200A1-2.ASC 12. The whole doctrine of `love' is discussed in the Book Aleph (Wisdom or Fol
200A1-2.ASC
12. The whole doctrine of `love' is discussed in the Book
Aleph (Wisdom or Folly) and should be studied therein. But
note further how this Verse agrees with the comment above,
how every Star is to come forth from its veils, that it may
revel with the whole World of Stars. This is again also a
call to unite or `love', thus formulating the Equation
1(;mi1)=0*, which is the general magical formula in our
Cosmos. `Come forth' -- from what are you hiding? `under the
stars', that is, openly. Also, let love be `under' or `unto'
the Body of Nuith. But above all, be open! What is this
shame? Is Love Hideous, that men should cover him with lies?
Is Love so sacred that others must not intrude? Nay, `under
the stars', at night, what eye but theirs may see? Or, if one
see, should not your worship wake the cloisters of his soul
to echo sanctity for that so lovely a deed and gracious you
have done?
31. All this talk about `suffering humanity' is
principally drivel based on the error of transferring one's
own psychology to one's neighbour. The Golden Rule is silly.
If Lord Alfred Douglas (for example) did to others what he
would like them to do to him, many would resent his action.
The development of the Adept is by Expansion -- out to Nuit
-- in all directions equally. The small man has little
experience, little capacity for either pain or pleasure. The
bourgeois is a clod, I know better (at least) than to suppose
that to torture him is either beneficial or amusing to
myself. This thesis concerning compassion is of the most
palmary importance in the ethics of Thelema. It is necessary
that we stop, once for all, this ignorant meddling with other
people's business. Each individual must be left free to
follow his own path! America is peculiarly insane on these
points. Her people are desperately anxious to make the
Cingalese wear furs, and the Tibetans vote, and the whole
world chew gum, utterly dense to the fact that most other
nations, especially the French and British, regard `American
institutions' as the lowest savagery, and forgetful or
ignorant of the circumstance that the original brand of
American freedom -- which really was Freedom -- contained the
precept to leave other people severely alone, and thus
assured the possibility of expansion on his own lines to
every man.
32. It is proper to obey The Beast, because His Law is
pure Freedom, and He will give NO command which is other than
a Right Interpretation of this Freedom. But it is necessary
for the development of Freedom itself to have an
organization; and every organization must have a
highly-centralized control. This is especially necessary in
time of war, as even the so-called `democratic' nations have
been taught by Experience, since they would not learn from
Germany. Now this age is pre-eminently a `time of war', most
of all now, when it is our Work to overthrow the slave-gods.
The injunction `seek me only' is emphasized with an oath, and
a special promise is made in connection with it. By seeking
lesser ideals one makes distinctions, thereby affirming
implicitly the very duality from which one is seeking to
escape. Note also that `me' may imply the Greek MH, `not'.
The word `only' might be taken as `[...]' with the number of
156, that of the Secret Name BABALON of Nuith. There are
presumably further hidden meanings in the key-word `all'.
33. Law, in the common sense of the word, should be a
formulation of the customs of a people, as Euclid's
propositions are the formulation of geometrical facts. But
modern knavery conceived the idea of artificial law, as if
one should try to square the circle by tyranny. Legislators
try to force the people to change their customs, so that the
`business men' whose greed they art bribed to serve may
increase their profits. `Law' in Greek, is NOMOC, from NEM,
and means strictly `anything assigned, that which one has in
use or possession'; hence `custom, usage', and also `a
musical strain'. The literal equivalence of NEM and the Latin
NEMO is suggestive. In Hebrew, `Law' is ThORA and equivalent
to words meaning `The Gate of the Kingdom' and `The Book of
Wisdom'.
34. The Ordeals are at present carried out unknown to the
Candidate by the secret Magick Power of The Beast. Those who
are accepted by Him for initiation testify that these Ordeals
are frequently independent of His conscious care. They are
not, like the traditional ordeals, formal, or identical for
all; the Candidate finds himself in circumstances which
afford a real test of conduct, and compel him to discover his
own nature, to become aware of himself by bringing his secret
motives to the surface. Some of the Rituals have been made
accessible, that is, the Magical Formulae have been
published. See The Rites of Eleusis, `Energized Enthusiasm',
Book4, Part III, etc. Note the reference to `not' and `all'.
Also the word `known' contains the root GN, `to beget' and
`to know'; while `concealed' indicates the other half of the
Human Mystery.
