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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Gerald Yorke
c/o
8/10/30
C∴F∴
93
Yours of 2-10-20.
Owen certainly sounds likely. Owen = און =aאבו = the Word!
Your quarrelling with me is nit my quarrelling with you, as you falsely wrote to Cora [Cora Eaton]. I'm perfectly friendly.
You never did do what you say you can "no longer" do. You have never introduced one person of any importance. You err when you say that I refuse to help Marie [Maria de Miramar]. I wrote her that I would. It is she that does not reply to my letters. "There are two of them and they both bounce." I still do not understand this sentence, even after study of the context. Yet you wire me the phrase! (I get a feeling of triumphant-malice with this and other of your outbursts.) Can you wonder that I doubt your sanity?
I went to Portugal on the strongly-worded advice of both yourself and Thynne [Major Robert Thynne].
The finances were to be arranged solely on the basis of the sale of the John[?], Aumont [Gerard Aumont], and any contracts I could make for the story of the adventure.
(I did not get into a mess: the Gods arranged things very well.) But when you wrote that you intended to misappropriate the money—when you had every reason to believe that I was in danger of prison or starvation—your attitude was clear. And my duty was plain. Nothing can stop you going on with the G[reat] W[ork]:—except your own will. And you now seem hopelessly divided against yourself. The meaning of the [illegible]. It is senseless to go to [illegible] vision of yourself. My morals are from Liber AL.
I hope your "retirement" will bring you to yourself, though so cowardly and disloyal an act seems more likely to bring disaster.
I repeat that both you and Thynne were strongly in favour of the Portuguese Working and your malice was one factor in its startling success.
Your letter, sent to Portugal and just arrived, though even more malignant, seemed less insane. But you may as well know that normal men rarely appoint sexual degenerates to pass judgment on what is "morally unjustifiable." Besides, you are pitiably bougeois; you don't understand the autocrat. However if as reported (and apparently admitted by yourself) you are committing adultery with Marie, there may be hopes for you. "Stepping-stones of your dead self to higher things"—etc.
Yours of 4th. I have no intention of returning to live in England until there is a proper G.H.Q. [Grand Headquarters] where I can work. Naturally I want proofs here. Regardie [Israel Regardie] says Haunchant is trying to break me altogether!
Of course you remain a Probationer in the ordinary way—till you shew a record with adequate practices.
About the "friendship", I should believe it more if so much in your letters and behaviours were not so [illegible] with ill-feeling. (Remember your first interview with Thynne, and the Tattersall game.) In all, you always compromise. If you go on with G[reat] W[ork] you'll find you can't do that. One has to consider the abstract conditions on which one would choose a man to win a revolution. I am the man in the soup—for I did think you were the heir. You have all the qualifications, except this moral thoroughness. And I still hope you'll win through.
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