CHAPTER LXX MORALITY (1) Cara Soror, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. +quo
CHAPTER LXX
MORALITY (1)
Cara Soror,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
"Tu l'as voulu, Georges Dandin!" I knew from the first that your sly,
insidious, poisoned poniard, slipped in between my ribs, would soon
or late involve a complete exposition of the whole subject of Morality.
Of we go! What really is it? The word comes from Mos, Latin for
custom, manner. Similarly, ethics: from Greek ESOC custom. "It
isn't done" may be modern slang, but it's correct. Interesting to
study the usage of "moeurs" and "manires" in French. "Manner" from
"manus" --- hand: it is "the way to handle things."
But the theological conception has steered a very wrong course, even
for theology; brought in Divine Injunction, and Conscience, and a
whole host of bogeys. (Candles in hollow turnips deceive nobody out-
side a churchyard!)
So we find ourselves discussing a "palely wandering" phantom idea
whose connotations or extensions depend on the time, the place, and
the victim. We know "the crimes of Clapham chaste in Martaban," and
the difference between Old and New Testament morality in such matters
as polygamy and diet; while the fur flies when two learned professors
go down with a smart attack of Odium Theologicum, and are ready to
destroy a civilization on the question of whether it is right or wrong
for a priest (or presbyter? or minister?) to wear a white nightie or a
black in the pulpit.
But what you want to know is the difference between (a) common or area
morality, (b) Yogin -- or "holy man's" morality, and (c) the Magical
Morality of the New Aeon of Thelema.
1. Area Morality: This is the code of the "Slave-Gods," very thor-
ougly analysed, pulverized, and de-loused by Nietzsche in Antichrist.
It consists of all the meanest vices, especially envy, cowardice,
cruelty and greed: all based on over-mastering Fear. Fear of the
nightmare type. With this incubus, the rich and powerful have devised
an engine to keep down the poor and the weak. They are lavish alike
with threats and promises in Ogre Bogey's Castle and Cloud-Cuckoo-Land.
"Religion is the opium of the people," when they flinch no longer
from the phantom knout.
2. Eight Lectures on Yoga gives a reasonable account of the essence
of this matter, especially in the talks on Yama and Niyama. (A book
on this subject might well include a few quotations, notably from
paragraphs 8, 9 and 10 in the former). It might be summarized as
"doing that, and only that, which facilitates the task in hand." A
line of conduct becomes a custom when experience has shown that to
follow it makes for success. "Don't press!" "Play with a straight
bat!" "Don't draw to five!" do not involve abstract considerations
1
of right and wrong. Orthodox Hinduism has raped this pure system, and
begotten a bastard code which reeks of religion. A political manoeuvre
of the Brahmin caste.
Suppose we relax a little, come down to earth, and look at what the
far-famed morality of the Holy Man was, and is, in actual practice.
You will find this useful to crush Toshophist and Antroposophagist1
cockroaches as well as the ordinary Christian Scolex when they assail
you.
In the lands of Hinduism and (to a less extent) of Islam, the Sultan,
the Dewan, the Maharajah, the Emir, or whatsoever they call "the Grand
Pandjandrum Himself, with the little round button on top," it is almost
a 100 per cent rule that the button works loose and is lost! Even in
less exalted circles, any absolute ruler, on however petty a scale, is
liable to go the whole hog in an unexceptionably hoggish fashion. He
has none to gainsay him, and he sees no reason for controlling himself.
This suits nearly everybody pretty well; the shrewd Wazir can govern
while his "master" fills up on "The King's Peg" (we must try one when
champagne is once again reasonably cheap) and all the other sensuous
and sensual delights unstinted. The result is that by the time he is
twenty --- he was probably married at 12 --- he is no longer fitted to
carry out his very first duty to the State, the production of an heir.
Quite contrary to this is the career of the "Holy Man." Accustomed to
the severest physical toil, inured to all the rigours of climate,
aloof from every noxious excess, he becomes a very champion of virility.
(Of course, there are exceptions, but the average "holy man" is a
fairly tall fellow of his hands). More, he has been particularly
trained for this form of asceticism by all sorts of secret methods and
practices; some of these, but the way, I was able to learn myself, and
found surprisingly efficacious.
So we have the law of supply and demand at work as uncomplainingly as
usual: the Holy Man prays for the threatened Dynasty, blesses the
Barren Queen; and they all live happy ever after. This is not an
Arabian Night's Tale of Antiquity; it is the same today: there are
very few Englishmen who have spent any time in India who have not been
approached with proposals of this character.
Similar conditions, curiously enough, existed in France; the "fils
papa" was usually a hopeless rotter, and his wife often resorted to a
famous monastery on the Riviera, where was an exceptionally holy Image
of the Blessed Virgin Mary, prayers unto whom removed sterility. But
when M. Combes turned out the monks, the Image somehow lost it virtue.
Now get your Bible and turn up Luke VIII, 2! When the sal volatile has
worked, turn to John XIII 2,3 and ask a scholar what any Greek of the
period would have understood by the technical expressions there unambigu-
ously employed.
1^ WEH NOTE: This is a reference to the school of thought of Rudolf Steiner.
By the time of this writing, Steiner's students were being taught that Crowley
was a "bad man". Tit for tat. Anthroposophy presents a merging of several
branches of mysticism with dance and movement. It rewards study, but one
shouldn't mention A.C. at the Steiner schools until one has acquired what
one wants!
2
Presently, I hope, you will begin to wonder whether, after all, the
"morality" of the middle classes of the nineteenth century, in Anglo-
Saxon countries, is quite as axiomatic as you were taught to suppose.
Please let me emphasize the fact that I have heard and seen these condi-
tions in Eastern countries with my own ears and eyes. Vivekananda ---
certainly the best of the modern Indian writes on Yoga --- complained
bitterly that the old greymalkin witches of New York who called them-
selves his disciples had to be dodged with infinite precaution whenever
he wanted to spend an evening in the Tenderloin. On the other hand,
the Sheikh of Mish --- and a very holy Sheikh he was --- introduced his
"boy friend" as such to me when I visited him in the Sahara, without
the slightest shame or embarrassment.
Believe me, the humbug about "morality" in this country and the U.S.A.,
yes, even on the Continent in pious circles, is Hobgoblin No. 1 on the
path of the Wise. If you are fooled by that, you will never get out
of the stinking bog of platitudinous mouthings of make-believe "Masters."
Need I refer to the fact that most of the unco' guid are penny plain
hypocrites. A little less vile are those whose prejudices are Freudian
in character, who "compound for sins that they're inclined to, By damn-
ing those they have no mind to."
Even when, poor-spirited molluscs, they are honest, all that twaddle is
Negation. "Hang your clothes on a hickory limb, and don't go near the
water!" does not produce a Gertrud Ederle. Thank God, the modern girl
has cast off at least one of her fetters --- the ceinture de chastt!
Perhaps we have now relaxed enough; we see that the "Holy man" is not
such a fool as he looks; and we may get on with our excursions into
the "Morality" of the Law of the New Aeon, which is the Aeon of Horus,
crowned and conquering child: and --- "The word of the Law is Thelema{this
word in Greek caps}."
3. So much of The Book of the Law deals directly or indirectly with
morals that to quote relevant passages would be merely bewildering.
Not that this state of mind fails to result from the first, second,
third and ninety-third perusals!
"When Duty bellows loud 'Thou must!'
The youth replies 'Pike's Peak or Bust!'"
is all very well, or might be if the bellow gave further particulars.
And one's general impression may very well be that Thelema not only
gives general licence to to any fool thing that comes into one's head,
but urges in the most emphatic terms, reinforced by the most eloquent
appeals in superb language, by glowing promises, and by categorical
assurance that no harm can possibly come thereby, the performance of
just that specific type of action, the maintenance of just that line
of conduct, which is most severely depreciated by the high priests and
jurists of every religion, every system of ethics, that ever was under
the sun!
You may look sourly down a meanly-pointed nose, or yell "Whoop La!" and
make for Piccadilly Circus: in either case you will be wrong; you will
not have understood the Book.
Shameful confession, one of my own Chelas (or so it is rather incredibly
3
reported to me) said recently: "Self-discipline is a form of Restric-
tion." (That, you remember, is "The word of Sin ...".) Of all the utter
rubbish! (Anyhow, he was a "centre of pestilence" for discussing the
Book at all.) About 90 % of Thelema, at a guess, is nothing but
self-discipline. One is only allowed to do anything and everything so
as to have more scope for exercising that virtue.
concentrate on "...thou hast no right but to do thy will." The point is
that any possible act is to be performed if it is a necessary factor
in that Equation of your Will. Any act that is not such a factor,
however harmless, noble, virtuous or what not, is at the best a waste
of energy. But there are no artificial barriers on any type of act in
general. The standard of conduct has one single touchstone. There
may be --- there will be --- every kind of difficulty in determining whether,
by this standard, any given act is "right" or "wrong": but there should
be no confusion. No act is righteous in itself, but only in reference
to the True Will of the person who proposes to perform it. This is the
Doctrine of Relativity applied to the moral sphere.
I think that, if you have understood this, the whole theory is now
within your grasp; hold it fast, and lay about you!
Of course, there must be certain courses of action which, generally
speaking, will be right for pretty well everybody. Some, per contra,
will be generally barred, as interfering with another's equal right.
Some cases will be so difficult that only a Magister Templi can judge
them, and a Magus carry them wisely into effect. Fearsome responsibility,
I should say, that of the Masters who began the building-up of the New
Aeon by bringing about these Wars!
(I do wish that we had the sense to take our ideas of Peace conditions
from the Bible, as our rulers so loudly profess that they do. The
Enemy knows well enough that there is no other way to make a war pay.)
Now then, I hope that we have succeeded in clarifying this exceptionally
muddy marish water of morality from most of its alien and toxic dirt;
too often the Aspirant to the Sacred Wisdom finds no firm path under his
feet; the Bog of Respectability mires him who sought the Garden of
Delights; soon the last bubbles burst from his choked lungs; he is
engulfed in the Slough of Despond.
In the passive elements of Earth and Water is no creative virtue to
cleanse themselves from such impurity as they chance to acquire; it is
therefore of cardinal importance to watch them, guard them, keep their
Purity untainted and unsoiled; shall the Holy Grail brim with poison
of Asps, and the golden Paten be defiled with the Bread of Iniquity?
Come Fire, come Air, cleanse ye and kindle the pure instruments, that
Spirit may indwell, inform, inspire the whole, the One Continuous
Sacrament of Life!
We have considered this Morality from quite a number of very different
points of view; wrought subtly and accurately into final shape, you
should find no further difficulty in understanding fully at least the
theoretical and abstract aspects of the business.
But as to your own wit of judgment as to the general rules of your
own private Code of Morals, what is "right" and what is "wrong" for
you, that will emerge only from long self-analysis such as is the
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chief work of the Sword in the process of your Initiation.
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours fraternally.
666
P.S. Most of this is stated or implied in AHA!
MARSYAS . . . . . . . . . . . Be ever as you can
A simple honest gentleman!
Body and manners be at ease,
Not bloat with blazoned sanctities!
Who fights as fights the soldier-saint?
And see the artist-adept paint!
Weak are the souls that fear the stress
Of earth upon their holiness!
They fast, they eat fantastic food,
They prate of beans and brotherhood,
Wear sandals, and long hair, and spats,
And think that makes them Arahats!
How shall man still his spirit-storm?
Rational dress and Food Reform!
OLYMPAS I know such saints.
MARSYAS An easy vice:
So wondrous well they advertise!
O their mean souls are satisfied
With wind of spiritual pride.
They're all negation. "Do not eat;
What poison to the soul is meat!
Drink not; smoke not; deny the will!
Wine and tobacco make us ill."
Magic is life: the Will to Live
Is one supreme Affirmative.
These things that flinch from Life are worth
No more to Heaven than to Earth.
Affirm the everlasting Yes!
OLYMPAS Those saints at least score one success:
Perfection of their priggishness!
MARSYAS Enough. The soul is subtlier fed
With meditation's wine and bread.
Forget their failings and our own;
Fix all our thoughts on love alone!
CHAPTER LXXI
MORALITY (2)
Cara Soror,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
The contents of your letter appalled me. I had hoped that you had
5
left behind forever all that quality of thinking. It is unclean. It
is stuffy and flabby. You write of a matter about which you cannot
possibly have information, and what you say is not even a good guess;
it is simply contrary to fact. It shows also that you have failed to
grasp the nature of the O.T.O. Its main raison d'etre, apart from
social and political plans, is the teaching and use of a secret method
of achieving certain results. This secret is a scientific secret; it
is guarded against betrayal or abuse by a very simple automatic arrange-
ment. Its guardians cannot be "dying" any more than electricians as
a class can be.
It is really difficult to answer your letters. You have got things so
higgledy-piggledy. You write of the constitutions of two orders, the
A.'. A.'. and the O.T.O.; yet you ignore the printed information about
them which you are supposed to have read.
I have to answer each sentence of your letter separately, so incoherent
have you become!
You are a "student" of A.'. A.'., and become a Probationer as soon as
you take and pass the examination. (This is intended mostly to make
sure that you have some general idea of the principal branches of the
subject, and know the more important correspondences,) The rest: ---
please read One Star in Sight again, and do for God's sake try to
assimilate the information there very clearly and very fully given!
It is terrifyingly near the state of mind which we symbolize by Choron-
zon, this hurrying flustered dash of yours from one point of view to
another: a set of statements all true after a fashion, but flung out
with such apprehensive agitation that a sensitive reader like myself
comes near to being upset.
You say that you must tread the Path alone: quite true, if only because
anything that exists for you is necessarily part of yourself. Yet you
have to "go to others", and you become a veritable busybody. You quote
odd opinions at random without the means of estimating their value.
Cannot I ever get you to understand the difference between an honest
and dishonest teacher? I have always made it a rule never to put for-
ward any statement of which I cannot produce proof; when I venture a
personal opinion it is always Marked in Plain Figures to that effect.
(I refer you to Magick p. 368: p. 375, paragraphs 1 and 2:. and p. 415,
paragraphs 000 and 00. We insist from the beginning on the individual
character of the work, and upon the necessity of maintaining the objec-
tive and sceptical standpoint. You are explicitly warned against
reliance upon "authority," even that of the Order itself.) Consider
my own assets, personal, social, educational, experiential and the
rest: don't you see that all I had to do was to put out some brightly-
coloured and mellifluous lie, and avoid treading on too many toes, to
have had hundreds of thousands of idiots worshipping me?
Please get a Konx om Pax somehow, and read p. XII:
"It's only too easy to form a cult,
"To cry a crusade with 'Deus Vult' . . . .
"A pinch of Bible, a gallon of gas,
"And I, or any otherguess ass,
"Could bring to our mystical Moonlight Mass
6
"Those empty-headed Athenians."
and so on.
But I never forget that I am working on the 2,000 year basis; my work
will stand when all the pompous platitudes and pleasant pieties have
withered for the iridescent soft-soap bubbles that they are.
Soap! yes, indeed. I work on gold, and gold must be cleansed with
acid.
I really cannot understand how you can be so inaccurate, with the very
text before your eyes! You write --- "you write that in Jan. 1899 etc."
But I don't. Captain J. F. C. Fuller wrote it. A small point; but
you must learn to be careful about every tiniest detail.
Then you go on about "not only invisible chiefs2 of the A.'. A.'. . . . . .
but also the Chiefs of the Golden Dawn . . ." The Golden Dawn is merely
the name for the Outer Order: see Magick pp. 230-231. You have never
been taught to read carefully. You write of Theoricus as the grade
following Neophyte: it isn't. Back to Magick pp. 230-231! You have
never taken the trouble to go with me through the Rituals of O.T.O.,
or you would not ask such questions. The O.T.O. is a training of
the Masonic type; there is no "astral" work in it at all, nor any Yoga.
There is a certain amount of Qabalah, and that of great doctrinal value.
But the really vital matter is the gradual progress towards disclosure
of the Secret of the Ninth Degree. To use that secret to advantage
involves mastery both of Yoga and of Magick; but neither is taught in
the Order. Now it comes to be mentioned, this is really very strange.
However, I didn't invent the system; I must suppose that those who
did knew what they were about.
To me it is (a) convenient in various practical ways, (b) a machine
for carrying out the orders of the Secret Chiefs of A.'. A.'. (c) by
virtue of the Secret a magical weapon of incalculable power.
You are not "stuck." You can use your Astral Body well enough: too
well, in one way. But I think you need a few more journeys with me:
you ought to get on to the stage where the vision results from a
definite invocation.
Do please forget all these vague statements about the "clarification
of one's dream-life" (meaning what?) and "shadow-thinking" (meaning
what?) These speculations are idle, and idleness is poison. In your
very next paragraph you give the whole show away! "Artistically it
appeals to me --- but not spiritually." You have been spiritually
poisoned.
