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Correspondence from Frieda Harris to Aleister Crowley
It was a lovely day today, are you better and could you get out?
Rolling Stone Orchard Campden
March 25th [1942]
My dear Aleister,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
I hastily return your sample sheet as I don't trust papers a minute, it would get away I am sure.
1. It's lovely paper.
2. The type looks very nice.
3. The price is not outrageous but surely the size, if you mean to put the book [The Book of Thoth] in with the cards, is too big. Perhaps you mean to publish without, in which case I think you should at least have the photographs of the cards reproduced don't you think?
I enclose a cutting from the Evesham Journal. Written by Gosse and quite good I think.
I am having a funny time with the Show, very stuffy old ladies and very ancient men. But the children! I don't understand, they crowd in after school. I must have had at least 8 little boys today and they ask intelligent questions and go solemnly round and stare. I have amused myself with asking them which one they liked. Oh yes! they know at once and generally I find it is the picture which fits with the month in which they have been born. But one little boy aged 6, a little gnome-like person obstinately declared for the Aeon. I tried to move him but he clung to it—. What chord did it strike in him? Those clear eyes looked so gravely at me.
“I walked home with a gold dark boy And never a word I'd say Chimborazo, Cotopaxi Had taken my speech away
I gazed entranced upon his face Fairer than any flower O shining Popocatapetl It was thy magic hour
The houses, people, traffic seemed Thin fading dreams by day, Chimborazo, Cotopaxi Had stolen my soul away.”
Also a little person aged 2, scuttling and crawling, was asked which picture: Straight she went to No 2. Cups, Love. I though she would forget and asked her again 10 minutes later and she toddled off to the same picture. “That” she said again.
Then they asked me “What is the meaning of 'Lust'.” That's a knockout blow for a poor adult.
So somewhat timorously I said “Well you must understand the feeling of it. Now how do you feel if you see nice chocolates and there, you get them and how good they taste. That is a picture of how you feel about those chocolates.” And then we had a lovely conversation about our favorite sweets and yum yum over sticky toffee and the sweets that took longest to suck. But such concentration, how I envied them.
I will try to send you Sol in Aries picture. [?] Mercury is photographed but do I know I like him. We shall tell when we see the photographs but all these reproducers are constipated. Where are the 2 new cards from the Sun—Oh dear! I hope Pussy has sent you the poems by now. It is my fault I have been supine. My rib is better but stops sleep.
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours ever,
Frieda
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