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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Wilfred T. Smith
London, W.1.
1st April, 1943.
Care Frater:
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
I received your letter of February 5th just before the Equinox. I did not answer it for some days, because I want you to feel that I considered it very carefully, and have not written anything in a temper in a hurry. Your “greetings” cable was very welcome, as was Jack’s [Jack Parsons]. At the same time I have to say that if you understood the situation here, you would realize that politenesses sound almost like insults. If a man goes overboard, you do not shout at him that you will send him a postcard when you get to the other side. (My reply N.L.T. was in the nature of a test.)
What you say about yourself in 1935 is, I daresay, perfectly true. I should not have pit it quite so strongly; but (to be quite open with you) I hardly remember hearing of any activities of yours beyond squabbles, mostly of the petty personal or sordid sexual kind.
With regard to your honesty, I have never been able to get any accounts from you, or even regular reports as to what you are doing. I sent you books of considerable value, and all fees and subscriptions should have been paid to the Grand Treasurer General, whose business it is to support the different Lodges, according to their needs, from the General Fund. The period from your starting work to the arrival of Frater Saturnus [Karl Germer] in New York was almost a blank of support of any kind. I do not think that in twenty years or more you contributed more than £150 at the very outside. You have done practically nothing yourself for the Order beyond keeping the Mass going more or less, and occasionally getting out a few small publications. Your expenses for matters connected with the Order can have amounted only to the most insignificant sums; but however, that may be, the fact of your failure to correspond and to render accounts is sufficient condemnation.
I am not quite sure in what sense you use the term “black magician” so I cannot give you my opinion on that subject.
You say that now you are “a clown, vile and have a swelled head.” It is quite natural for people to regard you as a clown, because you are always exercising what you apparently suppose is humour of the Jerome K. Jerome brand, and I must say that I received one of the shocks of my life when you sent me the photographs of the Temple and its Officers robed. The fact is that you simply cannot wear a robe. You have no dignity. It is not your fault that you are of a small stature and that you never seem to know quite what to do with your hands; but when anyone has these qualities either they take the most extravagant measures to get over the handicap, or they are careful to avoid pushing the facts in peoples’ faces. You know, of course, the trouble that Mussolini, for one, has taken in order to look like something which has not been brought in during the night by an alley-cat.
I cannot understand—I never could understand—what Jane [Jane Wolfe] was doing not to correct all this. What is the use of her experience of stage and screen if she cannot produce a photograph of you which would impress at least certain classes of people with the proper feelings of respect? The point is really to be referred to the True Will. You were not built to swank about any more that St. Paul, or you would have made yourself extremely impressive by an atmosphere of darkness and mystery; but it is absurd to carry a sword if it is instantly patent to everyone who sees you that you would be scared out of your life if you had to use one.
I don’t know quite what you mean by “vile.” I should have to examine the context.
As to the swelled head—I am told by several people, some of them entirely friendly to you, that you have been laying claim to all sorts of degrees to which you have no shadow of right. In the A∴A∴ you may possibly have been passed to Neophyte, but you certainly never went any further. Your claim to Magister Templi was merely a drunken freak; but of course this kind of joke is not appreciated by the Chiefs, and I daresay that 90% of your present troubles is due to that error.
I am told that you have not even claimed the grade of 9º=2o! But if you are a Magus, why have you not announced your Word? And with regard to the intermediate Grades, where are your examinations? Where are your records? Where are your diplomas?
As regards the O.T.O. you have, of course an Honorary Tenth Degree as my deputy in California; but that is itself purely an honorary degree conferred for the convenience of running the Lodges in my absence; this is quite evident from the facts. I think you have the rituals up to the Fourth Degree; you may possibly even have the Fifth, but you certainly have not got any of the higher Grades. You do not even know what they are about! You are supposed to possess the secrets of the Ninth Degree; but from a recent communication it appears to me very doubtful as to whether you understand it properly, let alone being capable of making good use of it.
When it comes to the Tenth Degree, I may remind you that you registered the name of the Order as “Rex summus sanctissimus”!! For the excellent reason that you had not the faintest idea of the meaning of those very simple Latin words. If you are an honest-to-God Grand Master, you should know all the other Grand Masters. If you will send me, for instance, the name and address of, let us say, the Grand Master of Denmark[1] (pre-war of course will do), I shall be inclined to believe you—at least to the extent of suggesting that you should supplant so barren an item of information by the exhibition of a letter from him which acknowledges you. I am prepared to bet all the gold that ever came out of California that you have never had any correspondence with any member of the Order of any Grade outside the United States.
Your paragraph 7 is the first which I can heartily approve; but even so you seem to be on the defensive. The whole tone of your letter is too peevish to be manly. You do seem to be obsessed about your character and position. You don’t live in the atmosphere of the work itself, although on that point your paragraph 8 is more reassuring.
As to your paragraph 9: of course, your persistence has always been your greatest asset in my mind. If you would just go on with that, without wondering and worrying about grades and so on, I can see no reason why you should not come through all right. The Grades in themselves are nothing, except insofar as they are evidence of certain facts; and there have been plenty of people with all sorts of high degrees, perfectly genuinely acquired, who had really nothing in them at all. It was great slackness to allow of this; but sometimes emergency puts Grand Masters in a position where they make rather random gestures. For instance, the late O.H.O. [Outer Head of the Order], after his first stroke of paralysis, got into a panic about the Work being carried on; (he had been misled by some rumour that I was dead, or in trouble, or something) he hastily issued honorary diplomas of the Seventh Degree to various people, some of whom had no right to anything at all, and some of whom were only cheap crooks. You may remember that John Yarker was nobbled by the Toshophist crowd. There is some small account of this in Equinox I. 10.
