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Correspondence from Wilfred T. Smith to Aleister Crowley
Culling's Hermitage. Rainbow Valley.
10 June 43
To Mega Therion
Care Frater
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
It was a little surprise, yes and pleasure, to receive your letter the day before yesterday. I thought perhaps letter writing between us might be over.
Now that I am quit of the whole business and have no funds of my own, may be I can expect a different type of letter than a revision of yours up to 1934 reveals I have previously been able to invoke (I am still rereading them).
It might seem a pity that I have so seldom been able to interpret your wants, for one letter so contradicted the other, or understand the strange inflammatory misstatements you made. As an example.
1. “Take all the oaths you can and plunge into the work head first.” (March 1, 1928) My interpretation now is called a peek, or freak (your letters differ on this point). The stone out of Jones’ [Charles Stansfeld Jones] Tree of Life pin (Summer of 1920) had absolutely nothing to do with the matter; that was purely his idea and I had forgotten about the incident years ago.
2. “Sell your car and live on sandwiches for a year to prove your sincerity.” And a short while afterwards, “You have to live as a banker who come over in the Mayflower.”
There were plenty more. The inflammatory misstatements are legion—seven tenths of so many letters to me and to others about me.
The last two letters to me—April 1st and May 18th—one to Helen [Helen Parsons], one to Jack [Jack Parsons] to mention only four are just pathetic in this respect. I am not presuming to judge or even to criticize, you may have some psychological reason for it all. I merely mention it to point out that I was left high and dry to figure it out as best I could, and do what I could with what equipment I had.
The Church of Thelema: twice, or three times (I have not reread all my own letters) I wrote to you about the idea. No response. I go ahead, or rather Jacobi [Oliver Jacobi] did, send you copies of papers, and get panned for it.
Yes I knew with out any Latin, what R.S.S. means. Would not any one?
The matter of the form of incorporation was taken up with the lawyer before ever you criticizing me for it. In his letter of January 22, 1935 he said it went back to before the time of Sir William Blackstone, and gave a long quotation from Book I of the Rights of Persons, Lewis Edition, 1897, pages 469-470.
But it is useless! As I look at your last letter but one—April 1st—I quote, “What you say about yourself in 1935 is, I daresay, perfectly true. I should not have put it quite so strongly.” But, that is just how strong you did put it. In my letter which your answered I was not saying those things of myself, but quoting you. And, you know it! May be I lack a sufficient sense of humor.
I do not care the least little bit if you think I sent you only one hundred fifty pounds in over twenty years. I have actual bank records to show that you are away out. To say nothing of what I have expended at this end for you. The last item was better than $1200, which I collected on leaving the Gas Company, and thrown into the general exchecker to start 1003.
From your letter I read, “I am told. I am told.” That is just it! You accept what others tell you. Look how you exploded over Grady’s [Grady McMurtry] letter. Grady for the love of Mike! Not a word of truth in what he conveyed.
The yarns about declaring 8º=3o and 9º=2o grades, etc. are just pure fabrications. Besides, Grades and Titles never meant a damned thing to me personally.
In my photograph I may look awkward, frankly I do not have any passion to be photographed; you on the contrary by yours appear to have. Yes, the Priest’s robe was unfortunate. I could only afford $19.95 a yard for imitation velvet after spending $150, to fix up the attic to put on your Mass for you, I look much better in the robe for Saladin which Helen made; and my photograph is splendid—at least everyone here says so. Except Jane [Jane Wolfe], who would have wait for your sentiments before she would commit herself.
I wish you could read some of her letters re the 9˚. Now you say I am not.
You do labor some points. I really do not mind if I am a 10˚ or 9˚, or anything at all. I have what I have, am what I am.
Yes, I do happen to have the names of the pre-war Grandmasters of other countries. But such a “barren of information” is certainly of no matter now. I have on file letters from Cowie [George MacNie Cowie], Yorke [Gerald Yorke], Windram [James Windram], I think Bennett [Frank Bennett] and I faintly remember one or two others.
How silly to say I have not the courage to mention names. Where there is only one cat is hardly necessary to say, “The Yellow Cat named Minnie made the smell.” You know quite well I had reference to Jane and to Germer [Karl Germer] in my letter. Frankness is one of my strong points. Jane read the letter to you in which I spoke of her, as most every other letter I wrote. I made an extra copy of that letter for Germer, but was too weary to send it, feeling the whole business useless.
