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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to William Bernard Crow
Aston Clinton Bucks
25-5-44 E.V.
Dear Brother and Right Reverend Father in God,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
I was delighted to have yours of the 23rd with the very interesting pamphlets. As to these, however; in view of the almost total lack of Fire-Fighting services in Rome, my appreciation of the virtuosity of your Imperial rendering of this Violin Concerto is disturbed.
It is just this sort of question that I am anxious to discuss with you. I had my own bellyful of squabbles about Masonic jurisdiction; they, and the policy of "Don't say or do anything that might disturb or offend anybody" wrecked the whole fleet. So the Liturgical hair-splitting, and child's puzzles: "When is a seredos not a seredos?" did more to reduce the church to chaos than all the combined assaults of infidelity.
Personally, I am thrilled by whether Pugnacious Patriarch handed to Battling Bishop in A.D. 364 (not A.D. 367, curse and damn your soul to everlasting Hell, you blaspheming heretic—where's my Rack and Boot and Scavenger's Daughter?) but I know it's all nonsense, and won't help Bill Smith to pay his rent, or get honest beer, or get him free from bureaucratic granny.
These be delightful pastures for grey winter evenings by the fireside when the days' work is done; but to think that you can resurrect them into vital issues is a dog's delusion.
Certain remarks in your letter encourage me to think that you sell all this as clearly as I do; will that serve as my excuse for what you may think the frivolity, scurrility even, with which I have made free to write?
For many years now I have been gradually "fading out" all the sonorous titles and rituals to a dim picturesque historic background, and kept ever closer to a simple practical assault on the Future. (There is not a word in those pamphlets about what all those formidable organizations mean to do next year, or next week.)
Now please don't throw the Tarot [The Book of Thoth] at my head! (It is a weighty volume, with sharp edges.) It is necessary to have a language, a chart, a Treatise on Navigation. But the whole trend of the book is Forward!
About your copy, you really must have one, especially as the Tarot is one of your courses of study. And orders have been coming in so astonishingly fast that the editor may very well be sold out before the copies are all bound. I should hate to have to tell you about the Ten Virgins! Couldn't you make sure, as several others have done, by sending me half on account, and the balance on delivery? Probably about the end of June.
Yes, do come across to lunch: there's an A.1. 'bus service from Watford.
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours fraternally,
666.
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