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Correspondence from Frieda Harris to Aleister Crowley
Rolling Stone Orchard
Dec. 11th [1940]
Dear Aleister,
I have made several attempts to write to you, but have been the victim of upheavals in the domestic surroundings, and even now, having assembled a warm fire, or chair, a cup of tea, I simply can't climb down my ladder and fetch writing-paper, so please forgive this.
I am sorry you are so seedy. I have been thinking you were, but today you seem better again; are you? I rather wish you would not stare at the sword photographs in the middle of the night.
I have done, as you suggested, and it looks better but it is exceedingly difficult to alter these cards, as I can't match the colours without great effort, I think it is alright now.
Just imagine what happened (Mercury is in a very ape-like mood). I found the waste-pipe from the fixed basin leaked. “Aha” I said in the words of a well-known poet, “I'll fix it by giving the nut a tap with the hammer!” And so I did and the whole porcelain basin cracked and has had to be wrenched from the wall by a horde of plumber-demons and I have spent a day of discomfort and displacement.
However the Princess is now on the stocks. I wish she would not insist on being pregnant. She just will, so now I have let her get on with it. She chatters to me about being mixed up with the Virgin Mary. Anyhow I am having a good time with the trees and if you don't like the design I am, at least, enjoying it myself.
I can't, can't fine the 93. You say Equinox of the Gods page 138. There is not one in the edition you gave me. Hullo! just turned the page and see unnumbered extra page and there is 93, but it is almost as indecipherable as your letter. What is III° ++++ oh dear! it is awfully obscure. צבא The Fool. The Wheel of Fortune–the Devil in the Tarot. Then you say leaving aleph to join path of ה I take it you mean “He” the Priestess. Do you or don't you—I really do understand all this better, if I am unconscious!
All the same, apparently I prescribed correctly for Pussy, because I wrote and said all I gathered from thinking into her, was that she was awfully tired, and please would she come and stay a few days and not talk, only sleep.
But you misjudge her, she is really a generous brave person, a magnificent friend, and not a sentimentalist when she is not trying to think. So please respect her, in spite of her conversational perversity. I am going to stop and do some of that boring printing. The man-to-frame is now waiting, but it is so difficult to see at night, and I want to paint by day.
Yours obediently
F. H.
Just one thing more. I have been working at a life of Mahomet. He does seem a strange Hitler-like person. Can you be bothered to write a few words about him?
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