You judge my fitness for a position by the way I handled the two F.B.I. men. Really, that is not sound! Suppose some one made a judgment of A. C. from the letters he wrote to Smith. To have handled them the way suggested in your letter is laughable. If you only knew the type they were!
Doubtless you could have used the $150 for the Taro [The Book of Thoth], but Germer your official representative asked for and okayed a reprint, as he did Liber Oz with which you were so disgusted. I have never been jealous of 687, and certainly never considered him a danger to me.
That is more than enough, I think. The last paragraph of this April first letter is almost the only thing you have written to me which constitutes a little guidance. I thank you very much for it. It was just the little push which I needed to start what I had promised myself and put off for year. I am not here because of the threats.
Now in response to yours of May 18th. I have not yet become aware of the “tragic” part in the settlement of this affair. Unless one could call it tragic that I did not start last June with $1200. to the good, instead of nothing now.
Most remarkable! Did some one quote me so correctly, or did your intuition supply it? You quote an oft repeated phrase verbatim in paragraph 3. And, paragraph 4 is just my modus operandi upon leaving any job I have ever held. Paragraph 5, and that is just it, “Pure Gold.” And Great Master though you be you did not know it. Don’t know it. An unfortunate lack of equipment to manifest it—I had a sad start making the preface to the World’s Tragedy look like a pink tea party, and Domby and Sons a day in the country. And you could have helped a lot, I have no doubt. You say so in Paragraph 5, by the way.
I was not asked to resign. If it had been put that way I assure you there would have been a very different reaction on my part. I thought you were expecting me to stick to it under any kind of difficulty, and that you via Germer were making it so on purpose. It is in a way more deplorable to find it was not so, that you really thought the things you wrote. And I showed that I was certainly not the man for the job by making such a pathetic mistake in assuming you were incapable of making such blunders in judgment.
You are wrong again on the S.Q.[1] “The Testes and Penis” have not bothered me for years. As dear old Regina [Regina Kahl]. If fact I thought for the last three or four years at Winona Boulevard, as did she, that I was about through with such activities. I find more recently that I can play a good game of golf with vigor if I have a good companion. But golf hardly ever passes my mind until I am out on the course.
I like your last letter quite a bit; it is better than any received for some time past. I don’t know that I quite agree that the outcome of my experiment here will be as you suggest. I have never had any desire to be a “raging, raving, ranting, roaring, swash-buckling fanatic.” Much as such a one may be needed. We will see. I have determination but enthusiasm is slow in developing.
This place is almost ideal now; after some real hard work it is livable with the minimum amount of toil. I have an excellent cook, housekeeper, companion and typist. We will leave it at that. Not talkative; leaves me alone, but urges me along so that it appears she is more interested in my doing a good job than I am myself. She really fulfills the outline of what they should be like which you gave in “Confessions” [The Confessions of Aleister Crowley]. And the boy is an excellent alarm clock, for one A.M. rising. It all seems to be working out to my advantage—may it continue. I am as near happy as I have ever been in my life. And I am away from people and can see the Stars at night. What a sky! If I don’t get some inspiration here I will just go out with a begging bowl.
I have to turn myself round a bit, and use my terrific energy in another direction. It is a bit slow at first, but I shall get there. My diary will be pretty verbose but I promised my self to write instead of talk—the former is so much harder for me than the latter. No one has to read it after all. That I pull off the Hat Trick is all that matters.
At this time—yes, I guess it will pass—I am inclined to say “God’s in heaven and all’s right with the world.” And so, if you had not failed to see that “This man’s pure gold” I might not be here to do a job which I have to do. May I succeed.
Affectionately and fraternally,
132
W. T. Smith
W.T. Smith c/o O. Lester Riggles R.R. #1, Box 164 Fallbrook, California
P.S. June 22nd.
Finally I decided to mail this letter, and not to throw it in the waste paper basket as so often before. Yes, scores of times. It unfortunately for me of course, has never been possible to write as one would to a friend, brother, teacher. Each sentence almost, yes and even word, I write I foresee your comeback: snub, sneer, sarcasm, satire. I am not always right. What then was the use to mail my letters receiving the answers as I wrote them?
The contents of yours has seldom been a surprise. “Here we go again” is the thought as I tear the envelope, and sure enough it is so. You should just read through your letters to me as I have been doing here. Have got as far as 1934.
Notwithstanding all that I look forward to receiving your letters. Perhaps I am morbid and like punishment.
W.T.S.
1—Smith noted: “Sex question, in case you should write and say I was afraid to write it out in full.”
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