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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Grady McMurtry
S.W.1
Dec 15 [1943]
Care Frater H. A. [Hymaneous Alpha]
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Yours of 13th very welcome.
Letters get delayed at this time of year, even between parts of the same town: so don't fret yet!
Thanks for £4.10.0. 7/3 duly credited: there will be either—3d or 10s due when you decide about the Diary. Decision urgent, too.
While on the subject of Disks, it might be wise to consider the second £50. This world reeks with temptation to spend money, and it gets frittered away. You should reinvest interest as it falls in; pretty soon you have enough to do something worth while. [Excuse your Great-Grandfather! sometimes he gets loose.]
I should know by Monday whether that £5 will be needed: if so, will let you know.
Now for one bit of bad news, I find that the extra stuff in Taro has eaten more paper than we reckoned; so I may have to buy the next block that comes into the market. One can't tell at all when or how much; so all one can do is to sit tight, spend the minimum, save every penny, collect every penny, and wait. (One can't even guess at the amount: might be £10 might be £50, might be £500. In the last case one would split it, or arrange a credit.)
The good news is much bigger, and something for you to bite on. Lord Tredegar [Evan Morgan] is shutting up his country house, and getting rid of his housekeeper-secretary-manageress. This is a Mrs. Sutherland [Cordelia Sutherland]—with him for 15 years—and she is seriously interested in Thelema. In fact, she wants to join up and work for us. This is simply the Answer To Prayer! for it would be impossible to find any one more suitable. She could organize the whole business, for one thing; for a third, she could manage the Grand Dessein and even help you a lot with working out the details; lastly, she has numberless connexions with the best people in this country.
Obviously, we can't pay her. But, as things are, she would come in on a sort of commission basis, with perhaps a shadow-salary.
The crux is that she can't feed the 5000 without at least the "7 florins and a few small fishes"; in other words, she must have some capital to handle at the start. Hence, at the end of the year, when she is free, we could use that 5 or 10 grand of which we spoke.
Now that we have her, the one missing asset, in default of which all previous plans have petered out, it is worth while to make a serious effort about this. You cannot emphasize too strongly the value of her concurrence. [Note that Tredegar owns 121,000 acres in S. Wales, mostly coal, as well as whole streets in the City of London, mostly bombed to bits. Of course the Estate, as such, was not managed by her; but you see the scale. By the way, though we (T[redegar] and I) are old and close friends, I never ask him for assistance on the small scale. When he gets his compensation for the bombing, I may suggest his putting up a quarter of a million sterling or so. Indeed, it would be good business to invest the 10,000 bucks merely on the prospect of his coming in big, later on.]
I am sending you a somewhat untidy gift for the Birth of the New Year on Dec 22; but you'll thank me as a poet when you have found out its value.
"England Stand Fast!" is not as topical as that. Every Sunday there is great rejoicing about our victories over [illegible] of the [illegible] and Og king of Basham!
E.[ngland] S.[tand] F.[ast] is to be a classic. Ditto, my July 4 Hymn for you—have you seen it? If not, let me know: I'll send a copy.
Now I must turn to other letters—BLAST Xmas!
Love is the law, love under will.
Fraternally
666
[envelope addressed to:] Lieut. Grady L. McMurtry 1684th Ord MM Co (Avn) (Q) APO 635 AAF 473 c/o Postmaster U.S. Army
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Saturnus [