2,000 Greater & Lesser Mysteries/2,000 Greater and Lesser Mysteries.iso/crowley/mys00552.txt

Text File | 1994-06-10 | 13.3 KB | 274 lines

       [Aleister Crowley]

       Memorandum re "Stipend"

       1. Originally the idea was to dash off a pack of cards from (a) the
       elaborate "Equinox" descriptions (b) mediaeval packs, as The Equinox
       did not describe the 22 Trumps. We thought that a day apiece would
       be enough for the 40 small cards; two days apiece for the 16 court
       cards and 11 weeks for the 22 Trumps. This was thought to be an
       outside estimate--say 6 months in all, allowing for holidays &
       interruptions.

       2. The "Stipend" [L]2 weekly had nothing to do with my work on the
       Tarot, which was practically a full-time job. It was to cover my
       doing shopping and odd commissions for her--in many cases I paid the
       cost out of my own pocket. But principally it was to use me as a
       tame "Brains Trust".
            I instructed her in astronomy and astrology, mysticism, Yoga,
       geometry, algebra, history, literture, chemistry and what not.
            I even criticised--very fruitfully--her own efforts at
       painting.
                               _______

            This work, carried out sometimes by correspondence--very
       voluminous--sometimes by direct verbal instruction, had nothing to
       do with my Tarot work, which was entirely covered by my 2/3 interest
       in the property.

                              ________

            Note that the stipend and instruction have continued since the
       completion of the work on the Tarot.





       [a related sheet of conditions]

       Essential Condition of Peace.

            The cards are not to be sold without the book.
            If the book can be printed without illustrations it need not
       cost more than [L]300.
            If Lady Harris likes, she can give it away with the cards, I do
       not want any money out of it: and she can say she wrote it, I don't
       care.
            But I will not allow the cards to be issued so that they can be
       used only for gambling or fortune-telling.
            The new catalogue, full of grotesque blunders which discredit
       the scholarship of the Work, must be withdrawn.




       [Actually written by Crowley, to himself; the "Society" is
       fictitious as such.]



       An open letter to Alestair Crowley

       SOCIETY OF HIDDEN MASTERS

       Dear Sir

            For many years we have watched your career with benevolent
       interest; wile we have been unable to approve many of your
       activities in particular your policy of revealing secret knowledge
       which we consider dangerous if in the possession of untrained and
       uninitiated people. We have always respected your passionate
       integrity, your fanatical (and in our opinion, indiscreet) love of
       Truth.

            I our view, this mistaken policy has been responsible for many
       of your own personal mishaps. For this reason we re surprised that
       you should acquiesce, even by silence, in so blatant and impudent a
       hoax as the exhibition of Tarot Cards at the Royal Society of
       Painters in Water Colours, 26/7 Conduit Street, W.1. beginning 4th
       August 1942.

            We hereby challenge you to deny any of the statements here
       following:--

       1. During the winter of 1898/9 you were entrusted by the Order of
       A..A.. with the Secret Lecture on the Tarot, giving the initiated
       attributions.

       2. You published these attributions at the command of the Secret
       Chiefs of the order in a Book of Reference numbered 777 in 1909.

       3. You issued the Official Lecture of the Order on the Tarot, in the
       Equinox Vol. I Nos VII and VIII, March and September 1912.

       4. You have made the Tarot your continual study and used it daily,
       since the Winter of 1898/9.

       5. You have made the Tarot the skeleton or schema of all your
       writings on mystical and magical subjects. We would instance
       particularly "Ambrosia", "Magi Hortus Rosarum" (The Wake-World),
       "The Vision and the Voice", "Theory and Practice of Magick".

       6. You have been recognized everywhere in Europe and America (even,
       to a less extent, in India) as the supreme Authority on the Tarot;
       that is, by serious students of the subject.

       7. You have contemplated the construction and publication of a
       properly designed and executed pack, based on the Equinox
       information ever since the issue of the grotesque and falsified
       parody which appeared under the auspices of the later A.E. Waite.

       6. In a series of conversations in 1937 beginning at Mr. Clifford
       Bax' chambers in Albany St., W.1., you suggested to Lady Harris that
       she might be able to carry out this work. Although she very rightly
       protested that her knowledge of the subject hardly extended beyond
       the name, you, with the imbecile optimism characteristic of you,
       persuaded her that the descriptions of the cards given in the
       Equinox would be sufficient guide, and persuaded her to make the
       attempt.

       9. It became obvious almost at once that the Equinox designs were
       artistically impracticable. Lady Harris very properly asked you to
       take the whole subject in hand ab ovo esque ad umbilicum. You
       thereupon agreed to devote your whole knowledge to the work of
       designing an entirely original pack of cards, incorporating the
       results of your 39 years of constant study of the subject with your
       profound--if at times unacceptably unorthodox--knowledge of
       comparative religion, mathematical physics, philosophy and Magick.
       Also nthat you should compose a Treatise explaining the subject in
       full. It appears from a notice in the Exhibition that there is a
       proposal to publish the cards as a pack without this book. To do so
       would limit their use to fortune-telling, a form of fraud against
       which you have constantly set your face your whole life long. We
       refuse to believe that you have now consented to prostitute the
       Sacred Wisdom of Thoth to this base and dishonest purpose and we
       insist upon this point being made clear.

       10. On May 11, 1938, Lady Harris became officially your disciple,
       and was permitted to affiliate to the other Order of which you are
       Head, the O.T.O.

