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Correspondence from Gerald Yorke to Henri Birven
[EXTRACT]
[Undated: circa 1953]
I disliked some of the "scarlet women" with whom he lived. His life was full of what to me were sordid quarrels. He was suspicious of everyone, though at time he trusted everyone. He frequently misjudged motives, so that one could by no means trust his insight. Then he demanded everything of a disciple—money, reputation, family, friends had to be sacrificed to the cause, which in fact meant Crowley the Messiah of that cause, of the new religion for mankind, Thelema. This I was not prepared to do, as I never fully accepted The Book of the Law. The moment I left the A∴A∴ (in 1932 or 1933) he never made these demands on me, never badgered me for money or services.
His moral code and his money code were peculiar to himself. One was always in acute danger of being involved in some confidence trick for making money—he however honestly believed in these schemes, but to the outside world he, and oneself as his partner, appeared to be confidence tricksters.
He lived in a perpetual haze of quarrels and rows and abuse. The atmosphere in which he lived and which he carried round was one of acute tension. He was always about to be—or had just been—thrown out of his rooms or his hotel because the rent had not been paid. The pace was usually so hot that I never spent a long week-end with him without needing 24 hours in which to recover after I had left him.
Then he was a careless worker, he never checked anything he wrote, he never confirmed his references. You cannot always trust his scholarship. His attempts to apply the law of Thelema in politics and economics etc. were childish. His everyday life was impossible. Yet one had only to get him on spiritual topics and he satisfied one, or at any rate me.
I could not remain a disciple without being involved with his scarlet women (I do not mean having to sleep with them or anything of that sort), in his crazy financial schemes, in his endless rows, in his plans to run the world—and so I broke loose. But I remained friendly towards him: his smile of welcome whenever we met I always treasured. I was very fond of him. Finally, what fun he was!
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