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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Karl Germer
Ivy Cottage, Knockholt, Kent.
Jan. 9th, 1930.
Care Frater Pertinax [Karl Germer]:
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Thanks for your letters of Jan. 5 and 7, and also very much for the typed journal. I shall give the latter my most careful attention, and will let you have the comments in intelligible form.
I will answer the special notes of January 5th at once, as I feel like saying something nasty this morning.
To begin with—your not having made a copy of the typescript. It means more risk and anxiety.
Thanks very much about this man who paints. I don't think it would be much use sending photographs of the pictures. For one thing, they are now difficult to access. For another they are no longer at all representative. You might explain, perhaps, that I am not at all like the majority of artists who get in a groove and turn out pictures so much alike, that when you have seen one you have seen them all. For example, if you saw some of the stuff I have done since you left England, you would never guess it was by me.
The French business ought to be easy if, as Birven [Henri Birven] says, I am known as the "Patriarch of Montparnasse." It is true that I first went to Montparnasse in 1899, and settled down there in 1902. Since that date, I have lived constantly there; the only exceptions being when I was elsewhere.
I was also an intimate friend of the greatest artist of my period [Auguste Rodin].
I hope we are going to get an exhibition in London at the end of June. You may say that Mr. P. G. Konody [Paul Konody], who is probably the most celebrated art critic in England is very interested in my work, and is doing all he can to help me. You may also state that the work is very much liked by Mr. Edgar of the Claridge Galleries, who, I hope, is going to give me a show.
My idea of having one in Berlin is that I have always had a feeling of appreciation for the German artistic consciousness, which appeals to me as being rational and based on solid sense, illuminated by intelligence. I don't, of course, have reference to the bourgeois sentimental art, which is just as bad in one country as in another. But what is even more important is that the painter Leon Engers [Leon Engers Kennedy], who spent a long time in Berlin, and whose studio is 12 Rue Victor Considerant, Paris, has always said that my work would be appreciated in Germany, and that I had not any good chance anywhere else.
I think that the best thing for me to do is to send over half a dozen pictures as different as possible, though this will give only a small idea of the variety. I will see to this as soon as I have seen Yorke, which will be at the latest Monday night.
By the way, there seems to be quite a possibility of the Mandrake [Mandrake Press] trouble being put right in the course of the next few days. I will write you further as soon as anything certain develops.
Now for some notes on your notes.
No 1. Can't you see that the whole of your trouble springs from your monstrous and pervert egoism. If anything happens to A.C. whereby he might seem to be humiliated, he says "That is a finely cronical situation. I wonder how it would do in such and such a play."
No. 2. This business of only doing one thing at a time is not necessarily the good thing that some people pretend. It very often means that their brains are so small that they cannot think of more than one thing at a time. There are, of course, moments where very intense concentration is necessary. With me, it is necessary when I have to do a piece of very delicate mechanical work, about which I am not quite sure. As also in playing chess, if the game is important and the move critical. But this is merely a sign of doubt and a feeling of inferiority.
No. 3. The Sin complex. This is very probably due to the effects of fear. The animal consciousness of man is aware of its doom, and makes spasmodic subconscious efforts to avoid it. It gets the idea that proper conduct can, in some way, avert it or alleviate it. This is why the idea of sin and repentance are at the basis of all religions, even Buddhism, though in that case, the anthropormorphic idea of displeasing a powerful person has been exercised.
It is of interest to note that the Nordic and Latin ideas of sin are quite different, psychologically. The Latin, generally speaking, influenced by the pleasant climate of the Mediterranean, just pays his few sous for absolution, and dismisses the subject from his mind. He goes on sinning and paying with perfect complacency. The Nordic is too intelligent to be satisfied with this and tortures himself accordingly. Latins, as a rule, do not care for truth in itself. They want to get rid of the whole business as cheaply as possible. This is so, even in the case of the theologians, who turned the whole business into a dialectic game. You will note that the German mystics, whom you have studied and understood very well, are not in the least satisfied with the idea of the Atonement, though they pretend to believe in it. They carry the idea of sin even into high trance states. The Theologica Germanica is an example of this. The latter authority can find sin even in a pantheistic trance, which excludes the idea of sin as evil by definition.
Note 4. I remember your choice of Saturn well. With regard to your further remarks, we have again your egoism, which is here merely grotesque. You are constantly stubbing your toes against particles of air imperceptible by others, which should not others now the meaning of your motto? Who are these others? Read your Konx Om Pax. Others are the delusion of a delusion of this imbecile phantom of the ego.
You then say that at a certain time everybody thought that everybody was a spy around you, Marie [Maria de Miramar], and thus also me. I don't know who you mean by everybody. My own attitude to the business is simply demonstrated by the fact that I make rather a point of taking no precautions whatever against spying. I have nothing to conceal, because nothing can possibly go wrong. If things happen, which people normally consider unpleasant, it is simply another amusing incident in my career. All these things have to be looked at in perspective for their absurdity to become apparent.
The outstanding case in history is the Jesuits, who devoted the greatest intelligence and the most incredulous abuse of intrigue to their ends. They were beaten at every point by perfectly plain simple minded folks, who did not bother about them. The only mistake you can make with Jesuits, is to take them seriously; by doing so you go on their own dirty plane where you are naturally beaten by their superior technique and you have sown your hands in the bargain.
Your own stratagem in signing Pertinax was comically childish. The origin of the telegram would not have baffled a spy organization for a single hour.
Note 5. You really show very little respect for my intelligence in coupling me with Cora [Cora Eaton] in this ridiculous matter. You also make yourself entirely ridiculous if you suppose any one, except Cora, cares the least of last years' farts whether you are flirting with the Crown Princess or Jesus Christ. People who take the personal idea of sex seriously are inflated frogs. The act itself may be a pleasure or a sacrament, or just a damned nuisance as the case may be. That you should write all this balderdash is deplorable. Who the devil cares about your purity, and the conviction of your purity? What is purity? The only way to be pure about sex is to put your penis in the convenient orifice and think no more about it, and not get it mixed up with all sorts of speculations, which are only not boring because they give to laugh. I hope that you will continue to tire to write about the matter.
It is kind of you to spare me the four or five other points on the sexual problem, but I suppose you had better reel them off while you are about it. But I do wish you would realize that I am not such an idiot as I may seem. I washed out the whole sex question years and years ago. Perhaps I succeeded in doing this because it is natural to me to analyze things and to have horse sense. I have quite a good deal of contempt for artists who get all balled up about it, either about the rights and wrongs—all imaginary—of the thing in itself; either about their own stupid relations with some idiotic woman, or boy. The greatest, perhaps, of all the undeniable advantages which come from devoting oneself exclusively to goats and ducks is that so far as I am aware, people go on comfortably copulating with these attractive animals without bothering themselves or anybody else about the procedure. Go thou and do likewise!
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours fraternally,
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