|
Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Karl Germer
The Ridge, Hastings Sussex England.
April 29th '45 E.V.
Dear Karl,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
This is not going to be a very cheerful letter. In the first place it has proved much more difficult to make a proper [illegible] than I thought. In the second, I seem to have been going to pieces for the last few weeks. The question of removing the sunken wrecks at Port Said was hard enough, but the threatened collapse of the [illegible] at Suez is a very different story. I ought to know by tomorrow afternoon how seriously I have got to take this, but in the meanwhile the anticipation has been getting terribly on my nerves.
The result is that I decided to take the bull by the horns. Miss Kingston is going on with the preparation of a uniform set [of letters that make up Magick Without Tears], but this is a very slow business. It seems best to let you have as considerable number of them as are immediately available, without waiting for revision, correction, retyping, and so on.
I am sending accordingly, 48, more or less complete as they stand, but will no doubt be better for a little brushing up, if and when I feel able to get on with the work.
Love is the law, love under will.
Fraternally,
Aleister.
P.S. 29-4-'45 E.V. 4.0 P.M.
I have just got back from the doctor. (He has himself been ill, and I had to fill in a month's record of my "doings". You do not remember my Tunis poems, I make no doubt. Myself, I remember only the refrain: "Don't mix up cancer of the rect-tum-tum with car-ci-no-ma of the I-le-um!") The former disease most insidious, and I was getting various symptoms that suggested it. However, I got a careful examination this afternoon, and the results were quite negative. It is simply rotten of me to have let the suspicion prey on my mind for so long; but it did! (See note over*)
There are, however, troubles of a different kind. Grant [Kenneth Grant] has not made good in the housework; so if I am to keep him, I must dig out more cash, and I don't feel like doing so. In fact, he is leaving at Whitsun, and he will have to find board and lodging somewhere nearby, at £2 a week or near it. Well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Meanwhile, here is the list of the 48 letters that I am sending by sea.
Love to Sascha [Sascha Germer] and to your own dear self, with better hope of seeing you again in this incarnation!
Aleister.
P.P.S. Curious how odd things sometimes obsess! For weeks past I have been sad continuously about that alley of chestnuts on the Canal at the foot of the [illegible] Str.! It was always infinitely dear and beautiful; and now I suppose it has been knocked to pieces by insane machinery! I never expected to see it again—and yet! Of all the beauties of that incongruous loveliness I think it has always held the first place in my heart. Nothing in Paris to come anywhere near it. As for London and New York—bah! But why? There is no personal association about it; it is the Thing-in-Itself that somehow [illegible] me of personal things—that first week after you met me at Gera; something happened then which is altogether of Eternity.
I wonder how you feel! A.C.
P.P.S. Chits this A.M. from Jane [Jane Wolfe] and Frederic Mellinger.
I am quite O.K. Sane and cheerful.
F.M. [Frederick Mellinger]—well, dash it all, he gives not a hint, not even a [illegible] hope, of coming over here and seeing me!
Yet the whole letter is lament that he can't make "mundane contact" [illegible] me! How queer people are!
A.C.
*Note. If I had been hit, it would have meant (a) a major operation, with 1 chance in 20 of survival (b) fixing an artificial fistula, most awkward, clumsy, painful etc etc (c) prospect 80% at least of recurrence (d) general hell.
|