Correspondence from Karl Germer to Aleister Crowley

[Undated: 4 January 1932]

You have a certain kind of tact, the conventional tact; you have not at all what the Germans call tact of the soul or tact of the heart.

What is worse is that you are so obsessed (a) with the sense of inattackability of your points of view; (b) with the utter silliness of mine—so that anything I say is so ipso wasted.

I have chosen to represent myself to you in the past (and may continue to do so) from a lot of aspects as childish, inexperienced, backward etc. in many walks of life. I have—true to my inherent nature—exaggerated considerably. You should by now know better from what deeper root that springs. But it seems to be about time to make you get a proper perspective.

So far my pride has been attacked often enough but in a way I always after some time thought it enough to shrug my shoulders. But the degree of crude tactlessness that has been tried to-night almost brings the pot to boil over. I grant that the motives are honest. You want to tell Hedy [Germer's girl friend] exactly what she has to do with me, and me what I have to do with her. You are quite filled with the conviction of your own importance, your infinite superiority over others. You think you can treat me as a chemist deals with his life and soulless materials. To top it all there enters this coarse, crude, tactless Frau Busch [Bertha Busch] as the typical low-class "Kupplerin"!

You say somewhere that you have a "Satanic pride". What you need is the understanding of plain, ordinary human pride and self respect of other people. What you really suffer from (I have seen this for years) is a bad solar quality, a morbidly developed father complex. To explain what I mean, I show best by what I consider the opposite, which I have: I do not care anything about anybody. I never wanted to have children; anybody, whoever it may be could die; after some personal inconveniences I would pass the affair over. I hardly ever have a tendency to butt into anybody else's affair (except where manual skill is concerned); I have not the slightest tendency for a busy-body. In all these things, and particularly the last aspect, you are the extreme opposite. It is your infernal paternal instinct which makes you interfere in other people's affairs where it is not wanted. Your magical superiority, or your ready tongue, or your age, or what not, usually lets you get away with it. In my case the result has been different. The reason why I kept silent was a great sense of delicacy (of the soul to avoid misunderstandings), a rare tact (of the soul), a certain magical attachment and other things about which I don't want to reflect now. More important is the result. I suppressed my natural reactions, which worked themselves out in the subconscious, as I had not the means to express them outwardly. But the results were there all the same, often painful enough for you.

Your busybodiness springs from your over-eagerness. It is just this which has the opposite effects. It delays instead of hastens. I wonder why you should not have observed this simple fact before.

I have written you one or two serious letters in the past. I know that you did not read them, though they were written with blood. I also know that this letter's fate will not be better. I don't care very much, because my sense of time is so totally different from yours.

What I do care about is perhaps this. I am (I don't know how, because I never took an "Oath" consciously) bound to what you call the G.W. [Great Work]. You keep on behaving like a "Young man about town" whenever the feelings of others are concerned. In particular me you ridicule me, you expose me before others. You tell all kinds of things about me to everybody, things which you have only known from my diary, in short you let me bear alone the whole burden of forcing down any visible reaction, and sticking to the job. After the abysmal tactlessness, or rather treachery of a "friend", a regular backstabbing in October, it did come to a break. I thought you had learned the lesson. But you do not seem to have understood the essential root of your blunder yet.

You keep on attacking Cora [Cora Germer] with thoughts and words. You don't seem to have any notion how distasteful that always sounds to me. The next thing will be that you, or if not you, then surely Frau Busch, will talk to everybody and particularly to Frau N. all kinds of things about Cora! For Christ's sake, can't you be ordinarily human? My God, what a bore you and this Frau B. are! But you have a lot of her yourself (plus your fine qualities).

You know a lot of my life. But only those sides which a man tells his physician, things that have a bearing on the sicknesses. You also know some other things. But there are sides of my life of which you have no notion yet. This is not supposed to sound mysterious.

All these matters are in close connection with your indiscretions about the Holy Books [Volume I, Volume II, Volume III]. For over 20 Years you talked about all kinds of passages, discussed them, attributed them etc. instead of keeping silent. With me it would have been natural to be so. But "Silence he will never learn". The result has been disastrous enough until you were simply forced to shut up at least about these particular books. (However, you are not even quite silent about them.) I wish you could acquire the wisdom of silence about other things also. But I suppose I shall have to keep on suffering under your indiscretions.

