letter copied, returning the original to you. I only want to add one thing, if I could persuade my "unsuspecting secretary" to type it. I believe you have my own fault. My own great fault, about which I was told in the Vision and the Voice! It is the problem of keeping silent. Several times you have told Hunt things of which there was no need for him to know, and thus put weapons into his hands. Perhaps the most curious thing about the whole business is that I had a severe scolding from the priestess, out of a perfectly clear sky, on exactly this point. I confess, frankly, that I don't understand this question of silence. The nearest I can give it is written in one of the Little Essays on Truth.
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours fraternally,
666.
P.S. I send you herewith Lecram's [printer] letter, giving an estimate [for Magick in Theory and Practice]. I am going down there this afternoon to see them and will find out what that will work out at, for the whole book. It probably is more expensive than Turnbull & Spears, but we shall have less bother.
II. I think you should try to find out from Stapley what terms were likely to have been offered by a Sunday newspaper for those Memoirs [The Confessions of Aleister Crowley]. I have just seen General Holm, who, apropos of nothing at all, has just received a furious letter from Hunt. Hunt must be completely off his head. But it might be a useful weapon in defence if you obtain from Stapley, who is probably a solid man with a reputation to lose, details as to the nature of the transaction which they contemplated.
666.
1—[This refers to a Geomancy Box he was trying to market. The geomancy box was first called The Finger of Fate. The needle as of a compass in the centre of a circle. You approach your forefinger nearly to it until your body heat causes the needle to swing round. Withdraw finger and the needle stops, pointing to a number. You look up the number in the pamphlet and the word is your answer. It failed: the delicate balance broke down when the box was moved about—G.J. Yorke.] 2—[Hunt had written me what A.C. interpreted as a blackmail letter. It probably was the first step towards blackmail. G.J. Yorke.]
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