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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Gerald Yorke
Berlin.
August 24, 1931.
Care Frater,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
I was very glad to have your letter of August 21st. The "big move," I think, depends on your whole-hearted cooperation.
I shall be very glad to see you in Berlin. I have told the Germers [Karl and Cora] that I hope they will come to an agreement with you to make this possible, but you must absolutely not let them down. You have no conception of what the suffering has been for all of us, moral of course far more than physical, but severe enough even on the latter plane.
I note that you will see the liquidator of the Mandrake [Mandrake Press]. But the important thing to know is, about Volume III of the Confessions [The Confessions of Aleister Crowley]. I as recently wrote to you I believe that the publication of this would be the turning point for all of us. It is really very strange how all my efforts to secure the fulfillments of the instructions in the Book of the Law have been balked at the last moment in the most sudden and unexpected way. If we show enough grit now, we can pull it off. And it seems to me further that the moment of the breakdown of the system of parliamentary government in England may well be the moment foreseen and chosen by the Gods.
I write you a separate letter about the man in Pemmer.
Talking of records, I have not yet had your record for the desert. I did not expect you to get any great success, because that part of the world has its own peculiar secrets, and they are very far indeed from your exalted grade! I shall hope to be able to give you some hints one day, but we shall have to understand each other a great deal better. And you sill have to get rid of a great many prejudices which you suppose to be the fixed eternal truth before I can do so.
A woman giving the name of Marie [Maria de Miramar] has been admitted to Colney Hatch. I had previously supposed that this existed on the Music Hall stage, and in the jocose conversations of vulgar persons like Jerome K, Jerome.
I have for some time past endeavoured to identify the woman, but have so far not been successful.[1]
Let us assume however that this woman who claims to be the daughter of George V and Mary the 4/5, of pure English blood, married twelve years ago to her brother the Prince of Wales, though he was ignorant of the relationship, is actually the woman that we know. The situation should be cleared up in your mind. I never thought that her tantrums amounted to actual insanity. But you will remember quite well that to show the most ordinary firmness with her excited her beyond measure; and no doubt, when circumstances applied pressure, she could not stand it. I think that she must have been suffering for some time from incipient insanity, and perhaps I did not take it seriously enough. I think, too, that the ministrations of Stanley Piper [a dentist] were a shock to her system. It is the fact, whether you know it or not, that people who are beginning to lose their mental equilibrium change very much in character. In particular they show aversion to their best friends. And this is probably the reason why Marie persistently refused to answer my letters, even when I made a personal appeal to her through Regardie [Israel Regardie]. I think too that her outrageous attitude towards the friends who were so kind to her in Germany was symptomatic of the coming trouble. I am afraid there is nothing whatever to be done about it. At least we must wait for the situation to be regularised.
What we have to do is to concentrate on carrying out the instructions of the Book of the Law. If you will give all that you have and all that you are to this Great Work, it will be to you what my renunciation of the Abramelin operation in Easter 1898 was to me.
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours fraternally,
666.
1—I visited her there. It was his wife, and I told him so (G.J. Yorke).
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