May 8th
1 9 4 0Dear Muriel,
Getting letters answered is by no means my forte. And during the last six months I have had such a pressure of work for B.O.T.A., which is getting a fine start to a satisfactory reincarnation, that letters have been harder than ever to write.
By this time, I hope, your book about birthdates and destinies is in print. If not, do send me one as soon as it's off the press.
The Tarot tradition was never published until I put it in the book. It is part of the tradition of a section of the Western School with which I had made contact before entering the Golden Dawn. Regardie has nothing about it, because most of his G. D. material is from the revamped Mss. of the Stella Matutina, which followed the usual method of occultist, (so-called), and cut out whatever it could not understand. Gematria, for example, and the magic squares of the planets, have almost no references in the Stella Matutina texts.
Our Chapter out here is growing and working. We have an average of 98% attendance at meetings, and though I have been holding them back a little, it looks now as if we should have a real Second Order in about a year-and-a-half. We are limiting Chapter membership to 30, and beginning with 7. As soon as a Chapter reaches the limit, seven of its members must gather the nucleus of another, which then works out its own destiny. Thus no group gets big enough to be unwieldy and develop cliques.
The correspondence work is growing, too. It had fallen on evil days, thanks partly to the depression, and partly to the well-meant but ill-advised attempts of the one who had it for awhile under her direction to keep the teachings out ik of the hands of all save those she regarded as "chemically pure".
Yes, Saturn is my most important planet. Elevated in the 10th house, it accounts for most of my adventures and misadventures. But the Neptune aspect did me no particular dirt. Things have been restricted in some ways; but there has been steady development of the central idea. And the home life (which now includes two grandchildren--girls, respectively 23 months and 9 months) is happy as ever.
Your Brother in L.V.X.,
Paul Foster Case
July 5, 1941
Dear Paul;
It is a long time between letters, but the Temple did not get itself built in a day...Shortly after this one reaches you, you will receive from the E.P.Dutton Company a book, titled PURSUIT OF DESTINY, which I hope will please you from several points of view. It represents the end of a long and hard fight, and the first step (I hope) of further work. I made up my mind that this work would only be published in the orthodox channels, by a reputable publishing house, in such a way that it would be sold through the established channels. It took some time, and about six re-writings, but here it is -- and I think you will agree that it is a good-looking product.
You will find your name in the dedication. The alliteration of the three names was really rather fortunate! "Pulch" was the name given to Charles Lasenby in college because he was so ugly -- short for pulchritude, and his friends all used it rather than this own, which never seemed to suit him. I hope he's chuckling in heaven somewhere over the re-appearance of the ten day cycles...
Do let me know what you think of it, and how things go with you. It was good to sense the happiness in the letter I had from you a year ago, and I hope that everything continues to develop smoothly. You had earned a bit of happiness and peace, it seems to me.
I have made some rather important discoveries in time cycle work, springing out of the Ten Day Cycle Formula, which may or may not be published -- I do not think they will -- but which will interest you next time I see you. I have found a long range cyclic period which the astrologers seem to have missed entirely, and which correlates with history perfectly. It all hangs on the TREE, of course, without that, there is no possible understanding of the fundamental cyclic pattern -- which is why your name stands firmly on the dedication page of PURSUIT OF DESTINY. Remember when you sat me down and made me learn that Hebrew alphabet and the circles on the Tree, when to me they were just so much gibberish?
Louis, who is well and active and enthusiastic, joins me in warm greetings to you, and my own go also to your Dorothy. I do like the picture of you as a grandfather, Paul!Sincerely and affectionately yours,
MURIEL BRUCE HASBROUCK
July 13, 1941
Dear Muriel:
Your good letter came Friday, in the morning, and the afternoon post brought the book. Everything stopped then, and I promptly devoured it! Dot is spending the week-end on the desert with her friend, Miss Newton, and has taken the book along. Probably Miss N. will buy a copy. She and Dot may have some difficulties with your interpretations of the numbers -- especially with "initiative" for 2. But the whole performance is so good that you may be sure it will be recommended in my next circular letter to our B.O.T.A. members.
Your letter has been pasted into the book, right next to the dedication page. That dedication interested a friend of ours, John Comfort, son of Will Levington Comfort, because it seems that W.L.C. and Pulch were friends.