What blasphemy more hideous could be penned? What lie so base, so
false, so nasty, what so devilish and deadly a doctrine? I feel con-
taminated by the mere fact of being in a world where such filth is
possible to conceive. I am all but in tears to think of my beloved
sister tortured by so foul a denizen of the Abyss. Cannot you see in
this the root of all your toadstool spawn of miseries, of doubts, of
fears, of indecisions?
2* How do you know They are "invisible?" I foresee that sooner or later
you will be asking for more information about them, so I am planning a
separate letter to supply this. (See Letters IX, L and LXXVII)
7
As an Artist you are a consecrated Virgin Priestess, the Oracle of the
Most High. None has the right to approach you save with the most
blessed awe, with arms outstretched as to invoke your benediction.
By "spiritually" you mean no more than "according to the lower and
middle-middle-class morality of the Anglo-Saxon of the period when
Longfellow and Tennyson were supposed to be poets, and Royal Academi-
cians painters."
There is a highly popular school of "occultists" which is 99 % an
escape-mechanism. The fear of death is one of the bogeys; but far
deeper is the root-fear --- fear of being alone, of being oneself, of
life itself. With this there goes the sense of guilt.
The Book of the Law cuts directly at the root of all this calamitous,
this infamous tissue of falsehood.
What is the meaning of Initiation? It is the Path to the realisation
of your Self as the sole, the supreme, the absolute of all Truth,
Beauty, Purity, Perfection!
What is the artistic sense in you? What but the One Channel always
open to you through which this Light flows freely to enkindle you
(and the world through you) with flowers of inexhaustible fervour and
flame?
And you set up against That this spectre of grim fear, of shame, of
qualms and doubts, of inward quakings lest --- --- you are too stricken
with panic to see clearly what the horror is. You say "the elemental
spirits and the Archangels are watching." (!) My dear, dear, sister,
did you invent these beings for no better purpose than to spy on you?
They are there to serve you; they are parts of your being whose func-
tion is to enable you to reach further in one particular direction or
another without interference from the other parts, so long as you
happen to need them for some service or other in the Great Work.
Please cleanse your mind once and for all of this delusion, disastrous
and most damnable, that there can be opposition between two essential
parts of your nature.
I think this idea is a monstrous growth upon the tetanus-soaked soil
of your fear of "the senses." Observe how all these mealy-mouthed
prigs develop their distrust of Life until hardly an action remains
that is not "dangerous" or in some way harmful. They dare not smoke,
drink, love --- do anything natural to them. They are right!! The Self
in them is Guilt, a marsh miasmal of foul pestilence. Last, since
"nature, though one expel it with a pitchfork, always returns," they
do their "sins" in secret, and pile hypocrisy upon the summit of all
their other vices.
I cannot write more; it makes me too sad. I hope there is no need.
Do be your Self, the radiant Daughter of the Muse!
With that command I turn to other tasks.
Love is the law, love under will.
8
Fraternally yours ever,
666
CHAPTER LXXII
EDUCATION
Cara Soror,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Education means "leading out"; this is not the same as "stuffing in".
I refuse to enlarge on this theme; it is all-important. To extract
something, you should first know what is there. Here astrology ought
to give useful hints; its indications give the mind something to work
on. Experience makes "confirmation strong as Holy Writ;" but beware
of
priori. Do not be dogmatic; do not insist in the face of dis-
appointment. Astrology in education is useful as geology is to the
prospector; it tells you the sort of thing to look for, and the
direction in which to explore.
There are, however, two main lines of teaching which are of universal
value to normal children; it is hardly possible to begin too early.
Firstly, accustom his ear from the start to noble sounds; the music
of nature and the rhythm of great poetry. Do not aim at his understand-
ing, but at his subconscious mind. Protect him from cacophonous noise;
avoid scoring any cheap success with him by inflicting jingles; do not
insult him by "baby-talk."
Secondly, let him understand, as soon as you start actual teaching, the
difference between the real and the conventional in what you make him
memorize. Nothing irritates children more than the arbitrary "because
I say so."
Nobody knows why the alphabet has the order which we know; it is quite
senseless. One could construct a much more rational order: e.g. the
Mother, the Single and the Double letters, all in the natural order of
the elements, planets and signs. Again, we have the "Missionary" Alpha-
bet, arranged "scientifically" as Gutturals, modified ditto, Dentals,
Labials, vowels and so on; a most repulsive concoction! But I would
not accept any emendation from the God Thoth himself; it is infinitely
simpler to stick to the familiar order. But explain to the child that
this is only for convenience, like the rule of the road; indeed, like
almost any rules!
But when your teaching is of the disputable kind, explain that too;
encourage him to question, to demand a reason and to disagree. Get him
to fence with you; sharpen his wits by dialectic; lure him into think-
ing for himself. I want tricks which will show him the advantages of a
given subject of study; make him pester you to teach him. We did this
most successfully at the Abbey of Thelema in Cefalu; let me give you an
instance: reading. One of us would take the children shopping and bring
up the subject of ice-cream. Where, oh where could we get some?
Presently one would exclaim and point to a placard and say, "I really
do believe there'll be some there" --- and lo! it was so. Then they
9
would wonder how one knew, and one would say: Why, there's "Helados"
printed on that piece of card in the window. They would want to learn
to read at once. We would discourage them, saying what hard word it
was, and how much crying it cost, at the same time giving another demon-
stration of the advantages. They would insist, and we should yield ---
to active, eager children, not to dullards that hated the idea of
"lessons." So with pretty well everything; we first excited the
child's will in the desired direction.
But (you ask) are there any special branches of learning which you
regard as essential for all?
Yes.
Our old unvalued friend St. Paul, the cunning crook who turned the
Jewish communism of the Apostles into an international ramp, saw in a
vision a man from Macedonia who said "Come over and help us!" This
time it has been a woman from California, but the purport of her plaints
was identical. Much as I should like to see my Father the Sun once more
before I die, nothing doing until --- if ever --- life recovers from the
blight of regulations. Luckily, one thing she said helps us out: some-
one had told her that I had written on Education in Liber Aleph --- The
Book of Wisdom or Folly --- which has been ready for the printer for more
than a quarter of a century --- and there's nothing I can do about it!
However, I looked up the typescript. The book is itself Education;
there are, however, six chapters which treat of the subject in the
Special sense in which your question has involved us.
So I shall fling these chapters headlong into this letter.
DE VOLUNTATE JUVENUM
Long, O my Son, hath been this Digression from the plain Path of
My word concerning Children; but it was most needful that thou
shouldst understand the Limits of true Liberty. For that is not
the Will of any Man which ultimateth in his own Ruin and that of
all his Fellows; and that is not Liberty whose Exercise bringeth
him to Bondage. Thou mayst therefore assume that it is always an
essential Part of the Will of any Child to grow to Manhood or to
Womanhood in Health, and his Guardians may therefore prevent him
from ignorantly acting in Opposition thereunto, Care being always
taken to remove the cause of the Error, namely, Ignorance, as
aforesaid. Thou mayst also assume that it is Part of the Child's
Will to train every Function of the Mind; and the Guardians may
therefore combat the Inertia which hinders its Development. Yet
here is much Caution necessary, and it is better to work by
exciting and satisfying any natural Curiosity than by forcing
Application to set Tasks, however obvious this Necessity may
appear.
DE MODO DISPUTANDI
Now in this training of the Child is one most dear Consideration,
that I shall impress upon thee as is Conformity with out holy
Experience in the way of Truth. And it is this, that since that
which can be thought is not true, every Statement is in some sense
false. Even on the Sea of Pure Reason, we may say that every
10
Statement is in some Sense disputable. Therefore in every Case,
even the simplest, the Child should be taught not only the Thesis,
but also its opposite, leaving the Decision to the child's own
Judgment and good Sense, fortified by Experience. And this Prac-
tice will develop its Power of Thought, and its Confidence in
itself, and its Interest in all Knowledge. But most of all beware
against any Attempt to bias its Mind on any Point that lieth with-
out the Square of ascertained and undisputed Fact. Remember also,
even when thou art most sure, that so were they sure who gave
Instruction to the young Copernicus. Pay Reverence also to the
Unknown unto whom thou presumest to impart thy knowledge; for he may
be one greater than thou.
DE VOLUTATE JVENIS COGNOSCENDA
It is important that thou shouldst understand as early as may be
what is the true Will of the Child in the Matter of his Career.
Be thou well aware of all Ideals and Daydreams; for the Child is
himself, and not thy Toy. Recall the comic Tragedy of Napoleon
and the King of Rome; build not an House for a wild Goat, nor
plant a Forest for the Domain of a Shark. But be thou vigilant
for every Sign, conscious or unconscious, of the Will of the Child,
giving him then all Opportunity to pursue the Path which he thus
indicates. Learn this, that he, being young, will weary quickly
of all false Ways, however pleasant they may be to him at the Out-
set; but of the true Way he will not weary. This being in this
Manner discovered, thou mayst prepare it for him perfectly; for
no man can keep all Roads open for ever. And to him making his
Choice explain how one may not travel far on any one Road without
a general Knowledge of Things apparently irrelevant. And with
that he will understand, and bend him wisely to his Work.
DE ARTE MENTIS COLENDI, (1) MATHEMATICA.
Now, concerning the first Foundation of Thy Mind I will say
somewhat. Thou shalt study with Diligence in the Mathematics,
because thereby shall be revealed unto thee the Laws of thine own
Reason and the Limitations thereof. This Science manifesteth unto
thee thy true Nature in respect of the Machinery whereby it worketh,
and showeth in pure Nakedness, without Clothing of Personality or
Desire, the Anatomy of thy conscious Self. Furthermore, by this
thou mayst understand the Essence of the Relations between all
Things, and the Nature of Necessity, and come to the Knowledge of
Form. For this Mathematics is as it were the last Veil before the
Image of Truth, so that there is no Way better than our Holy
Qabalah, which analyseth all Things soever, and reduceth them
to pure Number; and thus their Natures being no longer coloured
and confused, they may be regulated and formulated in Simplicity
by the Operation of Pure Reason, to their great Comfort in the
Work of our Transcendental Art, whereby the Many become One.
SEQUITUR (2) CLASSICA
My son, neglect not in any wise the study of the Writings of
Antiquity, and that in the original Language. For by this thou
shalt discover the History of the Structure of thy Mind, that is,
its Nature regarded as the last Term in a Sequence of Causes and
Effects. For thy Mind hath been built up of these Elements, so
11
that in these Books thou mayst bring into the Light thine own
sub-conscious Memories. And thy Memory is as it were the Mortar
in the House of thy Mind, without which is no Cohesion or Indi-
viduality possible, so that it is called Dementia. And these
Books have lived long and become famous because they are the
Fruits of ancient Trees whereof thou art directly the Heir, where-
fore (say I) they are more truly germane to thine own Nature than
Books of Collateral Offshoots, though such were in themselves
better and wiser. Yes, O my son, in these Writings thou mayst
study to come to the true Comprehension of thine own Nature, and
that of the whole Universe, in the dimensions of Time, even as
the Mathematic declareth it in that of Space: that is, of Exten-
sion. Moreover, by this Study shall the Child comprehend the
Foundation of Manners: the which, as sayeth one of the Sons of
Wisdom, maketh Man.
SEQUITUR (3) SCIENTIFICA
Since Time and Space are the conditions of Mind, these two
Studies are fundamental. Yet there remaineth Causality, which
is the Root of the Actions and Reactions of Nature. This also
shalt thou seek ardently, that thou mayest comprehend the
Variety of the Universe, its Harmony and its Beauty, with the
Knowledge of that which compelleth it. Yet this is not equal
to the former two in Power to reveal thee to thyself; and its
first Use is to instruct thee in the true Method of Advancement
in Knowledge, which is, fundamentally, the observation of the
Like and Unlike. Also, it shall arouse in thee the Ecstasy
of Wonder; and it shall bring thee to a proper Understanding
of Art Magick. For our Magick is but one of the Powers that
lie within us undeveloped and unanalysed; and it is by the
Method of Science that it must be made clear, and available to
the Use of Man. Is not this a Gift beyond Price, the Fruit
of a Tree not only of Knowledge but of Life? For there is that
in Man which is God, and there is that also which is Dust; and
by our Magick we shall make these twain one Flesh, to the Ob-
taining of the Empery of the Universe.
I suppose I might have put it more concisely: Classics is itself
Initiation, being the key of the Unconscious; Mathematics is the Art
of manipulating the Ruach, and of raising it to Neschamah; and Science
is co-terminous with Magick.
These are the three branches of study which I regard as fundamental.
No others are in the same class. For instance, Geography is almost
meaningless until one makes it real by dint of honest travel, which
does not mean either "commuting" or "luxury cruises," still less
"globe-trotting." Law is a specialized study, with a view to a career;
History is too unsystematic and uncertain to be of much use as mental
training; Art is to be studied for and by one's solitary self; any
teaching soever is rank poison.
The final wisdom on this subject is perhaps the old "Something of
everything, and everything of something."
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours ever,
12
666
P.S. Better mention, perhaps, that literacy is no test of education.
For ignorance of life, the don class leaves all others at the post;
and it is these monkish and monkeyish recluses, with their hideous
clatter and cackle, "The tittering, thin-bearded, epicene," "Dwarf,
fringed with fear," the obscene vole, dweller by and in backwaters
that has foisted upon us the grotesque and poisonous superstition
that wisdom abides only in dogs-eared, worm-eaten, mule-inspired
long-forgotten as misbegotten folios.
I like the story --- it is a true tale --- of the old Jew millionaire who
bought up the annual waste of the Pennsylvania Railroad --- a matter of
Three Million Dollars. He called with his cheque very neatly made
out --- and signed it by making his mark! The Railroad Man was naturally
falbbergasted, and could not help exclaiming, "Yet you made all those
millions of yours --- what would you have been if only you had been able
to read and write?" "Doorkeeper at the Synagogue" was the prompt
reply. His illiteracy had disqualified him when he applied for the
job after landing.
The story is not only true, but "of all Truth;" see my previous letter
on "Certainty.
Books are not the only medium even of learning; more, what they teach
is partial, prejudiced, meagre, sterile, uncertain, and alien to
reality. It follows that all the best books are those which make no
pretence to accuracy: poetry, theatre, fiction. All others date.
Another point is that Truth abides above and aloof from intellectual
expression, and consequently those books which bear the Magic Keys
of the Portal of the Intelligible by dint of inspiration and suggestion
come more nearly to grips with Reality than those whose appeal is only
to the Intellect. "Didactic" poetry, "realistic" plays and novels,
are contradictions in terms.
P.P.S. One more effort: the above reminds me that I have said no
word about the other side of the medal. There are many children who
cannot be educated at all in any sense of the word. It is an abonin-
able waste of both of them and of the teacher to push against brick
walls.
Yet one last point. I am as near seventy as makes no matter, and I
am still learning with all my might. All my life I have been taught:
governesses, private tutors, schools, private and public, the best of
the Universities: how little I know! I have traveled all over the
world in all conditions, from "grand seigneur," to "holy man;" how
little I know!
What then of the ninety-and-nine, dragged by the ears through suicide
examinations, and kicked out of school into factory in their teens?
They have learnt only just enough to facilitate the swallowing of the
gross venal lies of the radio and the Yellow Press; or, if mother-
wit has chanced to warn them, they learn a little --- very little ---
more, getting their Science from a Shilling Handbook and so on, till
they know just enough to become dangerous agitators.
No, anything like a real education demands leisure, the conversation
13
of the wise, the means to travel, and the rest.
There is only one solution: to pick out the diamonds from the clay,
cut them, polish them, and set them as they deserve. Attempt no idiot
experiments with the muck of the mine! You will observe that I am
advocating an aristocratic revolution. And so I am!
P.P.P.S. Short of the ideals above outlined, you may as well have
a pis aller --- words of astonishing insight and wisdom, not alien to
the Law Thelema, and written by one who was trained on The Book of the
Law.
"Self-confidence must be cultivated in the younger members of
the nation from childhood onwards. Their whole education and
training must be directed towards giving them a conviction that
they are superior to others", wrote Hitler.
"In the case of female education," I read on, "the main stress
should be laid on bodily training, after that on character, and,
last of all, on the intellect; but the one absolute aim of female
education must be with a view to the future mother."
They are quoted as an extreme example of all that is horrible and evil
by Mr. George E. Chust of the Daily Telegraph --- from Mein Kampf!
P.P.P.P.S. There is a game, an improvement on the "Spelling Bee" --- I
have anti-christened it "Fore and aft" so as to be natty and naval ---
which is in my opinion one of the three or four best indoor games for
two ever invented., Here are the rules, in brief: any disputed points?
Apply to me.
