220A1-3.ASC 43. The general meaning of this verse is that so great is the power of asserti

         220A1-3.ASC

         43.    The general meaning of this verse is that so great is
         the power of asserting one's right that it will not long be
         disputed. For by doing so one appeals to the Law. In practice
         it is found that people who are ready to fight for their
         rights are respected, and let alone. The slave-spirit invites
         oppression.

         44.    This verse is best interpreted by defining `pure will'
         as the true expression of the Nature, the proper or inherent
         motion of the matter, concerned. It is unnatural to aim at
         any goal. The student is referred to Liber LXV, Cap. II, v.
         24, and to the Tao Teh King. This becomes particularly
         important in high grades. One is not to do Yoga, etc., in
         order to get Samadhi, like a schoolboy or a shopkeeper; but
         for its own sake, like an artist.  `Unassuaged' means `its
         edge taken off by' or `dulled by'. The pure student does not
         think of the result of the examination.

         49.    This verse declares that the old formula of Magick --
         the Osiris-Adonis -Jesus-Marsyas-Dionysus-Attis-Et cetera
         formula of the Dying God -- is no longer efficacious. It
         rested on the ignorant belief that the Sun died every day,
         and every year, and that its resurrection was a miracle.  The
         Formula of the New Aeon recognizes Horus, the Child crowned
         and conquering, as God, the Sun; and about our System is the
         Ocean of Space. This formula is then to be based upon these
         facts. Our `Evil', `Error', `Darkness', `Illusion', whatever
         one chooses to call it, is simply a phenomenon of accidental
         and temporary separateness. If you are `walking in darkness',
         do not try to make the sun rise by self-sacrifice, but wait
         in confidence for the dawn, and enjoy the pleasures of the
         night meanwhile.  The general illusion is to the Equinox
         Ritual of the G.D. where the officer of the previous six
         months, representing Horus, took the place of the retiring
         Hierophant, who had represented Osiris.  Isa is the Legendary
         `Jesus', for which Canidian concoction the prescription is to
         be found in my book bearing that Title, Liber DCCCLXXXVIII.

         51.    The first section of this verse is connected with the
         second only by the word `therefore'. It appears to describe
         an initiation, or perhaps The initiation, in general terms. I
         would suggest that the palace is the `Holy House' or Universe
         of the Initiate of the New Law. The four gates are perhaps
         Light, Life, Love, Liberty -- see `De Lege Libellum'. Lapis
         Lazuli is a symbol of Nuit, Jasper of Hadit. The rare scents
         are possibly various ecstasies or Samadhis. Jasmine and Rose
         are Hieroglyphs of the two main Sacraments, while the emblems
         of death may refer to certain secrets of a well known
         exoteric school of initiation whose members, with the rarest
         exceptions, do not know what it is all about.  The question
         then arises as to whether the initiate is able to stand
         firmly in this Place of Exaltation. It seems to me as if this
         refers to the ascetic life, commonly considered as an
         essential condition of participation in these mysteries. The
         answer is that `there are means and means', implying that no
         one rule is essential. This is in harmony with our general
         interpretation of the Law; it has as many rules as there are
         individuals.  This word `therefore' is easy to understand. We
         are to enjoy life thoroughly in an absolutely normal way,
         exactly as all the free and great have always done. The only
         point to remember is that one is a `Member of the Body of
         God', a Star in the Body of Nuith. This being sure, we are
         urged to the fullest expansion of our several Natures, with
         special attention to those pleasures which not only express
         the soul, but aid it to reach the higher developments of that
         expression.  The act of Love is to the bourgeois (as the
         `Christian' is called now-a-days) a gross animal gesture
         which shames his boasted humanity. The appetite drags him at
         its hoofs; it tires him, disgusts him, diseases him, makes
         him ridiculous even in his own eyes. It is the source of
         nearly all his neuroses.  Against this monster he has devised
         two protections. Firstly, he pretends that it is a Fairy
         Prince disguised, and hangs it with the rags and tinsel of
         romance, sentiment, and religion. He calls it Love, denies
         its strength and truth, and worships this wax figure of him
         with all sorts of amiable lyrics and leers.  Secondly, he is
