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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Grady McMurtry
[Postmarked 1 December 1943]
Note.
Like Mark Twain's yarn about
"A pink trip slip for a two-cent fare Punch, brothers, punch! Punch with care! Punch in the presence of the passengare!"
Your
"I have heard the Mass of Mendes Chanted by a slitted tongue"
Haunts me. I find myself repeating it all the time.
Deduction. It is one of those very rare verses that compel.
Analysis.
1. It is absolutely simple. 2. Its music is perfect. 3. Each significant word pulls its weight in the boat. 4. There is no superfluous after effect. 5. There is no straining after effect. 6. It creates a clear and precise image: one is carried away to witness the ceremony, as if one were actually there.
Re 6. Allan Bennett taught me a lot once, so much that I wrote a whole book "Sir Palamedes the Saracen" on the principle which he pointed out.
In "The American Mariner", Coleridge wrote:
"And ice, mast high, went floating by, As green as emerald."
Not mountain-high, or cathedral high, or some big thing chosen for wished-for effect; but "mast-high".
That takes the reader right on board the ship.
A.C.
Note.
Eliphas Levi says "Nature conforms herself to the statement of the Magician."
This is true when the Magician is thinking as such; it happens to me sometime quite unexpectedly that I get into the right state. This state often results from an "Act of Truth". (Details of this by word of mouth.)
Some little time back a sister arrived, mad at having got too late to her tailor. I said: "That shop's no good to you; I'll bring up the women from mine" "Alas! They'll be shut by now." "I will try". So I brought up the tailoress, and they started to talk business. I left them to it, but, coming back into the room for something, heard the tailoress say: "O.K., I know who can do that for you; a little old clockmaker . . ."
I was suddenly impelled to say: "Oh yes! I want a second-hand watch." She said she would ask him about it. Then it passed right out of my mind again.
But the next morning I came in from shopping to find a small parcel—no name or anything—had been left for me by "a respectable-looking sort of man". He would leave no name or message.
There was the second-hand watch!
It was quite beyond the means of either woman to have bought it—about 60 guineas it must have cost.
That shows you one of the ways in which Magick works.
I bore you will all this because a phrase from your first letter has stuck in my mind, and crops up every day or so.
"I proclaim an era of abundance."
So I am wondering whether you have not already this magical power. Your "divine self" was perhaps referring to the Order, when it made you say this.
I am putting it on record because of the designs for you which are slowly cooking.
666.
Note.
The best pun I can remember was made by a Pope! In 1869-70 there was an Oecumenical Council at Rome-[illegible] of the church from all over the world. Object: to declare the Pope infallible. Those in favour of the plan were called Infallibillistic. They were his guests: it cost like hell. Goaded, he exclaimed: "Questi infallibilistic me faranno fallire". (These infallibilisti will make me bankrupt.)
A.C.
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