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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Gerald Yorke
July 21 [1941]
July 20—the day of V.V.V.V.V.?
Dear Gerald
93.
Yi this a.m. was Lu 56 "Strangers". So a letter from you did not surprise me. Also I went to Whiteley's and told them to sell everything of mine except books and papers—see lines 3 and 6. Why? because I must either die or get to California. (doctor says "sunny, dry equable climate") and in neither case shall I need furniture and other perishable goods.
Sorry to hear your military news. (Term "bowler-hatted" new to me: = "booted"?) I hope the delo narrow and the Gawd Forbid are well. My girl Pat [Patricia MacAlpine] and young Ataturk [Aleister Ataturk] last heard of in Jerusalem—with her grandmother nearly a year ago. Good for the lad's education, but I can't help wishing I could see him every so often.
My news is voluminous, and the Oxford Tarot business important; it's too long to write, for I am worn out with worry and illness. Desperately poor of course, since May 10, '40 when Hitler walked into Belgium. No loss of courage though: my next book is "Thumbs Up" (in hoc signo vinces) being a few war-effort poems. Eleven bob. I wish you'd subscribe for 50. (There are 100 only, signed and numbered.) You would find them good gifts for your friends, and I think you'd like "The Battle of the River Plate". There's one to suit Russia, too—written long before the volte-face. It is amusing (when one has mastered one's contempt and disgust) to watch the hypocrisy and double-crossing and explaining-it-away. Much more fantastic than last time.
I've got a bed-sitting room; small, but clean and comfortable: people are very nice, and expected to stay so till Saturday morning. After that who can tell?
It was really touch-and-go last year; reporters pestering my vet, to give them a scoop on my death.
Heart fed up with resisting the Asthma Panzer-divisions. The worst part is the emphyzema, which is of course as incurable as an amputated leg. Teeth very 'Coventrated' and anaesthetics too dangerous for extractions. I get a sort of semi-fainting attack two or three times a day, on an average. Still a fair amount of work gets done.
(Talking of gaps, Piper's house got it, also a bit of Oxford Mansions.)
I should very much like to see you; if I can ever raise the fare, I would like to come up for lunch. Or maybe you're in town now and then?
You're right to go for the Staff College: told you so long, long ago. But I shouldn't be surprised if the whole was switched off suddenly: I have always expected the Hun to collapse with a bang like a paper bag.
I'm very glad to notice a new tone in your letter. Your deep trouble has been your O.E. attitude to life. Not free from a similar fixation myself, but yours was super-charged, and made you at times inhuman. And fear was the cost of it, very much as one slaps at a mosquito. I had been hoping that actual courage would have shocked you out of it; instead, you seem to have slid gently into sunnier ways. (I mean sun-like, in the astrological and poetic sense.)
Did I tell you about the "Coins of Ko Yuen"? Very sudden: I must have been delirious, or near it. It came out one night and I made a set in the small hours, to the alarm and horror of the Nurse. You take a hexagram and label it: then reverse and label that. On the back ditto, but each Yang turned to a Yin and vice versa. So you have 4 hexagrams on each coin, except when they're the same either way up, when you have two. There are thus 8 "gold" and 12 "silver" coins. It is lovely and neat; helps a new grouping in the mind. Sample enclosed (sorry it's done so crudely). (55 is the symbol I had originally for you).
Will you write me this week, as after Saturday I may not be here? But I'm trying to hang on, to fix the Exodus.
Safest to address me at 10 Hanover Square W. 1.
93 93/93
Yours ever,
Aleister.
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