         so certain, despite all his theatrical-wardrobe-work, that it
         is a devouring monster, that he resents with insane ferocity
         the existence of people who laugh at his fears, and tell him
         that the monster he fears is in reality not a fire-breathing
         worm, but a spirited horse, well trained to the task of the
         bridle. They tell him not to be a gibbering coward, but to
         learn to ride. Knowing well how abject he is, the kindly
         manhood of the advice is, to him, the bitterest insult he can
         imagine, and he calls on the mob to stone the blasphemer. He
         is therefore particularly anxious to keep intact the bogey he
         so dreads; the demonstration that Love is a general passion,
         pure in itself, and the redeemer of all them that put their
         trust in Him, is to tear open the raw ulcer of his soul.  We
         of Thelema are not the slaves of Love. `Love under will' is
         the Law. We refuse to regard love as shameful and degrading,
         as a peril to body and soul. We refuse to accept it as the
         surrender of the divine to the animal; to us it is the means
         by which the animal may be made the Winged Sphinx which shall
         bear man aloft to the House of the Gods.  We are then
         particularly careful to deny that the object of love is the
         gross physiological object which happens to be Nature's
         excuse for it. Generation is a sacrament of the physical
         Rite, by which we create ourselves anew in our own image,
         weave in a new flesh-tapestry the Romance of our own Soul's
         History. But also Love is a sacrament of trans-substantiation
         whereby we initiate our own souls; it is the Wine of
         Intoxication as well as the Bread of Nourishment. `Nor is he
         for priest designed Who partakes only in one kind.'  We
         therefore heartily cherish those forms of Love in which no
         question of generation arises; ;we use the stimulating
         effects of physical enthusiasm to inspire us morally and
         spiritually. Experience teaches that passions thus employed
         do serve to refine and to exalt the whole being of man or
         woman. Nuith indicates the sole condition: `But always unto
         me.' The epicure is not a monster of gluttony, nor the
         amateur of Beethoven a `degenerate' from the `normal' man
         whose only music is the tom-tom. So also the poisons which
         shook the bourgeois are not indulgences, but purifications;
         the brute whose furtive lust demands that he be drunk and in
         darkness that he may surrender to his shame, and that he lie
         about it with idiot mumblings ever after, is hardly the best
         judge even of Phryne. How much less should he venture to
         criticize such men and women whose imaginations are so free
         from grossness that the element of attraction which serves to
         electrify their magnetic coil is independent of physical
         form? To us the essence of Love is that it is a sacrament
         unto Nuith, a gate of grace and a road of righteousness to
         Her High Palace, the abode of peerless purity whose lamps are
         the Stars. `As ye will.' It should be abundantly clear from
         the foregoing remarks that each individual has an absolute
         and indefeasible right to use his sexual vehicle in
         accordance with its own proper character, and that he is
         responsible only to himself. But he should not injure himself
         and his right aforesaid; acts invasive of another
         individual's equal rights are implicitly self-aggressions. A
         thief can hardly complain on theoretical grounds if he is
         himself robbed. Such acts as rape, and the assault or
         seduction of infants, may therefore be justly regarded as
         offences against the Law of Liberty, and repressed in the
         interests of that Law. It is also excluded from `as ye will'
         to compromise the liberty of another person indirectly, as by
         taking advantage of the ignorance or good faith of another
         person to expose that person to the constraint of sickness,
         poverty, social detriment, or childbearing, unless with the
         well-informed and uninfluenced free will of that person.  One
         must moreover avoid doing another injury by deforming his
         nature; ;for instance, to flog children at or near puberty
         may distort the sensitive nascent sexual character, and
         impress it with the stamp of masochism. Again, homosexual
         practices between boys may in certain cases actually rob them
         of their virility, psychically or even physically.  Trying to
         frighten adolescents about sex by the bogeys of Hell,
         Disease, and Insanity, may warp the moral nature permanently,
         and produce hypochondria or other mental maladies, with
         perversions of the enervated and thwarted instinct.