1. A "Word" consists of four or more letters.
2. It must be printed in big black type in the Dictionary chosen for
reference. (Nuttall's is fairly good, though some very well-known
words are omitted. The Oxford Pocket Dictionary is useless; it is
for morons, illiterates, wallowers in "Basic English" --- and [I suppose]
Oxonians. No proper names, however well-known, unless used as common:
e.g. Bobby, a flatfoot, a beetlecrusher, a harness bull; or Xantippe,
a shrew, a lady. X-rays is given in the plural only: ditto "Rntgen-
rays", and they give "Rntgenogram". "You never can tell!" Participles,
plurals and the like are not "words" unless printed as such in big
black type. E.g. Nuttall's "Juttingly" is a word; "jutting" is not,
being in smaller type. "Soaking" is in small type, but also in big
type as a noun; so it is a word.)
3. The Dictionary is the sole and final arbiter. This produces blas-
phemy, but averts assassination.
4. The first player starts with the letter A. The second may put any
letter he chooses either before or after that A. The other continues
as he will, and can.
5. The player who cannot add a letter without completing a "word"
loses.
They proceed to B, and so on to Z.
14
6. A player whose turn it is must either add his letter within a
reasonable (This is a matter of good feeling, courtesy and considera-
tion) time, may say "I challenge" or, alternatively, "That is a 'word'."
The other must then give the "word" that he intends, or deny that it
is a "word" within the meaning of the Art, as the case may be. The
Dictionary decides the winner. The challenged player may give one
word only, and that in the form which is printed in the Dictionary;
e.g. if he were challenged at BRUSS, and answered Brussels, he would
lose; if BRUSSELS-SPROUTS, he would win. Hyphens need not be given.
CASHMERE is a "word"; it is a kind of shawl, etc., so is CHARLEY, a
night-watchman. Don't argue: the Dictionary decides.
7. This game calls not only for an extensive vocabulary but for courage;
foresight, judgment, resource, subtlety and even low cunning. It can
be played by more than two players, but the more there are, the more
the element of chance comes in; and this is hateful to really fine
players and diminishes the excitement. The rapier-play of two experts,
when a word changes from one line of formation to another, and then
again, perhaps even a third time, is as exhilarating as a baseball-
game or a bull-fight.
And what the Tartarus-Tophet-Jehanna has all this to do with Education,
and the Great Work? This, child! H.G.Wells and others have pointed
out with serene justice that a gap in your vocabulary implies a gap in
your mind; you lack the corresponding idea. Too true, "Erbert! But
I threap that a pakeha with such xerotes as his will chowter with an
arsis of ischonophony, beyond aught that any fub, even in Vigonia and
dwale mammodis with a cascade from a Dewan tauty, a kiss-me-quick, a
chou over her merkin and a parka over her chudder could do to save
him, and have an emprosthotonos, when he reads this. Sruti!
(Whaur's your Wullie Chaucer noo?)
I put this in for you because an American officer3, very dear to me,
flited from the Front for a few days to ask me a few questions --- oh,
"very much above your exalted grade" my dear --- and I thought it might
be useful to him to learn this game, needing, as it does, such very
meagre apparatus, to wile away some of the long hours between attacks.
He picked it up quickly enough; but, after a bit when I suggested
that he should pass it on to his comrades-in-arms, he jeered at me
openly!
Their vocabulary to mine, he said, holds just about the same proportion
as mine does to yours; I hypothesized modestly, "about five per cent."
(After all, I am forty-five years his senior.) He roared at me. "Not
one in a hundred," he said, "know so much as the names of nine-tenths
of the subjects that I discuss habitually and fluently. They gasp,
they gape, they grunt, the gibber; it is almost always black bewilder-
ment4. And some of them are college graduates --- which I'm not."
3^ WEH NOTE: Probably Grady Louis McMurtry, who became "Caliph" or
acting head of O.T.O. many years later.
4* They attach no meaning to these words:
Palaeontology
Criterion
Vector
Synthesis (They know "synthetic" but can't connect it with the noun)
Epitome
15
He was snatched from school, and given a commission on the spot, appar-
ently because he was one of very few that could be differentiated from
the average Learned Pig.
All this made me exceeding sorrowful. I began to understand why my
Liber OZ, written entirely in words of one syllable only, with this
very idea in mind, turned out to be completely beyond the average man's
(or woman's) understanding. I had some Mass Observation done on it.
"But this is rank socialism," "Sy, ayn't this all Fascism?" "Oh
Golly!" "Cripes!" "Coo!" "How dreadful!" about the nearest most of
them got to Ralph Straus and Desmond MacCarthy!
Words of one syllable! Louis Marlow5 had already told me what a fool
I was to expect that. "All they can digest," said he, "is a mess of
stewed clichs with Bird's custard Power."
Damn everything --- it's true, it's true.
So do you at least get together the stones that you need to build
your Basilica!
CHAPTER LXXIII.
"MONSTERS," NIGGERS, JEWS, ETC.
Cara Soror,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Come now, is this quite fair? When I agreed to tip you off about
Magick and the rest, I certainly never expected to be treated as if I
were being interviewed by an American Sunday Newspaper. What do I
prefer for breakfast, and my views on the future of the theatre, and
is the Great White Brotherhood in favour of Eugenic Babies? No, dear
sister --- I nearly said sob-sister. But this I will say, you have been
very artful, and led me on very cleverly --- you must have been a terror
to young men --- for the matter of that, I dare say you are still!
And I don't see how to get out of swallowing this last sly bait; as
you say, "Every man and every woman is a star." does need some attention
to the definition of "man" and "woman". What is the position, you say,
of "monsters"? And men of "inferior" races, like the Veddah, Hottentot
and the Australian Blackfellow? There must be a line somewhere, and
Foreign Policy (To them a mere phrase; no idea of its connotation
or principles)
Demology
Entrepreneur
Correspondent and Co-respondent. (They don't know the difference)
Subcutaneous
Chordee)
Gleet ) (Although they have them!)
Histology ("Something to do with history")
5^ WEH NOTE: Louis Umfraville Wilkinson wrote under this pen name. He was
one of two individuals named to be literary executors under Crowley's
Last Will and Testament.
16
will I please draw it? You make me feel like Giotto!
There is one remark which I must make at the beginning. It's some
poet or other, Tennyson or Kipling, I think (I forget who) that wrote:
"Folks in the loomp, is baad." It is true all round. Someone wisely
took note that the vilest man alive had always found someone to love
him. Remember the monster6 that Sir Frederick Treves picked up from
an East End peep-show, and had petted by princesses? (What a cunning
trick!) Revolting, all the same, to read his account of it. He --- the
monster, not Treves! --- seems to have been a most charming individual ---
ah! That's the word we want. Every individual has some qualities
that endear him to some other. And per contra, I doubt if there is any
class which is not detestable to some other class. Artists, police,
the clergy, "reds," foxhunters, Freemasons, Jews, "heaven-born," women's
clubwomen (especially in U.S.A.), "Methodys," golfers, dog-lovers;
you can't find one body without its "natural" enemies. It's right,
what's worse; every class, as a class, is almost sure to have more
defects than qualities. As soon as you put men together, they somehow
sink, corporatively, below the level of the worst of the individuals
composing it. Collect scholars on a club committee, or men of science
on a jury; all their virtues vanish, and their vices pop out, rein-
forced by the self-confidence which the power of numbers is bound to
bestow.
It is peculiarly noticeable that when a class is a ruling minority, it
acquires a detestation as well as a contempt for the surrounding "mob."
In the Northern States of U.S.A., where the whites are overwhelming in
number, the "nigger" can be more or less a "regular fellow;" in the
South, where fear is a factor, Lynch Law prevails. (Should it? The
reason for "NO" is that it is a confession of weakness.) But in the
North, there is a very strong feeling about certain other classes: the
Irish, the Italians, the Jews. Why? Fear again; the Irish in poli-
tics, the Italians in crime, the Jews in finance. But none of these
phobias prevent friendship between individuals of hostile classes.
I think that perhaps I have already written enough --- at least enough
to start you thinking on the right lines. And mark well this! The
submergence of the individual in his class means the end of all true
human relations between men. Socialism means war. When the class
moves as a class, there can be no exceptions.
This is no original thought of mine; Stalin and Hitler both saw it
crystal-clear; both, the one adroitly, the other clumsily, but with
equally consummate hypocrisy, acted it out. They picked individuals
to rule under their autocracy, killed off those that wouldn't fit,
destroyed the power of the Trades Unions or Soviets while pretending
to make them powerful and prosperous, and settled down to the serious
business of preparing for the war which both knew to be inevitable.
It is this fundamental fact which ensures that every democracy shall
end with an upstart autocrat; the stability of peace depends upon
the original idea which aggrandized America in a century from four
millions to a hundred: extreme individualism with opportunity. Our
own longest period of peace abroad (bar frontier skirmishes like the
Crimean war) and prosperity at home coincided with Free Trade and
Laissez-faire.
6^ WEH NOTE {needs research}: Is this the "Elephant Man"?
17
Now we may return, refreshed, to the main question of monsters, real
(like Treves') or imaginary like Jews and niggers.
'Arf a mo! Haven't we solved the problem, ambulando? Everything
would be okydoke and hunkydory if only we can prevent classes from
acting as such?
I suppose so. Then, what about a spot of pithy paradox for a change?
Why should the classes want to act as classes? It's obvious; "Union
is strength." The worst Fifteen can do more with a football than the
best opposing team of one --- excuse my Irish!
Well, that tortoise is that elephant based upon? Why, still obviously,
upon the universal sense of individual weakness. We all want a big
bruvver to tell of him! Hence the Gods and the Classes. It's fear
at the base of the whole pyramid of skulls.
How right politicians are to look upon their constituents as cattle!
Anyone who has any experience of dealing with any class as such knows
the futility of appealing to intelligence, indeed to any other quali-
ties than those of brutes.
And so, whenever we find one Man who has no fear like Ibsen's Doctor
Stockmann or Mark Twain's Colonel Grainger that strolled out on his
balcony with his shotgun to face the mob that had come to lynch him,
he can get away with it. "An Enemy of the People" wrote Ibsen, "Ye
are against the people, O my chosen!" says The Book of the Law. (AL
II, 25).
Not only does it seem to me the only conceivable way of reconciling
this and similar passages with "Every man and every woman is a star."
to assert the sovereignty of the individual, and to deny the right-
to-exist to "class-consciousness," "crowd-psychology," and so to mob-
rule and Lynch-Law, but also the only practicable plan whereby we may
each one of us settle down peaceably to mind his own business, to
pursue his True Will, and to accomplish the Great Work.
So never lose sight for a moment of the maxim so often repeated in
one context or another in these letters: that fear is at the root of
every possibility of trouble, and that "Fear is failure, and the fore-
runner of failure. Be thou therefore without fear; for in the heart
of the coward virtue abideth not."
Good-night; and don't look under the bed!
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours fraternally,
666
CHAPTER LXXIV.
OBSTACLES ON THE PATH.
Cara Soror,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
18
Peccavi! And how! But my excuse is good, and I will try to make
amends.
First, a little counter-attack --- your letter is so rambling and diffuse
that at first I couldn't make out what you were getting at, and at last
decided that it is much too random to reproduce, or even to deal with
in detail. I shall simply formulate the case for the Prosecution, plead
guilty, and appeal for clemency.
The gravamen is that the Path of the Wise is gay with flowers, gilded
with kiosks, and beset with snares; that every step is the Abode of
Terror and Rapture --- and all that! Yet I habitually write in the manner
of a drunken dominie! You "gaped for Aeschylus, and got Theognis."
I tempted you, it seems with The Chymical Marriage of Christian
Rosencreutz, its incomparable mystery and glamour, its fugitive
beauty, its ineffable romance, its chivalry and its adventure, pellucid
gleams as of sunlight under the sea, vast brooding wings of horror
overshadowing the firmament, yet with strong Starlight constant over-
bead. And then I let you down!
You did expect at least something of the atmosphere of the Arabian
Nights; if not so high, of Apuleius and Petronius Arbiter; of Rabelais,
Meinhold, de la Motte Fouqu; and the Morte d'Arthur in later times, of
Balzac, Dumas, Lytton, Huysmans, Mabel Collins and Arthur Machen.
You look at me with strange sad eyes: "But you, too, Master, have not
you too led a life as strange, as glamourous, as weird and as romantic,
as the best of them? Then why this cold detachment from that ambience?"
Well, if you put it like that, I can only say that I feel at the same
time more guilty and entirely innocent!
For, while the charge is true, the defence is not to be shaken.
The worst of all teachers are the Boloney Magnates, of whom I have
already given some account. But the next worst are just exactly those
who try to create an atmosphere of romance, and succeed only in a crude
theatricalism. So, avoiding the swirling turmoil of Scylla, I have
broken the ship on the barren rock Charybdis.{Editorial Q. --- isn't this bas-
akwards? WEH}
Now let me hearten you, brave sister! All the old tales are true!
You can have as many dragons, princesses, vampires, knights-errant,
glendowers, enchanted apes, Jinn, sorcerers and incubi as you like to
fancy, and --- whoa Emma! did I tell you about Cardinal Newman? Well,
I will.
The one passage in his snivelling Apologia which impressed me was a
tale of his childhood --- before the real poet, lover and mystic had
been buried beneath the dung-heap of Theology. He tells us that he
read the Arabian Nights --- in a heavily Bowdlerized edition, bet you
a tosser! --- and was enchanted, like the rest of us, so that he sighed
"I wish these tales were true!" The same thing happened to me; but
I set my teeth, and muttered: "I will make these tales true!"
Well, I have, haven't I? You said it yourself!
19
Let me be very frank about one point. It has always puzzled me com-
pletely why one is forbidden to relate certain of one's adventures.
You remember, perhaps, in one of these letters I started out gaily to
tell you some quite simple things --- I couldn't, can't, see quite what
harm could come of it --- and I was pulled up sharp --- yes, and actually
punished, like a school-boy! I had often done much more impudent
things, and nobody seemed to give a hoot. Oh somebody tell me why!
The only suggestion that occurs to me is that I might somehow be
"giving occasion to the enemy to blaspheme." Let it go at that!
"Enough of Because! Be he damned for a dog!"
Yes child, my deepest attitude is to be found in my life. I have been
to most of the holy inaccessible places, and talked with the most holy
inaccessible men; I have dared all the most dangerous adventures, both
of the flesh and of the spirit; and I challenge the world's literature
to match for sublimity and terror such experiences as those in the
latter half of The Vision and the Voice.
You understand, of course, that I say all this merely in indication;
or rather, as I said before, as an appeal for clemency.
On the contrary (you will retort) you are a mean cat (Felis Leo,
please!) not to let us all in on the ground floor of so imposing a
Cathedral!
To atone? Not a catalogue, which would be interminable; not a classi-
fication, which would be impossible, save in the roughest terms;
nothing but a few short notes, possibly an anecdote or so. Just a
tickle or a dram of schnapps, to enliven the proceedings. ordeals ---
temptations --- that sort of thing. A general Khabardar karo! With
now and then a snappy Achtung!
Oh, curse this mind of mine! I just can't help running to hide under
the broad skirts of the Qabalah! It's Disk, Sword, Cup and Wand again!
Sorry, but c'est trop fort pour moi.
Disks. To master Earth, remember that the Disk is always spinning;
fix this idea, get rid of its solidity.
Commonly, the first tests of the young Aspirant refer to cash --- "that's
God's sol solid in this world." The proper magical attitude is very
hard to describe. (I'm not talking of that black hen's egg any more;
that is simple.) Very sorry to have to say it, but it is not unlike
that of the spendthrift. Money must circulate, or it loses its true
value. A banker in New York once told me that the dollar circulated
nine times as fast as the English equivalent, so that people seemed
to themselves to be nine times as rich. (I told you about the 100
note in a special letter on Money). But here I am stressing the
spiritual effect; what happens is that anxiety vanishes; one feel
that as it goes out, so it comes in. This view is not incompatible
with thrift and prudence, and all that lot of virtues, far from it, it
tucks in with them quite easily. You must practise this; there's a
knack in it. Success in this leads to a very curious result indeed;
not only does the refusal to count (Fourpen'north or Yoga, please miss,
and Mum says can I have a penny if I bring back the bottle!), bring
about the needlessness of counting, but also one acquires the power
to command!
20
A century ago, very nearly, there lived in Bristol and "Open Brother"
names Muller, who was a wizard at this; Grace before breakfast, the
usual palaver about the Lord and His blessings and His bounty et
cetera, da capo; to conclude "and, Blessed Lord, we would humbly
venture to remind Thee that this morning Thou art 3 4s. 6 1/2d.
short in the accounts; trusting that Thou wilt give this small matter
Thine immediate attention, for Jesus' Christ's sake, Amen." Sure
enough, when he came to open his post, there would be just enough,
sometimes exactly enough, to cover that amount.
This story was told me by an enemy, who thought quite seriously that
he would go to Hell for being "Open." ("Open" Brethren were lax about
the Lord's Supper, let people partake who were not sound upon the
Ramsgate Question; and other Theological Atrocities!) It meant that
the facts were so undeniable that the "advertisement for Answer to
Prayer" outweighed the "miracle by a heretic."
