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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to David Curwen
The Ridge, Hastings
11th September 1945
Dear Brother Curwen:
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
I am sorry to say that I have been somewhat indisposed for the last week and have not given your papers the full attention that they require. There are one or two remarks however which I may make at once on your teacher's references to me.
On page 5 he says that I have attempted to make an identification of myself with Marius de Aquila and Eliphas Levi and failed, but this is not a statement, it is only a speculation. Look at the middle paragraph on p. 58 of your Magick [Magick in Theory and Practice. As I there say it matters nothing, but as a point of interest I think you would like to know that my memory of Levi's Life received a very striking confirmation. I had made a number of notes of one thing and another more for amusement than anything else. And two or three years later Chacornac, the bookseller/publisher on the Quai Saint-Michel who had got a lot of Levi's private papers and correspondence, published a book on him, and I was extremely surprised and delighted to find that what he found in those documents corresponded exactly with those odd memories of mine.[1]
I cannot understand why your teacher should be so careless of fact. His letter says: "He was the student for a time of a brother of mine staying at Madura." I was only at Madura for three days and was nobody's pupil. I had a casual conversation for a couple of hours one morning with a local Camille, but there was no suggestion of any sort about tuition.
One incident at Madura is however very interesting, though it does not bear on the point at issue. I got on the right side of the local mahant and persuaded him to introduce me to a part of the temple where he said no European had previously been allowed, and there sacrificed a goat. At this time I was travelling entirely alone, except for a servant that I had brought from Ceylon. When I got to Madras I sent him back and awaited the boat to Calcutta. The weather being very stormy the steamer was not able to get into harbor and I was shipped on to it in a wherry of sorts. In this way my connection with the past was completely broken.
After arriving at Calcutta there was some talk at dinner about the ridiculous stories that the natives would put about any newcomer. All the servants, said my host, are telling everybody that you went into the most sacred shrine of the temple at Madura and sacrificed a goat. Can you imagine such nonsense? I having already learned to some extent to hold my tongue, replied "Yes, I wonder how they ever came to invent such rubbish like that." But needless to say I was in reality very much impresses. You see nobody had got on to the ship at Madras beside myself, neither European nor native.
I don't know why you think that I shall think more kindly of your teacher because he speaks so well of me. If he did, it would make no difference, but I cannot see that he gives me credit for anything except the value of my publications. As far as I can make out what he says is that I have in certain passages given an exact paraphrase of certain secret Sanskrit teachings, and in a certain sense this is very likely true. For example in the secret holy books which I do not suppose you have seen, there are passages of great sublimity and exaltation. But these come not through an intellectual source, but as the spontaneous expression of direct experience.
I am still struggling with the Slokas; it is all very interesting indeed, and I hope you will give me another week to study them, in the meanwhile please let me hear something from yourself. My impression is that you have already the knowledge for which you are asking, or at least the materials for putting that knowledge into the form wherein it can be of practical value, but then from what your teacher himself says, it would surely be unwise to commit the secret doctrine to written words, at least in a savage country.
On the other hand I am not quite sure as to what it is that you complain that you are not getting. I am most anxious to help you for the simple reason that you have on your own showing been capable of undertaking hard work and ordeals. Please make it absolutely clear to me exactly what it is you want from me, and I will tell you straight out, first, whether I can give it to you, and secondly whether I will.
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours fraternally,
1—Author and publisher Paul Chacornac (1884-1964) was at the epicenter of the occultist circles in Paris, and his friends and colleagues included authors such as René Guenon, many of who saw their works published through his publishing house.
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