Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Wilfred T. Smith

E. A. Crowley

ONFT.18.1

93 Jermyn St,

London, W.1.

18th May, 1943.

Care Frater,

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

Well, can I help being glad that this affair is settled at last, although in so tragic a manner.

How infinitely stronger you would have been had you only been weaker! Suppose that you had written me, at the first breath of Himalayan rigour, somewhat as follows:—

“Only too well am I aware of my unfitness to occupy the exalted position which I have so lamentably failed to maintain, I assure you that it is not lack of goodwill, but of my original capacities. I shall be only too grateful to be permitted to resign and promise to co-operate faithfully with my successor, giving him the advantage of my experience and prestige, such as they are.”

     What would have been my instant reaction? “Good God! I must be making a mistake. This man’s pure gold”—and proceeded patiently with infinite care and caution, to set you right in every smallest detail.

96.85327 (according to the latest statistics) is too much percentage of absorption in sex. How much happier you will be, and how much quicker you will get on, in a little while, (the late Alfred, First Lord Tennyson, nearly wrote it):—

“When the testes cease from troubling,

And the penis is at rest”

You seem to have regarded the Order as a desirable Shoot for One Gun. My own rule was never on any account to have sexual relations with anyone who had first come to me on matters connected with the Order. (There might have been exceptions; but in fact there were not).

Now, don’t regard yourself as “out.” Shew your manhood and your devotion to 93 by putting over the Order on a big scale. Think of Paul, of Peter the Hermit, of Savonarola, even of Billy Sunday! You must be not only single-hearted and single-minded, but a raging, raving, renting, roaring, swashbuckling fanatic. There was another Smith, Joseph his other name, martyred and living, with a whole state of the Union tagged on to his tail. No other American ever did a job that size! No other State can boast a single Founder. And you have all his assets—the Book of the Angel and all the rest of the apparatus. Now, then, let them say that come after: “The Stone that the builders rejected the same is become the head of the corner” and on your monument “This Smith wrought in steel!”

Love is the law, love under will.

Yours Fraternally,

TO ΜΕΓΑ ΘΗΡΙΟΝ 666 9º = 2^o   A∴A∴

[eleven-fold Cross] Baphomet X° O.T.O.

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