Correspondence from to Gerald Yorke to Charles Stansfeld Jones

 

 

 

 

19 March 1948

 

 

Dear Mr. Jones.

 

Your 15/3/48. I am delighted to find that we are so closely in agreement. Germer [Karl Germer] I know is reluctant to correspond with you, and it is clear to me that you will both continue to work independently. I agree with you that the joke is on G.[ermer].

     

I do not feel strongly about not having a copy of the VI° lection. It would complete the set which the British Museum will have, the details are comparatively unimportant and can be reconstructed by anyone who cares to do so.

     

If you would like me to copy out for you the whole of the Constitution of the Thelemites I will do so. It is 8 pages of typescript.

     

Symonds [John Symonds] would very much like a copy of Aud's [Raoul Loveday] letter to you from Sicily. To date the only evidence we have of A.C.'s life there are his and Alostrael's [Leah Hirsig] diaries and Betty May's "revelations". Symonds, without dealing actually with newspaper attacks, wants to write as fully as possible on the Cefalů period and to recreate the atmosphere. Your letter from Aud might help him a lot. If it is not too much trouble do please try to find it.

     

One of the old stock lists mention you as having 3/4 of a typescript of the hagiography [The Confessions of Aleister Crowley]. I doubted the accuracy of the document, but wrote you in case.

     

I doubt whether I am competent to judge if Liber 31 represents the document referred to in One Star in Sight. I will not myself copy nor will I allow anyone else to copy without your express permission Liber 31, to the receipt of which I look forward. I want however to make a last plea that a copy be made and sent to Germer. The original MSS of The Book of the Law goes to Germer by special mention in A.C.'s Will, and in my opinion there should be at least a copy of Liber 31 with the MSS: moreover Germer will have the letters from you to A.C. in which mention is made of it. From the historical point of view I have to consider the possibility of the material which I collect being destroyed by an atom bomb, or other such horror. I shall be happier if Germer has a copy hidden away in California with his archive. The decision however rests with you. I have said my say and will not refer to it again.

     

As for the second half of your diary, this like the first half is of little interest to Symonds. He only deals with the magical life of A.C.'s followers during the periods when they were actually working and living with him. I do think however that a copy should go to the British Museum on my death with my other papers to provide material for some future historian of the Order, if in fact there be one. It is a complement to Liber 31, but not of all that importance as the real proof of 31 should reside in the book itself.

     

I enclose copy of A.C.'s typescript comment on AL II 76, which you may not have had. The note was added later (date not specified) in his own handwriting.

     

May I repeat how relieved I am that we are in such agreement. I thought we might be, in view of our personal experiences of the old sinner having been rather similar. He never understood my real motive in trying to preserve his more important magical diaries. As a result, on one occasion he removed them from my safekeeping. They are now in private and unsympathetic hands, and I have begun a negotiation for buying or copying them. Since writing my last letter I have heard of another collection of his MSS, and have arranged to see them appropriately enough through the man who looks after the Erotica in the British Museum.

 

Yours Fraternally,

 

Volo Intelligere.

 

P.S. I have recovered and bought part of the Amalantrah Working record in which you took part in the U.S.A. Have you the whole of it?

 

 

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