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Correspondence from Marcelo Motta to Karl Germer
Caiza Postal 15, Tijuca Rio de Janeiro Guanabara, Brasil
30 December 1961
Care Frater
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
I found out, to my great shock, upon going thoroughly through the printed text of Liber Aleph, that despite my meticulous, painstaking care in providing the necessary corrections, flagrant mistakes were allowed to remain, and as a result at least five pages of the book are marred and useless.
Due to our personal questions and conflicts, which greatly depressed me, and especially your incredible lack of common breeding in disposing of the money I had entrusted to you, and not giving me any satisfaction, I was tempted to let the thing go out exactly as it was, and even gave them order to bind.
But I have decided that I cannot let this be, for it is my motto and my seal that go on such an edition; and I have decided that I will rather lose all the money and all the time involved, if it comes to that, than allow the book to go out this way. I am going to fight this to the end, and you may not expect the edition in the near future; indeed, quite possibly it will take several months before you get books at all.
All this apart, there are a few other subjects I wish to touch upon with you. First, your Swiss. I call them your Swiss intentionally; for although you disclaim any responsibility for them, I, even if it were only my humble slave's opinion, hold you responsible for them. I notice the effect of my letter was passing, and gone. Their latest edition of their magazine came out in the same blasphemous way as before.
I have felt for a long time that there was something intrinsically wrong with the O.T.O.; all brethren of this order I have met have had several serious defects of character; and your Swiss confirm my impression that one can't work with a mended sword; like Sigfried, a new weapon must be forged.
If I live to do any work of promulgation of Thelema, therefore, I do not intend publishing the O.T.O., or the Gnostic Catholic Church, at all. I shall work exclusively with the A∴A∴ for initiatic work, and with the Order of Thelema (which, the Gods willing, I shall organize) for masonic, that is, social, work. In short, the A∴A∴ for individual, the Order of Thelema for social work. Further, if I live, and get to be a true initiate, I shall strive to destroy all remnants of any "Thelemic" work of the temper and stamp of your Swiss, or those Californians I was in touch with.
I confess candidly that I have great doubts whether I am really the Beast or not; the climax of my ritual work last year led me to an intuitive certainty of this; but I certainly may have been quite wrong; it is such an ego-satisfying feeling, and therefore one can easily deceive oneself. Much of my manner with you was designed to get either a positive confirmation of my position, or a positive denial from you; you have dodged the issue with the skill of great practice, no doubt, but have managed to make me feel like a pretentious fool and a chief betrayed both at once.
Consequently, I intend to retire into the groundwork of training, and wait upon the day when it shall please the Gods either to confirm me as the Beast directly, or blast me definitively [handwritten by Motta: "or enlighten me on which [remainder cannot be seen]]. Either end would be more welcome than the present intolerable position.
You are the head of the O.T.O., as you yourself told me several times in the years I have known you; and I cannot conceive that the Head of an Order that calls itself Thelemic could allow the things that your Swiss have been doing. I see no excuse whatsoever for your laxity of behavior. It almost infected me, I perceive now. I have no doubt that you shall answer for it some day, to somebody.
As for me and you, I, not being a master, am dependent upon you, as the only brother of the A∴A∴ I know or will know until I reach the grade you have told me is yours (and I doubt it not!). Therefore I ask you to continue our relationship until the day it please the Gods to sever it.
I want however to make quite clear that your behavior in the last two months and your rudeness in the question of the money specially, have made vanish any personal regard I may have had for you, and I ask you to limit our contact solely to business of the A∴A∴ and the Order of Thelema—insofar as A.C. has worked out material on that.
I have received the little Thelema book No. 1, for which I thank you; also a diary, when I had lost hope of getting one, and for which also I thank you; also your letter.
I feel much better now that I have reached a decent decision on the question of those books. I hope I made it quite clear to you that I don't know when, if ever, you shall get them.
I don't think I have anything else to say to you for the present. I shall of course keep you informed of the progress of the book, if any. I have a strong suspicion that there was deliberate sabotage; as I said before, this printing house is infested with communists, and communists are, of necessity, maniacs, cheats, or slaves. Which is not to say that most capitalists are any better. Bt give me a good honest bourgeois, hard-working, a man whose word one can trust, anytime! [handwritten by Motta: "or give me a self-[illegible] peasant."]
Love is the law, love under will.
Fraternally,
M.
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