220A3-4.ASC To fight is the right and duty of every male,as of every woman to rejoice in h
220A3-4.ASC
To fight is the right and duty of every male,as of
every woman to rejoice in his strength and to honour and
perpetuate it by her love. My primary objection to
Christianity is `gentle Jesus, meek and mild,' the pacifist,
the conscientious objector, the Tolstoyan, the `passive
resister.' When the Kaiser fled, and the Germans surrendered
their fleet, they abandoned Nietzshes for Jesus.
Rodjestvensky and Gervera took their fleets out to certain
destruction. The Irish Revolutionists of Easter Week, 1916,
fought and died like men; and they have established a
tradition. `Jesus' himself, in the legend, `set his face as
a flint to go to Jerusalem,' with the foreknowledge of his
fate. But Christians have not emphasized that heroism since
the Crusades. The sloppy sentimental Jesus of the
Sunday-school is the only survivor; and the War killed him,
thank Ares! When the Nonconformist Christian churches,
especially in America, found the doctrine of Eternal
Punishment no longer tenable, they knocked the bottom out of
their religion. There was nothing to fight for. So they
degenerated into tame social Centres, so that Theosophy with
its Black Brothers, Mrs. Eddy with her Mental Arsenic
Experts, the T.K. with his Hypnotists and Jesuits, and Billy
Sunday with his Hell Fire, made people's flesh creep once
more, and got both credit and cash. The Book of the Law
flings forth no theological fulminations; but we have
quarrels enough on our hands. We have to fight for Freedom
against oppressors, religious, social, or industrial; and we
are utterly opposed to compromise. Every fight is to be a
fight to the finish; each one of us for himself, to do his
own will; and all of us for all, to establish the Law of
Liberty. We do not want `professional soldiers,' hired
bravos sworn to have no souls of their own. They `dare not
fight;' for how should a man dare to fight unless his cause
be a love mightier than his love of life? Therefore they
`play;' they have sold themselves; their Will is no more
theirs; life is no longer a serious thing to them; therefore
they wander wastrel in clubs and boudoirs and greenrooms;
bridge, billiards, polo, pettie coats puff out their
emptiness; scratched for the Great RACE of Life, they watch
the Derby instead. Brave such may be; they may well be (in a
sense) classed with the rat; but brainless and idle they
must be, who have no goal beyond the grave, where, at the
best, chance flings fast- withering flowers of false and
garish glory. They serve to defend things vital to their
country; they are the skull that keeps the brain from harm?
Oh foolish brain! Wet thou not wiser to defend thyself,
rather than trust to brittle bone that hinders thee from
growth? Let every man bear arms, swift to resent oppression,
generous and ardent to draw sword in any cause, if justice
or freedom summon him! `All fools despise.' In this last
phrase the word `fools' is evidently not to be taken in its
deeper mystical sense, the context plainly bearing reference
to ordinary life. But the `fool' is still as described in
the Tarot Trump. He is an epicene creature, soft and
sottish, with an imbecile laugh and a pretty taste in fancy
waistcoats. He lacks virility, like the ox which is the
meaning of the letter Aleph which describes the Trump, and
his value is Zero, its number. He is air, formless and
incapable of resistance, carrier of sounds which mean
nothing to it, swept up into destructive rages of senseless
violence from its idleness, incalculably moved by every
pressure or pull. One-fifth is the fuel of fire, the
corruption of rust; the rest is inert, the soul of
explosives, with a trace of that stifling and suffocating
gas which is yet food for vegetable, as it is poison to
animal, life. We have here a picture of the average man, of
a fool. He has no will of his own, is all things to all men,
is void, a repeater of words of whose sense he knows nought,
a drifter, both idle and violent, compact partly of fierce
passions that burn up both himself and the other, but mostly
of inert and characterless nonentity, with a little
heaviness, dullness, and stupefaction for his only positive
qualities. Such are the `fools' whom we despise. The man of
Thelema is vertebrate, organized, purposeful, steady,
self-controlled, virile; he uses the air as the food of his
blood; so also, were he deprived of fools he could no live.
We need our atmosphere, after all; it is only when the fools
become violent madmen that we need our cloak of silence to
wrap us, and our staff to stay us as we ascend our
mountain-ridge; and it is only if we go down into the
darkness of mines to dig us treasure of earth that we need
fear to choke on their poisonous breath.
