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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to William Bernard Crow
[EXTRACT]
[4 April 1945]
My relations with the Gnostic Catholic Church are like the annals of the Poor—short and simple. My predecessor [Theodor Reuss] was rather keen about the Gnostics as the original founders of what, after many changes, has become the O.T.O.
During my six weeks in Moscow in 1913 e.v., I had what I can only call, almost continuous illumination, and wrote quite a number of my very best poems & essays there. Of these, the Gnostic Mass was one. It was inspired, I think, by St. Basil's.
It sounds rather extraordinary, but I seem to have had some premonition of the Revolution in Russia, and my idea was to write a Mass which would in one sense carry on the old Tradition, yet not come into conflict with Science. The whole thing was, as is almost invariably the case with my work, written straight off at white heat, and never underwent revision.
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