Now we come to your “on the other hand” part; and this does certainly fill me with contempt and disgust. You keep on talking about “one who,” “another who,” and so on, but you haven’t the courage to mention any name. You leave me to guess. You tell me of one person “whose memory is deplorably weak.” Are you referring to the man who had Liber VII, Liber LXV and Liber Legis by heart? Or is this an attack on Soror Estai [Jane Wolfe]? In your next paragraph you apparently refer to Frater Saturnus, but anyone less hysterical I have never met. For solid good sense he is unsurpassed. Now there comes “another,” who writes a letter with every word of which I most heartily agree. I have had unsolicited information from more sources that you suspect. There is no doubt that you are an expert at the game of playing people off against each other. I am told, for example, that you are showing my telegram congratulating you on the publications as evidence that you were the white-headed boy, and are using it in that way. You are only able to play this game because the members of the Lodge cannot be got to understand the importance of frankness. If A wants to attack B, he is pledged, in writing to C about the matter, to let B know exactly what he has written. If you were to do this, you would checkmate any intrigues against you, and if they would only do this themselves, it is your intrigues that would take the count.
Your complete unfitness for your position is most clearly indicated by your attitude to the F.B.I. You should have welcomed the investigators in the warmest way, assumed the offensive, taken the line that you thanked God that they had come to you at last, that the only thing you needed to establish your Work was to get the ear of people of sufficient importance, place and intelligence to understand that the only hope of pulling the country—and indeed all countries—through the present assault of bureaucracy and totalitarianism in one form of another is to accept the Las of Thelema officially, and determine everyone’s job by an analysis of his quantities, his abilities and disabilities, and his tendencies (in the proper Buddhist sense of the word) from childhood upwards. This, you should have pointed out, is the object of the Magical Records for training people to analyse themselves pending the establishment of proper organisations to do it for them, at least in the earliest years when they are not yet equipped to carry out the research.
Instead of that, you act like a person found loitering on enclosed premises—“Oh, please sir, you may see all my letters. I really haven’t been doing anything wrong” —which is enough to stamp you in the mind of any intelligent investigator as a perfect scoundrel, except that he is likely to observe that, unless your manifest feebleness is a clever mask, you are simply not worth bothering about. But then (you see!) you are worth a great deal of trouble, not because of any ideas of your own, any output of your own, but because you have had the sense to understand the true and vital importance of the official documents of the Order.
With regard to your paragraph about finances, what you did not understand was that this $150, or whatever it was, would have been of immense value in paying the installments on the Tarot, whereas the books that you have published were not immediately vital. It is the business of the Grand Treasurer General to allocate the funds of the Order; and to withhold any money from him whatever is plain embezzlement.
It is all very well to be an advertising agent, but the form of advertising in not in your discretion. At the moment the Tarot [The Book of Thoth], the Hymn for Independence Day and L’Etincelle are of supreme importance, because they will reach a public of more or less normal people. We do not want any more drifting “occultists.” You want the great political leaders, great industrialists and people of that sort, the kind of persons who does not subscribe $835 in a year, but half a million dollars in a day; and every distraction or diversion of funds from the business of getting at such people is hardly better than throwing the money into the sea. In fact, I think it is worse; because the practice of doing so discourages me in my struggle, almost single-handed as I am over here, against all the worst elements in sub-human society.
I really cannot go on trying to find out your subsequent paragraphs, with the “anonymous “one” and the anonymous “another” turning up again. You talk about cleaning up the mess; but you are principally concerned in the production of the same. Your original jealousy of 687 [Max Schneider] was abominable; on the lowest grounds, he was no danger to you; he is agreeable, plodding, loyal and magnanimous. If you have 1% of his qualities, how happy I should be!
I do not see how you can get out a “small monthly publication of dignity and quality.” I was not aware of anyone in your crowd who is of any account as a writer. I can hardly imagine a more grievous waste of money, a more certain cause of disappointment, and a more fantastic exhibition of your ignorance as to what getting out a monthly means. The trouble with you is that you are hopelessly parochial—and I am sorry to say that the parish appears to be Bow.
Your general wind-up is really difficult to understand, but at least you ought to be able to run your community on the lines clearly laid down in official documents. I have been absolutely horrified by the account of a woman ostracized by you and yours, flat in the face of Liber CI pars. 13-15, 37-39 et al., for doing that which the Order expressly encourages her to do. I am making further enquiries into this matter, and you will doubtless hear in due course what it is all about.
Finally, in regard to your whole personal position, I really cannot see any proper and dignified course for you but to go apart into the wilderness, and start to train yourself for leadership. I am sure it has been very bad for you to have had a lot of people to play with. This is bad for almost everyone. Personally, I keep people who are studying with me apart as far as possible—“let no one know well the other.” Whenever two of three people get together the old trouble starts all over again. I want you to work by yourself for a few months at any rate, avoiding any attempts at the Samson act of burying others in the ruins. If I could see you standing up straight and working for the Order on your own, writing daily a proper magical record of your experiences during retirement, I believe you would come back fifty times the man you are. 516 [Jane Wolfe], as you know, had a pretty hot time of it for a month, and she will also tell you that it was the only really valuable time that he ever had in her life.
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours fraternally,
[eleven-fold Cross] Baphomet X° O.T.O.
1—Grunddal Sjallung (1895-1976), Frater Gallahad X° O.T.O., the successor to Carl William Hansen-Kadosh (1872-1936) who had been given an O.T.O. charter by Reuss [Theodor Reuss] in 1921.
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