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Correspondence from Fernando Pessoa to Aleister Crowley
Apartado 147, Lisbon
5th. October, 1931.
Carissime Frater:
Thank you very much for your letter of the 18th. September, I received it on the 24th., which is a slight delay but not enough to explain my writing only to-day, for which there is no explanation but an apology.
I do owe you all the things you say, and besides, the rectified horoscope and a copy of Girassol. It was kind of you not to overburden my conscience by (perhaps involuntarily) forgetting these.
The fact is that for some of these omissions I have no excuse outside myself, meaning the recent lack of myself in which I have been living since the Sun's square to the Ascendant opened for me in 1929 a period which is now promoted to its fullness by the Sun's conjunction with Saturn in coincidence with Mars' conjunction with the Ascendant. All these last months—already under the shadow of these major aspects—I have been living a life of indolent intensity, mentally something like a whirlpool, which is a swift way of not moving on.
This will explain the delay in sending you the really rectified horoscope and in completing the detective novel, not to speak of not writing. But the other things derive their nonexistence from causes I need not blush for. The capitalist was doubly unattainable; I mean that neither of the men I approached on this subject was able to do anything. The issue of Girassol was completely sold out; I have not even a copy myself. The translation of "Hymn to Pan" was sent to Presenca rather late for their issue which came out in May; their next issue was their anniversary number and they published only old contributor' things. I expect therefore that the translation will appear in the next one, which will come out some time between now and the end of the year. This Presenca is the only really literary periodical here and its publication is of course irregular. As soon as the translation is published I shall send you a copy.
What picture exhibition is it you refer to as opening on the 11th. October? Is it yours, or, rather, another of yours? How did you get on in last year's one? I should indeed like to go to Berlin, but at this moment it is quite impossible.
Write me whenever you can. You know how pleased I am always to hear from you. You are not having Saturn embracing Apollo. By the bye, I hope to send you the rectified horoscope in about a week.
Most fraternally yours,
Fernando Pessoa
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