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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to David Curwen
The Ridge, Hastings
21. 8. 45
Dear Mr. Curwen:
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Thanks very much for the opportunity of reading your typescript. I must confess that I was very disappointed. You seem to think that the objection to its acceptance was that it was so strange a subject; but to me on the contrary it appears unacceptable because so hackneyed. Consider just one point: the Prince has remained young and beautiful in a state of trance for some thousands of years, but on those conditions being disturbed he ages with considerable rapidity. This has been used in She by Rider Haggard, and more recently in The Lost Horizon by James Hilton. All the characters appear to me the merest puppets—the learned scholar, and the bad young man and the good young man, the bad young girl and the good young girl; nor can I find any dramatic quality in the story.
I am sorry because I had really hoped to find something original and eccentric. I am returning it by registered post.
With regard to your letter of 17th Aug. I cannot seem to get it into your head that the kind of knowledge which you require is not the kind which can be communicated; it must be won. If you will choose the practices which [you] prefer from the official papers and send me the record at the end of eleven months, I shall no doubt be able to help you.
You seemed to have failed to understand that Jocelyn is also a man's name. This one is well-known as having presented the Walker Cup for Competition at Golf.
About the Ophidian Vibrations: The O.T.O. is a system which leads ultimately to the knowledge of what they are, and how to use them. Their abuse being exceedingly dangerous, they cannot be revealed to all and sundry. You have to go through a very arduous training of the O.T.O.
I have never come across what you call the Bhairavi Diksha, but in my wanderings through India I cam across, I suppose something like fifty different systems which made similar claims, and the training for which was equally eccentric.
Now this is where I find that you are illogical. You do not tell me why you should believe that this training would extend the span of your life for a thousand years or so, yet you put yourself to the most incredible hardships and persist in spite of everything. Yet when you are given a simple and reasonable training to carry out—one in which the results guarantee it within a very short period indeed—you just cannot be bothered with it.
I am reminded of Hitler's famous remark, though he was far from being the first to make it, that you only have to tell a big enough lie to obtain credit.
In return for your kindness in sending me the film script I am sending you the paper that was issued some years ago. We had hoped to establish a regular headquarters for administering the treatment, but of course the war put paid to any such ideas.[1] Please return it at your earliest convenience.
Yours sincerely,
1—Crowley attempted to make a business of administering his elixir—called amrita—to patients during the 1930s. He came close to realizing his plans in 1938 and set up a clinic at 6 Hasker Street in London, but fell out with the financier of the project, John Bland Jameson.
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