I knew a poetess of great distinction who used to amuse herself by
breaking off a conversation and saying, "Give me a franc" (or a shilling,
or any small sum) and then going on with her previous remarks. She told
me that of over a hundred people I was the second who had passed the coin
to her without remark of any kind.
This story --- do you think? --- is neither here no there. No, my remarks
are rarely asyntartete. The Masters, at one stage or another of initia-
tion --- it is forbidden to indicate the conditions --- arrange for some
test of the Aspirant's attitude in some matter, not necessarily involv-
ing cash. If he fails, goodnight!
Swords, now. The snags connected with this type of test are probably
the nastiest of any. Misunderstanding, confusion, logical error (and,
worse, logical precision of the kind that distinguishes many lunatics),
dispersion, indecision, failure to estimate values correctly --- oh! ---
there is no end to the list. So much so, indeed, that there is no
specific critical test, it is all part of the routine, and goes on
incessantly.
Well, there is just one. Without warning a decision of critical
importance has to be made by the candidate, and he is given so many
minutes to say Yes or No. He gets no second chance.
But I must warn you of one particular disgrace. You know that people
of low mentality haunt fortune-tellers of equal calibre, but with more
low cunning. They do not really want to know the future, or to get
advice; their real object is to persuade some supposed "authority"
to flatter them and confirm them in their folly and stupidity.
It is the same thing with a terrifying percentage of the people that
come for "teaching" and "initiation." The moment they learn anything
they didn't know before, off they fly in a temper! No sooner does
it become apparent that the Master is not a stupid middle-class prig
and hypocrite --- another edition of themselves, in short --- they are
frightened, they are horrified, they flee away on both their feet,
like the man in the Bible! I have seen people turn fish-belly pale
in the face, and come near fainting outright, when it has dawned upon
them suddenly that magick is a real thing!
21
It's all beyond me!
Cups: we are much more definite again. The great test is so well
known, and accounts have already been published, that it can be here
plainly stated. Early in his career, the Aspirant is exposed to the
seductions of a Vampire, and warned in due form and due season.
"Sleep with A,B,C,D,E and F, my lad, and our hearty best wishes! But
not with G on any account, on peril of your work!"
So off he goes to G, without a second's hesitation. This test may be
prolonged; the deadliness and subtlety of the danger has been recog-
nized, and he may have half a dozen warnings, either direct or springing
from his relations with her. And the penalty is not so drastically
final; often he gets off with a term of penal servitude.
On the other hand, the Aspirant who can spot at the first hint why the
Masters think that particular woman a danger, and acts promptly and
decisively as he should, is secretly marked down as a sword of very
fine temper indeed!
The rest of the Cup Ordeals consists for the most part of progressive
estimations of the quality of the Postulant's devotion to the work;
there is not, as a rule, anything particularly spectacular or dramatic
in it. If you stick to your Greetings and Adorations and all such
mnemonics, you are not likely to go very far wrong.
Wands: this obviously a pure question of Will. You will find as
you go on that obstacles of varying degrees of difficulty confront you;
and the way in which you deal with them is most carefully watched.
The best advice that I can give is to remember that there is little
need of the Bull-at-a-Gate method, though that must always be ready
in reserve; no, the best analogy is rapier-play. Elastic strength.
Warfare shows us.
That seems to cover your question more or less; but don't forget that
it depends on yourself how much of the dramatic quality colours your
Path. I suppose I have been lucky to have had the use of all the
traditional trappings; but it is always possible to make a "coat of
many colours" out of a heap of rags. To show you that you have had
Chaucer and John Bunyan --- yes, and Laurence Sterne: to bring up the
rear, James Thomson (B.V.) to say nothing of Conrad and Hardy. Nor
let me forget The Cream of the Jest and The Rivet in Grandfather's
Neck of my friend, James Branch Cabell.
So now, fair damozel, bestride thy palfrey, and away to the Mountains
of Magick!
Love is the law, love under will.
Fraternally,
666
P.S. One danger I had purposely passed over, as it is not likely to
come your way. But, since others may read these letters ---
Some, and these the men of highest promise, often of great achievement,
22
are tempted by Treason. The acquire a "Judas-complex,' think how
splendid it would be if they were to destroy the Order --- or, at the
very least, unhorse the Master.
This is, of course, absurd in itself, because if they had crossed the
Abyss, they would understand why it is impossible. It would be like
"destroying Electricity," or "debunking" the Venus of Milo. The maxi-
mum of success possible in such an operation would be to become a
"Black-Brother;" but what happens in practice, so far as my own
experience goes, is complete dispersion of the mental faculties amount-
ing to suicide; I could quote no less than four cases in which actual
physical self-murder was the direct result.
CHAPTER LXXV.
THE A.'. A.'. AND THE PLANET
Cara Soror,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
You Write:
"Am I to understand that the A.'. A.'. has two main lines of Work.
(1) The initiation of Individuals, (2) Action on the world in
general --- say "Weltpolitik"? Because your letters on the History
of Magick do imply (2); and yet the A.'. A.'. discourages any
form of group working. Is it that the Masters (8ĝ = 3ŝ Magistri
Templi) having been admitted to the Third Order --- the A.'. A.'.
proper; below this are R.R. et A.C. and G.'. D.'. --- are no longer
liable to the dangers which make group activity in lower grades
undesirable. Or do they still work as Individuals, yet, because
they are initiates, appear to act as a corporate body? You have
often expressed yourself as if this were so. 'Of course, They had
to pick on me to do the dirty work' is a typical growl of the old
Big Lion! But again there is that Magical Memory of yours when
you came down from that Hermitage in the little wood overhanging
the nullah below the Great Peak 'somewhere in Asia' and sat in
some sort of Consistory in the valley where the great Lamaserai ---
or whatever it was --- towers over the track, (I quote some of your
phrases from memory.) Which is it?"
My dear child, that is all very sensibly put; and the answer is that
Convenience would decide. Then you go on, after a digression:
"Then how are They acting at present? What impact has the new
Word, Thelema, made upon the planet? What are we to expect as a
result? And can we poor benighted outsiders help Them in any way?
I know it's 'cheek' to ask."
then turn the other cheek, and repeat the question! I will do my best
to make it all clear. But do not forget that I am myself completely
in the dark with regard to the special functions of most of my
colleagues.
To begin, then!
Achtung! I am going to be hard-boiled; my first act is to enlist the
23
Devil himself in our ranks, and take the Materialistic Interpretation
of History from Karl Marx, and accept economic laws as the manifest
levers which determine the fortune of one part of the earth or another.
I shall take exception only by showing that these principles are second-
ary: oil in Texas, nitrates on the Pacific slope of the Andes, suphur
in Louisiana (which put Etna's nose out of joint by making it cheaper
for the burgers of Messina to import it from four thousand miles away
instead of digging it out of their own back garden), even coal and
timber, upset very few apple-carts until individual genius had found
for these commodities such uses as our grandfathers never dreamed.
The technical developments of almost every form of wealth are the
forebears of Big Business; and Big Business, directly or indirectly,
is the immediate cause of War.
In the "To-day and to-morrow" series is an essay called Ouroboros, by
Garet Garrett; one of the most shrewd and deep-delving analysis of
economics ever written. May I condense him crudely? Mass Production
for profit fails when its markets are exhausted; so every effort is
made to impose it not only on the native but the foreigner, and should
guile fail, then force!
But the process ineluctably goes on; when the whole world buys the
nasty stuff, and will accept no other, the exploiter is still faced by
diminishing returns. No possibility of expansion; sooner or later
dividends dwindle, and the Business is Bust.
To even the most stupid it becomes plain at this stage that war is
wholly ruinous; organization breaks down altogether; one meaningless
revolution follows another; famine and pestilence complete the job.
Last time --- when Osiris replaced Isis --- the wreck was limited in scope
--- note that it was the civilized, the organized part that broke down.
(Jews and Arabs could remain aloof, and keep a small torch burning
until Light returned with the Renaissance.)
This time there is no civilization which can escape being involved in
the totality of the catastrophe.
Towards this collapse all totalitarian movements inevitably tend.
Bertrand Russell himself admits that, although himself "temperamentally
Anarchistic," Society must be yet more organized than it is to-day if
it is to exist at all.
But his, as Garet Garrett shows, is the John Gilpin type of horseman-
ship. We are to-day more or less at the stage where "off flew Gilpin's
hat and wig."
Achievement of high aims, which tends ultimately to the well-being, the
prosperity of the republic, depends on the proportion of masters to
servants. The stability of a building depends on the proportion of
superstructure to foundations. The rule holds good in every department
of Nature. There is an optimum for every case. If there is one barber
for ten thousand men, most of them will remain unshorn; if there are
five thousand barbers, most of them will be out of a job.
Apply this measure to society; there must be an optimum relation between
24
industry and agriculture, between town and country. When the proper
balance is not struck, the community must depend on outside help,
importing what it lacks, exporting its surplus. This is an unnatural
state of affairs; it results in business, and therefore ultimately in
war. That is, as soon as the stress set up by the conditions becomes
insupportable. So long as "business" is confined to luxuries, no great
harm need result; but when interference with the flow of foreign trade
threatens actual necessities, the unit concerned realizes that it is in
danger of strangulation. Consider England's food supply! Switzerland,
Russia, China, the U.S.A. can laugh at U-boats. England must support
a Navy, a wealth-consuming, not a wealth-producing, item in the Budget.
Similar remarks apply to practically all Government Departments. The
minimum of organization is desirable; all artificial doctrinaire
multiplication of works which produce no wealth is waste; and for
many reasons (some absurd, like "social position") tend to create fresh
unnecessary necessities. Ad infinitum, like the fleas in the epigram!
When laws are reasonable in the eyes of the average man, he respects
them, keeps them, does his best to maintain them; therefore a minute
Police Force, with powers strictly limited, is adequate to deal with the
almost negligibly small criminal class. A convention is laudable when
it is convenient. When laws are unjust, monstrous, ridiculous, that
same average man, will he-nill he, becomes a criminal; and the law
requires a Tcheka or a Gestapo with dictatorial powers and no safeguards
to maintain the farce. Also, corruption becomes normal in official
circles; and is excused. I refer you to Mr. J. H. Thomas.7
One evil leads to another; the seven devils always take possession of
a house that is swept and garnished to he point at which people find
it uncomfortable.
But is not all this beside the point, you ask? No. It was needful to
indicate this cumulative progression to social shipwreck,because,
to-day an obvious peril of the most menacing, in 1904 no ordinary sane
person foresaw anything of the sort. But special knowledge alters
things, and it is certain that the Masters anticipated, with great
exactness of calculation, the way things would go in the political
world.
Practically all the messages received during the "Cairo Working" (March-
April 1904 e.v.) came to me through Ouarda. No woman ever lived who
was more ignorant of, or less interested in, anything to do with poli-
tics, or the welfare of the race; she cared for nothing beyond her
personal comfort and pleasure. When the communications ceased, she
dropped the whole affair without a thought.
She nearly always referred to the authors of these messages as "They:"
when asked who "They" were, she would say haltingly and stupidly "the
gods," or some equally unhelpful term. But she was always absolutely
clear and precise as to the instructions. The New Aeon was to supersede
the old; my special job was to preserve the Sacred Tradition, so that
a new Renaissance might in due season rekindle the hidden Light. I was
accordingly to make a Quintessence of the Ancient Wisdom, and publish
it in as permanent a form as possible. This I did in The Equinox. I
should perhaps have been strictly classical, and admitted only the
7* The Chancellor of the Exchequer, having fixed the increase of Income
Tax at threepence, proceeded to defraud the Insurance Companies by
insuring himself against a rise of the sum!
25
"Publication in Class "A", "A-B", "B " and "D" material. But I had the
idea that it would be a good plan to add all sorts of other stuff, so
that people who were not in any way interested in the real Work might
preserve their copies.
This by the way: the essence this letter is to show that "They",
not one person but a number acting in concert, not only foresaw a
planet-wide catastrophe, but were agreed on measures calculated to
assure the survival of the Wisdom worth saving until the time, perhaps
three hundred or six hundred years later, when a new current should
revive the shattered thought of mankind.
The Equinox, in a word, was to be a sort of Rosetta Stone.
There is one other matter of incomparable importance: the wars which
have begun the disintegration of the world have followed, each at an
interval of nine months, the operative publications of The Book of the
Law. This again seems to make it almost certain that "They" not only
know the future, at least in broad outline, but are at pains to arrange
it. I have no doubt that the advance of Natural Science is in the
charge of a certain group of "Masters." Even the spiritually and
morally as well as the physically destructive phenomena of our age must
be parts of some vast all-comprehensive plan.
Putting two and two together, and making 718, it looks as if the Masters
acquiesced in and helped to fulfill, the formula of the catastrophic
succession of the Aeons.
An analogy. We have the secret of the Elixir of Life, and could carry
on in the same body indefinitely; yet at least some masters prefer to
reincarnate in the regular way, only taking care to waste no time in
Amennti, but to get back to the Old Bench and pick up the New Tools
with the minimum of delay.
By having attained the Freedom of "Elysian, windless, fortunate abodes
Beyond Heaven's constellated wilderness" "we are blessed; and bless"
by refusing to linger therein, but shouldering once more "Atlantean
the load of the too vast orb of" the Karma of Mankind.
This hypothesis does at least make intelligible Their action in riding
for a fall instead of preventing it. It may also be that They feel
that human progress has reached its asymptote so far as the old Formula
can take it. In fact, unless we take some such view, there does not
seem to be much point in taking an action so fundamentally revolutionary
(on the surface) as the proclamation of a New Word.
But then (you will object, if an objection it be) people like Lenin,
Hitler, Mussolini, the Mikado, et hoc genus omne, are loyal emissaries
of the Masters, or the gods! Well, why not? An analogy, once more.
In the Christian legend we find God (omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent)
employing Judas, Pilate and Herod, no less than Jesus, as actors in the
Drama which replaced Isis by Osiris in the Great Formula. Perfectly
true; but this fact does not in any way exculpate the criminals. It is
no excuse for the Commandants of Belsen and Buchenwald that they were
acting under orders. The Drama is not mere play-acting, in which the
most virtuous man may play the vilest of parts.
Your further objection, doubtless, will be that this theory makes the
26
Masters responsible for the agony of the planet. I refer you to The
Book of the Heart Girt with a Serpent, Cp I, v. 33-4-0.
33. Let us take our delight in the multitude of men!
Let us shape unto ourselves a boat of Mother-of-Pearl from
them, that we may ride upon the river of Amrit!
34. Thou seest yon petal of Amaranth, blown by the wind from the
low sweet brows of Hathor?
35. (The magister saw it and rejoiced in the beauty of it) Listen!
36. (From a certain world came an infinite wail) That falling
petal seemed to the little ones a wave to engulph their
continent.
37. So they will reproach thy servant, saying: Who hath set thee
to save us?
38. He will be sore distressed.
39. All they will understand not that thou and I are fashioning
a boat of Mother-of-Pearl. We will sail down the river of
Amrit even to the yew groves of Yama, where we may rejoice
exceedingly.
40. The joy of men shall be our silver gleam, their woe our blue
gleam --- all in the Mother-of-pearl.
And again, Cp. I, v. 50-52 and v. 56-62.
50. Adonai spake yet again with V.V.V.V.V. and said: The earth
is ripe for vintage; let us eat of her grapes, and be drunken
thereon.
51. And V.V.V.V.V. answered and said: O my Lord, my dove, my
excellent one, how shall this word seem unto the children of
men?
52. And He answered him: Not as thou canst see. It is certain
that every letter of this cipher hath some value; but who
shall determine the value? For it varieth ever, according
to the subtlety of him that made it.
. . . . . . . .
56. And Adonai said: The strong brown reaper swept his swathe and
rejoiced. The wise man counted his muscles and pondered, and
understood not, and was sad. Reap thou and rejoice!
57. Then was the adept glad, and lifted his arm. Lo! an earth-
quake, and plague, and terror on the earth! A casting down of
them that sate in high places; a famine upon the multitude!
58. And the grape fell ripe and rich into his mouth.
59. Stained is the purple of thy mouth, O brilliant one with the
white glory of he lips of Adonai.
27
60. The foam of the grape is like the storm upon the sea; the
ships tremble and shudder; the shipmaster is afraid.
61. That is thy drunkenness, O holy one, and the winds whirl away
the soul of the scribe into the happy haven.
62. O Lord God! Let the haven be cast down by the fury of the
storm! Let the foam of the grape tincture my soul with thy
light!
. . . . . . . .
Yes, I dare say. But is there not here a sort of moral oxymoron? Are
not the Masters pursuing two diametrically opposed policies at the same
time?
Genius --- or Initiation, which implies the liberation and development of
the genius latent in us all (is not one of names of the "Holy
Guardian Angel" the Genius?) --- is practically the monopoly of the "crazy
adventurer," as the official mind will most certainly rate him. Then
why do not the Masters oppose all forms of organization tooth-and-nail?
