I am selling a hand written letter by Crowley that I bought from Weiser Antiquarian a couple of years ago. This letter was written at Crowley's 93 Jermyn Street address in 1944 to Anne Macky. It also has the OTO lamen printed in red at the top of the sheet. It comes with an official letter of authentication from Weiser Antiquarian.
I paid £660 for it but also had it framed. I am asking £750 for it plus post and packaging.
The Weiser letter of authentication reads:
“A single page handwritten receipt written on a sheet of pale blue O.T.O. notepaper (5" x 8") headed with the O.T.O. lamen (pyramid, dove and chalice) printed in red. To the left of the lamen Crowley has written his address of the time: 93 Jermyn Street S.W.1, to its right the date, Jan. 4, '44 e.v. Below this Crowley has written five lines, acknowledging the receipt - on behalf of the Grand Treasurer of the O.T.O. - twenty-six pounds five shillings, in payment for 'Letters XIII - XXV.' Crowley has affixed a postage stamp to the bottom of the page, and has signed his name and the date across this, thereby making it an officially recognized document. The 'Mrs. A Macky' to whom it is made out was Anne Macky, Soror Fiat-Yod of the O.T.O. For a time she engaged in a lengthy correspondence with Crowley on magical matters, and it was his letters to her that formed the basis of the posthumously published book Magick Without Tears. The letters referred to in the document are presumably those that made up the correspondence. The inference, of course, is that she was paying Crowley for what was, in effect, a correspondence course of magical instruction, although there may be some other explanation.”
After doing some research I came up with the following:
"In July of 2010 I procured a receipt made out to Anne Macky by Aleister Crowley dated January the 4th, 1944. This receipt was ‘presumably’, so it states in the letter of authentication provided by Weiser Antiquarian who I purchased it from, for a series of letters which formed the basis of the book ‘Magick Without Tears’. The author of the letter of authentication appears to be unsure as to the purpose of the receipt: “The inference, of course, is that she was paying Crowley for what was, in effect, a correspondence course of magical instruction, although there may be some other explanation.” This led me to investigate further to ascertain whether I could shed any light on the matter. Anne Macky, of Hertfordshire, England, is cited by many as the primary correspondent in MWT and we find Crowley providing her with the A∴A∴motto ‘FIAT YOD’ in Letter E, and then subsequently in Letter F he provides a Qabalistic analysis of its formula. The receipt is for Letters XIII to XXV, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that they correspond to Letters 13 to 25 contained in MWT as chapters; one would certainly need evidence to propose this notion, as the chapters seem to be only partially compiled chronologically and Macky’s correspondence to Crowley appears to no longer exist. However, Hymenaeus Beta is preparing a new edition of MWT and in his reconstruction of Crowley’s ‘General Principles of Astrology’ he provides the full version of Letter XXI as Appendix I from the unabridged 1954 edition of MWT. The footnote on page 437 of ‘General Principles of Astrology’ appears relevant since it states that Letter XXI is to Anne Macky; the use of Roman numerals being of interest instead of the Arabic designation, 25, used in the later abridged 1973 edition, which was prepared by Israel Regardie. This could be Letter XXI mentioned in the receipt. Time may tell when the new version of MTW is finally published".
Deviluna
Please PM me if you are interested.
