From The Occult Review in April 1926 this article by J.F.C. Fuller. Major-General John Frederick Charles Fuller, CB, CBE, DSO (1878–1966) was a British Army officer, military historian and strategist, notable as an early theorist of modern armoured warfare. He was also the inventor of "artificial moonlight". He was also something of an occultist and an early fan of Aleister Crowley and author of a book on him The Star in The West: a critical essay upon the works of Aleister Crowley (Walter Scott Publishing Co., London, 1907).This article was also published in Austin Osman Spare's magazine Form. When later Fuller attempted to distant himself from Crowley to advance his military career The Great Beast fired this salvo at him:
I wanted to give you a leg up the literary ladder. I have taken endless pain to teach you the first principles of writing. When I met you, you were not so much as a fifth-rate journalist, and now you can write quite good prose with no more than my blue pencil through two out of every three adjectives, and five out of every six commas. Another three years with me and I will make you a master, but please don't think that either I or the Work depend on you, any more than J.P. Morgan depends on his favourite clerk.
As to Fuller's merits as a writer, it is probable that he wrote better prose as a military tactician than a follower of the occult. Worth noting in this longish piece is Fuller's quotation from Arthur Machen-- an over-the-top rant about the British Museum Reading Room:
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I wanted to give you a leg up the literary ladder. I have taken endless pain to teach you the first principles of writing. When I met you, you were not so much as a fifth-rate journalist, and now you can write quite good prose with no more than my blue pencil through two out of every three adjectives, and five out of every six commas. Another three years with me and I will make you a master, but please don't think that either I or the Work depend on you, any more than J.P. Morgan depends on his favourite clerk.As to Fuller's merits as a writer, it is probable that he wrote better prose as a military tactician than a follower of the occult. Worth noting in this longish piece is Fuller's quotation from Arthur Machen-- an over-the-top rant about the British Museum Reading Room:
O dim, far-lifted, and mighty dome, Mecca of many minds,
mausoleum of many hopes, sad house where all desires fail! For there men enter in with hearts uplifted, and dreaming minds, seeing in those exalted stairs a ladder to fame, in that pompous portico the gate of knowledge, and going in, find but vain vanity, and all but in vain...