It depends, surely, on the stage which a society has reached on its fall
to the servile state. Civilization of course, implies organization up
to a certain point. The freedom of any function is built upon system;
and so long as Law and Order make it easier for a man to do his True
Will, they are admirable. It is when system is adored for its own sake,
or as a means of endowing mediocrities with power as such, that the
"critical temperature" is attained.
It so happens that I write this on the eve of a General Election in
England; and it seems to me that whichever wins, England loses:
The Socialists openly proclaim that they mean to run the country on
the lines of a convict prison; but the Tories, for all their fine talk,
would be helpless against the Banks and the Trusts to whom they must
look for support.
Still, perhaps with a little help from Hashish, one can imagine a Mer-
chant Prince or a Banker being intelligent, or even, in a weak moment,
human; and this is not the case with officials. The standard, moreover,
of education and Good Manners, low as it is, is less low in Tory circles.
As I think that totalitarian methods are already on the way to extinguish
the last spark of manly independence --- that is, in self-styled civilized
countries --- it seems to me that we all should regard with shrewd suspi-
cion any plans for "perfecting" social conditions. The extreme horror
is the formula of the gregarious type of insect. Inherent in the
premises is the impossibility of advance.
One may sum the policy of the A.'. A.'. as follows:
1. To assist the initiation of the individual.
2. To maintain a form of social order in which the adventure of
initiation is easy --- to undertake!
3. To work out the Magical Formula of the New Aeon.
28
"Ye-e-ss, I s-e-e."
I doubt it. But what you are asking is how to decide upon your personal
programme.
The intelligent visitor from who knows what planet was puzzled. He
chanced to have landed in England --- to find a General Election in full
blast. (The operative word is "blast".) They must be absolute imbeciles,
was his first reaction, to risk upsetting the policy of Government with
a first-class war on.
(There would have been no need of such nonsense --- I interrupted --- if
Parliament was elected by my simple plan. I'll give you the main idea;
I don't insist on the figures. When a candidate is returned by 50 per-
cent over his runner-up, he sits for five years. If forty percent,
four years; and so on. An alternative --- to "stagger" the assembly, as
(I think) is done in the Senate of the United States.)
How are you going to vote?
Rather like the question of the dentist8. The teeth can be tinkered:
of course, sooner or later they have to go. Is it worth the trouble
and expense? The Socialists would have them all out right away, and
replaced by a set of "dentures," which (obviously) are perfect. Arrange
them, change them, choose your own pattern; no trouble, no pain: all
one's dream come true! But hardly biological.
You may argue that convicts are examples of living individuals whose
safety, shelter, nourishment and the rest are organized with the utmost
care; but accidents will happen in the best-regulated "brown stone
jugs." The one ideally automatic case is the foetus. You will agree
that here is lack of initiative; in fact, its "True Will" is to escape,
albeit into a harsh and hostile universe, fraught with unknown and
incalculable dangers.
As the Ritual says: "Prepare to enter the Immeasurable Region!"
I think your decision should depend on how far caries has travelled on
its road of destruction.
I do not think that the Masters need be unanimous.
A practical plan might be for them to concentrate on one particular
group, or one part of the world, and to keep this in as good shape as
possible until the time has come for Nature to grow a new set.
They will be grown on a new Formula, to meet the new needs, just as
when our "permanent" (Alas, not much!) set replace our milk-teeth.
You ask me if I think this change can be made without bloodshed.
No. The obscure autocrats of Diplomacy and Big Business are infinitely
stupid and short-sighted; they cannot see an inch beyond their too
8^ WEH NOTE: Crowley suffered from bad teeth in his last years, finally
having them extracted about six months before his death in 1947 e.v. It is
speculated that secondary infection from the extraction may have contributed
to his death from pneumonia in December of that year.
29
often stigmatically shapen probosces, except where the profit of the
next financial year is concerned. They live in perpetual panic, and
shy at their own shadows. The accordingly attack even the most innoc-
uous windmills in suicidal charges.
Yes: bella, horrida bella,
Et flavem Tibrim spumantem sanguine cerno.
So, whichever way you vote, you are asking for trouble, or would do,
if the vote had any meaning. The result of any election, or for the
matter of that any revolution, is an almost wholly insignificant compo-
nent of those stupendous and inscrutable Magical Forces which determine
the destinies of the planet.
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours fraternally,
666
CHAPTER LXXVI.
THE GODS: HOW AND WHY THEY OVERLAP
Cara Soror,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Your last letter.
I am glad: it shows you have been putting in some genuine original
work. Result! You make a very shrewd observation; you have noticed
the curious fashion in which Gods seem to overlap. It is not the same
(you point out) with Angels. In no other system do we find a parallel
for the Living Creatures. Wheels, Wings, Fiery Serpents, with such
quasi-human cohorts as the Beni Elohim who beget the children on women,
to whom the Qabalah has introduced us. The Beni Elohim is actually
an exception; there is the Incubus and some of the Fairy Folk, as
well as certain Gods and demi-Gods, who act thus paternally. But you
are right in the main. The Arabs, for example, have "seven heavens"
and seven Orders of Angels, also Jinn; but the classes are by no means
identical. This, even though certain Archangels, notably Gabriel,
appear in both systems. But then Gabriel is a definite individual, a
person --- and this fact is the key to your puzzle.
For, as I have explained in a previous letter, Gods are people: macro-
cosms, not mere collocations of the elements, planets and signs as are
most of the angels, intelligences and spirits. It is interesting to
note that Gabriel in particular seems to be more than one of these;
he enjoys the divine privilege of being himself. Between you and me
and the pylon, I suspect that Gabriel who gave the Q'uran to
Mohammed was in reality a "Master" or messenger of some such person,
more or less as Aiwass describes himself as "...the minister of Hoor-paar-
kraat." (AL I, 7) His name implies some such function; for G.B.R.
is Mercury between the Two Greater Lights, Sol and Luna. This seems
to mean that he is something more than a lunar or terrestrial arch-
angel; as he would appear to be from 777. (There now! That was my
private fiend again --- the Demon of Digression. Back to our Gods!)
30
777 itself, to say nothing of The Golden Bough and the Good Lord
knows how many other similar monuments of lexicography (for really
they are little more), is our text-book. We are bound to note at
once that the Gods sympathise, run into one another, coalesce much
more closely than any other of the Orders of Being. There is not
really much in common between a jackal and a beetle, or between a
wolf and an owl, although they are grouped under Pisces or Aries
respectively. But Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Melcarth, Mithras, Marsyas
--- --- --- a whole string of them comes tripping off the tongue. They all
have histories; their birth, their life, their death, their subsequent
career; all goes naturally with them exactly as if they were (say) a
set of warriors, painters, anything superbly human. We feel instinc-
tively that we know them, or at least know of them in the same sense
that we know of our fellow men and women; and that is a sense which
never so much as occurs to us when we discuss Archangels. The great
exception is the Holy Guardian Angel; and this as I have shewn in
another letter is for exactly the same reason; He is a Person, a
macrocosmic Individual. (We do not know about his birth and so on;
but that is because he is, so to speak, a private God; he only appears
to the world at all through some reference to him by his client; for
instance, the genius or Augoeides of Socrates).
Let us see how this works in practice. Consider Zeus, Jupiter, Amon-
Ra, Indra, etc., we can think of them as the same identical people
known and described by Greeks, Romans, Egyptians and Hindus; they
differ as Mont Cervin differs from Monte Silvio and the Matterhorn.
(They are bound to appear different, because the mountain does not look
the same from Zermatt as it does from Domodossola, or even as seen by
a French-Swiss and a German-Swiss.) In the same way read the Life of
Napoleon written by one of his marshals, by Michelet (a rabid Republi-
can), by Lord Rosebery, by a patriotic Russian, and by a German poet
and philosopher: one can hardly believe that the subject of any two
of these biographies is the same man.
But upon certain points the identity is bound to transpire; even when
we read of his crushing and classic defeat at Waterloo by the Belgians,
the man is detected. Transferring the analogy to the Gods, it is then
open to us to suppose that Tahuti, Thoth, Hermes, Mercury, Loki, Hanuman
and the rest are identical, and that the diversity of the name and the
series of exploits is due merely to the accidents of time and space.
But it is at least equally plausible to suggest that these Gods are
different individuals, although of the identical Order of Being,
characteristics and function. Very much as if one took Drake, Frobisher,
Raleigh, Hood, Blake, Rodney and Nelson, as seen through the mists of
history, tradition, legend and plain mythopoeia. Add a few names not
English, and our position is closely parallel. Personally, I incline
to the latter hypothesis; but it would be hard to say why, unless that
it is because I feel that to identify them completely would be to re-
duce their stature to that of personifications of various cosmic energies.
History lends its weight to my view. When the philosophic schools,
unable to refute the charge of absurdity leveled at the orthodox
devotee who believed that Mars actually begot Romulus and Remus on a
Vestal Virgin, explained that Mars was no more than the martial instinct,
and the Virgin a type of Purity, their faith declined, and with it
Roman Virtue. "Educate" Colonel Blimp's children and we have the
"intelligentsia" of Bloomsbury. I am very sorry about all this; but
life must always be brutal and stupid so long as it depends upon
31
animals and vegetables for nourishment.
How restore faith in the Gods? There is only one way; we must get to
know them personally. And that, of course, is one of the principal
tasks of the Magician.
One further remark. I have suggested that all these "identical" gods
are in reality distinct persons, but belonging to the same families.
Can we follow up this line of thought? Yes: but I will defer it to
a subsequent letter.
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours fraternally,
666
CHAPTER LXXXVII
WORK WORTH WHILE: WHY?
Cara Soror,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Your remarks on my 0 = 2 letter are very apt and inspiriting --- that is
if I have rightly understood what you want to say. (Really, you know,
they are a bit muddled --- or I am!) May I frame your question, if it
is a question, in my own terms? Yes? Right.
You say that I have advanced an invulnerable theory of the Universe
in philosophical and mathematical language, and you suppose (under-
lined three times with two question marks) that one could, with a great
effort, deduce therefrom perfectly good reasons for an unswerving
contemplation of one's umbilicus, or the performance of strange dances
and the vibration of mysterious names. But what are you to say (you
enquire) to the ordinary Bloke-on-the-Boulevard, to the man of the
world who has acquired a shrewd knowledge of Nature, but finds no
rational guide to the conduct of life. He observes many unsatisfactory
elements in the way things go, and for his own sake would like to
"remould them nearer to the heart's desire," to refurbish the clich
of Fitzgerald about "this sorry scheme of things." He is not in the
least interested in the learned exposition of 0 = 2. But he is aware
that the A.'. A.'. professes a sound solution of the problem of conduct
and would like to know if its programme can be justified in terms of
Common Sense.
As luck would have it, only a few weeks ago I was asked to address a
group of just such people --- and they gave me three-quarters of an
hour's notice. It was really more like ten minutes, as the rest of
the time was bespoke by letter-writing and posting which could in no
wise be postponed.
So I had to devise an adequate gambit, one which ruthlessly excluded
any touch of subtlety, or any assumption of previous knowledge of the
subject on the part of the audience.
It came off. For the first time in history, the laymen elicited intel-
ligent and relevant questions. There were only three half-wits in the
32
five score or so persons present, and these (naturally!) were just those
people who claimed to have studied the subject.
What follows is a rough outline of my argument.
I began by pointing out that Nature exercises many forms of Energy,
which are not directly observable by the senses. In fact, the History
of Science for the last hundred and fifty years or so has consisted
principally of the discovery of such types, with their analysis, measure-
ment and manipulation. There is every reason to suppose that many such
remain to be discovered.
But what has in no case been observed is any trace of will or of
intelligence, except through some apparatus involving a nervous and
cerebral system.
At this point I want especially to call your attention to certain
species of animals (bees and termites are obvious cases) where a
collective consciousness seems to exist, since the community acts as
a whole in evidently purposeful ways, yet the units of that community
are not even complete in themselves. (Isn't there some series of
worms, each sub-type able only to subsist on the excrement of its
preserver in the series?)
Then there are the phenomena of mob psychology, where a crowd gleefully
combine to perform acts which would horrify any single individual. And
there is the exceeding strange and interesting psychology of the "par-
touse" --- this is a little more, in my judgment, than a spinthria.
In all such cases the operative consciousness does not reside in any
single person, as one might argue that it did when an orator "carries
away" his audience. But these remarks have rather shunted one into a
siding away from the main line of argument. My most important point
is to insist that even with the most familiar forms of energy, man has
done no creative work so ever. He has discovered, examined, measured
(rather clumsily) and used, but in no case has he understood, still
less explained, the causes of phenomena. Sometimes he cannot even
reconcile different "laws of Nature." So we find J.W.N. Sullivan
exclaiming "The scientific adventure may yet have to be abandoned,"
and to me personally he confessed "It may yet turn out that the mathe-
matical approach to Reality may have to be supplanted by the Magical."
Now in Nature it leaps at one that Will and Intelligence are behind
phenomena. My old friend and colleague Professor Buckmaster, who
wrote a book on "Blood" which, he admitted, could not possibly be
understood by more than six people, told me that the ingenuity of the
structure of the human kidney "almost frightened" him. Yet in all
Nature there is no trace whatever of any purpose such as human mentality
can grasp. Again, apparent purpose often appears to be baffled. Take
one example. Evolution, working through thousands of years to estab-
lish a most subtle scheme of cross-fertilization, found, just as it was
perfect, conditions so altered that it was completely useless.
The "law of cause and effect" itself took a death-blow when Hesinger
showed that the old formula "If A then B" was invalid, and must be
altered to "If A, then B or C or D or E or . . . "
But at least we know enough phenomena to make it certain that Will and
33
Intelligence do exist somehow apart from any nervous and cerebral system
of which we are aware, and that these must be of a type which transcends
our human consciousness as that does that of a limpet or a lichen.
It follows that somehow, somewhere, there must be "gods" or "Masters"
--- whatever name you like. And that, I suppose, is what you may call
the premise major of my syllogism.
The minor, I confess, is not so apodeictic. No one, I suppose, is
going to point proudly to the present state of human affairs, as evi-
dence that we are all becoming wiser and nobler every minute, as
people did seventy years ago. (I was brought up in the faith that
Queen Victoria would never die, and that Consols would never go below
par.
In face, one may suspect that the majority of well-instructed men
expect nothing but that History will repeat itself, and our civiliza-
tion go the way of all the others whose ruins we dig up in every quarter
of the earth.
(Our own destruction may be more compete than theirs; for most of
the monuments to our intelligence, sobriety and industry are made of
steel, and would vanish in a very few years after the smash.)
Well, if we have to wait for the calamity, and for evolution to begin
all over again in a number of centuries --- with luck! --- one thing is
at least quite certain: we can do nothing about it. Any form of
activity must be as futile and as fatuous as any other; and the only
sensible philosophy must be "Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die."
Is there a conceivable alternative?
Well, consider the cause of the impending collapse. It is quite simple:
Knowledge is loose, without control of Will and of Intelligence. (How
clearly the Qabalah states and demonstrates this doctrine! But I
musn't be naughty; let me stick to Common Sense!)
Now, these qualities in us having failed to measure up to the situation
of the world, one hope remains; to get into communication with those
"gods" or "masters" whose existence was demonstrated in my Premise Major
and learn from Them.
But is this possible?
Tradition and experience unite to assert that it is so; moreover,
various forms of technique for accomplishing this are at our disposal.
This is what is called The Great Work; and it is abundantly clear that
no other aim is worth pursuit.
So much for the argument; it will be agreed readily enough that to
put it into practice we shall need an Alphabet, a Grammar and a Diction-
ary. Follow the Axioms, the Postulates, the Theorems; finally, the
Experiments.
And that is what all these letters are about.
Love is the law, love under will.
34
Yours fraternally,
666
CHAPTER LXXVIII.
SORE SPOTS
Cara Soror,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Three in one and one in three --- it's the Athanasian Creed in the Black
Mass --- eh! What's that you say? Oh, quite right, quite, quite right
of you to remind me. "Definition first!"
A "sore spot" is one which reacts abnormally and violently, however
gently you touch it; more, all the other bits of you give a painful
jerk, however disconnected they may seem. Still more, the entire
System undergoes a spasm of apprehension; and the total result is
that the mental as well as the physical system is quite unable to
grasp the situation with any accuracy, and the whole man is temporarily
engulphed in what is naturally not far from a condition of insanity.
(Now, Athanasius! It's all right; the lady has gone away to think it
over.)
In --- shall I say "Anglo-Saxondom," or "Teutonic breeds," or "bourgeoisie,
so as to include some of the French whom when they are good are very
good indeed, but when they are bad, they are horrid? --- the presiding
God/Gods of this Trinity is/are: 1. Sex, 2. Religion, 3. "Drugs;" and
the greatest of these is Sex, actually the main root of which the other
two are tough and twisted stems, each with its peculiar species of
poisonous flowers, sometimes superficially so attractive that their
nastiness passes for Beauty.
I shall leave it to the psychoanalysts to demonstrate the reduction to
Sex, merely remarking that though I agree with their analysis as far as
it goes, I do not allow it to stop where they do.
