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Correspondence from John Symonds to Louis Wilkinson
[EXTRACT]
[21 March 1949]
Thank you for sending me Germer's [Karl Germer] paranoic outburst. I'll return it to you when I've written to him which I will do at once. The only person who is a member of the Order and who seriously and solemnly accepts Crowleyanity is little Kenneth Grant. Why he shouldn't see the stuff when (a) he knows it already; (b) he has been most useful to me in discussing with me Crowleyismus; (c) he is a member and I am not, I cannot imagine.
Germer's error (to treat his views seriously) arises out of the fact that he treats the Order as a serious and as a secret organization. Now Crowley kept certain of the Order's papers more tightly under his arm then he did other papers, but when he made his will he was more concerned with getting Literary executors than Magical or Thelemic ones which, itself, makes nonsense (anyhow as far as I am convinced) with the secret nature of A.C. documents. I was not sworn in and therefore it rested and rests solely on my and your discretion as to whether we should show these papers to this person or that. And Grant seemed to me to be eminently suitable to show them to.
Also Gerald Yorke, who bought for a sum between one and two hundred pounds three collections of Crowley's Magical Diaries and other papers which he is having copied to send to Germer.
Now it is quite untrue that I have held these documents back until I have had time to copy them. I kept them for at least a whole year before I let them out of my hands to be copies by Grant. I've held onto the stuff and was determined to hold on to the stuff until I had extracted the guts from it for my biography. Had I allowed the diaries to be copied at once Germer could have had them all in March 1948. Secondly, I thought it a good safeguard to have them copied so that if they fell into the hands of the U.S. Customs they would not be lost. Thirdly A.C. put no time limit on my use and therefore withholding of the material.
The explanation of Germer's attitude lies in the fact that he has had some sort of tiff with Grant and is furious to think that Grant has the stuff and he hasn't. Anyhow it is all ready to go off to Germer now.
Did you hear that Germer has unearthed a typed German translated copy of Vol III of the Confessions [The Confessions of Aleister Crowley]? I've asked him for a copy of it, but I suppose he'll delay it now and possibly not send it at all.
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