Mrs. Macky the Unknown Soror from Magick Without Tears

Many years ago I acquired this envelope which included two beautiful examples of Crowley’s personal seal of Ankh-f-n-khonsu; done in his hand and sent to Mrs. Anne Macky on February 15th, 1944.  Eventually curiosity got the best of me and about five years ago I decided to research just whom Mrs. Macky was and to see if I could uncover just why she and Crowley had been corresponding.  I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the envelope contained letter XXVII in a series of informal letters, between this Aspirant and Crowley, on a wide variety of Magical topics.

Crowley met Macky in March of 1943 and by August of that year we find him pondering Macky’s motto when recording in his journal, “Mrs Macky ‘I would be one with the creative force of the Universe’. PURAMIS GEN (?) OINI (?) 831.”  Later this would evolve into Soror “Fiat Yod”, (811+20=831). She is usually referenced as simply “FY” in Crowley’s journals and figures regularly in this period.  On August 23 of 1943 Crowley and Macky came to terms on a contract for a 50-letter correspondence in which she would pose questions and he would respond.  These letters would eventually evolve into the main body of work we now know as Magick Without Tears which Crowley first considered titling Aleister Explains Everything.  This title was not published during Crowley’s life time.  Instead Karl Germer first published it in January of 1954.  Fewer then 100 were printed and the early copies carry the misprinted title “Magic without Tears”.

However, Macky’s name is not given in any of the thus far published editions.  In the forward to the first edition, Germer simply refers to her as “a lady.”  Nor has any edition given the proper order of the letters, or identified to whom each letter was sent.  Regardie hints at this fact in 1973, when in his introduction to the first widely available edition he mentions that “the letters may have been re-arranged”.  Many of these details have yet to be worked out, but hopefully we will some day soon know much of these details.  What we do know is that the bulk of the material for Magick Without Tears did indeed originate from Crowley’s correspondence with Macky and the unknown Soror mentioned by Germer in his forward, now has a name.