|
Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Charles Cammell
68 Warren Drive, Tolworth, Surrey.
Nov 5, 1936.
Dear Cammell or rather indeed rather
Cher Mâitre.
Pearl Brooksmith has been telling me that you thought it unwise to get after Simpkin Marshall. I disagree.
(a) To avoid publicity is to plead guilty.
(b) People will say that I am afraid.
(c) The more the affair is ventilated, the clearer it will become that I am the just man made perfect.
(d) Of my three libel actions I won two; the third was only lost through the rage of that notorious habitual drunkard le [Judge] Jeffreys de nos jours. On the other hand if we don't do it, the anthology is wet. Any publisher would shriek with ribald mirth at the idea of including my work.
The moral of this is that you should join the Sacred Band which we are organizing to make secret propaganda for the Law of Thelema. If every one pulls his weight in the boat, we shall flash past the post in a very few months. I can be very useful indeed to the Government; and as soon as I have demonstrated this fact, I shall have an irresistible weight behind me. I am hampered and delayed by present conditions; you can help greatly if you will. I will ask one of the Band to see you about it.
Shelley, Byron, Rossetti, Swinburne, Burton k.t.l. [et cetera] all met this trouble; but I have been honoured by as much abomination for all of us. PS your law not my law?? But my law is the Law of Thelema, and affirms your law because it is yours and not A.C.'s. If you reject the Law of Thelema, you deny your own rights to a law of your own, and offer your wrists to the fetters of an alien law.
Yours sincerely.
Aleister Crowley.
P.S. I shall be in town on Monday, if you are free.
A.C.
|