       11. You made an agreement with Lady Harris by which you were to have
       a 66 2/3% interest in the work.

       12. For the next four years approximately, Lady Harris prepared
       water-colours of the cards. She did this from your rough sketches
       and descriptions under your continual direction, subject to your
       constant and repeated corrections. In some cases you made her redraw
       and re-paint a card which you found unsatisfactory as many as five
       or six times. She has, when left to herself, no sense of dignify or
       congruity; one of us has seen some attempts which you rejected, for
       instance, her ideal figure for "The Fool", the Holy Ghost, was Harpo
       Marx. Did you really pass this and Trump I? She gave the Sphinx in
       Trump X a French cabahy sabre! And her first conception of "The Lord
       of the Winds and the Breezes; the King of the Spirits of the Air",
       was a clown in plate armour, waving rapier and dagger, sprawling
       over a demented nag, diving through a paper screen in a circus!

       13. You left Lady Harris a comparatively free hand in respect of
       insignificant details; but at no time did she contribute a single
       idea of any kind to any card, and she is in fact almost as ignorant
       of the Tarot and its true meaning and use as when she began. We
       cannow however, blame you for this.

       14. You have followed with as much fidelity as was possible the
       traditional designs of the mediaeval packs; but you have notably
       enriched and revivified some of them, especially the Trumps, with
       your scholarship, as observed above in paragraph 9.

       15. In every trump you have not only incorporated symbols
       illustrating the doctrines of Payne Knight, Hargrave Jennings,
       Arthur Eddington, J.G. Frazer, Bertrand Russell, J.W.N. Sullivan,
       Eliphaz Levi and how many others! --but introduced very many ideas
       purely personal to yourself and based on your own personal magical
       experience--see "The Vision and the Voice", "The Paris Working" etc.

       16. In certain cases, in order to make sure that your doctrine of
       the New Aeon is clearly manifest as the spiritual-magical basis of
       the whole work, you have given new names to the cards. Notably
       Trumps XI, XIV, and numerous "small" cards. You have made the final
       correction to the attributions--Trumps IV and XVII, according to the
       Book fo the Law given to you in Cairo April 8, 9, and 10 1904. You
       have used "The Stele of Revealing" (see "The Book of the Law" Chap.
       I 49, III 19) to replace "The Last Judgment" (Trump XX) to affirm
       the supersession of the Aeon of Osiris the Dying God by that of
       Horus the Crowned and Conquering Child. The entire composition is
       soaked in and reeks of your own private and personal point of view
       with regard to Magick.

       17. You undertook this Work with two main motives:--

           1. That it should serve as a Magical Atlas of and Guide to the
              Universe, for this "New Aeon of Horus", that is, for the next
              2,000 years.
           2. That its undeniable beauty and majesty should be an
              intelligible vindication of the whole of your life's work.
              You rightly foresaw that sooner or later it would be clear
              that you are the sole responsible author of the Work and Lady
              Harris only your more or less docile and intelligent
              instrument.

       18. You and Lady Harris were at first agreed that the Work should be
       put forth anonymously. She wrote to a friend "I intend to remain
       anonymous when the cards are shown". You had, of course, pointed out
       that any student of the subject would recognise your authorship at a
       glance.

       19. Too well aware that in the past your work has been stolen and
       exploited by unscrupulous rascals and also that doctrinal argument
       of a lightly technical kind may all too frequently prove rather hard
       for a jury, you took the precaution of introducing certain symbols
       into the designs of susch a character that the most stupid would be
       compelled to acknowledge your authorship of the Work.

            Your conduct is abominable and inexcusable to allow Lady Harris
       to issue a catalogue crammed with the grossest errors of fact,
       blunders of scholarsip, irrelevancies and absurdities; to allow her
       to make herself the laughing-stock of London by larying claim to the
       authorship of pictures of which all artists know her to be utterly
       incapable, her work having been that of a wealthy amateur persistent
       enough to acquire a good technique but with no personality, no
       "message" groping in Bloomsbury forgs for the parasitic adulation of
       a gaggle of sycophants.

            We can understand your passionate wish to get these cards
       exhibited, even by a subterfuge, but you had no right to sacrifice
       Lady Harris and you have no right to lend yourself, even by silence
       to the perpetration of a hoax transparent and nausient as it must
       naturally be, which affects the honour of the Fraternity of Art and
       Letters.

            We repeat that we are surprised; for whatever your faults, you
       have always been honourable and truthful with more than ancient
       Roman rigour. You must speak now.

       for the Society of Hidden Masters.

       Justus M.
       Sic vos non vobis.
       Sunur evique.





       [1st page of letter missing--this is Crowley's "reply" to the letter
       from the Society of Hidden Masters.]

            Their estimate in paragraph 6 is exaggerated: it depends on the
       definition of "serious students."
            Nor would it be useful to deny them, as in every case their
       truth is guaranteed by evidence independent of my asseveration,
       internal evidence of documents easily accessible.

                               _________

            I do however most strenuously deny participation in the hoax.
       This was perpetrated by Lady Harris without my knowledge or consent;
       I only learnt of the exhibitions, in the first case several days
       after the opening, from information supplied by loyal friends.
            This letter is to authorize and to request you to publicize its
       substance, either by a letter addressed to the Times and other
       newspapers, or as you in your best judgment may see fit.

Believe me,

       Gentlemen,

       Yours faithfully,

       Aleister Crowley