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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Jane Wolfe
S.W.1.
Nov 8 [1943]
Dear Jane,
93.
Ten days more to my 45th Magical Birthday![1]
You will have been saying quite rightly that I am a great big hulking ugly brute of an animal hog not to have answered your two delightful letters long ago.
Honest to Gawd, kid, I had an accident and a devil of a chill on top of it; and I've been in and out of bed (to no profit!) most of the time for the last two months or so.
Now, yours of Sept 2. It made me very happy that you are pulling out of depression. But—oh really, how can you tolerate that 132 [Wilfred Talbot Smith]? Don't you know that he never misses a chance of sneering and jeering at you? In the most common stupid way, at that: it is the mark of the cheapest minds to mock the infirmities of age. (But any one with less trace of any decent human feeling I have yet to meet; that is why he simply must be a God. No getting out of it!) I am myself less likely to climb the Mittleggi [illegible] of the Eiger than I was 40 years ago!
I know that feeling of yours—we're in on yours of Sept 9 now—perfectly well. "Who are yer? Did Gawd make yer?" and it's quite natural: only limited. My landlady has a cat—perfectly black with the loveliest coat I ever saw—to whom I have to explain the rights of the matter all the time. Especially about my pet arm-chair when I want to work.
Did I say "work"? The Tarot book [The Book of Thoth] now runs to 300 pages, after 2 1/2 years in the press. The bulk of it goes to be printed off to-morrow—can you believe it?
I made several new discoveries of the first importance while actually revising it—do you remember "Magick" [Magick in Theory and Practice]? New chapters to write every week or so! But it did come out in the end—and they had to be stuck in. I've got the Special Universe aligned with modern science, and the Qabalah dovetailed not only with the Yi King but with Geomancy. And so on. For the first time in my life I'm fully satisfied with the scholarship of it. Everything fits like a glove. Behold me happy!
I'm ashamed to write it for the nth time, but you will really get your cards in a very short time now. It seems as if there were a curse on them; but perhaps I was pulled up so as to prevent me hurrying the rest of the Book, and shooting it out imperfect.
What you say about the Order is true, too true. But I do blame you for not having refused to receive Smith when he sneaked back, and made Jack [Jack Parsons] break the pledge he had signed only a month or so before.
Jack is a bit of a marshmallow Sundae, I fear. He does what the last person to talk to him tells him. I looked especially to you, on account of your Month on the Beach!
He is, moreover, too ready to emphasize with the sexual side of life (This weakness enable Smith to get his sympathies).
I ran into a man from Washington D.C. the other night—not a member—of the Order, but knows Jack. His analysis ran:
A yellow pup Bumming around With his snout glued To the rump Of an alley-cay."
Smith's prostitution of the Order, his use of it for his own antics: these things have discredited us in the eyes of all sensible people.
Do get Jack to see this: science, art, philosophy and the like are our prime care. The sex-ideas come a very long way behind. It is chiefly for the technical use that it matters so much. And all this frivolous promiscuity is the very reverse of the aim. We must intensify, concentrate, exalt this side of our nature.
Do get Jack to see this! He has so much A.1. in him that he must appeal against the Washington verdict!
Your letters have rejoiced me very much as far as they concern yourself; keep going!
Write me fully whenever you feel like it; and don't be shy!
Love to all the loyal!
93 93/93.
Yours ever,
Aleister.
You should if necessary go through my very long letter to Jack with him, help him to know me better.
1—Refers to the anniversary of Crowley's initiation into the Golden Dawn on 18 November 1898.
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