37. Each star is unique, and each orbit apart; indeed,
that is the corner-stone of my teaching, to have no standard
goals or standard ways, no orthodoxies and no codes. The
stars are not herded and penned and shorn and made into
mutton like so many voters! I decline to be bellwether, who
am born a Lion! I will not be collie, who am quicker to bite
than to bark. I refuse the office of shepherd, who bear not a
crook but a club. Wise in your generation, ye sheep, art ye
to scamper away bleating when your ears catch my roar on the
wind! Are ye not tended and fed and protected -- until word
come from the stockyard? The lion's life for me! Let me live
free, and die fighting! Now one more point about the obeah
and the wanga, the deed and the word of Magick. Magick is
the art of causing change in existing phenomena. This
definition includes raising the dead, bewitching cattle,
making rain, acquiring goods, fascinating judges, and all the
rest of the programme. Good: but it also includes every act
soever? Yes; I meant it to do so. It is not possible to utter
word or do deed without producing the exact effect proper and
necessary thereto. Thus Magick is the Art of Life itself.
Magick is the management of all we say and do, so that the
effect is to change that part of our environment which
dissatisfies us, until it does so no longer. We `remould it
nearer to the heart's desire.' Magick ceremonies proper are
merely organized and concentrated attempts to impose our Will
on certain parts of the Cosmos. They are only particular
cases of the general law. But all we say and do, however
casually, adds up to more, far more, than our most strenuous
Operations. `Take care of the pence, and the pounds will take
care of themselves.' Your daily drippings fill a bigger
bucket than your geysers of magical effort. The `ninety and
nine that safely lay in the shelter of the fold' have no
organized will at all; and their character, built of their
words and deeds, is only a garbage-heap. Remember, also,
that, unless you know what your true will is, you may be
devoting the most laudable energies to destroying yourself.
Remember that every word and deed is a witness to thought,
that therefore your mind must be perfectly organized, its
sole duty to interpret circumstances in terms of the Will so
that speech and action may be rightly directed to express the
Will appropriately to the occasion. Remember that every word
and deed which is not a definite expression of your Will
counts against it, indifference worse than hostility. Your
enemy is at least interested in you: you may make him your
friend as you never can do with a neutral. Remember that
Magick is the Art of Life, therefore of causing change in
accordance with Will; therefore its law is `love under will'
, and its every movement is an act of love. Remember that
every act of `love under will' is lawful as such; but that
when any act is not directed unto Nuith, who is here the
inevitable result of the whole Work, that act is waste, and
breeds conflict within you, so that `the kingdom of God which
is within you' is torn by civil war. To the beginner I would
offer this programme.
1.Furnish your mind as completely as possible with
the knowledge of how to inspect and to control it.
2.Train your body to obey your mind, and not to
distract its attention.
3.Control your mind to devote itself wholly to
discover your true Will.
4.Explore the course of that Will till you reach its
source, your Silent Self.
5.Unite the conscious will with the true Will, and
the conscious Ego with the Silent Self. You must be
utterly ruthless in discarding any atom of
consciousness which is hostile or neutral.
6.Let this work freely from within, but heed not your
environment, lest you make difference between one
thing and another. Whatever it be, it is to be made
one with you by Love.
41. The first paragraph is a general statement or
definition of Sin or Error. Any thing soever that binds the
will, hinders it, or diverts it, is Sin. That is, Sin is the
appearance of the Dyad. Sin is impurity.* The remainder of
the paragraph takes a particular case as an example. There
shall be no property in human flesh. The sex- instinct is one
of the most deeply-seated expressions of the will; and it
must not be restricted, either negatively by preventing its
free function, or positively by insisting on its false
function. What is more brutal than to stunt natural growth
or to deform it? What is more absurd than to seek to
interpret this holy instinct as a gross animal act, to
separate it from the spiritual enthusiasm without which it is
so stupid as not even to be satisfactory to the persons
concerned? The sexual act is a sacrament of Will. To profane
it is the great offence. All true expression of it is lawful;
all suppression or distortion is contrary to the Law of
Liberty. To use legal or financial constraint to compel
either abstention or submission, is entirely horrible,
unnatural and absurd. Physical constraint, up to a certain
point, is not so seriously wrong; for it has its roots in the
original sex-conflict which we see in animals, and has often
the effect of exciting Love in his highest and noblest shape.
Some of the most passionate and permanent attachments have
begun with rape. Rome was actually founded thereon.
Similarly, murder of a faithless partner is ethically
excusable, in a certain sense; for there may be some stars
whose Nature is extreme violence. The collision of galaxies
is a magnificent spectacle, after all. But there is nothing
inspiring in a visit to one's lawyer. Of course this is
merely my personal view; a star who happened to be a lawyer
might see things otherwise! Yet Nature's unspeakable variety,
though it admits cruelty and selfishness, offers us not
example of the puritan and the prig! However, to the mind of
Law there is an Order of Going; and a machine is more
beautiful, save to the Small Boy, when it works than when it
smashes. Now the Machine of Matter-Motion is an explosive
machine, with pyrotechnic effects; but these are only
incidentals. Laws against adultery are based upon the idea
that woman is a chattel, so that to make love to a married
woman is to deprive the husband of her services. It is the
frankest and most crass statement of a slave-situation. To
us, every woman is a star. She has therefore an absolute
right to travel in her own orbit. There is no reason why she
should not be the ideal hausfrau, if that chance to be her
will. But society has no right to insist upon that standard.
