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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Gerald Yorke
"Netherwood", The Ridge, Hastings, Sussex.
15th July, 1947.
Dear Gerald,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
I have been ill and overworked and bearing up under heaps of unexpected visitors, else I should have found time to answer your of 22 May long before now.
I know all those calculations, and notice that you have omitted one large half. I am so familiar with all that sort of thing and of the difference between can't and won't.
I am also familiar with what happens when you might have done something really worth while, and didn't do it. You will doubtless retort that the beam in my eye is much bigger than the mote in your own, and that, I daresay is true enough; although for the last 20 years anyhow I think it is fair to say that I have not let my eye move from the target.
Of course in the present instance there is a personal obligation: a matter which I could not do with the best will in the world, and which you could have done easily enough, and I am sure you are going to be sorry when you realize suddenly that it is too late for you to have done what you should have done in all these years. Possibly lack of imagination has a good deal to do with it.
Anyhow, I shall take 'No' as meaning 'No' and let the matter rest entirely on your shoulders.
Forgive me if I do not write further and more clearly, but I am, in fact, rather knocked down by implacable circumstance.
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours fraternally,
Aleister.
P.S. I hope to receive the two watches soon. I should not have bothered you with them at all, but I did not know the name of your little Swiss man. However, as things are, I am really most anxious to get them back with the least possible delay. Ask the man to enclose his account and I will discharge it immediately, though I must say I am a little disappointed after what you said of him, that his repair should have proved of so temporary a nature. In any case, please hurry him up, because I am terribly dependant upon a watch for arranging my day.
I tried to pick up a cheap second-hand watch in Hastings, but could find nothing less than £5.0.0, which it would have been absurd to spend on so temporary a matter.
Please give my love to Angela [Yorke's wife] and the tribe.
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