Your article in Cosmopolitan stirred up quite a tempest amongst the astrologeers (that double "ee" is intentional) out here. Of course they all missed the main point, which you slipped over so nicely in the guise of a confession--that prediction is possible. And both Dot and I can heartily agree with your conclusions as to the futility of trying to help the ordinary consultant by astrology. I thought I detected a trace at irony in your moral reflections and references to Scriptural injunctions against soothsaying, but that seemed to be flavoring for the jam in which you concealed the pill concerning prognostication.I use the same basic principles in my ORACLE OF THE TAROT, but as that work was intended for public reading, I slipped in a blind, by using the modern rulerships of the decanates instead of the traditional ones. But one of our Working Builders out here happens to be a natural diviner. Probably because, having been for years a pulp-fictioneer, he has a low threshold. Whatever the reason, he is a positive wizard at Tarot divination, and the thing he amazes everybody with is the uncanny accuracy of his time-placings, both past and future. Of course, the real reason he succeeds so well is that he is truly religious about it. He doesn't fortune-tell. He divines--making himself intentionally an instrument for the all-knowing Wisdom. Two or three people who came to him with evil purposes in the back of their minds have been frightened into actual repentance and amendment!
The B.O.T.A. work grows, but rather slowly. Two men who are associated with me are experienced in advertising, and they tried various types of copy in the occult magazines. But we got such a lot of replies from
If there's anything in your long-range method which has a bearing on coming world-events, and would be helpful in getting the pattern clearer for us, won't you tell me about it? Not in a blue moon do I write such a lengthy epistle, but something seemed to prompt it this morning.Once a month, I write a personal letter to every Affiliate. They may write as often as they like, ask whatever questions they have, and make any comments or suggestions that occur to them. Their letters from me go out in alphabetical order, and touch on every point they have raised during the preceding month. This is a lot of work, but it keeps live contact with every member, and prevents the few who are voluminous letter-writers from absorbing too much time. When they know they'll get just one Pauline Epistle, no matter how often they write, they don't get impatient. And usually it is possible to boil down the replies into a very few paragraphs.
My best to Louis. You two seem to be working together just as well as I work with Dorothy. We have sharply divergent views on some things. Yet we do about as good a job of basic co-operation as any two people I know.
The kids are all well. Three grandchildren now, named, in the order of their ages: Sylvia Louise (3 in June), Charlotte Louise (2 this month), and Sharon Ruth (February 12, 1941). They make me rather glad, sometimes, that this workshop isn't where I live! Our home is just across the street from 6018, at 6023 Springvale. Plenty of room, and a big backyard, with a sand-pile in which Sylvia and Sharon have a good time.
Your Brother in L.V.X.,
Paul Foster Case
July 30, 1941
Dear Paul:
It was delightful to read your long letter! With the sole exception of Louis' unfailing understanding of and loyalty to my job, I have been working very much alone, this last few years, and your letter gave me, as it were, an outer sensation of companionship which matched the inner one that (Adonai be praised!) is always there. What I particularly enjoyed in your letter, next to the big-brother-onthe-job warm feeling that it gave me, was the way in which you accepted PURSUIT OF DESTINY as just what it is. I suppose that what I am trying to tell you is that I enjoyed what you didn't say even more than what you did say.
Did you, or would you, send a word direct to Dutton? I have told them that you are, in my opinion, the authority on hermetic philosophy and the Kabala in America. Do, of course, exactly as you like about this; I am neither asking nor suggesting. I think that HRU has charge of the job, and everybody will be moved to do whatever is best for it.
You are the first and only reader of my article in COSMOPOLITAN who got the point. It was so interesting that I wrote, and sold, that article nearly two years before it was published. The timing was perfect; it came out just as Dutton was hesitating before the final plunge. HRU is a good angel! I hope you saw the six-page publicity that the good Mr. Clancy gave me in "American Astrology." He tried awfully hard to disagree with me, and failed entirely; the only thing he did was to call me a liar on two points, which I gently corrected for him in a letter which he didn't publish. The "astrologeers" are evidently above such things as editorial ethics. I am adopting your word, incidentally; it's a beauty.
Your experience with B.O.T.A. and ordinary advertising interests me enourmously. One of my biggest problems has been to find a point of correlation between making a living and obeying the fundamental laws which forbid the "selling" of the Wisdom itself. I have tried numerous experiments, and all them have proved that only through person-to-person methods can the work, in any branch, be developed. That is, your decision to attract new students through already established members is correct. We find the people who can use -- and pay for -- our work in broad trends only through those individuals who have been in touch with us, either as personal friends or as personal clients of mine. Louis made, last year, one of the most valiant efforts that has ever been made to prove the fallacy of this law; he failed to prove the fallacy, thereby proving the law, and what a few of us learned from it has been worth far more than anything else could ever have been!
The net results are just touched upon in my chapter "THE QUALITY OF TIME" but it is unlikely that they will ever be publicly developed or recorded. They are for private circulation only, but -- like the individual -- Ten Day Cycle Formula -- my feeling is that "The Boss" wants them to be on record, and I am trying to obey this order in an intelligent manner.
