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Manifesto for the Theosophists
(circa 1919)
[Crowley felt that the publication of his comment to The Voice of the Silence in the Equinox Vol. III, No. 1 was going to cause a challenge to the Theosophical Society. With this in mind he prepared a Manifesto for the Theosophists.]
The President of the Blavatsky Association
The enclosed Manifesto has been worded so as to meet the situation caused by the glamour which has been cast by the Masters around the personality of the author. This has been necessary in order to prevent any premature manifestation of Their plans or any assumption of authority on his part before They had completed his initiation.
It is important to observe that his interest in Occult Science did not begin until after the death of H.P.B. [Helena Petrovna Blavatsky]. He always held her in absolute reverence as a genuine messenger from the Masters and would have nothing to do with any of her successors on the express grounds that they were entirely faithless to the essence of hr teaching. His views on the subject have been partially published in an edition of the Voice of the Silence—Supplement to Vol. III, No. 1 of the Equinox (Detroit, 1919). He wrote his notes very much on H.P.B.'s own principle of outraging the timid; but a careful perusal should satisfy you of his full right to judge the matter.
His fundamental position is this: that whereas such works as Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine might conceivably have been compiled by Scholarship, The Voice of the Silence offers indefeasible evidence of intimate initiated knowledge impossible to express in the language of reason, and also of sublime inspiration unmistakable in character.
The time has now arrived when it is no longer possible for Those who sent forth H.P.B. to allow her message to fade out in theoretical studies or even personal attainment. Its real object was above all to prepare the world for the Law of Thelema. The necessity of this law is explained by the author of the Manifesto in a recent letter as follows:
(As quoted before)
We therefore put it to you that the author of the Manifesto is the legitimate successor of H.P.B. The fact that he has never compromised himself with any branch of the T.S. [Theosophical Society] is highly significant. You will notice that your own Movement has been very accurately timed to meet his manifestation. But it is never any use in any movement to go back to primitive conditions, for however pure and sublime may have been the original impulse, the conditions are no longer the same. The planet has been thoroughly leavened by the mission of H.P.B. But from that work has sprung no fruitful plant. It was never the intention of the Masters that Theosophy as such should conquer the world, for the time had not yet come for the proclamation of the Law of the New Aeon. The more carefully you consider this matter, the more clearly will the plan of the Masters become apparent to you.
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