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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Gerald Yorke
The Ridge, HASTINGS
21. 12. 45
Dear Gerald,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Thanks very much for your letter of no date, but it arrived 2 or 3 days ago. I have been half insane with work of one sort or another,—mostly another—the kind that doesn't matter, and has to be done.
The thing that sticks out a mile in your letter is the remark about your eyes. Please let me worry you very seriously about that. For goodness sake get the best man; make sure he is the best man. I am eternally grateful to you for steering me to Hudson; his glasses lasted over ten years and then needed only the very slightest change. You remember poor old Bayley [James Gilbert Bayley]; he got cataract a couple of years ago, and he went to somebody, and the last time I wrote to enquire he said the man had "muffed" it. Of course Bayley is one of those men who has a special gift for coming out at the little end of the horn; but eyes are too serious to joke about, and I reckon it perhaps as one of my many great blessings that they are still holding out a good deal better than might be expected at my age, though I frequently kick myself because I might have taken a good deal more care than I did, and they might have been a good deal better than they are. But at least I have this in justification: that the abuse of my eyesight to which I plead guilty was part of the purchase price of that "black egg without haggling". (Hudson said: "Anyhow, you've seen 10 times as well with them as any man alive")
A letter from Prof[essor] Butler [Eliza M. Butler] turned up the day after yours, and I replied immediately by hand. She was suffering from the hallucination that she could get rooms in St. Leonards for the summer. In any case she is coming down here to see about it, and proposes to devote the afternoon of New Year's Day to me. I think we ought to have a very agreeable and illuminating time.
I am apparently finished with the ancient excavations of my odontological pastures, but have to wait till the Equinox or thereabouts when the old boy is proposing to make me a permanent substitute. I am still waiting with a certain tremor for his account for the past work.
It is particularly worrisome, because in my last letter from New York I got a most curious communication to the effect that the monthly arrangement which has worked so long and so well might be in some way modified. Karl [Karl Germer] has been in partnership of sorts with some Czech Jew; they were trying to put up some kind of Engineer's Journal in America, and they could not get enough advertisements, so the whole thing went more or less phut. So he is coming to England (the Czech, not Karl) with his tail more or less between his legs. What his message can be is rather baffling. (P.S. A sunsequent chit is somewhat reassuring.)
After telling me quite brusquely that nothing would arrive in January, he went on without a break "However . . ." —then all this stuff about this man's visit. But he doesn't say that the message will be an equivalent for what it ought to be.
You will naturally think I'm a perfect idiot to be nervous about it. I cannot believe that anything is seriously wrong there, as I should have heard of it from other sources; but I am in a nervous state. Rather foolishly, I thought I would sing my Swan Song by entering for the Championship of the Hastings Chess Club. I have won the first 2 games and the third—which I played yesterday against the strongest member of the Club, a famous International—was left rather in my favour. At least I think that although he can get a draw by perpetual check if he wants to, he may be so eager to get a win that he will do something foolish.
My hopes in this direction are based on the fact that he lost his game a couple of weeks ago to a man named Winser, who is certainly very hot stuff. I have only played him 3 or 4 games and I think, if memory serves me, that he won the majority.
However, it is always very different when you are playing with a clock. Pray for me!
In the meantime I will pray for you about your eyes. Do listen to grandfather, and give it more serious attention than you have given anything else in your life!
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours fraternally,
Aleister.
P.S. Yours of 18th. "Is Saul also among the prophets?" My critical method has never been Ex pede Herculem; but I see no harm—nor any special good, in your opening salvo. But why 6 and 6 only? No mention of Tantras? I don't understand your final paragraph. Surely Advaita is the antithesis of 0 = 2. How did Thou and That come to be? Can't argue this in a letter; it needs a talk. I thought Advaita was Monism.
A.C.
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