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Correspondence from Charles Stansfeld Jones to Aleister Crowley
Post Office Box 365 Vancouver, B.C., Canada
September 15, 1936
Care Frater 666,
93.
Thanks for your letter of August 28, and the proofs of Liber AL which followed it; I was staying in the city all last week and unable to answer immediately.
I know I have a copy of Frater Aud's [Raoul Loveday] article because it was included in letter sent to Morning Post; I will copy it for you when can find time, so that even if the original and early letter can not be found it will, with the quotation from letter included in the Morning Post article already sent from you, form the historical record you desire.
I have not fallen out with Smith [Wilfred Talbot Smith], but there has been little of interest in common for many years past and have not heard from him directly since I passed through L.A. six years ago and had a chat with him. I understand, however, that he is closely associated with Max Schneider with whom you dealt my back some ten years ago, and although I hold no ill will towards him I have no intention of allowing the same sort of thing to happen again—in other words I no longer fully can trust either of you as I once did.
I note your reference to the manuscripts and first editions which you claim were lost. The last I saw of these was at the time I carefully packed them in one of two boxes which, at the risk of my job, I rushed out of the U.[niversal] B.[ook] S.[tore]—on finding they were going to smash—placed on a van and sent to the Leonards Storage, where to the best of my knowledge they remained until—years later—one box was sent on to Chicago with a letter saying they could not find the second. Which box was sent I do not know because I turned it over to Schneider unopened, together with the letter from Leonards admitting they had had the other box and had been unable, then, to locate it. That is all I know about the matter, other than that I am extremely sorry to hear from you that your agent has not since recovered them for you.
After reading the proofs you sent I now see clearly your distinction between the Comment and Commentary. You have made a gesture fulfilling the essential instructions given in Liber Legis in this connection, leaving the rest until later. The new book will convey some further information to those not so closely in touch with you as I have been in the past, but for those nearer to you it contains little that is new, and not nearly so much as might have been expected. How this book is going to convert the people of the earth, or clear things up for them, so as to avert the possibly impending trouble, or improve conditions in Europe, Asia and the U.S.A. as described by you to exist at the present moment, is yet to be discovered. It does, however, tell them a good deal about A.C.—and more by implication.
I could hardly help but be amused at one or two points:
"Again, it was impossible to him to take interest in anything from the moment that he had grasped the principles of 'how it was, or might be done'. This trait prevented him from putting the finishing touches to anything he attempted. . . . . .This characteristic extended to his physical pleasures. . .
One might ask: What about the sexual act? Did you cease to indulge in it as soon as you found out how it might be done? Or are you still trying to find out how to do it? And have you consistently been prevented from putting the finishing touches to it when attempted. And if so, was this due to "almost inhuman unselfishness"? Or does the statement lack somewhat of truth?
I think your reference to my task having possibly been fulfilled in discovery of the key is very much in line with what I suggested in my letter of July 12, and that this leaves me free to continue with my own special mission according to my best light, and in view of the Word given me. I see no reason for transmitting or publishing it, and my future value to you may be covered by the injunction "As brothers fight ye." But, in any event, "Success is your proof" and this I wish you in the fullest sense of the word.
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours fraternally,
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