There is a certain series of "planetary" relationships which seems to be directly associated with the fundamental changes of mass psychology which make what we call history. This particular series, as far as I have been able to discover, has never been studied as a series by astrologers. This is not surprising, as it would make about as little sense as most of the astrological dogmas (which isn't much) except for the light which is shed upon in by the Ten Day Cycle Formula. As I have been able to study and interpret it, thanks to the Formula, it -- the series -- gives a recurrent cyclic period during which major changes in mass psychology take place in the indicated order, inducing world events and conditions that are fundamentally similar, with each recurring phase.
I noticed a similar cyclic period working in individual lives, and checked up a few of these, only to discover that there was an evident law at work. Applied to the field of mass psychology, I found that the same law seemed to work, and gradually the technique revealed itself. With the result that I have an orderly time pattern of a long range cyclic period, measured off into phases, all of which can be timed and -- by virtue of the Formula -- analysed as to the type, or direction that will be taken by the mass psychology during each phase. As is the case with everything connected with the Ten Day Cycle Formula (as you will have noticed is you have looked into the skeleton of it in my book) the whole thing works out with the utmost mathematical accuracy, fitting in with the universal order on every hand.
And it is quite evident to me that whoever first worked out the Ten Day Cycle Formula knew about the long range cyclic period. Just for example: the cyclic period which is now drawing to a close began with the indicator-factors (planets) in the cycle which is called STRIFE. The next cycle, beginning in 1958, starts with the indicators in the cycle which is called REST FROM STRIFE. You will note that STRIFE is a Five potential; REST FROM STRIFE is a Four potential. The numbers of these all-important cycle indications have moved right along down the pattern, in retrogression, as far back as I have been able to trace them, and invariably there is, in history, a definite quality in the mass psychology of the time that can be linked with the old name of the cycle without stretching even the imagination. I'll show you the whole thing one day -- but in the mean time, you see what really great significance the cyclic indication of the incoming period can have. I may publish a prognostication about it -- as I said, I can't seem to get my orders clear on this, and until I do, I shall not move. But to you I can say definitely that the world is in for an entirely new type of peace, and that all the symbolic factors of the cycle in question must be fully analysed and rationalised before a sane judgement can be made. Much of this, Louis and I have been doing, and so far, prognostications that we have made (and recorded) have worked out with basic, and useful accuracy.
This cyclic period reveals that every so often the world goes quite mad. It happens with the utmost regularity. These phases last for about eight years, and there is always a breathing space of sanity about half way through. This time, the CHAOTIC phase was timed in early 1933, and, with its regular attempt at equilibrium, lasted until its final signal came in January 1940. The next phase change -- from chaos to "minor prosperity" was timed for July, 1941. These phases, we have found, deal with BASIC CHANGED IN MASS PSYCHOLOGY. They are synchronistic, and fundamentally
The point about these possible, or apparent inaccuracies, is that the actual, tangible work that Louis and I have done in connection with the cyclical changes in the various markets of this and other countries has tended to provide considerable evidence (I never, of course, use the word "prove" in such a connection) that the basic ten-day cycle pattern is so much more accurate than any other basis for measuring time in relation to human psychological changes that these fundamentals can well be taken as fundamentally correct -- for a working basis, that is.
You said to me, years ago, that no one had ever worked out a way of analysing the stock market, or the commodity markets, through the use of "astrological" measurements. At the time, I believe your statement was correct. Now, it isn't; we have done it, but in doing it we have learned (the hard way) just how far one may go in trusting human judgment even of the simplified and basic pattern of the ten-day cycle structure, and -- most important, I think -- what additional realistic factors are necessary to use in correlation with the timing factors.
It has been a terrific job, and it is by no means completed, but we have accomplished certain things. Our accomplishments, I am happy to say, are not only intellectual but practical. In a word, they do give results. And the odd thing is that by being obstinate enough to stick to the job in the face of what seemed, at times, to be insuperable difficulties, we have learned not only how to use the time pattern, but also quite a lot of the basic fundamental laws of what is demanded of the neophyte by the great Laws, if said neophyte insists on poking his or her (or his and her) nose into affairs of such great moment.
All of which long-winded remarks are supposed to bolster up my statement that Jupiter, being exalted in Leo, not in Cancer, has more to do with the Lady and the Lion than with the Chariot. In a word, if you can make money in the cotton market by sticking to basic, accurate, time measurements, there must be something in it -- as the English say, what?
Please let me know, fast, about where I can get your book, and what other material there is available for further study, for us both, particularly in relation to the Grade work.
As I said, we may be in California before many weeks, and one of our main reasons for coming there will be to see you -- we were hoping so much that you might visit us in our home in the wilderness, which it now seems we are ready to leave. Three years in the wilderness should be long enough, don't you think? In one works like the devil all the time, and we really have, both of us. I hope you had a wonderful and fruitful trip East, and that it will not be long before we can all get together in the flesh as well as in the Spirit of L.U.X. Louis joins me in warm good wishes to you and to the lady whose acquaintance we are looking forward to making some time soon.
Affectionately,
MURIEL BRUCE HASBROUCK