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Correspondence from Karl Germer to Jane Wolfe
K. J. GERMER 260 West 72 New York, N. Y.
April 26, 1944
Dear Jane,
93
You and Jack [Jack Parsons] have both made me very happy with you special effort, and I am sure A.C. will appreciate your help very much, and warmly. Nothing else has come in so far. No word from Mildred [Mildred Burlingame] or Ray [Ray Burlingame]. Georgia [Georgia Schneider] has written me that she was willing to take a loan, but that in that case she would have to forego her monthly contributions, and I dissuaded her. Roy [Roy Leffingwell] seems in a hell of a mess and about his problem and WTS [Wilfred Talbot Smith] later. I cannot expect anything from Max [Max Schneider]; he is the mainstay of the monthly contributions, and he has been so for the last few years. I do not think he has any reserves, as I noticed when the March tax was due. So I hate to ask him for anything special and thereby possibly endanger the regular contributions.—I had been able to make a special contribution on April 15th—but then the Feb. and March transfers had been unusually small. Still, if I can get something from Ray, as you indicate, the total should be enough for A.C. to pay up the most important dues on the Tarot [The Book of Thoth] and put the volume on sale.
I have had some extended correspondence with Rhea [Rhea Leffingwell] and Roy on the subject of WTS. A full letter is now on the way to A.C. and Roy asks a definite reply by cable how to act with regard to WTS and Liber 132.[1] Meanwhile he had asked for my advice and I have given it to him.
I have also touched this point of WTS in my last to Jack and sent him a copy of Roy's last letter to me. It might be as well for you to ask Jack to give it to you to read, as I think you should know what is developing. Anything I say about the problem WTS is of course, personal, and not authoritative.—Now: I have not lost, and never did lose, my skepticism about WTS despite all the wonderful loyalty with which Frederick [Frederick Mellinger] stuck up and tried to explain WTS. All this just does not count, at least not with me. I have had too many forcing magical symptoms to make me change my attitude easily.
My view is that WTS is in the same hole in which Achad [Charles Stansfeld Jones], Mudd [Norman Mudd] and several others found themselves. Any amount of attainment or merit does not count when you have to face certain demonic forces, it is there where "success is your proof". As I wrote to Jack: we all are servants of the Order. It has seemed to me for a long time that WTS was not pure in this aspiration. That he has some spot in his make-up where he thinks the Order has to feed, shelter and maintain such a high person as WTS—with his woman and child thrown in plus his car. My view has been that long ago he should have taken a job Helen [Helen Parsons] too) and, instead of drawing on the scant resources of the Order, to assist contributing. Had he done so, the Tarot would have been out long ago, and two or three other books, which A.C. trembles to get printed, too. I have felt that Jack was being sucked dry by the demands of WTS and Helen all the time. I had been sure that WTS was being kept at 1003 [1003 S. Orange Grove Avenue], and, if so, that his presence would be of the greatest danger—magically speaking, (same as his presence at Roy's ranch, as I warned him in January.)[2] I now have proof in Roy's letters as well as in Jack's. It is so utterly incomprehensible to me that all you people have not learned certain simple magical lessons.
There is the old story that if you put a rotten apple in the midst of healthy apples, it is not the latter who will cure the former, but the latter ones will rot too. If you permit yourself to have intercourse with a person who is in the phase where he is the object of violent attacks by malignant demons, and shows that he has not the maturity nor power nor purity to eliminate them instantly and continuously, the result will be that where this person resides, or where he contacts healthy people, these will be under the stress too. (Remember the period when A.C.—too early—attempted the Abramelin operation: both at Boleskine and in his London Temple all kinds of sinister forces manifested.) In the same way, Roy has been troubled for some time by visitations, evil astral forces and what not which he has the greatest difficulty in exorcising. I have warned him of the danger re runs in keeping contact with WTS as early, I think, as December 1943.—I cannot see how Jack can possibly succeed when WTS still lives—even only temporary— at 1003. However, I was doubly, trebly happy when he wrote me of the transfer of his $300: it's such acts more than anything else that may help him overcome the enemy. It also seems to show the attainment of a degree of independence from Smith's influence. It will be easier to get along.
Still, it may well be that A.C. will take a different attitude. It is his cable to Roy that will decide the issue and further action.
I can advise on "obsessions". I have no astral experiences whatever. I have always left the astral behind and tried to pierce straight through. We are all subjected to phases of blackness. I don't think you are exempt on any plane, where dualism exists, and this is practically everywhere. I think the goal for everyone is to realise the state where duality has been dissolved, a state where you can always take refuge in the midst of conflicts.—If you have cured the stammering in Hugh, I congratulate you. He should further improve. The man and woman part of his make-up do not seem to be bad: remember the passage of the androgyne and gynander in LXV, chapter 5.
Frederick has a government job, on which he is not allowed to write or speak. The work is indeed more to his liking, though he would probably not mind if the pay were better. We both like him very much. He will probably have written you in the meantime himself.
Don't worry too much about details such as lodge dues: pay them by deducting them from your monthly contributions. I know perfectly well that you are going the limit with the little you have. I also wish to thank your sister very warmly for paying for a copy of the Tarot in advance. And I thank you for making this possible.
Let me close now. I think I have mentioned all I have on my mind.
93 93/93
Yours ever,
Karl
Give me your sister's [Mary K. Wolfe] correct name, for me to write A.C. to send her her copy direct with an inscription. Or, will you write A.C. yourself?
1—Liber 132, or Liber Apotheosis, was a set of instructions for Wilfred T. Smith's magical retirement. 2—Written in the margin in Germer's hand: "This was the subject of A.C.'s injunction not to have any relations with W.T.S. apart from Liber 132."
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