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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Louis Umfreville Wilkinson
1 Oct 1945
Dear Louis
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Thanks very much for your of the 29th and 30th. Of course I do not want another Star in the West. God forbid! I think I can make my position clear by an analogy, for I feel that in some way you have been missing on six cylinders. Suppose that you had been a friend of Arthur Orton, or whoever he is, in his latter days, and that you had acquired a great deal of mutual respect and affection. Then he discovers suddenly that all those years that you have been assuming that he was Orton and knew it. Obviously all his words and actions would have been liable to misinterpretation if the fact was that he was really Roger Tichbourne, and was really obsessed by that idea. It must have been that he had deceived himself completely, but anyway it was the key to his whole life that he believed himself to be Sir Roger C.f. the famous cross-purposes conversation between Frankie and O.W. in Holloway.) I quite agree too that the best approach is the indirect one. Obviously if some well known man makes half-a-dozen references to John Smith in his last book, I begin to be curious about John Smith, and how is it that I do not happen to have heard of him.
I am glad your news of J.C.P. [John Cowper Powys] is better, but after all he is getting a pretty old man. I am sorry that Deal should be so far away. It was a place I used to love. It was so clean and big and open, not a bit like England at all; the very character of the golf-course shewed it; all that corner of England is lovely. Of course you keep those samples, you might find them useful next time you see John Squire! Or is he dead too? Thanks for your page of corrections. With regard to p 97 you see how simple it is, what a short Sorites. Jones' secret ambition in life is to become (centuries hence) the National Bard par excellence, as Shakespeare is here. Is it then conceivable that any motive whatever would induce him to carry out a course which would damage his reputation as a Welshman? Yes, I think that deflation was not the best word. It is a pity we have not got a short way of saying "a pin-prick in a balloon".
Yours ever,
Aleister
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