Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to James Agate^[1]

Waldorf Hotel

Aldwych, W.C.2

Oct. 4, '34.

Dear Sir,

You rightly brush aside Gerhardi's vague experiments and half-baked physics. Why not listen to those who have given a life's work to the subject? I can demonstrate controlled results in your own person; and the theory is based on the most rigid mathematical physics. (I might mention that I gave Einstein's formula for Space in 1900. The Sanctuaries hold more than people suppose.)

If you have a free evening, I should be glad you show you the elements.

Yours sincerely,

ALEISTER CROWLEY.

1—James Agate (1877—1947), English drama critic for the London Sunday Times (1923–47), book reviewer for the Daily Express, novelist, essayist, diarist, and raconteur. He is remembered for his wit and perverse yet lovable personality. Educated at the Giggleswick and Manchester grammar schools, Agate went to London to become a journalist, working as drama critic for several papers. During World War I he served as an army officer. Between 1917, when, as he said, he “stormed London” with a lively account of an uneventful war, and 1949, 44 volumes of his drama, book, and film reviews, essays, novels, and surveys of the contemporary theatre for 1923–26 and 1944–45 had been published. He was perhaps one of the last of a long line of English dramatic critics to take for granted his position as arbiter of taste and was also one of the last outstanding journalists of a great age of English journalism.

[From Cafe Royal: Ninety Years of Bohemia, Guy Deghy and Keith Waterhouse, Hutchinson, London, 1956, p. 190.]