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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Karl Germer
Ivy Cottage, Knockholt, Kent.
Dec. 26th, 1929.
Care Frater Pertinax [Karl Germer]:
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
I had to go to London for a couple of days, so did not get your letter till yesterday.
I am very glad that you are working on that diary. It is rather a confession of weakness on my part and I am sure I shall be able to much better work on it when typed.
I quite agree with you about the essential lack. But you must remember that everybody has got some kind of essential lack. I think I know pretty well what yours is. There are several rather similar cases in my experience. It seems as if you were paralysed by certain kinds of problems. It is not simply that you react wrongly, but that you can't react at all. But the way to get out of this condition is by practice. In my own case, the peculiar nervous timidity due to my weak kidneys in boyhood was very largely overcome by climbing mountains and shooting buffaloes. Force yourself to act rightly according to a prearranged plan and the habit is soon acquired. When it is, you act spontaneously without devoting any conscious thought to the problem.
That is why Cora [Cora Eaton] can be so useful. But you should try it also on these people who want you to be the journeyman harth-horn scraper, or an undertaker's tout, before they will lick your boots. You should take a d'eau en bas to all these tupenny hapenny little doctors and professors. Treat them like dirt, and they will respect you. It is just as true for you as for the French. Oignez Germain il vous poindra—Poindres Germain il vous oignera.
Here is an example. Cora has behaved ungracefully and foolishly about the whole money question. I simply do not want to have any relations of that kind with her. It is entirely up to you to control the entire situation, and this can be done by gentle firmness. What you require is the attitude of Count Fosco. He explained that the way to treat children, animals and women is identical. Never accept a provocation; never allow yourself to be turned aside a hair's breadth from your purpose. They soon get tired of butting against an attitude so infinitely superior to anything possible to them that they cannot even understand it. This is one form of the fourth power of the Sphinx. It is a kind of silence, which includes every form of activity, physical and mental.
Things at the moment are looking rather bad here. In fact, I might say, like the lady in the police court, "Bloody unfortunate, your worship." But with a single stroke the whole situation can be turned upside down. We have simply got to get rid of the boycott, and we shall have no further trouble. This might be done in a week.
There is, of course, a contributory trouble. That the generally bad conditions of business here as in New York. The City of London is very badly hit indeed by the Hatry smash and the shipping crisis. A lot of other firms, who have on the surface nothing to do with it, are in sympathetic trouble.
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours fraternally,
666 / ir [Israel Regardie]
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