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Correspondence from Gerald Yorke to Charles Stansfeld Jones
24 May 1948
Dear Jones,
Your 18/5/48. I do not think Saturnus [Karl Germer] is likely to perform the ritual, as he has never done any ritual working. If he does so, he will be aware of the dangers as the MS contains a specific warning in addition to the actual wording of the rite. I salvaged these documents in order to preserve them for those interested, and to see that they only got into the hands of people in a position to know the consequences of using them. I should regard myself as a Black or at any rate a greyish brother if I concealed them from those qualified to possess and understand them. Of course if someone else sends me something which he asks me not to show to others, the above argument does not apply so far as I am concerned.
I took my spelling of MAAT without a stop between the letters from 777.
I had always taken Horus and Ra Hoor Khuit as synonymous, or rather the latter as the modern version of the former.
I understand that Mrs. Sturges [Mary d'Este-Sturges] has been dead for some time. The twelve cases of books and MS diaries were burned as containing indecent material by H.M. Customs, when Mudd [Norman Mudd] brought them to England from Cefalù. Hence the fact that so few diaries have survived. Had what you have got been at Cefalù, it would have probably been destroyed, because owing to some peculiarity of the law, id there is one indecent item in the package, the whole package is confiscated. If you send me this material to copy, and ask me not to send it to Saturnus, I will not send a copy to him. It seems however that the followers in the U.S.A. should be denied this material. They are Thelemites, and it seems to me a pity that they should be denied material on account of Saturnus' shortcomings. I am particularly anxious to see the diary material which you have (a) for my own archive, which I desire to make as complete as possible; (b) for my own information and instruction; (c) so that John Symonds has this important material as a basis for his Life, which would be incomplete without it. If he has to rely on the bare bones of the typescript of The Confessions [The Confessions of Aleister Crowley] for the period, and the newspaper attacks, which is all we have, his Life will be very much the poorer. As far as the Strictly Confidential document re, Virakam [Mary d'Este-Sturges] is concerned, I will see that he does not publish anything further than what has been published in Moonchild, or was to have been published in The Confessions, where there is a fairly full account of his working with Virakam from the popular point of view; but it omits the part that interests me, namely the details of the working with the Intelligence with whom at that time they were in touch. My reading of the matter is that had 'Providence' intended this material to be lost or withheld from those vitally interested, it would have seen that the MS, instead of being temporarily forgotten by you and then found, would have been in A.C.'s possession at Cefalù, and then destroyed with the other material in the 12 seized cases. The diaries which I bought were in store in Naples, and brought to England by myself in 1929. A.C. removed them from my care, and then lost them, but I was able to run them to earth and get them.
Let me know if there are any of the official books, such as Liber DCXXXIII de thaumaturgia, which I think only survives in my typescript copy, Liber CLXXXV, Liber Collegii Sancti, and the comment on Liber VII. Let me know if there are any of these which you have not got, and would like, and I will send them to you.
I have found a young man [Kenneth Grant] to whom A.C. gave Liber C, and the other O.T.O. secret typescripts, which is a relief.
Your 19/5/48. This is the first of your newspaper excerpts that I personally regard as significant.
Yours,
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