DEAD WEIGHT
Waite would write “Placental amniotes, ultra, goversxw vobis,
conuterinian mascules” for St. Paul’s ‘Men and brethren”
even in his calmest moments. And while correcting the
proofs he would put in some more hints about the Sanctuary
he belonged to, the fact being that his only teacher was an ex-
Cantab, named Humphreys, who had at one time been tolerated
by Crowley in order to analyze the soul (if any) of the kind of
man who fills his rooms with the portraits of “actresses”
whom he has never seen, and boasts of their devotion to him.
His only other guide appears to have been a solicitor of
the kind that writes you terrible threatening letters, and on
being told rudely to do what the Oldest Inhabitant of the
Northumbrian Capital actually did (as we are incredibly
informed) retires into the Pleroma, and confines his activi-
ties to sneaking attacks on you without mentioning your
name.
Well, he reached the age of 40 years, and his very syco-
phants could hardly have called him a physician.
It was not many years after that, like Nicodemus, he
came to Crowley secretly by night, and pleaded for initiation.
Crowley was moved by his tears, and promised never to
divulge the nature of the interview while Waite lived, for it
was truly a pitiable thing to see one who had advertised him-
self as a Master clasping the feet of a man twenty years
younger than himself, and begging for the very initiation of
which he had boasted himself the dispenser.
It was impossible for Crowley to grant this request; the
Dweller on the Threshold would have found Waite scarce a
caper in her daily mayonnaise. Initiation for Waite would
have meant madness, and the cold portals of the tomb, for one,
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