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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Charles Stansfeld Jones
c/o Dennes & Co. 22 Chancery Lane, London. W.C.2.
August 28, 1936.
Care Frater 777,
93.
Yours letter of Aug. 5, 6, 7 and 11.
I answer the last first.
Your memory seems to be much better than mine. It was only when you wrote to me that I remembered that Frater Aud [Raoul Loveday] had sent you the article at all. I do not want to give you any trouble, but if you should happen to come across the papers I wish you would let me have a look at them. They might be of no value as evidence from a legal point of view, and yet of considerable assistance to the historian.
I have no knowledge of your experience with what you call the L.A. bunch. I had it in my mind that Smith [Wilfred Talbot Smith] was your most intimate co-worker, and if I ever heard that you quarreled with him, it has certainly made no impression on my mind.
The business arrangements with regard to the publication of the Book of the Law are entirely independent of me.
My writing to you was routine. I found your address among your papers and wrote to you and some hundreds of other people.
Yours of August 5. The principles of truth and justice are of course inherent in the Law of Thelema. Of course, we are holding this clearly in sight. But I hope you will understand that a clear distinction is to be made between the attitude and aim of the initiate and the repercussion of a new law upon mankind at large, and what I feel is that your residence in so secure a retreat as Vancouver, while intensely favourable to your personal work, has tended to prevent your understanding the state of affairs in Europe, Asia and the U.S.A. You remember the war hysteria after the entry of the U.S.A. There was some excuse for that, because we were all in close personal touch with actual facts. Let me assure you that the state of people's minds at that time was very much calmer than it is to-day when the world is actually at peace. The nervous tension over here is terrific. It is really quite indescribable; and you would have to be here to understand how bad it is. We are all acting like condemned criminals with only the very faintest chance of a reprieve; with this addition, that nobody knows whether the hangman will come along to-day or next week or next year.
I find it very difficult to go into the question of your personal work. I am occupied at present almost entirely with practical matters. These have to be treated with the greatest simplicity, or they could not be treated at all.
There is little or no reference to you in the present volume. Hope to mail you proofs on Monday 31st. I am distinguishing the Comment from the Commentary. When you see the former you will grasp my views.
I should like to hear, however, about this word and formula from Philadelphia. My career was thrown out of its expected course ten years earlier. As you know I have always been strongly opposed to the making of mysteries in intellectual matters. To my mind it is only justified where positive danger is foreseen, as in the case of some of the secrets of the O.T.O.
Yours of August 6. I don't remember much about the mutual agreement, except the disappearance of my manuscripts and first editions.
I do not think you understand my attitude about persons and their offices. I cannot be bored with any of it. When playing chess, one does not argue about the representative function of the pieces. They perform those functions, and there is no further trouble. I have done all that is necessary in suggesting that the publication of the book initiates a new current, and having done this, I have no more to say.
One thing I will say: that I do not expect anything to come of qabalistic speculations. I think that they may even be extremely mischievous in times like the present. Our sole business should be to use the Law to reconstruct the world from the chaos into which it is already half tumbled. That formula is a simple one, and requires no specialized training. The work requires the cooperation of tens of thousands of people who have never heard of the Qabalah, and they have to be addressed in language which they can understand.
Yours of August 7. This letter is very interesting, and I hope that you will let me hear more on the subject. May I add one by way of pastime. In the MS. III 72 there was a word which I could not hear, but written in by W. as Coph Nia. That may still be imperfect. Accendat in nobis domineignemstflammamseternaecaritatis!!!
93 93/93.
Yours fraternally,
666.
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