|
Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Grady McMurtry
[Undated]
Care Frater
93.
Your para 1 I am rather bewildered, it is not at all a good plan that you make jokes in matters of importance of this kind.
Here is the occasion of a few remarks on punning. Punning is the worse possible abuse of the formless mind. It cheapens it, degraded very often it deceives in bad cases.
Take the pseudo histrionic pun—Thou art Peter on this Rock and on this Rock will I build my Church. This has naturally been taken as an argument in favour of Popery.
But thou art Grady; verily I say unto thee thou shalt make the Grade; this is not even funny, but to take it [illegible], but be very dangerous indeed. For instance, you might say to yourself the MASTER ! ! ! ! ! ! has guaranteed me grade, worse still if you used it on other people as evidence that you had attained some exalted position.
In all history there are very few puns indeed. They are not funny even at the time unless they have a sting in their tail, a spark of wit, preferably malicious.
The essential badness of the practice is that you are making false analogies, "A skein of the [illegible] Escobar's worked on the bone of a lie [?]."
Nothing can be much deadlier than the finding of significance where it does not exist makes you eschew such apish tricks, you are liable to become a Baconian or a Pyramidist or one of those crazy ingenious half-wits. I have just had two long letters from a Brother recently admitted to the Order, and which he has found an infinite of Qabalistic correspondences in the City of God. Even in the Dedication in the title page where I certainly never put them. Of course it is open for him to reply that no doubt I did not know that I was putting them there. For I should have been overwhelmed by the majesty or terror, of these marvellous things, and that therefore the Masters mercifully veiled them from my eyes. When you have reached this stage, you may consider yourself a full-fledged Spiritualist.
I feel bound to insist very strongly upon this attitude, because after all a deal of our Qabalistic ravening does seem to skate on very thin ice indeed.
I feel very different about trying to set down what I may call the rules of the Game.
To begin with however, one can quite confidently eliminate a phenomena which are demonstratable accident.
For instance you suppose you think it is lucky to be born on Thursday because it is the day of Jupiter, that has no value because the circumstance is the result of a purely arbitrary connection. A century or so ago eleven days were dropped by Act of Parliament to square up the calendar with Astronomy which has of course the [illegible] series out.
Generally speaking any attribution which is definitely due to human interference is to be banned, though there are exceptions to this, such as the Caldarazzo [?] incident at Posilippo.
[Crowley's notes: 1. copy from page 464 "I prevailed upon him . . . page 468 to "begins the book".
2. copy from paragraph 2 page 312 to "irresistibly strong" on page 315 (Bailey). This will be typed and included in this letter.]
While looking up this account I came upon another incident just as convincing. Here it is.
After all this, let me get back to your letter. Your 'doodles' are interesting in their way but you really must recognise that nothing has any permanent value unless it is all built in to a planned structure. One or two elements are rather interesting, "the sign of the striking falcon" reminds me very much of some of the sigils in various old books of Magic.
I thought the Mass of the Phoenix had been reprinted in Magic [Magick in Theory and Practice], but apparently not, so I am making a copy to enclose in this letter. It is the best possible ritual for daily practice at Evensong. The intention of writing it was to perform it in public and this was done for a year or so just before the 1914 skirmish. The trouble is that you need a settled abode and a certain amount of magical apparatus but it makes a very good preparation for one's evening work.
You asked me how to construct the Fiery Chariot and the answer is by the simple process of constructing it. This applies to everything that you want on the astral plane. When you have performed the Pentagram Ritual at few 100 times, you have got all the symbols, living and blazing in your mental armoury—You therefore simply pick up whatever you happen to want and use it as required. Practice is what gives intensity and solidity to your weapons.
When you want to test any being that appears you begin by judging its nature and hold up against its appearance (that is to say in front of it) the symbol which seems to you appropriate. If the daemon is a good sport, your symbol should appear to vibrate and glow, if he is the wrong kind, the symbol may assume an angry tinge or grow pale if you have not formed it very strongly. The effort in him should be to disperse his elements or to dismiss him. You may elaborate this to any desired extent, but the general rule is, at least for a beginner, to put up the Hebrew Letter appropriate to his nature in the appropriately coloured light. For a human being, you would test him with a 'Gimmel'. If a martial being with a Pe. Or, of course, if you have stronger symbols of the right kind, such as the talismanic figures of the geomantic symbols, you can use them. The sign of the Emperor would not banish them as a rule, that gesture is more useful if anyone should oppose your progress. The effect is that of a man at football charging a full back.
All this is, of course, very elementary, when you get a vision like those in Liber 418 [The Vision and the Voice] you need the most elaborate arrangement as you well see on reading that book.
(I do not quite understand the last half line of that paragraph. I do not quite see what the Vision and the Voice and Magic have to do with the previous remarks)
I don't quite know what you want to know about Phallicism. Do you refer to the Cultis or Anthropological System. I agree with you that the word is too vague.
I find what you say about the use of symbols very interesting. Towards the end, however, you appear to go a bit off the handle. There seems to me to be one corner of the mind which requires for satisfaction some kind of cash-register. This corner is, no doubt going to be very useful to you, but I think you have to correlate it with specific facts or problems—This part of your thinking, reminds me of a motor car with the engine racing. You don't seem to go anywhere when you write or talk in this way.
Love is the law, love under will.
And will you please not stick in capitals when they are not in the text.
Love etc.
Yours etc.
666.
|