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Correspondence from Karl Germer to Kenneth Grant
Hampton N.J.
June 8, 1955.
Care Frater Aossic:
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
I had to delay answering your of May 27, not only because I was indisposed for a few days, but because I wanted to review our past exchange of letters from the beginning and give the whole of our relations some thought. If I can rely on your letters, yours is an unusually gifted nature, and I blame myself for not having made a greater effort to understand it. I have also looked at your nativity. If the data you gave me are correct then you would have 12° Cancer rising and 9° Pisces at the cusp of X. Uranus may give trouble, and especially cauda draconis and Mars in IX. Mars especially would indicate difficulties in your present years, though all this may be wrong if the time was not correct. I go into this because there are some striking connections with my horoscope: your Moon is exactly on my Sun, your Sun on my Pluto, and both your Sun and Moon are rayed by my royal trine which is formed in my radical horoscope by Uranus, Sun and Pluto. Your wicked radical Uranus, apparently, spoils the harmony by placing itself plumb on the cusp of my VII.
I begin with these considerations because I shall have to be very critical with a number of points both in your letter and especially your Manifesto [Manifesto of the New Isis Lodge], and I do not want you to feel that what I shall have to say is inspired by injustice. (Beware of your Moon and Mars in Aquarius, the latter causes a peculiar kind of stubbornness!)
Your explanations in your letter re Isis corrects nothing. We must cultivate precision of thought and speech. A planet is a satellite, you cannot get away from this. So if your Isis is a "transplutonic planet" it remains an adjective, something adjunct. You cannot get away from this. Nuit, however, is cosmic, alone, involves all stars (plus planets), all possibilities, all Isis-es. Isis is an experience and conception that has to be transcended (cf. LXV, v, 50). It is transitory. Quite apart from all this: if any educated man reads your Manifesto, he will simply laugh at it and you. If you have not studied Astronomy, you better start.
Your reference to Eqx/Gods [The Equinox of the Gods] and "heavenly Isis" is unfortunate and forced. "Isis Urania" is, I believe, and old terminology, and, in my view, for lack of the term 'Nuit'. But it certainly does not mean "Isis" the, or a, planet. Incidentally, I have not been able to find out anything about this planet Isis of whose orbit you gave me interesting data in your letter. If you have an ephemeris of it, or its present longitude and latitude, when it was discovered, by whom, who gave it its name—I should be obliged.
Again—if your consider Isis as an idea, a symbol—you could much better draw upon one of the 9 Muses of the Greeks, it seems to me.
[ . . . ]
. . . "New Isis Lodge possesses . . ." What are these "certain Magical Formulae"? and at last! your "sister-Lodge in Germany" in the same connection and paragraph dealing with the highest secrets, when that very sister-lodge has no inkling of the Book of the Law at all. How silly can we get? (Grosche [Eugen Grosche] has received the translation of AL for the first time a few months ago; all he knew were the Greetings sentences which he knew from me and from one of the old pamphlets of Reuβ [Theodor Reuss]; and he adopted a silly explanation I, when a babe, gave him of 'love under will', and printed it and uses it!
[ . . . ]
You are not a full member of the O.T.O. at all. (You have the knowledge of the IX, but that does not make you more than just this!) You have not accepted its Constitution, in fact you have been putting yourself repeatedly on record of being hostile to some of its provisions.
It is for that reason that I have not been able to issue to you a full Charter to constitute a branch of the O.T.O. in England. You have a peculiar money complex, and the various Constitutions of the O.T.O. declare financial obligations. But I will not try to make you see the light on this point, still Constitutions mean what they say; they cannot be changed by individual decree. (Ask Mr. Yorke [Gerald Yorke] to show you the text of the revised Constitution of February 1917, of which, I believe, I sent him a photostat copy.)
So I must insist that you eliminate every reference to the O.T.O. in your pamphlet. I would also recommend that you change the system of grades and the abbreviations such as O.H.O. completely, to avoid misleading others; and sail under false pretences.
All this does not mean that I should not welcome your constituting an Order or a Lodge of your own. You have much knowledge and you have undoubtedly the will and the capacity to bring it to success. If you stick to the pure teachings of the Book of the Law, and loyally proclaim and preach the teachings of the Master Therion, there is no length to which I would go to assist you—with advice, if that is possible—with the supply of books of which I have spare copies, and otherwise.
Love is the law, love under will.
Fraternally,
Karl Germer
cc to Yorke
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