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Correspondence from to Gerald Yorke to Charles Stansfeld Jones
9 March 1948
Dear Mr. Jones.
Your 5/3/48 just opened and read. I reply seriatim I will tell Symonds [John Symonds] of your offer to help. He is not a qabalist, nor technically a Thelemite. He will not I think deal with the qabalistic side of Liber Legis, and beyond the fact that you discovered an important key I doubt his bringing you in at all. He lacks material about you, your later letters will in the main be unintelligible to him, you are hardly mentioned in the diaries which survive, and the correspondence which led up to your break with A.C. in 1925 or 1926, does not survive amongst Crowley's papers, though copies of most of it exist in a collection of letters which I bought the other day. He is writing a Life of A.C. and not of the Order; on the other hand if you send us a copy of Liber 31, he may easily find that he has to mention it. The document certainly should be at his disposal. It is not referred to as such on p. 127 of The Equinox of the Gods. I do not now remember where I read of the existence of the book, probably A.C. once told me of it. As to the Word you discovered in 1926, I only referred to it to establish my credentials. As long as you decide to keep silent about it, I regard it as a personal affair of your own, and will mot refer to it again.
The second half of your magical record, which was to have been published in The Equinox III 2, has not survived among Crowley's papers. The page proofs are somewhere here in England in private hands, but I have not yet succeeded in tracing them. I regard it as an important historical document for the Order, and would like to add it to my collection, which is destined for the British Museum on my death. If you send me a copy, I will not send a duplicate before your death without your permission to Germer [Karl Germer] for the Crowley archive in America.
I have sorted all the letters which survive from you to A.C. and placed them in a separate file, which Germer will get. Those extracts which are important from the point of view of the history of the Order, I copied out on the fly leaves of my copy of your The Anatomy of the Body of God which will go to the British Museum on my death.
I sent you this morning the relevant extract from the only document I have found dealing with the succession. A.C. may have sent Germer something in addition, but if so no copy survives amongst his papers.
I did not find and have never seen any document dealing in detail with the grade of Ipsissimus.
Of your published works I have The Egyptian Revival, Q.B.L, I.N.R.I., The Anatomy of the Body of God, and the diagram of the Wheel of the Tarot. If you have not sent to the British Museum copies of your other works, you should do so, in order to complete their collection of the Books of the Order. They will get my copies as listed above with all my material on my death. Incidentally I am 46 years of age.
I made my position so clear and at length in the letter I wrote and posted to you this morning, that I will not repeat it. From the point of view of Symonds' Life of A.C., the missing section of the old boy's hagiography [The Confessions of Aleister Crowley] is the most important. From the point of view of the history of the Order, and of completing a centralised collection of the old boy's papers, a copy of Liber 31 is of the utmost importance. Anything you care to send me will be appreciated, and dealt with along the lines indicated in this morning's letter.
Forgive crudity of typing, I am out of practice, and my handwriting is such that I never inflict it on other people at length.
Yours truly,
G.J. Yorke.
If there is any information you would like, please let me know. I do hope you agree with me A.C.'s last wishes be carried out, namely that Germer should inherit the two mantles. I will not let myself take part in quarrels re the succession. I restrict my activities entirely to the historical side, i.e. assisting Germer to complete his archive of Crowleyana and retaining a duplicate set of the important unpublished technical work—as well as an almost complete collection of the published work, which I shall give to the British Museum, so that one set survives in England, another in America. History will decide whether this work is worth while.
G.J.Y.
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