         Repression of the natural satisfaction may result in addition
         to secret and dangerous vices which destroy their victim
         because they are artificial and unnatural aberrations. Such
         moral cripples resemble those manufactured by beggars by
         compressing one part of the body so that it is compensated by
         a monstrous exaggeration in another part.  But on the other
         hand we have no right to interfere with any type of
         manifestation of the sexual impulse on a priori grounds. We
         must recognize that the Lesbian leanings of idle and
         voluptuous women whose refinement finds the grossness of the
         average male repugnant, are as inexpungably entrenched in
         Righteousness as the parallel pleasures of the English
         Aristocracy and Clergy whose aesthetics find women
         disgusting, and whose self-respect demands that love should
         transcend animal impulse, excite intellectual intimacy, and
         inspire spirituality by directing it towards an object whose
         attainment cannot inflict the degradation of domesticity, and
         the bestiality of gestation. Every one should discover, by
         experience of every kind, the extent and intention of his own
         sexual Universe. He must be taught that all roads are equally
         royal, and that the only question for him is `Which road is
         mine?' All details are equally likely to be of the essence of
         his personal plan, all equally `right' in themselves, his own
         choice of the one as correct as, and independent of, his
         neighbour's preference for the other.  He must not be ashamed
         or afraid of being homosexual if he happens to be so at
         heart; he must not attempt to violate his own true nature
         because public opinion, or mediaeval morality, or religious
         prejudice would wish he were otherwise. The oyster stays shut
         in his shell for all Darwin may say about his `low stage of
         evolution', or Puritans about his priapistic character, or
         idealists about his unfitness for civic government.  The
         advocates of homosexuality - primus inter pares, John
         Addington Symonds! -- hammer away like Hercules at the
         spiritual, social, moral, and intellectual advantages of
         cultivating the caresses of a comrade who combines Apollo
         with Achilles and Antinous at the expense of escaping from a
         Chimaera with Circe's head, Cleopatra's body, and Cressida's
         character.  Why can't they let one alone? I agree to agree; I
         only stipulate to be allowed to be inconsistent. I will
         confess their creed, so long as I may play the part of Peter
         until the cock crow thrice. They urge more strenuously still
         the claims of homosexuality to heal the hurts and horrors of
         humanity, almost the `complete cohort'. On this point I
         concur that they argue indiscutably, with sober sense to
         support and stress of suffering to spur them. They prove with
         Euler's exactness and Hinton's passion that heterosexuality
         entrains an infinity of ills; jealousies, abortions,
         diseases, infanticides, frauds, intrigues, quarrels, poverty,
         prostitution, persecution, idleness, self-indulgence, social
         stress, over-population, sex-antagonism. They show with
         Poincare's precision that Jesus and Paul struck at the heart
         of hell when they proclaimed marriage a scourge, and offered
         the testimony of John and Timothy to support the plea of
         Plato on behalf of paederastic passion. Out of the Court
         there slunk Mark Antony, his toga to his face, one of the
         legion of lost souls that woman had withered; behind him
         groped blind Samson, disinherited Adam, feeling his way along
         the table where they had piled countless papyri writ with
         woes of kings and sages woman-wrecked, and many a map of
         towns and temples torn and trampled beneath the feet of Love,
         their ashes smouldering still, and smoky with song to witness
         how Astarte's breath had kindled and consumed them.
         Extinguished empires owned that their doom was the device of
         Venus, her vengeance on virility.  By Paul sat Buddha
         smiling, Ananda's arm about his neck, while Mohammed paced
         the floor impatiently between two warrior comrades, his belt
         bearing an iron key, a whip and a sword, wherewith to limit
         women's liberty, their love their life, lest to his loss they
         lure him. The Beast is there also, aloof, attentive. He will
         not weigh the evidence in the balances of any particular kind
         of advantage. He will not admit any standard as adequate to
         assess the absolute. To him, the pettiest personal whimsy
         outweighs all wisdom, all philosophy, all private profit and
         all public prudence. The sexual obol of the meanest is
         stamped with the signature of his own sovereign soul, lawful
         and current coin no less than the gold talent of his
         neighbour. The derelict moon has the same right to drift
         round Earth as Regulus to blaze in the heart of the Lion.
