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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to David Curwen
Tel: Baldslow 19 Hastings, Sussex
10. 8. 45
Dear Mr. Curwen:
Many thanks for your letter of no date, but it begins with a quotation from Omar.
I have just dictated what I feel is a very poor attempt at your Nativity, but really I do not know when I have seen a figure so difficult to interpret. At least it goes with what I know about you personally, and I am grateful that you close a long paragraph of complaints by saying that there is no complaint.
Let me tell you about the Ophidian Vibrations. This name was suggested by Jocelyn Walker—son and heir of the great Whiskey man with whom I wandered about Germany for some time twenty years ago. I suppose I must call it a bit of luck that my answer to your letter should coincide with the Atomic Bomb. (Curiously enough one of the people working on it was a disciple of mine for some time in the Abbey of Thelema in Sicily.)
Now suppose you go to one of the few men who really know all the secrets about the Bomb, and say now I demand a complete explanation of this whole affair. He will obviously reply first of all that he is under the most stringent and solemn oaths not to do anything of the sort, and in the second place he would say, much as I should like to explain it I cannot do so because you know nothing whatever of the theories and experiments on which it is based. You must undertake the training before such things possess any meaning for you whatever. An indication of the course of training is given very simply and clearly in "One Star in Sight" which you will find in Magick [Magick in Theory and Practice] p. 229. Most great Greek scholars regard Sappho's "Ode to Venus" as the finest example of Greek poetry that has come down to us, but how am I to prove this to you; how am I to justify my belief? You must not only know the language thoroughly but have read and understood all acknowledged masterpieces before you could begin to lay down a basis for your judgement.
I think you have read all the right books, as well as one or two of the wrong ones, but what you need is practice. In my various writings or transcripts, there are a number of practices stated with perfect clearness. Our system is for you to pick out those which you think will suit you best, put them into motion and report after eleven months what you have done, then I can usefully judge which practices are suiting you and what mistakes, if any, you are making in those which you have chosen. In other words it is not I that am denying knowledge to you, but the reverse. I am not a guesser. It would be no good at all your joining the O.T.O. which is the only Society of the kind to which you refer, because you would have to go on for a number of years taking everything on trust, and at the end of the time I think it is very long odds whether you would receive the necessary invitation to proceed.
You do not want any proof from me about my own position because I am not asking you for anything, and any questions such as you suggest are mere impertinence.
Incidentally you do not seem to have grasped, though I thought that I had explained rather fully, that the series of Letters is merely an attempt to summarize what I have learnt myself, covering the ground as completely as possible in language suitable to the ordinary person.
With regard to the last paragraphs: I cannot understand why you fail to relies how things stand. Look up in your Magick for the definition of the word, that will tell you the nature of the result. As to the Indications, they are contained in all those books of instruction which you have read so carefully but of which you fail to get any value because you do not do the practices.
I well know that there are lots of people such as you describe, but when they come within my orbit it is not a month before they are running like rabbits. Why? Because I tell them they have to work. This applies to you. If you would pick out two or three practices from the official instruction in The Equinox, and put as much into them as you would into any of the other departments of your life, at the end of a year we should have something which we could talk about.
Love is the low, love under will.
Yours fraternally,
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