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Correspondence from Karl Germer to Grady McMurtry
West Point, Calif. Box 258
Jan. 31, 1958.
Dear Grady:
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
I needed no telephone call to remind me to answer your letter of Jan. 23. I must say that I was very surprised by it in several respects, and I think it will goad me to write more plainly.
First, I do not know what you mean by misunderstandings on which it would be needful to argue. I have no arguments with you, my way is to observe, note, and draw my conclusions; I may feel urged to make recommendations, or to criticize; but that would be only to be helpful.
A.C. some months before his death gave me some advise as to my policy after his death. Among other things he recommended that (my nature being what it is, so different from the normal) to select a triumvirate to assist me. He mentioned Grady McMurtry, Mellinger [Frederic Mellinger], and one other for me to select; he considered Roy Leffingwell [Roy Leffingwell], but discarded him because he was full of wind, but of no reliability.
Leffingwell is dead. Mellinger has become a traitor of the worst type. You? You have not been able to do anything helpful for the Work at all, at all, so far. (You went so far as to drop the thelemic greetings—I was puzzled to see you use them again in your last letter!) On the contrary, you have been a drag, by taking from me a loan of $630, plus over $100 worth of books, of which you have some sold, but never paid.
And no, on top of it all, you even stopped paying the insignificant installments on the cash loan, when I am waiting worriedly on their arrival every month! (It is due on the 1st of the month, but you have grown into the habit of sending it, when you do, at quite irregular times.) The balance is now 400 or 500 dollars. I had written you several times, that it represented over 20% of the proceeds of the sale of the Jersey house, urged you to repay the total debt, but nothing came of it.
What you do not seem to want to realize is that the $500 are very badly needed for very important repairs etc. I have to pay myself 7% (seven per cent) interest for my debts here. And we are stymied for lack of a few hundred dollars in my work.
So this is a very strong and serious appeal to me to make a special effort to raise $500 and repay me. This is a question of magical honour of yours. I want an early statement from you about this.
(2) your point. It beats me why you have to ask me to get a job for you here, when this is the dead lumber season, while you live right in the center of a metropolis where you could get a job of the type you asked me for! (In the season of lumbering you might be able to get a job as a truck driver, and they pay very high—but why, why?) Anyway, you are a born American, you have no such handicaps as we immigrants; you should be able to make money easily provided you want to work. But there is the hitch, as you say yourself in your point (3). Then, isn't it rather shameful that you were an officer in the U.S. Army, that you have your Degrees, and only think of menial jobs as a truck driver or so. I have no explanation for this, or if I have, it would not be complimentary to you. The most ordinary pay for someone in your age group is at least $500 per month.
Oh, hell, I am puzzlelter and puzzelter!
(3) and (4), There is plenty of work to do here, for a full time job in the library. But it is naiveté to expect to come here and live on mine, or more especially, on Sascha's [Sascha Germer] money, when we both hardly know how to scrape through every week? Get somehow a loan of the $500 you owe me, plus, say $2,000, to help things along here, then we might discuss your working here.
"Subtle danger" (4) Oh no! Not at all. That refers to other things, and your intuition, if pure, would tell you.
(5) Smith [Wilfred Talbot Smith] hated me; how much, I have only found after his death. Helen [Helen Parsons] continues his hatred, is the custodian of Smith's library, the son Kwen [Kwen Parsons] is imbued with this hatred of me, is the appointed successor of the Head of the Church of Thelema—there is much more to say, but not now. My sole reason for asking you to see Helen was that another, and you in particular, would be more suitable to intervene. But since then things have come to my knowledge which throw an even darker shadow on that quarter.
But I must strenuously object to your conception of "uniting these scattered fragments". This is not a fragment. It is the sole heir of A.C.'s Work. I recall to your memory that A.C. had had dealings with Smith for over 15 years; he knew, though he tried to rescue him time and again, until in 1943 he definitely and finally chucked him out from the Order for good. Culling [Louis Culling] and Jack [Jack Parsons] disobeyed A.C.'s strict injunction to break off with him completely. Magically, Jack has paid dearly for his disobedience culminating in abject treason.
I had never met Smith. When I came to California, I was instructed to test the various "members"; I included Smith, and learned that A.C.'s spiritual and magical judgment had been correct.
(6) "Solitary retreat just for yourself and Sascha"—reminds me of "Sascha's week-end house", the phrase Jean Sivohnen coined and circulated.
I emphatically reject from you such phrases. First, Sascha, is a very high member of the Order, though all you people are so spiritually blind, or poisoned, that you can't see this. As far as the Work, now, or in A.C.'s life, goes, she has done more for it, and is doing it, then all other so-called members combined. (I will except the Burlingames [Ray and Mildred], who proved Devotion to a very high degree.)
If somebody, like yourself, want to spread Thelema, the only and the only correct way is to collect such people as your mention, teach them the Law, give them books to buy and read, then, when they show sufficient interest, a good notion of the teachings of Therion, show Devotion to the Work, then there is no reason why they cannot meet me, and stay here for a while and drink at the Fountain.
It is up to you to 'get a small nucleus together with the idea of expanding'. What I fail to see is how you think of doing this when you are without a job, without income, without funds, and only with debts!
(7) Jane [Jane Wolfe] was taken by us to Los Angeles General Hospital.
Love is the law, love under will.
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