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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to William Bernard Crow
The Ridge, Hastings.
1st May, 1946
W. B. Crow Esq., D.Sc., 227 Glenfield Road, Western Park, Leicester
Care Frater,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Thanks very much for your letter. I am sorry to hear that you gad so much overwork and so much ill-health. Exactly the same is true of me.
I was very interested in your application which I thought a masterpiece of its kind; I hope that it will drive the nail well home to the head.
Thank you very much for letting me know about the article in Occult Review, which I have not so far seen. I am writing to the publishers to try to secure a copy. If you have one, please lend it for a week or so!
It is very kind of you to offer to write me up, as you suggest. I do not know where you can get a copy of the so-called Confessions [The Confessions of Aleister Crowley]. I have not got one myself; but if you wish, I can give you a brief synopsis of the principal events in my life in two sections—first, the External, and the other Internal progress.
The question of Freemasonry is a very thorny one. I am afraid it would take me much more time than I have to spare to give you even the briefest account of the history of the relations between our Sanctuary, Consistories, Chapters, Lodges, etc., with the Grand Lodge of England and the pseudo-Scottish Rite. The unfortunate thing is that they have all the power and the money; and there are a lot of malignant old stagers who are simply bent on making trouble for every one everywhere.
There is however a perfectly genuine grievance. As you know, the whole Masonic legend is based on the fact that the Word is lost. All right. We go on spending oodles of money making a song and dance about this lost Word. Then somebody comes and says 'Now, little boys, it is time you went to bed, that was only a bogey; the Word has not been lost at all. We have got it perfectly safe.' So there you are, with nine-tenths of the rituals reduced to nonsense. What is their feeling going to be about it? Not very friendly to the rude young man who found it.
That, I assume, is the basis of any difficulty, because it is at least a question of fact, but I have always been very careful indeed not to tread on anybody's toes. They can hardly complain of our willingness to affiliate members of the Grand Lodge and associated Lodges in good standing, and all references to the legend of Hiram have been expunged from our rituals.
They can hardly complain of our communicating the Word; it is certainly not robbery of anything of theirs because, as pointed out above, their whole standard point is that they have lost it.
I cannot go further into this at present, as it would take a volume of about 150,000 words to discuss adequately all the thorny questions of jurisdiction and authority.
It is all so complicated that I am sure no living man understands a tenth of it. I certainly don't. My personal belief is, that there is no mason alive of good standing! For instance, the Grand Lodge of France had a Lodge in Paris called Anglo Saxon 343, which was the headquarters of all visiting masons, both from England and the U.S. Yet that Grand Lodge was not recognised by the Grand Lodge of England, although all its officers were high dignitaries in the Grand Lodge of England!!!
Now, anyone who visited any clandestine lodge thereby lost his title to be a freemason, and as these people when they got home visited all the Lodges in their own countries, the germ of clandestinity must by this time have spread all over the world, so that no individual—except by some exceedingly rare chance—can possibly have escaped the infection.
When you consider that the whole thing is nonsense when it is not plain blackguardism as it is in almost every Lodge in the U.S. and a great many, I am sorry to say, in England, or else a mere excuse for getting drunk and telling the tale to the wife—the attitude of reasonable men is not difficult to discern.
I hope to hear from you again quite shortly to the effect that you are selected for Southampton.
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours ever,
666.
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