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Correspondence from Wilfred T. Smith to Aleister Crowley
3 Feb 43
My dear Aleister:
Thank you for the wire. I certainly owe you a letter, though I have written at least six on paper and many more in my head I have not sent you one.
Matters have come to a sort of impasse and something has got to be done. The sickly style of writing, and double dealing, is bad for organization and a continual drag on our efforts to accomplish our aims.
In 1935 I was a whoremonger, dishonest, a black magician. My memory serves me well and besides I have looked up the files on that case. Now I am a clown, vile and have a swelled head.
Personally I cannot take these criticisms too seriously because I do not take myself too seriously, besides the accusations are so positively stupid and false.
If it is an attempt at a correction measure it utterly fails because you surely must hit a man in his weak spots to be effectual. When two are selected for the duty of revolution surely they do not declare the king is a hunchback, knock-kneed, pigeon toed and therefore physically unfit, when it is obvious to every moron, man, and woman and child that he is none of these.
Neither pride of position nor avarice of possession motivate me. I may have to get out and leave it to other hands to prove it; and some other things. I have no illusions that I am the only man for the job. But so far, in the handful of adherents that I am acquainted with, no one has exhibited the capacity, poor though that be as you persistently inform me and the others to whom you write.
I love simple things, animals, nature, enjoy the ingenuity of my hands, good literature and intelligent conversation, am in good health, and having discovered a trick or two to maintain it, shall live a damned long time. Above all, my spiritual attainment, or whatever it may be called, however little, is mine. “To thine own self be true etc.” In this incarnation I shall not fail in that respect so fear neither the suspended sword nor the bomb. There may be damned little, but where there is, is pure.
The illusion of Others, the illusion of the necessity to establish your God-given way of life, on which you have so ably sold me, obsesses me. Herein the “damned little” worries me, but not my own soul, attainment nor achievement, How can it? I am nothing, have nothing, what can there be to lose? “Therefor strike hard & low, and to hell with them, master!”
But I have a dire disease called persistence, so as always, even in mundane things and when the pleasure therein or the imagined reward thereof had ceased to exist, I have had to keep on to completion of the job once started. In a real sense I do not exist, it is just “pure will unassuaged” etc., or is it just habit that constrains me in a course. I am just bound to go on talking of Beauty and the Beast.
On the other hand:
If you have “full confidence” in one whose memory is deplorably weak, who imagines that which was never said nor done, whose psychological judgment is so often but the echo of the opinion of some one else, and keeps the good opinion of others by the simple manner of agreeing with their weaknesses, what am I to assume, and how shall I act?
If the “word goes” of another who writes as in the following quotation, and is surely hysterical or sick, what am I to assume, and how shall I act.
I have no dislike, let alone hate for any in the past or present who have played a part in these misunderstandings. In fact I am very fond of one in particular. I merely put it thus before you for elucidation. I cannot understand how anyone should have such feelings of another as expressed in the following quotations, from just one letter only. But above all it so hampers one’s efforts to get organized and do things. We are well aware how far we are from our goal. But just what is the precise charges against us anyway? For my own part I see the faults in people, which unfits them for some purposes but certainly does not damn them in toto. I even like them for them. My own weaknesses bother me far and away more, for I am always with them day and night.
“. . . If I can speak frankly to you, I would say that 132 [Wilfred Talbot Smith] acted like a little boy in his childish hatred, his vile remarks about everybody else in California, about A. C. himself, in many of his letters to me, which showed me too clearly over a year ago where he stood magically and spiritually. I forced myself to be very patient, used diplomacy where it was indicated, but did not refrain from being very outspoken on some occasions.—Jack [Jack Parsons], when visiting here, was treated by Cora [Cora Eaton] and myself in the most hospitable way. He did not open up in the slightest, and kept shut up like a clam, but snooped the atmosphere like a detective who had to report to a superior. Yet I did my utmost, met him enthusiastically, as some of my earlier letters, to him showed. My antennae sensed the root of the trouble, and I made some outspoken remarks to him. Alas! he was and still is too young, immature, and unfree for the position I had then hoped for him. He went back, reported to 132 what he had seen and heard, and now I feel acutely from several signs, will finally fall under the dreadful spell to which he yielded.
“Do understand: I feel very intensely for yourself and the grave decision you had to take, and that you took it, that you affirmed your attachment once again to the OTO itself, its heads and what it stands for and shook yourself loose from the shadows that had hung over you. I feel intensely the difficult situation you are in which may torture you in its daily connections. Do remain firm: you have weathered storms in London in 1923 (was it?) and elsewhere that were worse. You will get help.
“Why for goodness’ sake can’t you find the way to Max [Max Schneider] and open up in a talk between brother and sister? It seems to me you have some distorted vision of Max’ soul. I know him very well; I know that he had to go through hard times and ordeals these last 12 years. But everything, every act of his during these last one or almost two years proves that he has come through. It was Max’s heroic efforts that were the main help to me. I wish Agape Lodge had shown similar devotion to the Work.”[1]
It is all too utterly childish and weak. By far the strongest sentiments ever expressed by me, and may be taken with some salt. are in the two paragraphs preceding the quotations. I told two FBI men ten days ago after three hours questioning that they had my full permission to read all my letters. And to make sure my mind was not failing I read all in one particular folder. I find no vile remarks of a single person!
Is there only one type of heroic effort? Is it more commendable to mail a check to the Master for $150.00 than to reprint a book of his for $150.00. It is easier, I can tell you that! The $835.00 in a year is a very little we know, but still we could have used it to great advantage here. We did our best.
Is a person continually to be chastised because he chose to be an advertising agent instead of an orderly? Both are necessary!
If we here say grace at table in the form you set, and consider as you have stated, that the Great Work is the establishment of the Law of Thelema, are we less loyal because we do not add, to the form by saying, “What is the Great Work?”—“To bring Crowley to America!”
It is my humble opinion that you are the greatest being on the planet. But, I do get cockey because you have written to me personally, and give myself airs because I am in direct touch with the Master.
Also I know myself, with out any conceit, better equipped for some small purposes than He. And I have found it possible for Him to make mistakes in judgment. You thought one was a good organizer—he appears not to have an ounce in his makeup. You thought another was a go-getter—and found him shy and retiring.
Ye gods, and what you don’t think of me! And besides you have contradicted yourself so many times in so many letters, I have just had to formulate my own judgment.
I am not bickering, whining, complaining. My hide is tough since I surplanted A. E. Waite, Dead Waite, Just Waite, More Waite, ad tedium. It is merely that this is a serious attempt to clean up the mess on the decks so that we can get into action, by showing the quandary you put me/us into.
Us more particularly! We have been harried by the FBI thrice lately, and other things are a continual source of annoyance. Can’t the internal unrest be stopped? You seem so often to be responsible for the continual disturbances. Just as we are trying our hardest to get out a small monthly publication of dignity and quality (which we hope will please you), got a quotation on it, figured out how we can squeeze it into our expense—You let fly another charge of buck shot, or tell some one else.
I shall, Hell! What’s the use? Write a few strongly worded letters, throw them in the fire, clench my teeth and make another effort. Oh, yes, feeble if you will, we are not all A. C.’s.
But the others don’t come back so easily, and a little more and the best of them may fly the coup once more.
I know my weaknesses. And I know just about what you want for I know what I want. I am trying in the face of material, financial and personal difficulties. External opposition and internal dissension. For obvious reasons people want optical, not oral demonstrations or proofs. I am sorry it is so; tis tough and against my inclinations, but I try.
Best of love always,
Wilfred.
1—This is a direct quote from Karl Germer to Jane Wolfe, 25 January 1943.
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