Correspondence from Karl Germer to Jane Wolfe

Hampton N.J.

January 5, 1952

Dear Jane,

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law!

Thank you for your long letter with enclosures, which I return with this.

I'll write Paul [Paul Millikin] soon. The school seems to have accepted my suggestions and are keeping Aleister [Aleister Ataturk]. I'll need help and am sure Paul will do so as soon as I write him. It was a complicated correspondence to get the result, as Deirdre MacAlpine is not just what you'd call businesslike. And one letter never reached me from her. It was mailed to the former address.

I saw Ero [Ero Sihvonen] shake his fist at me at the time of the accident, but never told anybody. The whole relation at H.Q. has been a mess. Joe [Joe Miller] since Barstow, figured Jean [Jean Sihvonen] was or would be his. There was a break between Ero & Jean practically when they arrived here, and once or twice Jean was on her knees before me (literally, not figuratively!!) imploring me to take her away from Ero. It foundered on the rocky iciness of my nature, my below-par libido, my slowness of reaction to obey directives from on high (which, I realised much later, it probably was.) But on the other occasions Jean played up intensely to Joe to such an extent that Joe went to Newark and rented a 3-room apt. for the purpose. And nothing happened! It must have been a blow to Joe, and a magical lesson, which, I hope, he has learned and assimilated in a BALANCED WAY, by which I mean that I hope he does not carry a grudge against all women to having led him by the nose in such a humiliating way. Needless to say, I had nothing whatever to do with this part of the drama, except possibly unconsciously.

Then, Jean played a game in a primitive and a little too obvious way with Sascha [Sascha Germer] who, being so much more mature, saw through it from the start, causing antagonism.—My break with S.[ascha] is ordained, I feel sure. May-be my subconscious wants me to make the break on my terms, when I think the time has arrived. Yet I know that all such considerations are bunk. Jean would be excellent as a partner for me in the Work which I need, but she needs one for other things too.

My prime consideration is to preserve the assets as much as I can manage, for the G.W. [Great Work]. If we sell H.Q. there must be enough in my share to have something to operate with when I should arrive in Cal[ifornia].

I like Jean. I like Ero. I like and respect Joe very highly. (He is a King.) He has behaved and acted royally, and poured out lavishly—I'm not speaking about his transfer—and Sascha alone has seen this deeply, while Joe seems to have been influenced intensely against the one person who Understood him, his nature and his problems!) Add to this trio Frederic's [Frederic Mellinger] presence, the Sascha-problem, and you get the Five-Body problem, which even mathematically is insolvable. Irrationally, yes, it can be solved, but that requires instant understanding of what your H.G.A. [Holy Guardian Angel] counsels, and acting thereon without doubt, or arguing. I am still very low, I know. I am quite prepared to place all the blame on myself alone.

I have had the K. & C. [Knowledge & Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel] since 1927 (Boston phase). 1931 was my 7º=4^o period. Then 666 pushed me into the Abyss. (I reacted wildly, and smashed everything of A.C.'s plans with very tragic results for him. It was "danger and trouble" for him. 1935 brought the Babe of the Abyss, and 1938 A.C. acknowledged me as M.T. [Magister Templi]—Now here is my incredible blindness: In retrospect I can see all this, now at least. But is was only in 1946 or 1947 that I began to realise what the HGA might mean, or had meant since 1927. I never realised that A.C. actually considered me a M.T. until he reminded me in a letter of about 1946 or 1947 that a M.T. 'ought not to act or think the way I expressed myself' in letters. I could (now) give some striking examples of my blindness in matters of the HGA. A.C. thought I was faking ignorance, while it is the bitter truth that I was so totally blind. (In 1887 I had a serious eye disease and was for months in a hospital; had to wear blue glasses up to my 7th or 9th year. When I mentioned this to A.C. soon after I met him—he discovered my blindness quickly—he thought he could cure me magically. But the way I saw and see it, it is part of my T.W. [True Will].

May-be this explains some things to you.

Ritual: yes, indeed, I do not care for them but I do not loathe them! By ritual I mean any form of invocation or practice that implies dramatic performance. Nor do I understand such formulae as IHVH or Geomancy—I would not call reciting the Holy Books [Volume I, Volume II, Volume III] ritual. I view it as a sort of mantra as once I start a chapter, it keeps running along without my being consciously aware of it. If I am interrupted—it continues at the exact spot where I was stopped, the moment when the interruptions have ceased.

The idea back of the term Ritual in AL, 220 is much more general and universal. Political, moral, ethical, religious conventions have a form or ritual as a basis. This refers especially to the ritual of law in this country. Anybody who has been the victim of legal, religious, or moral procedures—better persecutions—knows this. They are called "black" rituals.

Oh! I know well about Roy [Roy Leffingwell] having played the "spark-plug" for Phyllis's [Phyllis Seckler] growth to Tiphereth (I'm sure that's what it is!). But we must not mistake the tool for Adonai. You throw the tool away when used and keep on with the job. That's where Phyllis got on the wrong track. Incidentally, I feel sometimes as if Phyllis focused her imagination too much on me as an object of love. If you deem it wise to discourage this, do. I like everything about her. But I am not a lover!

Yes, we should have printed A.C. on the title page of 418.

I enclose the Texan Raymond letters. Please return them after reading. The duplicate copies I sent you you can keep.

Candy [Marjorie Cameron]: this sounds truly astonishing. Can you get her birth date?

Love is the law, love under will.

Karl

Your Solstice gift for H.Q. came last week. It is a masterpiece in every respect, and a work of art. Thank you so much. Everybody admired it, also some experts.

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