The Law is for All

Foreword Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. The Book of the Law was the foundation of Aleister Crowley’s life’s work, and its commentaries a problem that vexed him for most of his adult life, almost since the book’s reception in 1904 E.v. His basic difficulty with producing a commentary was a lack of objectivity. He was too close to The Book of the Law, on too many levels, to be able to easily write about it, let alone judge what other people might find helpful by way of commentary. He made numerous attempts over the years, only the first of which was published in his lifetime.1 The rest, including the “new” or “long” commentary that comprises the present book — remained unedited in typescript. He produced the first draft of the “new commentary” in 1919 E.v. and more than doubled its length dur­ ing 1921-22; he later added the occasional note. 1 A historical survey of the writing of the various commentaries to The Book of the Law may be found in the Editor’s Introduction to Crow­ ley’s Magick (Book 4, Parts I-IV), rev. ed.; see Works Cited. Crowley entrusted the task of editing the commentaries to his closest friend (and later literary executor) Louis Umfraville Wilkinson (1881-1966). Wilkinson wrote under the pen-name Louis Marlow, and like Crowley, was a member of the small English expatriate community in New York during the First World War. Wilkinson was an English man of letters in the best sense; he not only wrote, and wrote well, but lived a literary life 7