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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Gerald Yorke
Hotel Metropole, Bruxelles, Belgique
June 3rd, 1929
Care Frater:
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Thanks for your letter of the 31st ultimo. Germer [Karl Germer] cables this morning as follows:
I am replying by night letter:
You will notice that the first part of your letter is already answered by this cable of Germer's.
Please be just about my "turning down your proposition". To have sent Regardie [Israel Regardie] back to America would have been to admit defeat, and to have planked de Miramar [Maria de Miramar] on Miss Küntzel [Martha Küntzel] would have meant hardship and disagreeable relations for both. Of course, I don't mind at a pinch asking colleagues to take the rough with the smooth, but even at that I don't like abandoning them, still less messing up my whole plan, and least of all throwing up the sponge.
What you call my real position is an unknown quantity, which can only be discovered by the solution of elaborate equations. Nothing is more likely to damage that position than a report to the effect that we have "gone fut."
I have written Lecram [Press] very fully, and I believe the whole matter is now satisfactorily arranged. I expect a letter tomorrow or Wednesday, of which I will duly send you a copy.
I have not yet got the necessary papers from Scotland. It is just a toss-up whether the marriage can take place before Sunday. But in any case, I propose to cross on that day.
I am very sorry that you wrote the "Panther of the Prairies" that I was unlikely to arrive. All this lack of confidence is just what prevents other people having confidence in us. There is no need for boasting or bluster. But we do want the feeling that the Gods are with us and that in one mysterious way or another, things will pan out all right in the end.
Provided Germer's $1,000 arrives on Thursday or Friday—he is supposed to send it direct to the Metropole—there will be no need for you to brass up. But if you want to do so, please see that I receive the money on Saturday morning, at the latest.
The newspaper cuttings that you sent are interesting. The Prague thing, I can't fully read. But I have an idea that it is more or less friendly. It is certainly documented from accurate courses. The most curious thing is that the photograph appears to date from 1904 or thereabouts!
The Bremen cutting is a mere weekly letter and does not matter particularly. The "New York World" rather surprises me, as I was very friendly with a lot of the staff.
The "Patriot" is such muddled balderdash that it seems to me hardly more libellous than the "Hunting of the Snark". There is certainly a good case for putting these people into lunatic asylums. Nothing of course can be done without taking the best legal advice in London. I am quite sure, little as I know about it, that any good lawyer will say "attack these people criminally and not civilly," and I am pretty sure he will say "don't do anything at all unless and until I have a good working relationship with Scotland Yard! All this comes down to the same thing. I must come to England and see Carter [Lieutenant Colonel John Carter] and if possible the Home Secretary. Who he will be I cannot imagine, but I have written to Slocombe, in case the Socialists form a Government for an introduction to someone in high quarters.
The Socialists are useful people; not in the least because I am in any sympathy with them, but because they have intelligence, which the other parties seem to lack in a conspicuous degree, and because irresponsible maniacs say the same idiotic things about them as they do about me.
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours fraternally
666
P.S. Here is another thing. Harder to believe than ever:
I think I have found* a journalist both honest and intelligent. His name is Herdies, and he is the secretary of the Société Metapsychique in Belgium. He knows Everard Feilding in London and Jacques Courtier in Paris.
He quite understood my point of view, and was not in the least surprised at my not wearing horns and hoofs. He has promised to show me the draft of his article on Monday.
666.
*or, rather, been found by
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