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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Gerald Yorke
55 Avenue de Suffren, Paris, VII
January 1st, 1929.
Care Frater:
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
I think Aumont [Gerard Aumont] may become very much more important than ever in the next few weeks. Some French people of importance are nibbling; and it ought to be possible to interest them in getting translations made, if it is only that they put up a certain amount to have copies of the first typescripts.
I return Aumont's letter. It is quite clear that Hunt [Carl de Vidal Hunt] was perfectly off his head when he wrote that stupid letter to you.
Thanks for the intervention in the matter of Foulsham.
Thanks for your attempts to get the Geomancy sigils. In the meantime I have found them. When I say that I have found them, it is a lie. The Serpent [Israel Regardie], whom I expect to develop into an Uraeus or a basilisk at any moment, found them. But this should really be a lesson to us. We have absolutely got to have a headquarters where all this information, jotted down in all sorts of difficult circumstances, can be concentrated.
I gave up hopes of that studio. The old woman was quite impossible. She wanted references, and I proposed an interview at Church's, where we could exchange references. For Church himself, very reasonably, wanted to know who she was, and whether she had any rights to let the studio. She did not reply to my letter, but went to Church behind my back, and started trouble! It is obviously impossible to have anything to do with such a person. However, we shall look for another studio (beginning tomorrow, when life resumes its sway in Paris) and if we can find one for 1500 francs a month, it will best to take it. In any case Regardie's rent is now 500 francs, and even if I sleep under bridges, it will cost me more in roasted chestnuts. It is also a great pity to destroy the continuity of Work. They used to tell me as a child that "three moves were as bad as a fire". The Serpent will excuse my putting the notation in so gentile a form.
The essential requirement about the Golden Verses is an honest-to-God crib. The fact is that I am so uncertain of my scholarship that I am afraid to write down the translation which appears to me to be correct if it differs too obviously from that of Fabre d'Olivet.
It annoys me exceedingly when you write adjuring me to do just that which I have declared essential in the very letter which you are answering. If you want all the credit for it, I think you should have it cut in marble in some convenient cemetery. But please don't doubt that I am with you or you with me, as the case may be.
Lecram [Paris printers] makes no difficulties about distributing the book [Magick in Theory and Practice]. The main difficulty is that his sample page was quite unsatisfactory. Owing to the holidays, of course I cannot expect him to send the amended version before about Thursday, at the earliest. Naturally, the names and addresses are our property.
My immediate needs, as you humourously describe them, are approximately as follows: the tailor—5000 francs; Marie [Maria de Miramar], the femme de ménage—500 francs; the concierge—400. An act of truth in the form of a cheque to get cash to buy actual food—666 francs. I shall try to get another cheque for the same amount cashed this evening. (P.S. nothing doing). This is the damn nuisance of the thing. In order to cash a cheque when you haven't the money, you have to lunch or dine somewhere,—and bang goes another expense.
There is a small cheque due on January 3rd, besides the accurséd tailor. The others will be on the 6th.
But I do need "£70 extremely urgently" as I wired. This will merely cover outstanding debts; it takes no account of "immediate necessities". (I am really annoyed about this; at least 5000 francs could have been postponed indefinitely if there had been cash on hand.)
Cleopatra [Maria de Miramar] has come out very strong as a housekeeper. She makes admirable soup out of the atmosphere when the wind is blowing from Grenelle. Incidentally, she is deeply touched by your expressions of esteem and affection, and I think you will have the greatest difficulty in interpreting the secrets of the IX° O.T.O. when you arrive in Paris.
Incidentally (again) we have been doing very intense magical work for some days past, despite ill-health and this acute attack of nixes in the kick.
To continue about the immediate needs, there is a cheque out for 300 francs approximately, and I have to pay Regardie's rent which is 400. In view of the heroic conduct of the aforesaid lady, I really think we ought to be able to manage on the £10 a week. You have to remember, however, that I have had no salary for the last fortnight, and there is an overdraft of about £8 at the bank.
The difficulty about your week-end is that everything will probably be in the confusion of packing. If I am to go away for a Magical Retirement with nothing but a rucksack, everything has to be ready for me to leave on the morning of the 20th. What we need is about £10,000. If you should happen to win five or six times that amount at a bridge party, please remember us.
Millage [Chas. de Monmouth Millage] has not answered my letter.
On the other hand, my old and dear friend Fidelis wants me to go to Frankfort. But this is hardly the time of year. I believe about the best thing if we have to move is to go to the Studio Apartment Hotel in the Rue Delambre, for say a week, in order to give you a reasonably good show here. But you cannot expect much of a show when everybody is all messed up with the idea of moving.