The bad side of your early magical development shows in this way: you were too strong for most people from whom you could have learned. But whenever it came to loggerheads you carried the point—and did not learn. So now there are a number of defects left in your nature and at your age are ineradicable. You even are so convinced that they are virtues that it is useless to argue with you, even if one would master English, and dialectic as well as you. Here is where I might refer to what I said above that I don't care sufficiently. In your case I might care, when the time is ripe, because the G.W. is involved. And as long as you have these defects, how can one, rather the Gods, dare put you in touch with the real people? Again I refer to my time sense. I have never yet been heart and soul in your schemes. Why? Because I could not for the life of me see that you were ready.

Our relations should be entirely different from what they are. There should be full confidence. Mutual confidence. But in your false pride and arrogant self-holiness you can understand only one-sided confidence. I have used this word in this meaning several times speaking to you 6 or 9 months ago. It failed to register.

Your stupid arrogance and self-holiness shows itself in so many other ways. There is your need for "triumph" "glory", to be a king and behave like one, glory over victory, "dancing on the body of a defeated opponent", and similar stuff. They all seem to me so many bunky words, like child's play. It shows to me that in many respects you have not transgressed words, and passed into a higher realm, where one lives, not in the words any more but in their intrinsic meaning. You haven't got a natural sense for essentials. I could imagine that Isis would still glory and triumph and require the sense of victory like you. I don't think that Nephthys would bother about them. One might say: The II chapter of AL is too deeply engrained in you. Hence the lack of equilibration, I suppose.

Then all your cravings for victory! My God! Victory demands the constant food of new victories. So there remains no time for the G.W. All this Brocken of your little piled up victories only forces you to come down some day into the little silent valley of defeat, perhaps to be made ready for the 3rd Aethyr? What I sometimes suppose is at the root, is a very deep seated inferiority complex in you which demands constant compensation, over-compensation. But, of course, your terrible over-eagerness comes in, your impatience, or what you so arrogantly style YOUR GREAT CREATIVE POWER!

Resistance. I used the word some time ago to you as my only weapon of defence. But think the meaning of the word out yourself in connection with some passages above. I am sick of writing about all these things.

Then your women! Have by all means all the physical and spiritual relations with them you like. But get rid of this habit of squeezing them into our relations. And demanding my worship. None of the women you have had these years was any good, except (perhaps!) Dorothy [Dorothy Olsen]. And the Monster [Hanni Jaeger], if you had not spoiled her and created a frightful mess, where there could and ought to have been quadrupular cooperation. The present one [Bertha Busch] is the lowest of all of them, a street walker of the coarsest and most vulgar type and soul. I shall worship the right woman, when she comes. But I am afraid you will have to wait some more years before the prophecies can be fulfilled.

Our relations should be those of the blind man and the deaf. But while I have for over 6 years been making all the concessions of blindness, you have never made any of your deafness. I kept spilling until I was bled white and it was all wasted on you. I only spoiled you and strengthened your defects. I am not sorry for it, as I know that I will get my reward when the time is ripe.

P.S. I am just thinking of an illustration to the "triumph-glory" chapter, so I open the letter again.

The incident is very vividly in my memory. It was in Weida. There were just Mudd [Norman Mudd] and Leah [Leah Hirsig]; in the upper room where the insane-doctor incident took place. I leant against the door post after some thinking and said "Well, I suppose I will start a diary". Like a shot from a pistol Mudd and Leah looked at each other, got up and danced around in triumph and glory! Hands clasped in hands! Imagine my reaction. Of course, I understood it was page Aleister Crowley. It so disgusted me, and I believe they had to suffer for their tactlessness, worse for the inferior magical formula.

Triumph and glory, I guess, are quite alright, but they can take place in the sanctuarium of the soul; it is, I think a peculiar kind of pride which has a strong dose of humility in it.

I have a notion that you have learned much in these last years. But your essential nature has remained unchanged. It is not congenital with you.

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