It was, for practical reasons, almost necessary to set up
such taboos in small communities, savage tribes, where the
wife was nothing but a general servant, where the safety of
the people depended upon a high birth-rate. But to-day woman
is economically independent, becomes more so every year. The
result is that she instantly asserts her right to have as
many or as few men or babies as she wants or can get; and she
defies the world to interfere with her. More power to her --
elbow! The War has seen this emancipation flower in four
years. Primitive people, the Australian troops for example,
are saying that they will not marry English girls, because
English girls like a dozen men a week. Well, who wants them
to marry? Russia has already formally abrogated marriage.
Germany and France have tried to `save their faces' in a
thoroughly Chinese manner, by `marrying' pregnant spinsters
to dead soldiers! England has been too deeply hypocritical,
of course, to do more than `hush things up'; and is
pretending `business as usual', though every pulpit is aquake
with the clamour of bat-eyed bishops, squeaking of the awful
immorality of everybody but themselves and their choristers.
Englishwomen over 30 have the vote; when the young 'uns get
it, good-bye to the old marriage system. America has made
marriage a farce by the multiplication and confusion of the
Divorce Laws. A friend of mine who had divorced her husband
was actually, three years later, sued by him for divorce!!!
But America never waits for laws; her people go ahead. The
emancipated, self-supporting American woman already acts
exactly like the `bachelor-boy'. Sometimes she loses her
head, and stumbles into marriage, and stubs her toe. She will
soon get tired of the folly. She will perceive how imbecile
it is to hamstring herself in order to please her parents, or
to legitimatize her children, or to silence her neighbours.
She will take the men she wants as simply as she buys a
newspaper; and if she doesn't like the Editorials, or the
Comic Supplement, it's only two cents gone, and she can get
another. Blind asses! who pretend that women are naturally
chaste! The Easterns know better; all the restrictions of the
harem, of public opinion, and so on, are based upon the
recognition of the fact that woman is only chaste when there
is nobody around. She will snatch the babe from its cradle,
or drag the dog from its kennel, to prove the old saying:
Natura abhorret a vacuo;. For she is the Image of the Soul of
Nature, the Great Mother, the Great Whore. It is to be well
noted that the Great Women of History have exercised
unbounded freedom in Love. Sappho, Semiramis, Messalina,
Cleopatra, Ta Chhi, Pasiphae, Clytaemnaestra, Helen of Troy,
and in more recent times Joan of Arc (by Shakespeare's
account), Catherine II of Russia, Queen Elizabeth of England,
George Sand. Against these we can put only Emily Bronte;um,
whose sex-suppression was due to her environment, and so
burst out in the incredible violence of her art, and the
regular religious mystics, Saint Catherine, Saint Teresa, and
so on, the facts of whose sex-life have been carefully
camouflaged in the interests of the slave-gods. But, even on
that showing, the sex- life was intense, for the writings of
such women are overloaded with sexual expression passionate
and perverted, even to morbidity and to actual hallucination.
Sex is the main expression of the Nature of a person; great
Natures are sexually strong; and the health of any person
will depend upon the freedom of that function. (See Liber
CI, `de Lege Libellum', Cap. IV, in The Equinox III (1).)
42. `Manyhood bound and loathing.' An organized state is a
free association for the common weal. My personal will to
cross the Atlantic, for example, is made effective by
co-operation with others on agreed terms. But the forced
association of slaves is another thing. A man who is not
doing his will is like a man with cancer, an independent
growth in him, yet one from which he cannot get free. The
idea of self-sacrifice is a moral cancer in exactly this
sense. Similarly, one may say that not to do one's will is
evidence of mental or moral insanity. When `duty points one
way, and inclination the other', it is proof that you are not
one, but two. You have not centralized your control. This
dichotomy is the beginning of conflict, which may result in a
Jekyll-Hyde effect. Stevenson suggests that man may be
discovered to be a `mere polity' of many individuals. The
sages knew it long since. But the name of this polity is
Choronzon, mob rule, unless every individual is absolutely
disciplined to serve his own, and the common, purpose without
friction. It is of course better to expel or destroy an
irreconcilable. `If thine eye offend thee, cut it out.' The
error in the interpretation of this doctrine has been that it
has not been taken as it stands. It has been read: If thine
eye offend some artificial standard of right, cut it out. The
curse of society has been Procrustean morality, the ethics of
the herd-men. One would have thought that a mere glance at
Nature would have sufficed to disclose Her scheme of
Individuality made possible by Order.
E-Mail Fredric L. Rice / The Skeptic Tank