Even the Serpent feels he ought to have something like a genuine headquarters to work in. Not merely a hotel room where he can stack books and manuscripts in a corner. We have gone so far on the road to complete reconstruction that it will really be rather a tragedy if we have to break the whole thing up.
The only books on lunacy suited for your perusal, are those of Henry Maudsley. Maudsley was an ultra-materialist, but probably the sanest man that I have ever met. In particular, he had the unique gift of writing on insanity without disquieting the reader on that particular point. Maudsley understood, and it is one of the greatest lessons I ever had, that, any given idea in itself is not necessarily insane. It is the exaggeration of the importance which one can attach to it which determines the morbid condition. For example, I firmly believe that I am the Knight of the Holy Ghost, and I am prepared to argue in favour of that idea. But if it is going to come between me and my dinner, I am not going to bother about it for one minute. If I started worrying the House of Lords, and spending my time with lawyers, and the College of Heralds, and so forth, I should be a little bit touched on the subject. I want you to lay this very much to heart. Your own nervous composition is delicate, if not unstable. You get very rightly the proper reactions to various magical propositions, but so far you have not done anything stupid, from the ordinary point of view of the ordinary man of the world. What I want you to do is to keep in that condition. At a pinch I want you to be able to say that you are merely playing a comedy—to take the point of view of "my friend Arthur". On the other hand, that point of view is not to prevent you from making the supreme gestures, because you can equally well argue that the approval of Society, or whatever it may be, is just as much a bogey as Taphthartharath.
I understand that you dislike doctors. There are very few left of the type that one respected and trusted. The essence of that type was that they were gentlemen. On the subject of doctors, I may mention that Paris is agog with the rumour that the King of England has been dead for some days.
You don't seem to have quite got the essence of this idea of crossing the street. The point is that Aumont is completely sceptical of Magick, and that a long chain of circumstances convinced him that there was some mysterious opposition to the most ordinary matters being successfully accomplished where I was concerned.
The question of confidence does not arise. It is quite obvious that "if the sun and moon should doubt they'd immediately go out". That is (in fact) what I have been trying to drum into you and Germer [Karl Germer]. I never doubted for a moment that we should get this $5,000.00. I therefore kept on writing to Germer to persevere, in the face of the plainest statements that all further attempts were impossible.
Please don't quote against me the case of our unhappy friend, because there was deliberate bad faith, probably sent in motion by magical obsession. If however, you suppose that I have given up the game, you are entirely mistaken. I jeep everything in mind, and, at the right moment, strike.
Your remark that to admit the existence of occult opposition is to incur it, is, in a sense, quite true. But one must not shut one's eyes to plain facts and live in a fool's paradise. But don't you think, to come down to brass tacks, that you might try these theories on Ionides? But here we approach the question of silence, and I must again admit that I am very far from sure what that means in practical politics. It certainly does not refer to the mere cunning of the average knave or politician, who double-crosses his pals. The very sanctity of the idea shows that it cannot refer to anything less important than a settled habit of mind, and what that habit can be, I am not capable of making even a conjecture. Here, now, is an idea. The point as issue between Ionides and myself is apparently this question of silence. Why not ask him, on my behalf, humbly as a pupil should ask of a master, to define the right attitude.
I am particularly intrigued in this matter because old Nile herself [Maria de Miramar] has been giving me several smart lessons on the subject. As far as I can make out, the main idea is that I should not tell any one what I am going to do, or tell any one after I have done it. (I suppose in any matter which might conceivably prove of importance.)
If I understand her aright, I should depart for Jericho astride a unicorn on the 20th of January, without acquainting any one of my intentions, and that on my return, while I might admit that I spent a pleasant winter in Assyria, I should say nothing about the unicorn. I am a plain man, and there are moments when I deplore that her method is so bloody oracular.
But with regard to the mere circulation of knowledge, I cannot see that anyone need doubt that the guards to that knowledge are adequate. What (I confidently ask Mr. Ionides,) can be more secret than a paper on the acetyl derivatives of the benzoyl compounds of india-rubber?
It is true that I often do the wrong thing at the right time. But if you will consult my works, you will discover why it will be very hard to convince Scotland Yard of the fact.
This is a joke!
Your understanding of Magick is becoming deplorably formidable. Your psychology about me, though, is quite wrong. But it is so rightly wrong as to extort my reluctant admiration.
I communicated the substance of your remarks to Mme. de Miramar, and she hopes that one of these years you will analyze her as completely as possible. She also wishes you a happy New Year.