         Collision is the only crime in the cosmos.  The Beast refuses
         therefore to assent to any argument as to the propriety of
         any fashion of formulating the soul in symbols of sex. A
         canon is no less deadly in love than in art or literature;
         its acceptance stifles style, and its enforcement
         extinguishes sincerity.  It is better for a person of
         heterosexual nature to suffer every possible calamity as the
         indirect environment-evoked result of his doing his true will
         in that respect than to enjoy health, wealth and happiness by
         means either of suppressing sex altogether, of debauching it
         to the service of Sodom or Gommorrah.  Equally it is better
         for the androgyne, the urning, or their feminine counterparts
         to endure blackmailers private and public, the terrors of
         police persecution, the disgust, contempt and loathing of the
         vulgar, and the self-torture of suspecting the peculiarity to
         be a symptom of a degenerate nature, than to wrong the soul
         by damning it to the hell of abstinence, or by defiling it
         with the abhorred embraces of antipathetic arms.  Every star
         must calculate its own orbit. All is Will, and yet all is
         Necessity. To swerve is ultimately impossible; to seek to
         swerve is  to suffer.  The Beast 666 ordains by His authority
         that every man, and every woman, and every
         intermediately-sexed individual, shall be absolutely free to
         interpret and communicate Self by means of any sexual
         practices soever, whether direct or indirect, rational or
         symbolic, physiologically, legally, ethically, or religiously
         approved or no, provided only that all parties to any act are
         fully aware of all implications and responsibilities thereof,
         and heartily agree thereto.  Moreover, the Beast 666 adviseth
         that all children shall be accustomed from infancy to witness
         every type of sexual act, as also the process of birth, lest
         falsehood fog, and mystery stupefy, their minds, whose error
         else might thwart and misdirect the growth of their
         subconscious system of soul-symbolism. `When, where, and with
         whom ye will.'  The phrase `with whom' has been practically
         covered by the comment on `as ye will'. One need no more than
         distinguish that the earlier phrase permits all manner of
         acts, the latter all possible partners. There would have been
         no Furies for Oedipus, no disaster for Othello, Romeo,
         Pericles of Tyre, Laon and Cythna, if it were only agreed to
         let sleeping dogs lie, and mind one's own business. In real
         life, we have seen in our own times Oscar Wilde, Sir Charles
         Dilke, Parnell, Canon Aitken and countless others, many of
         them engaged in first-rate work for the world, all wasted
         because the mob must make believe to be `moral'. This phrase
         abolishes the Eleventh Commandment, Not to be Found Out, by
         authorizing Incest, Adultery, and Paederasty, which every one
         now practices with humiliating precautions, which perpetuate
         the schoolboy's enjoyment of an escapade, and make shame,
         slyness, cowardice and hypocrisy the conditions of success in
         life.  It is also the fact that the tendency of any
         individual to sexual irregularity is emphasised by the
         preoccupation with the subject which follows its factitious
         importance in modern society.  It is to be observed that
         Politeness has forbidden any direct reference to the subject
         of sex to secure no happier result than to allow Sigmund
         Freud and others to prove that our every thought, speech, and
         gesture, conscious or unconscious, is an indirect reference!
         Unless one wants to wreck the neighbourhood, it is best to
         explode one's gunpowder in an unconfined space. There are
         very few cases of `perverted hunger-instinct' in moderately
         healthy communities. War restrictions on food created
         dishonest devices to procure dainties, and artificial
         attempts to appease the ache of appetite by chemical
         counterfeits.  The South-Sea Islanders, pagan, amoral and
         naked, are temperate lovers, free from hysterical `crimes of
         passion', sex obsessions, and puritan persecution-mania;
         perversion is practically unknown, and monogamy is the
         general custom.  Even the civilized psychopaths of cities,
         forced into every kind of excess by the omnipresence of
         erotic suggestions and the contact of crazed crowds seething
         with suppressed sexuality, are not wholly past physic. They
         are no sooner released from the persistent pressure by
         escaping to some place where the inhabitants treat the
         reproductive and the respiratory organs as equally innocent
         than they begin insensibly to forget their `fixed idea'
         forced on them by the fog-horn of Morality, so that their
         perversions perish, just as a coiled spring straightens
         itself when the external compulsion is removed. They revert
         to their natural sex-characters, which only in rare cases are
         other than simple, pure, and refined. More, sex itself ceases
         to play Principal Boy in the Pantomime of Life. Other
         interests resume their proper proportions.  We may now
         inquire why the Book is at pains to admit as to love `when'
         and `where' we will. Few people, surely, have been seriously
         worried by restrictions of time and place. One can only think
         of lovers who live with fearsome families or in inhospitable
         lodgings, on a rainy night, buffeted from one police-bullied
         hotel to another.  Perhaps this permission is intended to
         indicate the propriety of performing the sexual act without
         shame or fear, not waiting for darkness or seeking secrecy,
         but by daylight in public places, as serenely as if it were a
         natural incident in a morning stroll.  Custom would soon
         surfeit curiosity, and copulation attract less attention than
         a new fashion in frocks. For the existing interest in sexual
         matters is chiefly because, common as the act is, it is
         closely concealed. Nobody is excited by seeing others eat. A
         `naughty' book is as dull as a volume of sermons; only genius
         can vitalize either.  Beyond this, once love is taken for
         granted, the morbid fascination of its mystery will vanish.
