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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Kenneth Grant
G.K.Grant Esq
The Ridge Hastings
Feb 13 [1945]
Care Frater,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Glad to have yours of 11th. Unless we meet Colonel Pacton’s brother,[1] I should be able to hand you the doings on Friday or at the week-end: you don’t say whether you can come, or, if so, on which day.
But now! Here I put on my mountain boots, and strap on extra tightly the steigeisen, and jump, and jump, and jump.
“Steady pay”. “Some source of steady income”! How many a tall ship have I seen wrecked on that abominable reef!
Woe's me!
There is no such thing, in this world, as security.
J.P. Morgan, who, the previous week had saved France from bankruptcy, was stopped at the French frontier for lack of cash to put up the deposit due on all cars entering France! He had to send a man back to the first big town while he kicked his heels at the douane.
I myself at the outbreak of the skirmish ’14-’18 saw millionaires, dozens of them, all stranded in Berne without the price of a drink!
My poor innocent child, you don’t seem to have the right idea at all about Magick.
You must take risks in any Magical Operation, if only because it is to insult the Gods (or the Masters) to hint that They may fail to do Their share of the Work.
There is a big case in California pending at this minute. A man [Wilfred T. Smith] went into an Ordeal, from which he was to emerge a God. He was to cut sharply across all old ties.
This is the sort of thing that might have happened. He picks out the first stranger, goes up to him, and says: “Good morning. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. I am (? whatever God he had become). I have just come out of my Great Magical Retirement, and I propose to spend the first six weeks with you”. The Gods would have sent the right man to meet him.
Instead—so far as I can make out from a cable received this morning—he is coming out as abject as he went in: no idea but to batten on his old associates as before.
Of course such an one must be prepared for charges of vagrancy, lunacy, or what not; that is all part of the game. But I believe that almost any man with a scrap of personality, could make a success of such an Opus—having a Banner to uphold. (He had one—claimed he was fanatically devoted to 93.)
Unless you can believe (Belief as that fire burns; i.e. you stake the success of your plans on the chance of its truth), you can never get more from Magick than the power to do various mild miracles; you will never attain to the Great Magick, which is identical with Life itself. Love is the law, love under will.
F∴ly [Fraternally]
666.
1—'Colonel Pacton's Brother' is the title of a story written by Crowley on a single day in August, 1920.
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