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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Louis Umfreville Wilkinson
10 Hanover Sq, W.1.
Dec 15 [1941]
Dear Louis,
93.
How delightful was the return to London (which I had anticipated dull and irritating) when I found your letter waiting on the doorstep to welcome me. I had been three days with Frieda [Frieda Harris] in weather for the most part sunny: of course the air is always clean. The bitter flavour in the draught was that you stay so long away.
I am quite well, not counting a few mortal sicknesses: the only real oppression is one which appears epidemic, a feeling of exasperated frustration. Talk of the grasshopper being a burden! The simplest plan seems utterly impossible to execute, especially as one feels that if one did succeed after all in getting it done, nobody would be a penny the better.
Still, it has been rather fun preparing Liber LXXVII: the Book of the Goat [Liber OZ]. I am so absorbed into my own spiritual blotting-paper (queer image, but somehow it seems apt!) that the publication of this Manifesto—I thought of calling it "Goat's Milk", with a glance in your direction—may amount to a Magical Gesture. I could ensure this, I suppose, by doing something idiotic in public at the moment of the Solstice.
Well, well, if it does count as a Gesture, we may look for a bloody great Revolution of some sort at the Autumnal Equinox.
—The writing of the above (at about 4.30 A.M.) seems to have exhausted me. I resume after breakfast.
Sorry I failed to explore the 'Lake'. It was that secret document about H. destroying all relations etc: probably you saw it. They ran it freely for nearly a week.
Frieda's visit should have cleared the way, and didn't. She was hell-bent on the Sun Engraving Co. doing it all. And I had got John Swain to come down to A.C. and they had a firm order. They were damned decent about it, just bowed and retired, though she was legally liable. The Sun were just lying to her: they did the cards all wrong, then messed things up in a dozen ways; now we may get one card by Christmas at a price far beyond their estimate—they are one mass of tricks—and I'll bet you all the typhus in the German army—this is the real story of Rostoo—that they mess this up in some incredible way. Any takers?
I think it excellent that Japan has come in. It cleared F.D.R.'s feet instantly. Also, I hope that it may bring about the dawn of common sense—in time!—We must not only disarm but disintegrate these types of mind. We must restore society to fundamental values.
I do wish I could see my way to a month in the country. But it's impossible without a near-by mind. Bad enough in London!
93 93/93.
Ever yours,
Aleister.
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