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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Jane Wolfe
The Ridge Hastings
May 10 [1945]
My dearest Estai,
93.
Yours of April 13. Ever it was a Friday, gladdened my heart no little.
Many thanks for the copies of AL—I have now got all I can use for the present—and the carton of good things. You ask me about chocolate: the powdered kind is plentiful, but the bars that one eats are almost unprocurable, and in any case require coupons. Oh for the good old times—fifty years ago now!—when one could get anything one wanted, or go any place that took one's fancy, without any argument or bother!
What you say about Aimée [McPherson] is too true; but I had the portrait of her in "Elmer Gantry" in my mind, for one thing; for another, be practical! If we had only 10,000 or so of these verminous creatures, we could have a temple, and a blue-print made of the Mass [Gnostic Mass] by professionals under my eye; also a Press of our own, and produce the dozen old classics of the first importance which are now in danger of being lost to the world for ever. Some already are lost. It is one continual agony for me. Worst of all, the despair into which I sink constantly deeper and deeper crushes my creative genius. I ask myself "Why should I start to write so-and-so when there is not one chance in 50 of getting it even as far as the typescript stage?" I tell you it's intolerable—it's killing me by inches. All very well to talk about "the little leaven", and trusting the Masters, and Time, and the Gods; but I'm human, dear Jane, all too human, alas!
It made me very happy indeed to hear of the Three Days of Festival. Human, yes, human! In fact, I'm like a silly baby in these matters. Don't any of you forget it!
You never know when there will come forth One seed to multiply an hundred-fold, a thousand-fold, oh there's no limit! But it is the first fruits for which I am always looking with such eager (yet such painful) zest!
All my love to you and M.K. [Mary K. Wolfe] and all my dear brothers and sisters and comrades in the Work.
93 93/93.
Ever yours,
666.
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