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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Gerald Yorke
Berlin.
21 Jan '32
C∴[are] F∴[rater]
93.
Remind me I do need Rapheal's Ephemeris badly.
Yours of 19th and the previous about the Cliff. Yes, nursing is n[o] g[ood] in asthma. One is either well or gasping for breath like a fish in the boat. I have an A.1. cough mixture now—only it contains codeine which depresses—and a box of capsules to inject in case of a violent attack like last Sunday. But the basis of all is worry and nervous exhaustion.
Your remarks on jumping over the cliff are excellent. But that is just the magical issue. One must.
There are two ways of success. If you want to be a surgeon, admiral, judge, or archbishop you go along the old lines very warily, with the maximum of adroitness and the minimum of risk. You must not lop the branch you are sitting on. All the ways are there, and all the rules are reasonably plain. If you are just a little more energetic, tactful, and intelligent—not to say subservient—than your competitors, you get to the top almost automatically. This is the way for a Wolsey, a Richelieu, a Disraeil, or a Kitchener, et hoc genus omne.
But there is no case of a first-rate man, one who has made a real mark in history, without a moment in which he makes a clean break with everything and everybody concerned. Because the ways are not there; he has to cut his own path through the jungle. And there are no rules for success; he has to use all his own virtues and intelligence. Consider the Buddha, Mohammed, even Luther! Consider Napoleon, Harvey, Lister, Lenin! Remember the axiom of Descartes, that you cannot start philosophy at all without passing through the crises of doubting everything without exception.
It is because you have the elements of true greatness that you can be a candidate at all for a first-class job in the Order. I couldn't write like this to Lloyd, could I? No, he could very well support the Work without straying from his vegetable garden. Remember too that I never urged you to take this definite step until you had so clearly shown the stuff you are made of in those Desert Letters. I rather undervalued you as having become the President of Pop etc etc, and wanted you to inherit quietly and dance the Princess Mary into adhering to our programme. But now that you have gripped reality and cross-buttocked it, the position is totally different.
Obviously one does not want disaster; with luck, you might in one of several ways suffer no damage, and inflict no pain upon your family. But the gesture is of supreme importance. As in the war, a man did not enlist to be killed; but if he did not enlist, he couldn't command an army.
I will work out a practical scheme with Hamilton [Gerald Hamilton] to-night, and let you know. Meanwhile, I'm tired, being on duty to-day, as Bill [Bertha Busch] has overdone the washing and got a chill, and a trifle of inflammation again. So I'm cooking.
93 93/93
F∴[raternal]ly
666.
Bill sends love, and will write you to-morrow.
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