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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to David Curwen
Aston Clinton.
October 9th, 1944
Dear Sir:
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Yours of October 3rd. Really now! Even when you are trying to apologize and asking favours, you cannot keep the sneer and the snarl and the grumble out of your letters.
Lest I should be misjudging you, I submitted them to two experts. One said: "he should use a hyphen—cur-wen: either would fit." The other: "a cantankerous old curmudgeon."
There, you seem to want people to put on a peepshow for your benefit. I suggest you go to Brighton Pier, a penny will initiate you into "What the butler saw."
I do indeed, as you say, see the state of mind you are in. But what I do not see is one glimmer of true aspiration. You have much knowledge; but where is there any understanding?
Read "One Star in Sight," (Magick [Magick in Theory and Practice] pp. 229 sqq.); do you feel fitted to undertake that programme?
In the book I am now working on, "Aleister Explains Everything" [Magick without Tears] I devote a chapter to showing why my style is so merry and bright. Briefly, because I am bubbling over all the time with the rapture that initiation brings; should I then be gloomily pious? Think of H.P.B. [Helena Petrovna Blavatsky] roaring with gusts of blasphemous laughter, introducing her star pupils in public with "He's a bloody fool" and so on.
Whereas you, soured, embittered, and frustrated, do nothing but complain.
I don't know what the devil you did in your last incarnation, or what horrors lurk in your horoscope (I should like to see this), but it's obvious that nobody is going to throw a bone to a dog that asks for it by barking and snapping.
Then—the questions you ask!! E.g. which are the Planetary Trumps? If you couldn't understand the plain attributions given over and over in the book, what can you understand? They are actually printed on the reproductions of the cards.
I give up.
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours Sincerely,
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