58. `The keen:' these are the men whose Will is as a sword
sharp and straight, tempered and ground and polished its
flawless steel; with a Wrist and an Eye behind it. `The
proud:' these are the men whose nature is kingly, the men
who `can.' They know themselves born rulers, whether their
halidom be Art, or Science, or aught else soever. `The
lofty:' these are the men who, being themselves high-
hearted, endure not any baseness.
59. Fight! Fight like gentlemen, without malice, because
fighting is the best game in the world, and love the second
best! Don't slander your enemy, as the newspapers would have
you do; just kill him, and then bury him with honour. don't
keep crying `Foul' like a fifth-rate pugilist, Don't boast!
Don't squeal! If you're down, get up and hit him again!
Fights of that sort make fast friends. There is perhaps a
magical second-meaning in this verse, a reference to the
Ritual of which we find hints in the legend of Cain and
Abel, Esau and Jacob, Set and Osiris, et cetera. The `Elder
Brother' within us, the Silent Self, must slay the younger
brother, the conscious self, and he must be raised again
incorruptible.
60. There are of course lesser laws than this, details,
particular cases, of the Law. But the whole of the Law is Do
what thou wilt, and there is no law beyond it. This subject
is treated fully in Liber CXI Aleph, and the student should
refer thereto. Far better, let him assume this Law to be
the Universal Key to every problem of Life, and then apply
it to one particular case after another. As he comes by
degrees to understand it, he will be astounded at the
simplification of the most obscure questions which it
furnishes. Thus he will assimilate the Law, and make it the
norm of his conscious being; this by itself will suffice to
initiate him, to dissolve his complexes, to unveil himself
to himself; and so shall he attain the Knowledge and
Conversation of his Holy Guardian Angel. I have myself
practiced constantly to prove the Law by many and divers
modes in many and divers spheres of thought, until it has
become absolutely fixed in me, so much so that it appears an
`identical equation,' axiomatic indeed, and yet not a
platitude, but a very sword of Truth to sunder every knot at
a touch. As the practical ethics of the Law, I have
formulated in words of one syllable my declaration of the
RIGHTS OF MAN Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the
Law. There is no god but Man. Man has the right to live by
his own Law. Man has the right to live in the way that he
wills to do. Man has the right to dwell where he wills to
dwell. Man has the right to move as he will on the face of
the Earth. Man has the right to eat what he will. Man has
the right to drink what he will. Man has the right to think
as he will. Man has the right to speak as he will. Man has
the right to write as he will. Man has the right to mould as
he will. Man has the right to paint as he will. Man has the
right to carve as he will. Man has the right to work as he
will. Man has the right to rest as he will. Man has the right
to love as he will, when, where and whom he will. Man has
the right to die when and how he will. Man has the right to
kill those who would thwart these rights. This statement
must not be regarded as individualism run wild. Its harmony
with statecraft is demonstrated in the Chapters of Liber
Aleph already quoted -- see comment on Chapter II verse 72.
Modern thought, even that of the shallowest, is compelled by
AIWAZ to confirm His Law, without knowing what it is about.
For instance: `God's wind from nowhere which is called the
Will; and is man's only excuse upon this earth,' was written
by so trivial a Fat Man as Gilbert Keith Chesterton in `The
Flying Inn.'
61. Note that Heru-Ra-Ha is not merely a particular form
of Ra, but the God enthroned in Ra's seat. That is, His
Kingdom on earth is temporary, as explained in verse 34. And
he is here conceived as the Hierophant, `lightening the
girders of the soul,' that is, bringing man to initiation.
These `girders' imply the skeletal structure on which the
soul is supported, the conditions of its incarnation. Man is
the heir of ages of evolutionary experience, on certain
lines, so that he is organized on formulae which have
determined the type of his development. Of some such
formulae we are conscious, but not of all. Thus it is true
for all men -- empirically -- that a straight line is the
shortest distance between two points; some savages may not
know this consciously, but they base their actions on that
knowledge. Now we cannot doubt that consciousness has
developed elsewhere than in man; only a blind megalomaniac
or a Christian divine could suppose our infinitesimal mote of
a planet the sole habitat of Mind, especially as our minds
are, at best, totally incompetent to comprehend Nature. It
is also unlikely that our Earth's physical conditions of
temperature, atmosphere, density and so on, which some still
regard as essential to Life, are found frequently; we are
only one of nine planets ourselves, and it is absurd to deny
that life exists on the others, or in the Sun himself, just
because the conditions of our own life are absent elsewhere.