For us, Sex is the first unconscious manifestation of Chiah, the Creative
Energy; and although (like everything else) it is shown both on the
spiritual and the physical planes, its most important forth-showing is
on the "Magical" plane, because it actually produces phenomena which
partake of all these. It is the True Will on the creative plane: "By
Wisdom formed He the worlds." So soon as its thaumaturgy is accomplished,
it is, through Binah, understood as the Logos. Thus in Sex we find
every one of the primary Correspondences of Chokmah. Being thus inef-
fable and sacrosanct, it is (plainly enough) peculiarly liable to
profanation. Being profaned, it is naturally more unspeakably nasty
than any other of the "Mysteries." You will find a good deal on this
subject implied in Artemis Iota, attached to another of my letters to
you.
Before tackling "Sore Spots" seriously, there is after all, one point
which should be made clear as to this Trinitarian simplification.
One of the most interesting and fruitful periods of my life was when
35
I was involved in research as to the meaning of Sankhara: "tendencies"
may be, indeed is, a good enough translation, but it leaves one very
much as deeply in the dark as before. You remember --- I hope! --- that
Sankhara lies between Vinnanam, Pure Consciousness, and Sanna, Percep-
tion. For instance, an electric fan in motion: a house-fly "tends"
to see the vanes as we do when they are still, we "tend" to see a
diaphanous blur.
Then, in delirium tremens, why do we tend to see pink rats rather
than begonias or gazelles?
We tend to see the myriad flashing colours of the humming bird; the
bird itself does not; it has no apparatus of colour-sense; to him
all appears a neutral tint, varying only in degrees of brightness.
Such were some of the fundamental facts that directed the course of
my research, whose results you may read in "The Psychology of Hashish",
by Oliver Haddo in The Equinox, Vol. I, No. 2. The general basis of
this Essay is Sankhara; it shows how very striking are the analogies
between, (1) the results obtained by Mystics --- this includes the Ecstasy
of Sexual Feeling, as you may read in pretty nearly all of them, from
St. Augustine to St. Teresa and the Nun Gertrude. The stages recounted
by the Buddha in his psychological analyses correspond with almost
incredible accuracy. (2) The phenomena observed by those who use
opium, hashish, and some other "drugs" (3) The phenomena of various
forms of insanity.
The facts of this research are infuriating to the religious mystic;
and the fact of its main conclusion is liable to drive him into so
delirious a frenzy of rage as to make one reach for one's notebook ---
one more typical extreme case!
Now of course very few religious persons know that they are mystics ---
already it annoys them to suggest it! --- but, whether the lady doth
protest too much, or too little, the fact is that they are. There is
no true rational meaning in religion. consider the Athanasian Creed
itself!
Observe that the rationalist dare not yield a millionth of a millimetre.
"First cut the Liquefaction, what comes next
But Fichte's clever cut at God himself? . . .
The first step, I am master not to take:"
says Bishop Blougram, and is pinned to the cork labelled "St. Januarius"!
This dilemma, consciously or subconsciously, is well rooted in the
minds of everybody who takes Life, in any one of its forms, seriously.
He feels the touch of the rapier, however shrewdly or cautiously
wielded. The salute itself is more than enough; he feels already
the thrust to his vitals.
I remember sailing happily in to breakfast at Camberwell Vicarage, and
saying cheerfully, in absolute good faith: "A fine morning, Mr. Kelly!"
I was astounded at the reply. The dear old gentleman --- and he really
was one of the best! --- half choked, then gobbled at me like a turkey!
"You're a very insolent young man!" Poor, tiny Aleister! How was I
to know that his son had driven it well home that the hallmark of
36
English stupidity was that the only safe topic of conversation was the
weather. And so my greeting was instantly construed as a deliberate
insult!
A typical example of the irrationality of the reactions of a sufferer!
Now, from this schoolboy level, let us rise and put the case a little
more strongly. Let us quit the shallows of social backchat for the
gloomy and horrific abysses of a murder trial!
To every man and woman that has not seen Sex as it is, faced it,
mastered it --- you will find elsewhere in these letters sufficient on
this matter --- it is his secret guilt. Imagine, then, how at any
reference however remote, the "sinner" quails, his inmost mystery laid
bare, his evil conscience holding up a tarnished mirror to his deformed
and hideous face! Often enough, he does not mind gross jests which
admit complicity on the part of the other; but any allusion to the
Truth, and his soul shrieks: I am found out! Then apoplectic Fear
puts on the mask of Indignation and Disgust.
As for a serious discussion of anything concerned therewith, why, every
word is a new rasping tear. The mind takes refuge in irrational and
irrelevant outbursts of feigned rage and horror.
In the case of religion, the consciousness of guilt extended to cover
everything from "playin' chuch-farden on the blessd tombstones" to
"the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost." Against this vague and mon-
strous bogey, religion is the only safeguard, and therefore to suggest
the unsoundness of the guarantee is to strike at the roots of all
security. It is like hinting to some besotted and uxorious oldster,
that his young wife may be unfaithful. It is the poison that Iago
dripped so skillfully into the long hairy ear of the dull Moor. So he
reacts irrationally --- every bush conceals a bear --- nay, more likely a
Boojum, or a Bunyip, or some other creature of fear-spurred Imagination!
"Monstrum informe, ingens, horrendum." Note well the "informe."
And because the guarantee is unsound (and must be, or where would be
the point of "Faith"?) reassurance is in the nature of things impossible.
Like the demented rider in The Erl-King, the chase goes ever wilder
and wilder, until he plunges at the end into the bottomless bog of
madness and destruction.
I wonder how many lunatics there are in the "bughouse" to-day --- in the
times of"evangelical revival" the number was fantastic --- who got there
through fear that they had somehow committed the aforesaid "blasphemy
against the Holy Ghost." The unknown again. The Bible does not tell
us that it is; only that it is unpardonable. Nor Grace, nor Faith,
nor predestination avail in the least; for all you know, you may have
committed it. Reassurance is impossible; no ceinture de chastet
avails to avert this danger.
Again with drugs, it is the unknown which is the horrific factor. Most
people get their information on the subject from the yellowest of yellow
newspapers, magazines and novels. So darkly deep is their ignorance
that that do not know what the word means --- like us so often, yes?
Wide sections of the U.S.A. are scared of tea and coffee. They blench
when you point out that bicarbonate of soda is a drug just as much as
cocaine; at the same time they literally shovel in the really danger-
37
ous Aspirin, to say nothing of the thousand Patent Medicines blared at
them from every radio --- as if the Press were not enough to poison the
whole population! Blank-eyed, they gasp when they learn that of all
classes, the first place among "drug addicts" is that of the doctor.
But the crisis in which fear becomes phobia is the unreasoning aversion,
the shuddering of panic, above all, the passionate refusal to learn
anything about "drugs," to analyse the conditions, still less to face
them; and the spasmodic invention of imaginary terrors, as if the real
dangers were not enough to serve as a warning.
Now why? Surely because in the sub-conscious lies an instinct that
in these obscure medicines indeed lies the key of some forbidden sanc-
tuary. There is a fascination as irrational and therefore as strong,
as the fear. Here is the point at which they link up with sex and
religion. Oh, how well nigh almighty is the urgency to him who reads
those few great writers who understood the subject from experience:
de Quincey, Ludlow, Poe and Baudelaire: into whom burn the pointed
parallels between their adventures and those of all the mystics, East
and West!
The worst of this correspondence-form is that you are always asking
simple elementary questions which require half a dozen treatises to
answer: so, take this, with my blessing!
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours fraternally,
666
P.S. One further reflection. With all these "sore spots" is closely
linked the idea of cruelty. I need not touch upon the relation of
cruelty to sex; the theme has been worn threadbare. But in religion,
note the Bottomless Pit and the Eternal Flame; in Buddhism, the eighteen
hot and eighteen cold Hells, with many another beneath. Hindu eschatol-
ogy has countless Hells; even pedestrian, precise Islam, and the
calculating Qabalists, each hoast of Seven. Again with drugs as with
insanity, we are confronted constantly with nameless terrors; the idea
of formlessness, of infinity pervades them alike. Consider the man who
takes every chance gesture of a stranger in the street as a secret
sign passed from one of his persecutors to another; consider those
who refuse food because of the mysterious conspiracy to poison them.
All sanity, which is all Science, is founded upon Limit. We must be
able to cut off, to define, to measure. Naturally, then, their oppo-
sites, Insanity and Religion, have for their prime characteristic, the
Indefinable, Incomprehensible, Immeasurable.
The healing virtue of these words is this: examine the sore spot,
analyse it, probe it; then disinfection and the Vis Medicatrix Naturae,
complete the cure.
I had just finished this when in comes your very pertinent "Supplemen-
tary" Postcard. "Doesn't hypocrisy fit in here, somehow?" Indeed it
does, my child!
Corresponding to, and the poison bacillus of, that centre of infection,
38
is a Trinity of pure Evil, the total abnegation of Thelema. Well known
to the psycho-analyst: the name thereof Shame --- Guilt --- Fear. The
Anglo-Saxon or bourgeois mentality is soaked therein; and his remedy
so far from our exploratory-disinfection method, is to hide the gan-
grened mass with dirty poultices. He has always a text of Scripture
or some other authority to paint his foulest acts in glowing colours;
and if he wants a glass of beer, he hates the stuff, but "doctor's
orders, my boy, doctor's orders."
There is really nothing new to be said about hypocrisy; it has been
analysed, exposed, lashed by every great Artist; quite without effect.
It gets worse as the socialistic idea thrives, as the individual leans
ever harder on the moral support of the herd.9
"My friend Freddy Lyon . . . told me a story . . . of the Volga Famine.
Some A.R.A. 'higher-ups' from New York were making a tour of inspection
. . . Among them was a worthy but sentimental citizen who gushed about
the unhappy Russians and the poor little starving children and what a
privilege it was for Mr. Lyon to be doing this noble work for humanity
and so on and so forth until Lyon said he was ready to choke him . . .
After lunch the visitors suggested they would like to visit the ceme-
tary. It was, said Freddy, a horrid sight, nude, dead bodies piled up
ten high like faggots, because the population was so destitute that
every stitch of clothing was needed for the living. The visitors were
sickened by what they saw, and even the gushing one was silent as they
walked back to the cemetery gate. Suddenly he caught Freddy by the arm.
'Look there!' he said, 'Is not that something to restore our faith in
the goodness of God in the midst of all these horrors?' He pointed to
a big woolly dog lying asleep on a grave with his head between his paws,
and continued impressively. 'Faithful unto death and beyond. I have
often heard of a dog refusing to be comforted when his master died,
lying desolate on his grave, but I never thought to see such a thing my-
self.' That was too much for Freddy Lyon. 'Yes,' he said cruelly, 'but
look at the dog's paws and muzzle' --- they were stiff with clotted blood
--- 'he's not mourning his master, he's sleeping off a meal.'
'At which point,' Lyon concluded his story with gusto, 'that talkative
guy did the opposite of sleeping off his lunch in a very thorough manner,
and there wasn't another peep out of him until we put him on the train.'"
P.S. Here is a very different set of reactions. I do not quite know
why I am putting it in; is it some sub-conscious attraction of my own?
Anyhow, here it is; call it
LA POULE AUX RATS
Time: a fine Sunday evening in June, just one and twenty years ago.
Place: Paris, just off the Place des Tertres, overlooking the city.
A large and lovely studio, panelled in oak. Strange: it was completely
bare, and so far as one could see, it had no door. The skylights, mind-
ful, were carefully screened with broidered stuff. A gallery, some ten
feet from the floor, ran round one corner. Here was a buffet loaded
with priceless wines and liquors of all sorts --- except the "soft" ---
and excellent variety of all cold "snack" refreshments. One gained it
by a staircase from the lower floor.
9* Here is a most pertinent story from I Write as I Please by my old
friend, Walter Duranty. It shows how the sentimental point of view
blinds its addicts to the most obvious facts.
39
By the buffet, the old butler: oh, for a painter to portray his Weari-
ness of Evil Wisdom!
Our host led us to the gallery; "we ate and drank and saw" not God
also, but the lady responsible for the heavy tread upon the stairs. A
woman of the Halles Centrales, in her early forties; coarse, brutal,
ugly, robust, square-set, curiously radiant with some magnetic form of
energy.
I cannot describe her clothes --- for lack of material. She greeted us
all round with a sort of surly good humour. The butler took a pot of
very far-gone Roquefort cheese, and smeared her all over. She drank
to us, and clumped away downstairs. She came out into the studio from
under the gallery, braced herself and shook her mop of hair as if about
to wrestle, waved to us and waited.
A minute later a small trap at the far end of the studio was smartly
pulled up; in rushed a hundred starving rats. There was a moment's
hesitation; but the smell of the cheese was too much, and they rushed
her. She caught one in both hands, bit through its spine, and flung
it aside.
Softly repeating to myself passages from The Revenge by the late Alfred
Lord Tennyson, of which the scene most powerfully reminded me. "Rat
after rat, for half an hour, flung back as fast as it came." Their
courage wilted; the hunted became the huntress; I thought of Artemis
as I sang softly to myself, "When the hounds of spring are on winter's
traces." But she pursued; snapped the last spine, and flung it into
the gallery with a yell of triumph.
It was not so easy a victory as I have perhaps described it, once she
slipped in the slime and came down with a thud; and at the end blood
spurted from innumerable bites.
The whole scene was too much for most of the men; they literally
howled liked famished wolves, and shook the balustrade until it creaked
and groaned. Presently one slipped over, let himself lightly to the
floor and charged. Others followed. All had their heart's desire. I
was reminded of Swinburn's Laus Veneris,
"I let mine eyes have all their will of thee
I seal myself upon thee with my might."
As for the women, the ferocious glitter of their eyes was almost terri-
fying. One of them, true, would have joined the happy warriors below;
but the butler roughly pulled her back, saying in a shocked voice,
"Madame est normale." (I enjoyed that!) Others consoled themselves
by capturing those males who were too timid to risk the jump.
I swallowed a last glass of champagne, and then "je filai a l'Anglais."
Summary: a pleasant time was had by all.
_______________
Note for political economists: the woman took 10,000 francs (at about
125 to the ); she took three weeks in hospital and three weeks' holi-
day between the shows. She was, or had been, the mistress of a Minister
40
with "peuple" ideas, though he was an aristocrat of very old vintage;
and he helped her to have her daughters brought up in one of the most
exclusive convents in France.
CHAPTER LXXIX
PROGRESS
Cara Soror,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
You will certainly have to have an india-rubber medal for persistence:
this is the nth time that you have tried to catch me contradicting
myself.
Well, so I do, and must, every time I make any statement whatever, as
has been shown several times in this chatty little interchange of views.
But that is not what you mean.
You say --- permit me to condense your more than somewhat tautological,
pleonastic, prolix, diffuse and incoherent elucubrations! --- that the
whole idea of the Great Order is based on faith in Progress. The doc-
trine of successive aeons is nothing else. The system of training is
nothing else. Nothing, in fact, is anything else. Maugr this and in
despite thereof (you continue, with a knavish gleam in your hither eye)
I am everlastingly throwing down the whole jerry-built castle by my
cynical reflections. (Some one --- Anthony Hope in a lucid moment, I
thing --- says that cynicism is always a confession of failure --- "sour
grapes.") Maybe, some of the time. But the explanation is very simple,
and you ought to have been able to think it out for yourself. It is a
question of the "Universe of Discourse," of Perspective. An engineer
may swear himself ultra-marine in the map all the time at the daily
mistakes and mishaps that go on all the time under his nose, yet at
dinner tell his friends complacently that the bridge is going up better
than he ever expected.
Just so, my gibes are directed at incidents; but my heart's truth is
fixed on the grand spiral.
All the same, I am glad you wrote; it is a text for a little sermon
that I have had in mind for a long while on the conditions of progress
Number One is obviously Irregularity, Eccentricity, Disorder, the Revolu-
tionary Spirit, Experiment.
I have no patience whatever with Utopia-mongers. Biology simply shouts
at us that the happy contented community, everyone with his own (often
highly specialized) job, nobody in need, nobody in danger, is necessarily
stagnant. Termites and other ants, bees, beavers; these and many
another have produced perfect systems. What is the first characteristic?
Stupidity. "Where there is no vision, the people shall perish." What is
the Fighter Termite to do, after he has been blocked out of his home?
None of these communities possess any resource at all against any unfore-
seen unfavourable change of circumstance. (We look rather like that just
now at the end of 1944 e.v.) Nor does anyone of them show any achievement;
having got to the end of their biological tether, they stay out, without
an aim, an idea, an effort. The leech, an insufferable pest in its
41
belt --- it has killed off tiger, rhinoceros, anything with a nostril! ---
is the curse of our military station at Lebong --- or was when I was
there. At Darjeeling, a few hundred feet higher, devil a one! They
have no one to think: now how can we flourish up higher? Those old
forlorn-hope Miss-Sahibs --- how wide are their nostrils! Then --- how?
