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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Jane Wolfe
The Ridge Hastings
Nov 22 [1945]
Private and Personal
Dear Jane,
93.
(You are the only person whom I am continuing in this familiar style: 'cos I knows ter, pussonly!) Keep the Lodge up to the mark in that, between themselves.
I hear, too, that the Rituals were gabbled through. It will not do. An initiation should make a life-long impression; if it do not, it is not an initiation at all. Do impress this on Jack [Jack Parsons]!)
I want a complete list of members with names, mottos, numbers (if any), ages, and addresses; also a brief account of the sort they are: occupations, social position, etc.
Why I have put off answering yours of Sept 26 and Oct 18 I just don't know, but so it was. (This is that PEN!) The ink came 6 weeks or more later!!
How any one can buy one after reading the notice enclosed with the ink is another thing I don't know. Most of those cleaning fluids are utterly strange to me, and to all those to whom I have shewn it. I have to shew it; people won't take my word for it when I try to describe it. Especially at the end, when they say that after all those ceremonies, it very likely won't work. Christ!
Still, for some strange no-reason, I have got to like the pen. For one thing, the lines are fascinating in their beauty.
Dec 1. die
As to your letters, I just can't follow all the vicissitudes of the Lodge or Lodges, and the total strangers of whom you write as if I had known them since 1881 and never missed seeing them for a week till last Friday!
Really, you don't have much sense about this. Perhaps when (and if!) I get that list, it will be easier. But then if must be kept up to date—at least once a fortnight. You remind me of "the bunch" in Babbitt—also of Aimée Gouraud's "bunch" of which I was supposed to be an inner light [?]. (I wasn't; but I let them play.)
If I came out to the Coast, I should join the Presbyterians after a week, to hang] on to what fragments of sanity you all leave me!
Jack's plan for the Lodge is not a bad one, if he will use the time of recess to get some idea of discipline, of dignity, of "reverence and godly fear" into the proceedings.
You do not need people of H's "own class and age", but seniors, steady folk who will take the O.T.O. for what it is: an effort to reconstitute human society on a basis of individual Freedom, Nobility, Generosity, and Wisdom. We don't want harum-scarum "good-timers".
Why must my Work be turned into a ribald jest and an excuse for scandal?
Yes, I heard of the Swine-dog's suicide. A wise course, but fifty years too late.
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours ever,
Aleister.
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. Day unto day uttereth speech, and week unto week sheweth knowledge; but
will month let month understand how it is that I can't
get on with this letter. With envelope ready addressed, and
you chits under them, it has lain on my desk all this time,
got smeared with butter, tea, egg, chocolate, God knows
what, but especially tobacco-juice. It is not that I have
forgotten; it's some queer feeling. I often get it by the
way; but not so badly.