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Correspondence from to Gerald Yorke to Charles Stansfeld Jones
24 April 1948
Dear Jones,
Your 17/4/48.
I have a typescript of The Vision and the Voice with introduction and short commentary in the shape of footnotes written by A.C. in North Africa. If you want to see it, let me know and I will post it to you, on the understanding that you return it to me after you have copied out the notes that interest you: they are mainly qabalistic. I have a similar typescript of Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente, and will send it to you later in the week on my return to London. You can keep it as I have two copies.
Afraid I assumed that when you discovered the Word for the Aeon of M.A.A.T. you automatically assumed the grade of Magus. You seem to question whether A.C. ever attained that grade, because he never received a new word. I therefore assumed that you claimed the grade with the Word.
The Tao is so subtle that it is difficult to write about it, but both Lao Tse and Chuang Tsu did both write, and the present head of the Taoist order, whom I met in China, does preach. I agree that thoughts survive and have a life of sorts of their own, but I prefer them to be recorded in print. It is unsatisfactory and shirking the issue to rely on the akashic records alone for survival. It is difficult to draw the line between a dislike for coming out into the open and meeting inevitable opposition, and the way of Tao, which is balanced Silence and Speech, Activity and Rest, combined and functioning simultaneously. It is not silence and inactivity, in the same way that Nirvana is not mere annihilation, and Samadhi is not mere negation.
One is part of the Macrocosm, but not part of the Trinity above Kether. Any interpretation of the latter and also of the triad immediately above the Abyss. Nevertheless I should have thought that your position in Malkuth forced you to preach and publish your word without lust of result or fear of failure.
The factor "infinite and unknown" by itself is not proof. Success is the proof, but historically that has seldom been in the lifetime of the discoverer of the Word in question. Personally, bhakti marga, the path of Love, is not my approach. I wish it were, as it simplifies everything. I like you when you preach a sermon as in this letter, for then I can establish contact with you. As long as you remain in the silence and darkness of a Master of the Temple of the Aeon of Horus, I can have no contact with you, while I still have an instinctive and possibly puerile mistrust of the qabala.
The world being in its present state of evolution, I do not think that you can escape from opposition and its more dangerous correlative, idolatry. I will keep all your letters confidential until you release the ban, but I want an answer as to whether I give your name and address to people who approach me re A.C. and the A∴A∴, as I asked you in my last letter.
Your 18/4/48 and Comment of 24/6/16 to hand. If you reissue the latter you are reopening an outer College of A∴A∴ I still think that the system of Scientific Illuminism of A∴A∴ should be kept alive and that it need not be so closely wedded to the O.T.O. system as A.C. attempted. Apart from the Catholic Church I know no system in the West today which can give so comprehensive a training to suitable aspirants. If A.C. had only been a reasonable man in his private life, so much could have been accomplished.
Please return my article in the Times Literary Supplement in time, there is no hurry, as it is the copy which I show to people who are interested. The book of which it is a review is not worth buying. It should have been written along the lines of my review, but was not, in spite of my advice to the author, whom I know.
Yours,
Yorke.
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