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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Gerald Yorke
Aston Clinton Bucks
July 10 [1944]
My dear Gerald,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Please, kind sir, I do dislike with my poet's ear the sound Crowley. Couldn't you make it Aleister? More warmly still, I should appreciate A.C., which takes me back to climbing days, when friends were friends.
Many thanks for you most lucid letter; the barometer is rising slowly but surely. ("Long foretold, long last" wrote Admiral Fitzroy.)
Your welcome and very timely present is accepted in the spirit in which it was offered. Ta muchly!
(What follows is not an appeal: just to tell you my plans. The 'doodle-bugs' (scarabaeus or dung-beetle—you must have struck thousands in N. Africa, and it's a jolly good name) have rather upset things. Personal accounts make them out worse than the official story. W[inston] C[hurchill] went to S. London with the V-sign and the grin, got cat-calls; and a man chucked a chunk of rubble at them, with "Laugh that one off!" Bad show. This from my friend Robert Cecil (of F.O.) who spent week-end here. He can't sleep at all in London, except in snatches from exhaustion. He actually saw the Guards' Chapel smash. Now then, I think it's going to be much worse; I believe in their No. 2 weapon. So I must give up [93] Jermyn Street—unless it gives me up first! So I must hunt for a new place. Several friends would join me in a 'Colony'; so if you know a furnished house—even unfurnished might do—let me know. Only way out would be it they collapsed utterly, as they would if we had generals who would go ahead regardless, as the Russians do. So that's that!)
Binders delayed too, but you should get your copy next week.
Your memory—or mine—is wrong about the lawyers. It was only about £500, on the promise of which I had given up all my hopes in Berlin. Please remember that I looked upon you as my magical son and my successor, that I thought your reaction Freudian, and that I wanted to make you toe the mark. I knew quite well what I was doing; that you might have to break with your family, and smash your career; but then, you might have come out of it a Great Man of the very first class. You had already achieved quite notable results; and my whole life was bound up in my hopes for you.
I quite understand what you meant by dropping the formal greetings.
As to Liber AL, you cannot disagree with much of it more violently than I do. Any normal human being with decent instincts would be bound to do so.
BUT. It is the only known document which carries in itself proof that its author belongs to a totally different Order of Being; he sees things from a point beyond our conception. The ideas of a farmer are not those of the stoat that he nails to his barn-door.
I accept these facts as facts, and obey (very reluctantly and badly) without understanding, like one of Napoleon's vieux grognards.
But as to your Magical Oath, you can't break it. Unless you have found out how to unscramble eggs? Any act accomplished is irrevocable, and you must take the consequences. I am really surprised if you cannot see this; it is plain science and plain sense.
You should also understand that suspicion in this vague sense is a poison to yourself. I should certainly like to clear it up in a talk, and am sure that I can do so, even though I can form no idea of its nature. I don't think you have understood the simplicity which goes with the sincerity you admit.
I should love to come to Cambridge for a week-end; but it's a cross-country journey, and accommodation none too good. If you could put me up for a couple of nights, I might manage it.
How right you are about marriage and about whole-heartedness in general! For all that, lots of people otherwise tied up can be most useful by sympathetic action, although debarred from direct cooperation.
Please accept the small present of 7 Cards: no great value, I fear; but they have cost me enough!
Love is the law, love under will.
Best of all to you all,
A.C.
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