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Correspondence from Charles Stansfeld Jones to Gerald Yorke
11 May 1948
Dear Yorke,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law!
I open up my letter again because I have just received yours of 2/5/48, 3/5/48, 4/5/48, and 5/5/48 in one envelope. Very many thanks. This is an extensive business, isn't it.
Haven't had time to copy QNA. (Yours 2/5/48).
Yours 3/5/48. I much appreciate this long comment. So long as "fundamental idea" may be sound, in your opinion, that's O.K. for the moment. The idea (re. Alalus etc.) arose in connection with working out of Liber Legis. Terms used are from that angle, except where others introduced such as "Plenum" and "spermatic logoi". I should not think of trying to write a scientific treatise from the point of view of modern science. If that is necessary, it will have to be done by one competent to undertake it. But that is not yet.
On the other hand, you should not be too hasty in expressing your likes and dislikes. You say: "I dislike expressions such as 'spermatic logoi'. Logos is a philosophic concept, while 'spermatic' is scientific, so that the expression mixes the planes, etc. etc." A little more knowledge or the use of a good dictionary would have shown you that: spermatic logos, in the Stoic philosophy, is "a principle of generation resident in matter" which is the sense in which I used the term. (It also appears in Scholastic Philosophy, such as that of Thomas Aquinas.)
You say: "To be scientific you need a world outlook". True, but one needs much more than that, viz: the freedom of the world of pure Ideas, which the scientists have not got, and without which their problem cannot be solved. Fortunately such a higher Science exists in black and white and not as a mere "mumbo jumbo" of someone's imagination.
I think that it is most important that you continue to formulate your universal world-view from the point of view of Oriental philosophy. That's your immediate will and job. For the moment I'm switched into trying to sort out the puzzles of Liber Legis, Qabalah, Magic, etc. That was fate. And, of course, as it turns out, I've butted into your affairs (temporarily) as a darned good (because skeptical) witness.
But there is a true Science of the Infinite—which neither religion nor science knows anything about. Again, there is a Science of the Void and voidities. There are some seventy or more different kinds of Nothingness, or Voidity, which may be have been distinguished and defined. Take, again, the term Evolution, which people use so freely. What about all the other kinds of "volution" which go to make up the pattern of the Great Cosmic Process? I'll quote a few, so that you may realise something of the complexity of the Great Syntagma on the plane of intellectual study and ideas. In the world of Becoming (rather than of Being or Non-being) there may be seen to exist the processes of Advolution, Abvolution, Evolution, Provolution, Supervolution, Retrovolution, Contravolution, Involution, Circumvolution, Devolution, Transvolution, Convolution and Intervolution.
All these have to be schematically shown as to just how they are related to one another, and Circumvolution breaks down again into major, minor and minim aspects. And so on . . .
Every Idea reflected in the universe can be shown to spring from One Single Idea, and the great network of inter-relationships, at least on the higher planes, fully established. Science, in the commonly accepted use of that term, only deals with facts and tries to show the laws which account for those facts. It does not deal with the principles which account for the laws. Philosophy is supposed to deal with the principles; but it has failed, exoterically, to show the connections with the One Idea, and the connection from which it sprang. Just as manifestation, with the Infinite from which it sprang. Just as science has failed to account for the BEGINNING of time and space and the manifested universe, and its true connection with the Plenum and Void. But, thank the Universal Lord, such knowledge is the Inheritance of the Human Race, and can be given to those destined to rightly receive and use it. But to do so takes as long as a University education—although such an education is probably more fruitful, because truly universal. This is not something I have invented. A.C. quite clearly lacked it. But each must do his true will and fulfil his own destiny. A very few, only, need such knowledge at present. The age of universality is (or was) not expected until the middle of the twenty-first century.
Someday, perhaps, over a cigarette and a glass of Scotch, I'll be able to tell you more about these things in a couple of hours than you'll collect on the subject from outside sources in as many or more years. But I simply cannot write from that point-of-view in this correspondence—which is intended to try and clean up A.C.'s affairs. (Besides, Germer [Karl Germer] might think I'd fallen among the dogs of reason.)
Yours 4/5/48. O.K. But there is a bit better news in the papers today. Things may be on the turn.
Yours 5/5/48. I am not permitted to tell you the name of the traditional system in question. Sorry. It cannot be correlated with other systems, except in the sense that it includes them. The other way round is impossible. I soon found that out.
Thanks for the promise of China Changes etc. The Arte Magica diary sounds very interesting. Some of A.C.'s workings, which he did not understand, because time not ripe, are clearly shown to be correct in this new manifestation. That's the amazing part—the precise accuracy of the whole thing.
Yours in Unity and Love.
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