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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Wilfred Talbot Smith
23 Jan 36
Care Frater 132
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Yours of January 11th arrived last night. Your attitude about Clymer [R. Swinburne Clymer] and Lewis [H. Spencer Lewis] is wrong. This is where you jump in and file a claim on my behalf to the whole property of the AMORC. (You do not seem to know that Lewis has had a stroke five weeks ago. I heard it from Max [Max Schneider]). That means that everything at San Jose will be upside down and his family though they doubtless think that they can carry on, will soon find that they can't. One of the defects of grafting is that the man who pulls it off, has always got something more in him than plain knavishness, even though he himself is not aware of it. Thus his immediate followers never suspect that there is anything in the business beyond plain trickery, and come croppers accordingly.
What you should do is to go to the best lawyer in Los Angeles, after taking a good deal of pains to find out who he is. You could get somebody on the newspapers to tell you people who have made their names by putting over claims of more or less this kind. On no account go to a shyster or an unsuccessful man. You can offer him the business on a fifty fifty basis, and you must get an undertaking from him that he will spare no trouble or expense to put it over. (I am enclosing a Memorandum about my own affairs. It is essential that I should come to California to prosecute this claim; and I must arrive with knobs on.)
I think your best plan will be to put the matter before Mary Green. You will be in a much better position to negotiate with the lawyer, if you can tell him that I am expected to arrive in the next month or two.
Mary Green is pretty sure to have one or two rich clients; and she ought to be able to get one (or more of them in concert) to put up the five thousand dollars necessary. This is where you have to be diplomatic. You must not insult the nobility of their characters by suggesting that they should make any money out of the business. At the same time make it perfectly clear that anyone who does put up money is doing so on a business basis, because we are too proud to accept unrequited assistance, and have no objection to signing an obligation to pay back 10,000 dollars (say) within six months.
It would of course be necessary for you to show him
(1) that Lewis has been claiming to operate under our jurisdiction, Clymer's proofs are perfectly clear on that point.
(2) That all properties of the O.T.O. are legally vested in the Sovereign Sanctuary.
We wrote direct to Spann, and have not heard from him yet. I cannot understand that he should have written to you as he did, if he were in with Clymer. He might just as well belong to the Societas Rosicruciana in America, run by Mr Plummer, the Mr Butcher of "Moonchild". At the same time you may be right; his letter is very non-committal.
am enclosing to you a letter for transmission to Max. The next time I have to write to you, I shall address it to him for transmission to you. This is called the equilibrium of contraries.
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours fraternally
666
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