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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to David Curwen
The Ridge, Hastings
19. 9. 45
Dear Brother Curwen:
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Your letter of 14th September is extremely interesting. It has cheered me up quite a lot during a most depressing week of absolutely impossible weather. There is only one maddening ingredient and that is your minute insertions in handwriting, which in nine cases out of ten refuse to be interpreted even after repeated efforts on my part and that of Miss Kingston.[1]
There is a certain hope of my turning up in London for a day or two in the course of the next month. Have you got a telephone at Melcombe Street, if so I could ring you up and make an appointment a day or two before, when I know my plans in detail?
I am not at all sure whether in certain cases we are talking about the same thing when we use the same word. I quite understand in the conventional sense when you say alcohol is taboo. But there is another sense of the word alcohol.
One of my earliest researches was with Prof. Hughes, who at that time had a job at Eastbourne College and I did some holiday work with him. We discovered that if you took the usual explosive mixtures of hydrogen and oxygen or hydrocarbon and chlorine, and some others, and dried them so completely that there was actually no water in the mixture, you could pass as much electric spark as you liked and it would not explode.
Again at the Royal Society, I was shown a specimen of benzene which had been continually dried for I think it was something like sixteen years. It was being heated by [a] powerful spirit lamp in an open flask to a temperature of over 200˚ centigrade, and it did not boil.
I think there is something congruous with such phenomena in alchemy. For instance we regard alcohol as the menstrum for any desired kind of astral energy. But if that alcohol has any impurity (when I say any I mean like one part in 10 million) that impurity is incidentally seized upon by qliphotic elements and so of course is an astral poison.
This tantric chemistry [. . .][2] deals so much with physiological forms of energy that it becomes perfectly impossible to expound the doctrine openly in writing.
Let me tell you what appears to me a very funny story. It bears on the point:
I had been giving my hostess a lift on my way back from the Chess Club and I happened to mention my birthday and say "Oh, I have not done your horoscope, have I?" She admitted that I had not, and I asked her for the date, which she gave, but she did not know the hour. As you know, I make a point of telling people beforehand what the hour is when they give me the date, and after we got back, I thought over the matter and sent down a note with my supper tray—" Mrs. S. [Ellen Symonds]—within an hour one way or the other of midnight." The horrible old hag who does my room is a peculiarly spiteful and ill-disposed person, and she took this note with the most important and serious secrecy to the lady's husband, whispering "I thought you ought to know what's going on sir." She thought it was an assignation!
So you see that even in these days of enlightenment you cannot get past stupidity and malice, and one has to be extremely careful.
I feel accordingly that there is much that you would tell me in a private conversation which it would be very unwise to write. The same applies to my communication in your direction.
I have not read "The Elixir of Life" in the Hints on [Esoteric] Theosophy book, and I should like to. Moreover I should very much like to read Hung Mung and it is very kind of you to offer to type it, but I am afraid it might mean a great deal of work and the use of a great deal of time which you can doubtless ill spare.
I am very interested in your Vision of the Black Line and the vivid green. I am inclined to think that it may have some connection with the 31st Hexagram of the Yi King, which is the beginning of the second half of the great work explained in this classic.
I [have] been working on the Yi King almost continuously for something over forty years and I have solved several of the problems including the one which Confucious admitted was too much for him. At the present moment I am suffering intensely from frustration. I need the constant daily help of someone who is interested in these subjects. I know so much about the Yi that I really cannot go on putting it all down unless I have another mind as a mirror; or dictograph. I feel sure from what you say about the Chokti that you have all the information that is required and surely there are sufficient hints, especially in Magick, to make the alchemical side of the business perfectly clear.
I can tell you this much, that what is required first of all is the universal menstrum charged with the type of energy that is required to achieve your purpose, whatever it is. I cannot tell you in so many words because the secret is a commercial property, and I am pledged to others not to divulge it, except through the regular course of training, and as things are in England at present I do not see any way in which this could be done. If you were a high degree freemason it would be easy to affiliate you, but I had this after discovering it for myself, though I was not at the time aware of the fact, from John Yarker and Theodor Reuss. They showed me the obligation in honour to accept the pledges that they had themselves given to Grand Lodge and the Sovereign Sanctuary.
What I can do is to write one of the Letters in the series in which the method of performing the great work is summarized, and if my health were not in the precarious state which it is at present I would sit down and write it out. As it is my only hope is to persuade Miss Kingston to give me a little more of her time, and whether this is possible I cannot say. But sooner or later it will be done.
There is one point on which I am not at all sure—whether you understand and accept the fundamental theory of the universe, and this is given in about half-a-dozen of the Letters already written, but I do not like to ask you to subscribe for these Letters; I have a peculiar instinct against taking money from you, I do not want you to be able to say to me "Thanks very much but I knew all that thirty years ago."
If you would allow me to choose the Letters which I think necessary it would have to be on the very clear understanding that I was not in any way dealing dishonourably with you.
Now you mention it, I seem to remember Mr. Trevor Lloyd and his practice. I should like to know further details; how long does he have to hold his tongue every day to get these manifestations to occur? And is there any special technique in the holding? You are of course acquainted with the Yogic practice of sawing the fraenum linguae with a sliver of bamboo until you can turn back the tongue in the mouth so that the amrita is prevented from draining away into the digestive system and being lost. Is this another form of the practice?
The secret Holy Books: You have of course Liber LXV which is reprinted in Equinox Vol. III (1), commonly called the Blue Equinox which I think you possess; then there is Liber VII of which I have not myself a copy at the moment. I advertised three of four years ago for any books of mine and one set of the secret Holy Books [Volume I, Volume II, Volume III] was reported, but the man wanted a price which was at the moment beyond my convenience to pay. I think I shall try again now that I am less cramped financially than I was at that time.
Many thanks for the photograph, which I return herewith. I am sending you my latest picture postcard, but there is something about it in the nature of a joke.
Looking forward to seeing you in the near future.
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours fraternally,
Enc.:
1—Crowley's secretary/typist at the time.
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