         The pander, the prostitute, the parasite will find their
         occupation gone.  Disease will go straight to the doctor
         instead of to the quack, as it does; the altars of Mrs.
         Grundy run red with the blood of her faithful!  The ignorance
         or carelessness of a raw youth will no longer hound him to
         hell. A blighted career or a ruined constitution will no more
         be the penalty of a moment's exuberance.  Above all, the
         world will begin to appreciate the true nature of the sexual
         process, its physical insignificance as one among many parts
         of the body, its transcendent importance as the vehicle of
         the True Will and the first of the sheaths of the Self.
         Hitherto our sexual tabus have kept far ahead of Gilbert and
         Sullivan. We have made love the lackey to property, as who
         should pay his rent by sneezing. We have swaddled it in
         politeness, as who should warn God off the grass.  We have
         muddled it up with morality, as who should frown at the
         Himalayas on the one hand, and, on the other, regulate his
         behaviour by that of an ant-heap.  The Law of Thelema is
         here!     (It appears pertinent to add that the above ethical
         theories have stood the test of practice. Experiment shows
         that complete removal -- in the most radical manner -- of all
         the usual restrictions on conduct results, after a brief
         period of uneasiness of various kinds, in the subject
         dropping entirely into the background; the parties concerned
         became natural, and led what would conventionally be called
         `strictly moral' lives without even knowing that they were
         doing so.)  As - Postcript, let me contrast with the above
         theories two actual cases of Marriage as it is in England.
         No.1. Mr.W., a solicitor and gentleman farmer of considerable
         wealth: a Plymouth Brother. Called, in Southsea, Hants.,
         where he practised: `The Honest Lawyer.' Every time that his
         wife gave birth to a child, or miscarried, she lay for weeks
         -- often months -- between life and death, with perityphlitis
         or peritonitis set up by the difficulties of parturition. Yet
         this man, knowing this well, had gone on and on
         remorselessly. When I knew him he had 18 children living, and
         two more were born during that period. It was evidently his
         view that he had an absolute Right to impregnate his wife,
         and that it was her business whether she lived or died.
         During all these years she was no sooner well enough to leave
         her bed than she was again `in the family way'. Thus in 25
         years, she was never permitted so much as a month's good
         health. This Mr. W. was a most kindly genial man, devoted to
         her and his family, genuinely pious and tenderhearted. But it
         never occured to him to refrain from exercising the Right
         which he possessed to endanger her life every year. (He
         suffered intensely with anxiety for his wife's health.)
         No.2. Mr. H., a very skilful engraver and die-sinker, a man
         of refined tastes and delicate feelings, sensitive beyond the
         common even of men in a far higher station of life and with a
         much better education. Since childhood he had suffered
         continually from an incurable form of Psoriasis. This kept
         him in a state of  almost constant irritation, spoilt his
         sleep, and made him lament that he was `a leper'. In fact,
         the scales of the eruption were so plentiful that his sheets
         had to be cleaned every morning with a dustpan and brush! He
         could only obtain relief (before trying to sleep) by being
         rubbed with oil of wintergreen, which filled his whole house
         with a loathsome ,stench. One would have thought that the
         first wish of a man thus afflicted would be to sleep alone,
         that it would be utterly repugnant and revolting to him to
         sleep with another person, for his own sake, apart from and
         consideration for her. But his wife, herself an invalid -- a
         huge obese greasy woman (of middle age when I knew the
         family) suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, tubercular
         trouble in the arms, etc., etc. -- was his Wife, she must be
         immediately available should Mr. H. want to exercise his
         conjugal Right. (In this case, too, Mrs. H. was likely to die
         if impregnated.) The extraordinary feature is that so
         extremely sensitive and refined a man could be so
         disgustingly callous on such a matter. Even vulgar people
         fear to appear physically repulsive to the person whom they
         love. It seems as if the fact of Marriage destroys every
         natural characteristic, and has a set of rules of its own
         diametrically opposed in spirit and letter to those which
         govern Love. I confidently appeal to impartial observers to
         say whether the ideals of the Book are not cleaner, more
         wholesome, more human, and more truly moral than those of
         Marriage as it is.