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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Jane Wolfe
S.W.1.
Dec 29, '43 E.V.
My dear Jane,
93.
How cheering was it to receive your letter of the 26 ulto as WE BIG BISHNESS MEN shay!
I am delighted to see that you have been getting everything all worked out, and worked out well.
Jack [Jack Parsons] is the objective [Smith [Wilfred Talbot Smith] is out, an affaire classée: anybody who communicates with him in any way is out also; and that is that, and the best plan is to sponge the whole slate clean, and get to work to build up Thelema on sound principles. And no more of this brothel-building; let's use marble, not rotten old boards!] His trouble is his weakness, and his romantic side—the poet—is at present a hindrance. He gets a kick from some Magazine trash, or an "occult" novel, (If he only knew how they were concocted!) and dashes off in wild pursuit. He must learn that the sparkle of champagne is based on sound wine; pumping carbonic acid into urine is not the same thing.
I wish to God I had him for six months—even three, with a hustle—to train in Will, in discipline. He must understand that fine and fiery flashes of Spirit come from the organization of Matter, from the drilling of every function of every bodily organ until it has become so regular as to be automatic, and carry on by itself deep down in the unconscious. It is the steadiness of one's heart that enables one to endure the rapture of great passion; one doesn't want the vital functions to be excitable.
I hope that by the time you get this my letter to him of Oct 19 will have done its job (did he get it? He wired on Nov 26 that he was writing; but I haven't heard yet). In any case, it won't hurt him if you send him this letter.
Thanks for remarks on Sara [Sara Northrup]: difficult for one to say much, or to answer her letters. She must label her remarks "serious" or "jesting" as the case may be: I want to be helpful, but not to have my leg pulled.
I am very interested in your new patients, or pupils, or whatever they are. You should write oftener; it gives me the greatest pleasure to hear from you. There is hope of definite news for you about the Tarot [The Book of Thoth] within the next fortnight: you shall have proofs by Air Mail, and damn the expense!
I have been hatefully up against it for 3 months: illness, a quite bad accident, almost total failure to get secretarial help—see how I'm writing this!—and so on. The great high light has been the arrival of McMurtry [Grady McMurtry]. I hope he will have knocked some of Jack's illusions out of him. He actually thought that I was "pompous"!!!!! How you could have let him harbour any such idea beats me! God forgive you!
Well, dear girl, here's all the Blessings in my bag for the Happiest New Year that ever was or will be!
93 93/93.
Yours ever,
Aleister.
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