Your remarks on silence are extremely satisfactory. But when you talk about advancing too quickly, you say that you don't propose to do any Magical Work of your own for 12 months. But I thought you had read Book 4 Part III [Magick in Theory and Practice]? In case that you have not, let me emphasize the fact that any act you do is a Magical act, and that you are advancing according to the Will of your Holy Guardian Angel, and that, to use the somewhat suggestive phraseology of the Holy Books [Volume I, Volume II, Volume III], your coquetry is merely one of your magical weapons. You are, so to speak, a dangerous woman.
(You give yourself away completely by your remarks about the proposed ceremony.)
The mistake would be if you allowed yourself to admit consciously the existence of the aforesaid coquetry. One does not wish to see you in the position of the man-eating virgin, whose mother had brought her to India as a forlorn hope.
At the same time you are quite right not to miss any chances. So let us try to put over something really important for the 18th, or the 19th.
From the magical point of view, I do think we need to have some kind of studio with a floor big enough for a circle. And everybody is going to work like hell to get one.
The Serpent is now working on the comment and text of the Vision and the Voice, which should be finished within a week or so. It depends whether there are many letters to answer. As soon as that is finished, a copy will be sent to you, and work of retyping the Diaries will be begun.
I think you are quite wrong to regard England as hopeless. The reactions which we have recently observed, seem to me the last stand of quite desperate people. They started raiding the night clubs, which were, I assume, quite harmless imbecilities, with the result that everybody is going insane playing poker for fantastic sums in their own houses.
I wonder how long it will take people to see that all these public restrictions are merely encouraging private extravagance. I think it is fair to say that public vice takes care of itself. People of common sense limit their follies. The others knock themselves out in very short order. When you have private vice, you stimulate the instinct, and what is even worse, you put the people on their guard. Therefore they last longer, and do more harm in seducing other people, than they would if the whole thing were open and above board.
The affair at Brooks', which was, as a matter of fact, the Portland Club, has been minimized. The cat was a full-grown lion, and, if I had not alleviated its pangs, it would have assuredly raped the late Queen Alexandra. Kindly recommend me for the M.V.O.
I never dreamed of you distributing Book 4, Part III.
I have already acknowledged the Cape [Jonathan Cape publishers] of the Hag [The Confessions of Aleister Crowley].
Mrs. Walker appears to belong to the feminine sex. We have letters from her, in which she guarantees the whole cost of arbitration. Incidentally, there has appeared a new debt of £10, about half of which really belongs to her. I expect she wanted me to take a kind of interest in her which is foreign to my nature. Generally speaking, you may distrust people who have vague aspirations about humanity, when they neglect those who have real claims upon them. Read her alleged poetry! Unless you value your reason. What put Mrs. Walker off was the appearance of the children at Fontainebleau. But I would assuredly feed Lulu Astarte on Mrs. Walker's heart's blood, if I were not afraid it would poison her.
The Seabrook [William Seabrook] articles[1] were never pasted in the enormous scrap-book. They were folded and put loose into that book. And they have now disappeared. Examination of the aforesaid book proves this beyond doubt.
I am sure that if I have to complain of the length of your letter, I have returned you the same in kind.
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours fraternally,
666.
P.S. I have been considering the matter of the photographic reproduction of my pack of Tarot cards. It appears that in France, this would be approximately equivalent to the forgery of bank notes. I had better entrust them to you next time you arrive. You can get them done in England. I will prepare the necessary booklet and you can sell the whole damn thing to anyone who is fool enough to buy it.
666.
1—This was the narrative by W. B. Seabrook that was serialized in a number of newspapers owned by the Hearst conglomerate in 1923. - Astounding Secrets of the Devil Worshipers' Mystic Love Cult - Part 1 - Astounding Secrets of the Devil Worshipers' Mystic Love Cult - Part 2 - Astounding Secrets of the Devil Worshipers' Mystic Love Cult - Part 3 - Astounding Secrets of the Devil Worshipers' Mystic Love Cult - Part 4 - Astounding Secrets of the Devil Worshipers' Mystic Love Cult - Part 5 - Astounding Secrets of the Devil Worshipers' Mystic Love Cult - Part 6 - Astounding Secrets of the Devil Worshipers' Mystic Love Cult - Part 7 - Astounding Secrets of the Devil Worshipers' Mystic Love Cult - Part 8 - Astounding Secrets of the Devil Worshipers' Mystic Love Cult - Part 9 - Astounding Secrets of the Devil Worshipers' Mystic Love Cult - Part 10 - Astounding Secrets of the Devil Worshipers' Mystic Love Cult - Part 11 - Astounding Secrets of the Devil Worshipers' Mystic Love Cult - Part 12
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