Consider for a moment our own Empire. How did that spread all over the
planet? It was the imaginative logic, the audacity, the adroit adapta-
bility, of the Adventurer that blasted the road.
The sunny Socialist smiles his superior smile, and condescends to
instruct us. That was an unfortunate, though perhaps sometimes neces-
sary, stage in the perfection of Society.
Something in that. But there are other kinds of Adventure. My imagina-
tion can set no limit to the possibilities of Science, or of Art: our
own Great Work is evidence of that.
Last Sunday I looked through an interview with the least brain-bound
of these ruminators --- poor old, dear old G. for gaga Bernard Shaw.
The artist, said he, was a special case. he should have a nice easy
job, three or four hours a day, and be free for the rest of it to devote
himself to his Art. I wonder how much of his own work would have seen
daylight if he had been tied to some silly robot soul-killing, nerve-
crushing, mind-infuriating routine job for even one half-hour a day!
When I am on a piece of work, I grudge the time for eating; and when
it's done, I need the absolute relaxation of leisured luxury.
Then what of the Work itself? If the Idea be truly new and important,
God help it! The whole class of men affected jump on it with one accord,
if haply they may crush it in the germ. Read a little of the History of
Medicine! Any man who shows a sign of independent thought is watched,
is thwarted. He persists and is threatened and bullied. He persists;
every engine of oppression is set in motion against him. Then some-
thing snaps; either they succeed in killing him (Ross, who defeated
malaria, nearly starved to death) or they make him a baronet, or a peer,
or make his death a Day of National Mourning, and bury him in the Pan-
theon --- "auc grands hommes la patrie reconnaissante" --- like Pasteur after
one of the most infamous campaigns of persecution in history.
Then, of course, entertainment must be standardized. It costs money to
produce; and who will produce anything which can only appeal to the
very few --- to none at all, soon, if these swine have their way. So, if
it is new, is original, is worth one's while, it must be ignored.
Besides, being new and incomprehensible to the great Us, it may be
dangerous, and must be suppressed.
In all literature I know no pages so terrifying as those in Louis
Marlow's Mr. Amberthwaite, which describe his dream. I wish I could
quote it, with Sinai as the orchestra; never mind, read it again. And
we are on the way --- far on the way --- to That!
Now, obviously, the robot education, robot textbooks stuffed in by robot
teachers, will have done wonders with the help of the bovine well-being
to produce a race of robot boys.
All independence, all imagination, all spirit of Adventure, will have
42
been ground down and rolled out smooth by this ghastly engine. But ---
Nature is not so easily beaten; a few boys and girls will somehow
escape, and either by instinct or by observation, have the sense to
keep secret. Now whatever their own peculiar genius may select as their
line, they will realise that nothing is possible in any way while the
accursed system stands. Their first duty is Revolt. And presently
some one will come along with the wit and the will and the weapon, and
blow the whole most damnable bag of tricks sky-high.
We had better busy ourselves about this while it is still possible to
get back to freedom without universal bloodshed.
"All right, Master, you win! Now give us your own idea of Utopia."
An Utopia to end Utopias? Very good, so I will. Education, to begin
with; well, you've had all that in another letter. The main thing to
remember is that I want every individual taught as such, according to
his own special qualities. Then, teach them both sides of every ques-
tion: history, for example, as the play of economic forces, also, as
due to the intervention of Divine Providence, or of "Sports" of genius:
and so for the rest. Train them to doubt --- and to dare!
Then, somehow, as large a number of the most promising rebels should be
selected to lead a life of luxury and leisure. Let every country, by
dint of honouring its old traditions, be as different as possible from
every other. Restore the "Grant tour," or rather, the roving Englishman
of the Nineteenth Century. Entrust them with the secrets of discipline,
of authority, or power. Hardship and danger in full measure: and
responsibility.
A great deal of such material will be as disgustingly wasted as it has
been in the past; and there will be much abuse of privilege. But this
must be allowed and allowed for; no very great harm will result, as the
weak and vicious will weed themselves out.
The pure gold will repay us ten thousandfold. You ask examples? With
us, the Elizabethan and the Victorian periods stand out. What is most
wanted is opportunity and reward. Under Victoria there was some --- taste
the late Samuel Smiles Esquire, D.D. (wasn't he?) --- but not enough, and
Industrialism, the mother and nurse of Socialism, was destroying the
soul of the people.
In my not very maternal remarks on Mother-love, was included the sub-
stance of the one wise saying of my pet American lunatic "You can't get
past their biology." This is so true, and so disheartening, that it
arouses me to combat. Must we for ever be bound to the inconvenient
habit of sows and cabbages? I pick up the glove.
Isn't it Aldous Huxley who says somewhere that some species or other
can never develop higher powers because its brain is shut in by its
carapace? I thought this too, long ago; and I went into interminable
conferences with my old friend, Professor Buckmaster; I wanted to
extend brain surgery to produce the phenomena of Yoga. Also, I wondered
what would happened if we wedged apart the sections of the cranium at, or
shortly after, birth, so as to prevent them closing and giving the brain
a chance to grow.
I suspect, by the way, that something of the sort is done in China and
43
Bruma; but the object is merely to produce megalocephalic idiots as a
valuable addition to the financial resources of the family.
I thought that modern physiology, with its great recent advances in
knowledge of the specialized functions of the brain, might quite
possibly succeed in producing genius.
You would not surprise me if you told me that something of the sort is
being tried in Russia, with its Communism modelled so closely on that
of Ivan the Terrible at the moment, war or no war! Qui vivra verra.
Anyhow, all that I really want you to get into your head "sunning over
with little curls" is that Progress demands Anarchy tempered by Common
Sense, and that the most formidable obstacle is this Biology.
The experience of the Magician and the Yogi does suggest that there is
room in the human brain as at present constituted for almost limitless
expansion. At least our system of Training is more immediately practi-
cal than digging up our Corpora Quadragenina and planting them in a
Monkey's Medulla just to see what will come of it. So put down that
bread-knife!
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours fraternally,
666
CHAPTER LXXX
LIFE A GAMBLE
Cara Soror,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
In one or two --- no, I think more like three or four --- letters of yours
to hand in the last couple of months, you have put forward various
excuses for slackness, the necessities of your economic situation.
You say you must have "regular work," and a "steady income" and all
that sort of thing. My innocent child, that species of Magick is
quite simple. Take the horns of a hare . . . That's enough for the
present: I'll tell you what to do with them when you've got them.
In Macbeth we read ---
. . . . "Security
Is mortals' chiefest enemy."
but this is another kind of security; it is the Hubris which "tempts
Providence," the insolence of thinking that nothing can go wrong.
Anyhow, there's no such thing as safety. Life is a gamble. From the
moment of incarnation a million accidents are possible. Miscarriage,
still-birth, abortion; throughout life, until your heart beats for the
last time, "you never can tell" - - - - - and then you start all over
again with your next incarnation!
(I wish I had a copy of a short story of mine called "Every Precaution."
44
The gallant young Uplift Expert, the one hundred per cent red-blooded,
clean-living, heir of the Eternities, takes his young fiance and
female counterpart to the "Old Absinthe House" in New Orleans to show
her the terrible results of Wrong-Doing. They are going to avoid all
that; their child is going to be the Quintessence of Americanism.
They marry and take a cottage by Lake Pasquaney. Presently, he being
(so she said) away on a business trip, the tradesmen complained that
she seemed to need very little pabulum. Somehow, people got suspicious,
and sure enough, when they broke in, they found that she had pickled
him! This story is founded on fact; damn it, why did the MS have to
get lost?)
Even suicide is not a "dead bird." I knew a creature once --- careless
observers often mistook him of a man --- who tried three times, pistol,
rope and poison. Something always went wrong. (Like the Babbacombe
murderer, who went to the scaffold three times, and lived to a green
old age!) Finally he did poison himself, by accident, when he had no
intention whatever of doing anything of the sort.
"Where's the Book of Lies? Ah, here we are. "It is chance, and chance
only, that rules the Universe; therefore, and therefore only, life is
good."
Then, is it mere fatuity and folly to make plans? Was not the IXth
Atu, the Hermit, also at one time called "Prudence?" Of course.
Abstract philosophy rarely coincides with common-sense. We should
plan as carefully as we can; but we should always allow a margin for
every conceivable accident.
Nor should we trust to luck, like England, when she goes to war. Bret
Harte has an admirable story "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" in which the
"bad man," the crooked gambler, gives his life for the safety of the
rest of his party, and winds up all with the remark: "Life isn't in
having the luck of the cards, but in playing a poor hand well."
Yes, I daresay, all very fine; but what you wanted to know was about
the propriety of taking risks in Magick.
So off we go.
Risks, we have agreed, are always unavoidable; but we can calculate
them. The best and wisest man I ever knew, the late Oscar Eckenstein,
was once offered a job which gave him a fifty percent chance of survi-
val. He calmly sat down, worked out his "expectation of life," his
"expectation of income," and the Lord alone knows what other factors.
It came out that the pay offered was a thousand pounds or so less than
he might expect normally, so he turned down the offer. Not a trace of
sentiment of any kind!
Now let us consider an "A.B. case." John Jeremiah Jenkins sees a short
cut to his performance of the Great work. To seize this opportunity,
he must give up a steady job with good prospects and as near safety as
is possible in the nature of things, for a slim chance of a career in
the most insecure of all the professions.
He can do it; that is at the mercy of his Will; but he risks something
very close to the utter wreck and ruin of his future. Only a miracle
45
can bring him through. Just so! But is he not neglecting one factor
in his problem? Who put this romantically insane opportunity in his
way? The Gods: it must be, since he is performing the Great Work. Very
well then! It is up to Them to watch: "he shall give his angels charge
over thee to keep thee in all thy ways: in their hands they shall bear
thee up lest thou dash thy foot against a stone."
What's more, he must leave it at that; he must not insult Them by
constantly looking out for extra safeguards, or "hedging." (You remember
the Major in The Suicide Club when Prince Florizel was picking seconds
for a duel? "In all my life I never so much as hedged a bet.") You
must give Them plenty of opportunity to show Their approval by steering
you miraculously through one crisis after another.
This course of conduct may seem to you a little like the "Act of Truth"
but this is only superficially the case. The latter is usually an
emergency measure, and either not particularly serious or as serious
as anything can be. But what I have said above amounts really to a
regular Rule of Life.
Need I add that the prime and essential requisite in all this Work is
that you so devote yourself to, and identify yourself with, the Gods,
that there is never any doubt in your mind as to what They intend you
to do?
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours fraternally.
CHAPTER LXXXI
METHOD OF TRAINING
Cara Soror,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
In your well-worn copy of the Bagh-i-muattar you have no doubt triply
underlined that great verse:
"Who hath the How is careless of the Why,"
which shows how cunning I was to induce you to put all your "why"
questions first.
But now let us get down to orichalc taques, as the Norman peasant might
say.
The first and absolutely essential task for the Aspirant is to write
his Magical Record.
You know some elementary Mechanics --- the Triangle of Forces, and all
that. Well, if we have a body acted on by two equal forces, one pulling
it East, the other south, it will tend to move in a south-Easterly
direction. But if the "south" force is (say) twice as strong, it will
move south of South-East.
Now you, sitting in your study reading this letter, got there and were
46
compelled to do that, as the result of the impact upon you of countless
quintillions of forces of every kind. I don't expect you to discover
all these and calculate and report them; but I want you to set down
all the main currents. For so you should be able to get some sort of
answer to the question "Where do we go from here, boys?"
I am not a guesser; and I cannot judge you, or advise you, or help you,
unless and until I know the facts as thoroughly as you are able to allow
me to do.
The construction of this Record is, incidentally, the first step in the
practice called Sammasati, and leads to the acquisition of the Magical
Memory --- the memory of your previous incarnations. So there is another
reason, terrifically cogent, for writing this Magical Record as clearly
and as fully as you can.
This best explanation of how to set about the task is given in Liber
Thisharb.
some of this sounds rather advanced and technical; but it ought to give
you the general idea. You should begin with your parents and the family
traditions; the circumstances of your birth and education; your social
position; your financial situation; your physique, health, illnesses;
your vita sexualis; your hobbies and amusements; what you are good at,
what not; how you came to be interested in the Great Work; what (if
you have been on false trails, Toshophists, Antroposophagists, sham
Rosicrucians, etc.) has been "your previous condition of servitude;"
how you found me, and decided to enlist my aid.
That, by itself, helps you to understand yourself, and me to understand
you.
From that point the keeping of the Record is quite easy. All you have
to do is to put down what practices you mean to begin, how you get on
with them from day to day, and (at intervals) what I have to say about
your progress.
Remember always that we have no use for piety, for vague chatter, for
guesswork; we are as strictly scientific as biologists or chemists.
We ban emotion from the start; we demand perception; and (as you will
see later on) even perception is not acceptable until we have made sure
of its bases by a study of what we call the "tendencies."
That is all about the Magical Record; the way is now clear to set
forth our Method. This is two-fold. (1) Yoga, introversion, (2)
Magick, extroversion. (These are rough but useful connotations.) The
two seem, at first glance, to be opposed; but, when you have advanced
a little in both, you find that the concentration learnt in Yoga is
of immense use in attaining the mental powers necessary in magick; on
the other hand, the discipline of Magick is of the greatest service in
Yoga.
Let me remark, by the way, that to my mind one of the greatest beauties,
and most encouraging confirmations of the validity of our system, is
the matchless harmony of its elements. Always, when we pursue any one
path to its end, we find that it has become one with some other path
which at the outset appeared utterly irreconcilable with it.
47
("Write down that the tearing apart is the crushing together" comes
from an actual experience. See Liber 418, The Vision and the Voice,
which teems with similar passages, and is itself an outstanding example
of the unity of the Yogic and the Magical methods.)
To study Yoga, you have my Book 4 Part I and my Eight Lectures on Yoga.
Then there is Vivekananda's Raja Yoga and several little-known Hindu
writers; these latter are very practical and technical, but one really
needs to be a Hindu to make much use of them. The former is very good
indeed, if your remember to switch off when he slides into sloppiness,
which luckily is not often.
To study Magick" Book 4, Parts II, III (Magick in Theory and Practice)
and IV (The Equinox of the Gods.) Add The Book of Thoth and the you
are: ---
"Being furnished with complete armour and armed,
he is similar to the goddess."
Of other writers, you have The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin
the Mage," and any of the works of Eliphaz Lvi. But that's all.
But --- I suppose you knew all this long ago. It may help if I try to
expound the essence of these two Methods in very simple language, and
very different language. By contrast and comparison, you should be
able, without reading even one of all those books, to get a perfectly
clear idea in perspective of "what's coming to you!"
The process of analysing, developing and controlling the mind is the
essence of all Yoga practices.
Magick explores and learns to control those regions of Nature which lie
beyond the objects of sense. Reaching the highest parts of these
regions, called the divine, one proceeds by the exaltation (? = intoxi-
cation? Yes, of a sublime sort) of the consciousness to identify oneself
with those "celestial" Beings.
In Yoga, various practices prevent the body and its functions from
interrupting the mental process. Then, one inhibits that process
itself: the stilling of "thoughts" allows one to become aware of men-
tal functions beyond the intellectual; these functions have their own
peculiar properties and powers. Each sheath, as one goes deeper, is
discarded as "unreal;" finally one apprehends that nothing which is
the only true and real form of existence. (But then it does not exist:
in these regions of thought words always become nightmares of self-
contradiction. This is as it should be.)
In Magick, on the contrary, one passes through the veil of the exterior
world (which, as in Yoga, but in another sense, becomes "unreal" by
comparison as one passes beyond) one creates a subtle body (instrument
is a better term) called the body of Light; this one develops and con-
trols; it gains new powers as one progresses, usually by means of what
is called "initiation:" finally, one carries on almost one's whole life
in this Body of Light, and achieves in its own way the mastery of the
Universe.
The first step in Yoga is "Keep still."
48
The first step in Magick is "Travel beyond the world of the senses."
There, that is the whole business in a nutshell, and expressed so that
anyone, however ignorant of the subject, may grasp the essentials (I
hope).
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours fraternally.
CHAPTER LXXXII
EPISTOLA PENULTIMA: THE TWO WAYS TO REALITY
Cara Soror,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
How very sensible of you, though I admit somewhat exacting!
You write --- Will you tell me exactly why I should devote so much of my
valuable time to subjects like Magick and Yoga.
That is all very well. But you ask me to put it in syllogistic form.
I have no doubt this can be done, though the task seems somewhat compli-
cated. I think I will leave it to you to construct your series of
syllogisms yourself from the arguments of this letter.
In your main question the operative word is "valuable." Why, I ask, in
my turn, should you consider your time valuable? It certainly is not
valuable unless the universe has a meaning, and what is more, unless
you know what that meaning is --- at least roughly --- it is millions to
one that you will find yourself barking up the wrong tree.
