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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to John Jameson
9 Jan 39
Fili Mi.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Yours of Jan 1. I should perhaps say "Your esteemed favour of January 1st duly to hand". I never dealt with the question of your motto and you had better think it over. In Greek it would be 'Ouk eim' ego'. In Latin 'Non sum ego'.
You do not seem to realise that you are teaching your grandmother to suck eggs, and preaching to the converted, and explaining to Mr Montagu Norman the elementary principles of banking. Everybody had an enormous number of sides to his nature; the number, in fact, is Aleph-Zero. Let us be accurate, no matter what the cost. That is the whole point of the Law of Thelema, that you have got to do.
If you would read carefully Liber Thisharb, you would realise that this is an important part of the Great Work, to calculate your formula from its elements; but you must obtain a single resultant of all these various forces, and that ultimate victor is your true will. In your case, you seem to have completed the analysis quite well, but the elements are utterly incoherent; as Hazel says, "Oh he is all over the place". But the result is that you are the slave of every whim; somebody puts some silly idea into your mind, and you have to execute it as if it were a matter of life and death. You have no control; you have no judgement; you have no patience. I quite see that my immediate job is to harmonise all these conflicting elements, by getting you to understand that none of them is important by itself. It can only become important in so far as it is related with the others. You are a machine, devised to produce a given result, and no part of that machine has any right to go off on its own. When any part apparently assumes the lead, that is only useful in as much as its function is of paramount importance.
Consider a train. It is going along at so many miles an hour, and does not require a touch from anyone on the train; but it is going to destruction unless the signalman pulls over the right lever at the right time. The signalman is really part of the train from a magical point of view; but the signalman is a very minute force in comparison with the total forces involved, and he has no importance whatever except in relation to the train. Moreover, his function is not arbitrary; he has got to pull that signal at that particular moment in obedience to a concerted plan of action.
Now as I said before, I think you have, deep in you somewhere, a subconscious comprehension of that concerted plan in your own case. I should be very sorry to think that I had been completely fooled when I made you the proposal I did in Cornwall.
I wish you would not split your infinitives; what is the good of talking all this nonsense about learning to write when you make blunders in writing that a schoolboy of 12 ought to be turned up and spanked every time he does it? I must further remark that I had to call together the Supreme Grand Council of Inspectors General and have a typed draft made of your letter before I could answer it without weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.
All this question of your behaviour is very symptomatic; I have been suspecting all along that it was the expression of your subconscious reluctance to 'leave the poor old stranded ship and pull for the shore'. It was so obviously Freudian; it was so ostentatiously unnatural.
What you want to do is to get somewhere else without leaving the spot where you are at present. I told you as much in my last letter; what you say about ski-ing confirms it. You talk most extraordinary nonsense, and you tell it to me, who was one of the first half dozen men to practice the sport in England. I cannot say that I have never read such rubbish, because Greville-Gascoigne [Anthony Greville-Gascoigne] sent me the 'Golden Dawn' (magazine), but I do think that with a little hard work, and possibly a blow on the head from a sledge hammer, you could arrive at the level of his contributors. This is all a question of the herd. You do things which are sissy, approximating to 'mancy'; your games are imbecile games. I used to play golf myself, but that was in the days of the Gutty, when the game was a game, and called for brains and accuracy. Now, the whole thing has become commercialised like your beastly ski jumping, and it is filth. You must get away from the herd, otherwise you will become entirely one of them; that is your very greatest danger, and as I said before, social pressure is a dreadful thing. Your defence of this nonsense is pathetic. A forked radish of my acquaintance was telling me the other day about fox hunting, in almost your words, how it developed this and that, and in particular developed your faculty of quick decision. I have not laughed so much since mother died! The only thing that fellow could ever decide to do was to lie, to break his word, to run away; I suppose there are such mongrel kinds of pup that run away from their own tails instead of after them. If so, he was that kind, and I apologise to all dogs, including yellow dogs.
It is all wrong. Even if it is a matter of shooting, you have to have a pheasant driven over you before you take a pot at it; in fact, I almost wonder if you shoot them sitting. Go into the jungle after a wounded buffalo, and then come back and talk about the faculty of quick decision.
The writing of this letter was interrupted by the Detective-Sergeant who has been investigating the matter referred to in the enclosed carbon of my original letter of complaint. The verdict is 'Not Guilty, but do not do it again'. I am afraid there is no doubt that it was just an impulse, braggadocio, New Year's Eve and all that. It makes it very difficult to know what to so. "Never glad confidant morning again".
You have a frightful cough and cold because you herd with the unspeakable in overheated hotels, and drink too many cocktails.
Will you kindly telegraph me the exact date of your re-appearance under these pale glimpses of the moon, because I have to make some complicated arrangements. We are in the throes of so many domestic crises that I cannot even count them. Peggy [Peggy Wetton] is very difficult; she turns everything into emotion. She has no more sense of humour than P.G. Wodehouse. She had been developing a persecution mania, and if there is one thing we cannot have in the circle, it is scenes.
I am putting this picturesquely, but it is not a joke; she really imagined a conspiracy between Dr Cosgrove and the hospital doctor, heavily bribed by Lady Harris [Frieda Harris] or Charlotte Corday, or both, or somebody else, to keep her in hospital when she ought to be training hard for the marathon race. She is simply hell bent on getting out before her feet, which was really rather badly messed up by the worms in Charing Cross, is properly healed; and what we shall need, if we are ever going to do any work at all, is invisible mending. There is a lot to be done in the house which cannot be either you or me, and the people who do it must be neither seen nor heard. I refer you to the instruction of Abramelin the Mage as to the proper behaviour of familiar spirits.
Furthermore I am really bothered about my health. I have been overtaxing myself, having been left in the lurch (said he brightly stabbing from underneath) by one whom etc etc (inconnu). I am honestly contemplating a magical retirement to the Royal Albion from Saturday morning to Monday night; then again, about Wednesday for a week, if possible; the latter part would depend on your having returned to take charge, and having taken charge, satisfying me that you will execute the charge which you undertake. I have really quite a lot of anxiety about the material side of the Work, so I would take it as very kind of you if you will pull your weight in the boat; you will row cox.
Love is the law, love under will.
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