Such Life and Mind may therefore be utterly different to
anything we know of; the `girders' of their souls in other
spheres may be other than ours. The above argument is a case
of a `girder;' we are bound mentally by our race-experience
of the environment in which our own lives flourish. A
pioneer choosing a camp must look for wood, water, perhaps
shelter, perhaps game. In another planet he might not need
any of these. The `girders' which deternmine the `form' of
our souls are therefor limitations to our thought, as well
as supports. In the same way, rails help a train to run
easily, but confine it to a definite direction. The `laws'
of Nature and Thought, Mathematics, Logic, and so on, are
`girders' of this sort. Our race-inherited conceptions of
space prevented men, until quite recent years, from
conceiving a non-Euclidean geometry, or the existence of a
fourth Dimension. The initiate soon becomes aware of the
un-truth of many of these limiting laws of his mind; he has
to identify Being with not-Being, to perceive Matter as
continuous and homogeneous, and so for many another Truth,
apprehended directly by pure perception, and consequently
not to be refuted by syllogistic methods. The Laws of Logic
are thus discovered to be superficial, and their scope only
partial. (It is significant in this connexion that such
advanced thinkers as the Hon. Bertrand Russell have found
themselves obliged to refer mathematical laws to Logic; it
seems to have escaped them that the Laws of Logic are no more
than the statement of the limitations of their own
intelligence. I quote The Book of Lies, KE . ME: `CHINESE
MUSIC. `Explain this happening!' `It must have a `natural'
cause.' ) `It must have a `supernatural' cause.') Let
these two asses be set to grind corn. May, might,must,
should, probably, may be, we may safely assume, ought, it is
hardly questionable, almost certainly -- poor hacks! let them
be turned out to grass! Proof is only possible in
mathematics, and mathematics is only a matter of arbitrary
conventions. And yet doubt is a good servant but a bad
master; a perfect mistress, but a nagging wife. `White is
white' is the lash of the overseer; `white is black' is the
watchword of the slave. The Master takes no heed. The
chinese cannot help thinking that the octave has 5 notes. The
more necessary anything appears to my mind, the more certain
it is that I only assert a limitation. I slept with Faith,
and found a corpse in my arms on awaking; I drank and danced
all night with Doubt, and found her a virgin in the
morning.') Now then consider the man whose soul has
thoroughly explored its structure, is actively conscious of
its `girders' of axiom. He must find that they confine him
like prison bars, when he would gain the freedom of the
initiate. In this verse therefore doth the God `enthroned in
RA's seat' declare that his Word lightens (or removes) the
oppression of these `girders of the soul.' The study of this
chapter is accordingly a sould preparatory course for
whosoever will become Initiate. See also the six verses
following this; the word increases in value as the reader
advances on the Path, just as a Rembrandt is a `pretty
picture' to the peasant, a `fine work of art' to the
educated man, but to the lover of Beauty a sublime
masterpiece, the greater as he grows himself in greatness.
62. This seems to indicate the means to be used in freeing
the soul from its `girders'. We have seen that
Ra-Hoor-Khuit is in one sense the Silent Self in a man, a
Name of his Khabs, not so impersonal as Hadit, but the first
and least untrue formulation of the Ego. We are to reverse
this self in us, then ,not to suppress it and subordinate
it. Nor are we to evade it, but to come to it. This is done
`through tribulation of ordeal'. This tribulation is that
experienced in the process called Psychoanalysis, now that
official science has adopted -- so far as its inferior
intelligence permits -- the methods of the magus. But the
`ordeal' is `bliss'; the solution of each complex by
`tribulation' -- note the etymological significance of the
word! -- is the spasm of joy which is the physiological and
psychological accompaniment of any relief from strain and
congestion.
63. The Fool is also the Great Fool, Bacchus Diphues,
Harpocrates, the Dwarf-Self, the Holy Guardian Angel, and so
forth. `He understandeth it not', that is, he understandeth
that it is NOT, LA, 31. But the above is only the secondary
or hieroglyphic magical meaning. The plain English still
discusses the technique of initiation. The `fool', is one
such as described in my note on verse 57. The vain, soft,
frivolous, idle, mutable sot will make nothing either of
this Book, or of my comment thereon. But this fool is the
child Harpocrates, the `Babe in the Egg', the innocent not
yet born, in silence awaiting his hour to come forth into
light. He is then the uninitiated man, and he has four
ordeals to pass before he is made perfect. These ordeals are
now to be described.
