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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Louis Umfreville Wilkinson
6 March 1946.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.
Your letter arrived this morning, Monday; that is fortunate because then I can dictate my answer in the afternoon and post it to you on Wednesday. By the way another letter like this and I shall have to start writing an entirely new Commentary! Let me see how far I can explain.
NUIT is space, or all possible predicates. HADIT is any point of view. HERU-RA-HA (-Ra-Hoor-Khuit plus Hoor-pa-kraat) is what I may call the dominant, the key in which all the music of life must be written for the next two thousand years or thereabout.
"Wilkinson" is a rough name for the sum total of all those possibilities which have been experienced by the point of view which for convenience we call "Wilkinson"—I am perfectly aware that the expression "Wilkinson" appears on both sides of the equation, which vitiates the whole business! But that cannot be helped. It is so.
In this whole business one will be constantly on snags, logical snags, of this kind. The logic whose form applies to our intellectual procedure is not applicable when we come to the discussion of the infinities. Take the first and most obvious example, 0 = 2. To understand this equation you have to learn to think in this peculiar fashion.
I have discussed the above with Miss Kingston,[1] who said at first that she did not understand, but that you would. Reassured on this point, she changed her own attitude a little, and admitted that she had some sort of idea of what I was driving at, and thinks that if she studied it thoroughly she might get out the meaning.
I have spent practically the whole morning thinking out the above with the special purpose of doing my best to help you. It seems to me that something of the kind must be done, because these personifications are of the substance or quintessence of the Book itself.
I quite agree with your remarks about Macauley's schoolboy, but there is something to be said on the other side. Let us take Das Kapital as an instance. This book is completely allergic to me, and yet (as far as one can make out from the actual facts of history) it must be completely intelligible to the average bloke with a pickaxe. Surely some weight must be given to the question of the reader's interest in the subject? I think part of the general difficulty about understanding various books is a question of will. My experience with Euclid is even worse than your own; I simply did not want to know anything about it, although I was very keen on Algebra and trigonometry, and invariably came out on top. It seems to me that there was something in the way which Euclid used to present his thesis which is antipathetic to my mind. I remember one addition of Euclid which gave the algebraic equivalent of the various theorems: in an instant the whole book was transparently clear to me. But this is only one example. I think similar observations are pertinent to various works of fiction. In the restricted sphere of detective stories I find myself limited by all sorts of considerations. For instance I must have my characters credible; there must be some characteristics of them; their motives must be intelligible. Then the element of surprise and excitement are very important. In Mason's "At the Villa Rose" I find practically every condition of a good story fulfilled. It does not make a book more exciting if you multiply the number of persons murdered; in fact it is very risky for an author to try to increase the reader's interest by any such means.
My difficulty in criticizing your letter is that I cannot form a picture in my mind of the finished book. I do not see how you can cut it down to 25000 words on any basis. There seems to be about 6000 words in the text alone and the Commentary itself runs to about 12000 words (of course you must have a short account of the history of the whole thing to make it intelligible to all). It might help to print your elucidation as the main part of the book in 12 point, and the original in 10 point, thus reversing the usual order of things. In those cases where my work can stand as it is of course you might use 12 point. I do not know if this notion appears to you quite crazy, but it is the only way I can think of giving the proper emphasis to the various parts of the book. About the total number of words—I should not cut down too much as we are writing for people who sell books, whatever their nature may be, by weight, and admit it.
There seems to be a filtering influence part of the time. Consider Shakespeare: how many lines in the whole bulk of his work are really familiar. It might indeed be more valuable to print editions of him (and certain other of the most voluminous writers) in some such way. Imagine the saving to the reader of an edition of Milton so printed.
The more I think this over the better I like it as far as general ideas are concerned. We do not want your work to be swamped by the original, at the same time we obviously cannot refer the reader of the more serious type to an original which has not been printed! I find myself struggling to visualize the finished product. Considering the problem as a matter of proportion, it seems to me as if your share, including the introductory essay, should be something like 50,000 words. I am thinking too of what I may call the first-glance judgment of the possible purchaser. I should like, if it were conceivable, to eliminate the idea of occultism. I have been told, in particular from America, that anything suggesting any such subject is worn threadbare. But they eat up the word 'philosophy'. This brings one to the consideration of the title. Perhaps something like "The Philosophy of Thelema" would do with an explanatory sub-title something like this: "Being the Book of the Law with a Commentary by the Master Therion condensed and clarified by --- etc etc" You see you are shooting at a public which has probably never heard of me at all. I think this is all for this afternoon.
Love is the law love under will.
Yours ever
Aleister
1—Crowley's secretary/typist at the time.
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