64. The `Tree of Life' in the Qabalah represents ten
spheres arranged in three pillars, the central one of these
containing four, and the others three each. These spheres
are attributed to certain numbers, planets, metals, and many
other groups of things; indeed all things may be referred to
one or other of them. (See Book 4 Part III and Liber 777).
The four ordeals now to be described represent the ascent of
the aspirant from the tenth and lowest of these spheres,
which refers to the Earth, unregenerate and confused, in
which the aspirant is born. He riseth in the first ordeal to
the sphere called the Foundation, numbered 9, and
containing, among other ideas, those of the generative
organs, Air, the Moon, and Silver. Its secret Truth is that
Stability is identical with Change; of this we are reminded
by the fact that any multiple of 9 has 9 for the sum of its
digits. The initiate will now perceive that the sum of the
motions of his mind is zero, while, below their moon-like
phases and their Air-like divinations, the sex-consciousness
abides untouched, the true Foundation of the Temple of his
body, the Root of the Tree of Life that grows from Earth to
Heaven. This Book is now to him `as silver.' He sees it
pure, white and shining, the mirror of his own being that
this ordeal has purged of its complexes. To reach this
sphere he has had to pass through a path of darkness where
the Four Elements seem to him to be the Universe entire. For
how should he know that they are no more that the last of the
22 segments of the Snake that is twined on the Tree?
Assailed by gross phantoms of matter, unreal and
unintelligible, his ordeal is of terror and darkness. He may
pass only by favour of his own silent God, extended and
exalted within him by virtue of his conscious act in
affronting the ordeal.
65. The next sphere reached by the aspirant is named
Beauty, numbered 6, and referred to the hear, to the Sun,
and to Gold. Here he is called an `Adept'. The secret Truth
in this place is that God is Man, symbolized by the
Hexagram, (in which two triangles are interlaced). In the
last sphere he learnt that his Body was the Temple of the
Rosy Cross, that is, that it was given him as a place
wherein to perform the Magical Work of uniting the
oppositions in his Nature. Here he is taught that his Heart
is the Centre of Light. It is not dark, mysterious, hollow,
obscure even to himself, but his soul is to dwell there,
radiating Light on the six spheres which surround it; these
represent the various powers of his mind. This Book now
appears to him as Gold; it is the perfect metal, the symbol
of the Sun itself. He sees God everywhere therein. To this
sphere hath the aspirant come by the Path called Temperance,
shot as an arrow from a Rainbow. He hath beheld the Light,
but only in division. Nor had he won to this sphere except by
Temperance, under which name we mask the art of pouring
freely forth the whole of our Life, to the last spilth of
our blood, yet losing never the least drop thereof.
66. Now once again the adept aspires and comes to the
sphere called the Crown numbered 1, referred ;to the God
Ra-Hoor-Khuit himself in man, to the Beginning of Whirling
Motions, and the First Mode of Matter. (See Liber 777, the
Equinox, and Book 4 for these attributions.) Its secret
Truth is that Earth is Heaven as Heaven is Earth, and shows
the aspirant to himself as being a star. All that seemed to
him reality is not even to be deemed illusion, but all one
light infusing star and star. The Many, each of them, are
the One; each individual, no twain alike, yet all identical;
this he knows and is, for now the Word hath lightened his
soul's girders. (The logic of the Ruach -- the normal
intellect -- is transcended in Spiritual Experience. It is,
evidently, impossible to `explain' how this can be.) In the
Number 6 he saw God interlocked with man, two trinities made
one; but here he knows that there was never but one. Thus
now this Book is `stones of precious water'; its Light is
not the borrowed light of gold, but is shed through the Book
itself, clearsparkling, flashed from its facets. Each phrase
is a diamond; each is diverse, yet all identical. In each
the one Light laughs! Now to this sphere came he by the Path
called the High Priestess; She is his Silent Self, virgin
beyond all veils, made free to teach him, by virtue of this
third ordeal wherein, passing through the abyss, he has
stripped from him every rag of falsehood, his last
complexes, even his phantasy that he called `I'. And so he
knows at last now the soiled harlot's dress was mere
disguise; naked in Moonlight shines the maiden Body!
E-Mail Fredric L. Rice / The Skeptic Tank