First of all let us consider this question of the meaning of the universe.
It is its own evidence to design, and that design intelligent design.
There is no question of any moral significance --- "one man's meat is
another man's poison" and so on. But there can be no possible doubt
about the existence of some kind of intelligence, and that kind is far
superior to anything of which we know as human.
How then are we to explore, and finally to interpret this intelligence?
It seems to me that there are two ways and only two. Imagine for a
moment that you are an orphan in charge of a guardian, inconceivably
learned from your point of view. Suppose therefore that you are puzzled
by some problem suitable to your childish nature, your obvious and most
simple way is to approach your guardian and ask him to enlighten you. It
is clearly part of his function as guardian to do his best to help you.
Very good, that is the first method, and close parallel with what we
understand by the word Magick. We are bothered by some difficulty about
one of the elements --- say Fire --- it is therefore natural to evoke a
Salamander to instruct you on the difficult point. But you must remember
that your Holy Guardian Angel is not only far more fully instructed than
yourself on every point that you can conceive, but you may go so far as
to say that it is definitely his work, or part of his work; remembering
always that he inhabits a sphere or plane which is entirely different
49
from anything of which you are normally aware.
To attain to the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel
is consequently without doubt by far the simplest way by which you can
yourself approach that higher order of being.
That, then, is a clearly intelligible method of procedure. We call it
Magick.
It is of course possible to strengthen the link between him and your-
self so that in course of time you became capable of moving and,
generally speaking, operating on that plane which is his natural habitat.
There is however one other way, and one only, as far as I can see, of
reaching this state. It is at least theoretically possible to exalt
the whole of your own consciousness until it becomes as free to move
on that exalted plane as it is for him. You should note, by the way,
that in this case the postulation of another being is not necessary.
There is no way of refuting the solipsism if you feel like that.
Personally I cannot accede to its axiom. The evidence for an external
universe appears to me perfectly adequate.
Still there is no extra charge for thinking on those lines if you so
wish.
I have paid a great deal of attention in the course of my life to the
method of exalting the human consciousness in this way; and it is
really quite legitimate to identify my teaching with that of the Yogis.
I must however point out that in the course of my instruction I have
given continual warnings as to the dangers of this line of research.
For one thing there is no means of checking your results in the ordi-
nary scientific sense. It is always perfectly easy to find a subjective
explanation of any phenomenon; and when one considers that the greatest
of all the dangers in any line of research arise from egocentric vanity,
I do not think I have exceeded my duty in anything that I have said to
deter students from undertaking so dangerous a course as Yoga.
It is, of course, much safer if you are in a position to pursue in the
Indian Jungles, provided that your health will stand the climate and
also, I must say, unless you have a really sound teacher on whom you
can safely rely. But then, if we once introduce a teacher, why not go
to the Fountain-head and press towards the Knowledge and conversation
of the Holy Guardian Angel?
In any case your Indian teacher will ultimately direct you to seek
guidance from that source, so it seems to me that you have gone to a
great deal of extra trouble and incurred a great deal of unnecessary
danger by not leaving yourself in the first place in the hands of the
Holy Guardian Angel.
In any case there are the two methods which stand as alternatives. I
do not know of any third one which can be of any use whatever. Logi-
cally, since you have asked me to be logical, there is certainly no
third way; there is the external way of Magick, and the internal way
of Yoga: there you have your alternatives, and there they cease.
Love is the law, love under will.
50
CHAPTER LXXXIII
EPISTOLA ULTIMA
Cara Soror,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
The suggestion in your last letter to me is a very sensible one. I do
think that people in general would like to get some idea of my system
of training as a whole, in a comprehensive form. In the past there has
been far too much of referring them to one quite unprocurable document
and then to another which probably has not even been written. No wonder
that they go away sorrowful. So I am going to put in as the last of
this series of Letters an account, as clear and as succinct as the gods
enable me to do, of what they may expect to have to do to get good marks
from Grandfather. Of course I shall not be able to avoid altogether
reference to the various official documents, but I will make these as
short and as few as I can.
First of all then, my system can be divided into two parts. Apparently
diametrically opposed, but at the end converging, the one helping the
other until the final method of progress partakes equally of both ele-
ments.
For convenience I shall call the first method Magick, and the second
method Yoga. The opposition between these is very plain for the
direction of Magick is wholly outward, that of Yoga wholly inward.
I will deal first then with Magick. How do I define this word?
Magick is the science and art of causing change to occur in accordance
with the will. (Obviously then all scientific methods can be included
in this term.)
I have to assume in all that follows that you have thoroughly under-
stood the doctrine of 0 = 2.
All Magical action may be classed as under the formula of progression
from the "0" to the "2"; in other words it is complete extraversion.
The aspiring Magician only analyses himself for the purpose of finding
new worlds to conquer. His first objective is the astral plane; its
discovery, the classification of its tenants, and their control.
All his early practises therefore are devoted to exploring the worlds
which surround (if you choose, or if your prefer --- are contained in)
the object of sense. If there is a tree in your garden, you want to
find out whether that tree is occupied by a nymph or a nat, and if so,
what are they like? How do they act? How can you make them useful to
your purpose? It is in fact the ordinary every-day scientific method
of exploration. The only difference is that in the course of one's
experiments one becomes aware of parts of the nature of the object to
be examined which are subtler and perhaps more powerful, nearer to
reality, than those which ordinary scientific examination discloses.
You will notice, however, that the qualities above-mentioned are iden-
tical. The chemical elements which go to form a tree are subtler,
51
more powerful and nearer to reality than the tree as it is presented to
the senses.
Finally, we reach the conception of molecules, atoms, electrons, protons,
neutrons and so on, and nobody needs telling nowadays what unfathomable
potencies lie hidden in the atom.
When I say subtler, moreover, I mean it. The analysis of matter has
resulted in the extraordinary discovery that the definition of matter
as given by the physicist of to-day is very similar indeed to the
definition of spirit as stated by the mystics of the middle ages.
Henry Poincar has well pointed out that the results of scientific
experiment as we know them, are altogether in their way dependant on
the existence of our own peculiar natures. If, for example, we had no
sense to use in our exploration but that of hearing, we should have
worked out a classification of trees entirely different from that which
we now possess. We should have taught our students how to distinguish
the sounds made by an oak and an elm respectively in a storm; the
differences in the rustling of various kinds of grass, and so on.
Similarly the results of our magical experiments are naturally and
necessarily very distinct from those which we obtain by ordinary
methods. to begin with we must build up an apparatus of examination,
and this we do by discovering and developing qualities in our own sturc-
ture which ware suitable for the purpose.
The first step is the separation of (what we call, for convenience) the
astral body from the physical body. As our experiments proceed, we find
that our astral body itself can be divided into grosser and subtler com-
ponents. In this way we become aware of the existence of what we call,
for convenience, the Holy Guardian Angel, and the more we realise the
implications of the theory of the existence of such a being, the clearer
it becomes that our supreme task is to put ourselves into intimate
communication with him.
For one thing, we shall find that in the object of sense which we
examine there are elements which resist our examination. We must raise
ourselves to a plane in which we obtain complete control of such.
It is found furthermore in the course of experiment that a great many
of the apparent differences in our study conceal a hidden unity, and
vice versa. Like every other science, both the subject and the object
of the work increase as that work proceeds.
Take a simple matter like Mathematics as our analogy. The schoolboy
struggling with the Rule of Three is a very rudimentary image of the
advanced mathematician working on the differential calculus.
From the above it ought to be clear to you that I have said all that
really needs to be said in explaining the whole of Magick as the science
and art of extending, first in oneself, one's own faculties, secondly
in external nature their hidden characteristics.
Before closing the subject entirely I think it well to point out that
there are quite a number of worlds on which a good deal of work remains
to be done. In particular I cannot refrain from mentioning the work of
Dr. Dee and Sir Edward Kelly. My own work on this subject has been so
52
elaborate and extensive that I shall never sufficiently regret that I
never had an opportunity of completing it, but I should like to empha-
size that the obtaining of a book like Liber 418 is in itself so
outstanding an achievement that it should serve as an encouragement to
all Magicians.
In the case of many worlds, in particular that of Abra Melin, of the
greater and lesser Keys of Solomon, of Pietro di Abano, of Cornelius
Agrippa, while we have perfectly adequate information as to the methods
we have very meagre examples of the results, especially so far as refers
to the technical side of the work.
I must conclude with a warning. So many of these branches of magick
are so fascinating that any one of them is liable to take hold of the
Magician by the short hair and upset his balance completely. It should
never be forgotten for a single moment that the central and essential
work of the Magicians is the attainment of the Knowledge and Conversa-
tion of the Holy Guardian Angel. Once he has achieved this he must of
course be left entirely in the hands of that Angel, who can be invari-
ably and inevitably relied upon to lead him to the further great step ---
crossing of the abyss and the attainment of the grade of Master of the
Temple.
Anything apart from this course is a side issue and unless so regarded
may lead to the complete ruin of the whole work of the Magician.
II
The second part of this letter, which appears to be expanding into a
sort of essay, will be devoted to Yoga. You will have noticed that the
grade of Master of the Temple is itself intimately associated with Yoga.
It is when one reaches this plane that the apparently contradictory
forms of the Great Work, Magick and Yoga, begin to converge, though even
earlier in the course of the work it must have been noticed that achieve-
ments in Yoga have been of great assistance to magical operations, and
that many of the mental states necessary to the development of the
Magician are identical with those attained in the course of the strictly
technical Yogic operations.
The literature necessary to the study of Magick is somewhat variegated;
there are quite a number of classics on the subject and though it would
be easy enough for me to draw up a list of not more than half-a dozen
which I consider really essential, there may be as many as an hundred
which in the more or less subsidiary forms are useful to the magician.
With Yoga the case is very different indeed. The literature on the
subject is so enormous and contains so vast a number of more or less
secret documents which circulate from hand to hand, that I believe
that the best advice I can give anyone is to cut one's cloth very
sparingly if one is to make a fitting suit. I do not think I am going
too far if I say that Part I of Book 4 and my Eight Lectures on Yoga
form an absolutely sufficient guide to the useful practise of the
subject; anything else is almost certain to operate as a distraction.
Swami Vivekananda summarised Yoga under four headings, and I do not
think that one can improve on that classification. His four are: Gnana,
Raja, Bhakti and Hatha, and comprise all divisions that it is desirable
to make. As soon as one begins to add such sections as Mantra Yoga, you
53
are adding to without enriching the classification, and once you begin
where are you to stop? But I honestly believe that the excessive
simplication given in Eight Lectures on Yoga is a practical advantage.
Any given type of Yogas is the work of a lifetime and for that reason
alone it is desirable to confine oneself from the beginning to an
absolutely simple programme.
What then is the difference between Yoga and Magick? Magick is extra-
verson, the discovery of and subsequently the classification of and
finally the control of new worlds on new planes. So far as it concerns
the development of the mind its object and method are perfectly simple.
What is wanted is exaltation. The aim is to identify oneself with the
highest essence of whatever world is under consideration.
With Yoga you might easily slip into saying that it was identical, with
the exception that the new worlds are from the start recognised as
already existing within the human cosmos, but nobody is asked to extend
these worlds in any way; on the contrary the object is to analyse ever
more minutely, and the control to which one approaches is not external
but internal. At all times one is concentrated on the idea of simpli-
cation. The recognition of any new idea or form of ideas, is invariably
the signal for its rejection: "not that, not that."
One might simplify this explanation by constructing some sort of
apophthegm; Magick is the journey from 0 to 2, Yoga from 2 to 0. It
is a very good rule for the Yogi to keep this mind constantly fixed on
the fact that any idea soever is false. There is actually a Hindu
proverb "That which can be thought is not true." consequently the
existence of any idea in the mind is an immediate refutation of it,
but equally the contraries as well as contradictory of that idea are
false, and the result of this is to knock the second law of formal logic
to pieces.
One puts up a sort of sorites --- A is B, therefore A is not B; therefore
not A is not B; and all these contrary statements are equally false,
but in order to realise this fact they must themselves be announced by
the mind as ecstatic discoveries of truth.
The result of all this naturally is that the mind very rapidly becomes
a discredited instrument, and one attains to a totally different and
much more exalted type of mind, and the same destructive criticism
which one applied to the original consciousness applies equally to
this higher consciousness, and one gets to one higher still which is
again destroyed. In The Equinox, Vol. I there is an essay called "The
Soldier and the Hunchback: ! and ?" In Liber Aleph too there are
several chapters about attainment by what is called the Method of
Ladders.
All these operations are equally valid and equally invalid, and the
result of this is that the whole subject of Yoga leads to constantly
increasing confusion. The fineness of the analytical instrument seems
to defeat its own purpose and it is perhaps because of that confession
that I have always felt in my deepest consciousness that the method of
Magick is on the whole less dangerous than that of Yoga. This is parti-
cularly the case when discussing these matters with a Western mind.
It is true that our 0 = 2 formula remains infinitely useful because it
is of such potency in destroying the scepticism which so often dis-
54
heartens one, especially in the highest realms of Magick. The criticism
which the enemy directs against your sun-kissed tower is thrown back
from those glittering walls, You accept the criticism at the same time
as you dismiss it with a laugh.
On the whole therefore I continue to regard the discipline of Yoga as
its most valuable feature. The results attained by pushing Yoga to its
end are on their own showing worthless, whereas the attainment of Magick,
however lofty, is still immune to all criticism and at every period of
its construction has been perfectly sympathetic with the normal conscious-
ness of man.
On this view indeed, one might laughingly remark that Yoga at its best
is a smoke-screen thrown out by a battleship in self-protection.
It may seem to you strange as you read this letter to have watched how
the pendulum has swung always a little more and more towards the side
of Magick. I do not know why this should have been, but that it is so
I have no doubt whatever. I see quite clearly now that Yoga from its
very first beginnings is liable to lead the mind away into a condition
of muddle, and though for each such state Yoga itself provides the
necessary cure, may not one ask oneself if it is really wise to begin
one's work with axioms and postulates which are inherently dangerous.
The whole controversy might be expressed as a differential equation.
Their curves become identical only at infinity, and there is no doubt,
at least to my mind, that the curve of Magick follows a more pleasant
track than that of Yoga.
To take one point alone: it is evidently more satisfactory to have
one's malignant demons external to oneself.
As I have written it has become clearer to me that this is the case,
but I should not like you to arise from its perusal with any idea that
I have been in some way derogating Yoga. I would not like to maintain
that it is necessary to Magick because there have been many very great
magicians who knew nothing at all of the subject but I am just as
strongly convinced as I was before that the practice of Yoga in itself
is of enormous assistance to the Magician in his more intelligible
path, only adding that he should beware lest the logical antinomies
inherent in Yoga divert him from or discourage him in his simple path.
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours,
666
THELEMIC BOOKS REFERRED TO IN THIS VOLUME.
BOOK 4, PART I --- A concise and clear treatise on
Yoga and mysticism.
BOOK 4, PART II --- An introductory treatise on the
practice of Magick.
BOOK OF LIES, The --- Which is --- This book deals with many matters
55
also falsely called "Breaks" on all planes of the highest im-
portance.
COLLECTED WORKS --- These works contain many mystical
and magical secrets, both stated
clearly in prose, and woven into
the Robe of sublimest poesy.
DAIRY OF A DRUG FIEND, The --- A true story of drug addicts who
were cured of their affliction by
a strict rgime and the constant
guidance of a Master.
EQUINOX, The
Vol. I, No. 1 - 10
Vol. III, No. 1 --- Contains an immense number and
variety of official publications,
rituals, treatises, etc. Also
special Supplements such as The
Vision and the Voice; translation
of Eliphas Lvi's The Key of the
Mysteries; Sepher Sephiroth; H.
P. Blavatsky's The Voice of the
Silence, with a Commentary by
Fr. O.M., etc., etc.
Vol. III, 3 --- The Equinox of the Gods
Vol. III, 4 --- Eight Lectures on Yoga --- the
deepest book written on the sub-
ject of Yoga.
Vol. III, 5 --- The Book of Thoth --- a masterpiece
on the Egyptian Tarot, with Appen-
dices, and designs with an entirely
new pack of Tarot cards, executed
by Frieda Harris.
GOETIA, The --- The most intelligible of the mediae-
val rituals of Evocation. Contains
also the favourite Invocation by the
Master Therion.
HEART OF THE MASTER, The --- A sublime Masterpiece, describing
a vision given upon the Holy Hill
of Sidi Bou Said.
THELEMIC BOOKS
KNOX OM PAX --- Four invaluable treatises and a
preface on mysticism and Magick.
LIBER ALEPH --- The Book of Wisdom or Folly. This
book contains some of the deepest
secrets of initiation, with a
clear solution of many cosmic
and ethical problems.
LIBER ARARITA --- This book describes in magical
language a very secret process
56
of initiation.
LIBER CORDIS CINCTI SERPENTE --- The Book of the Heart Girt with
the Serpent: an account of the
Aspirant with his Holy Guardian
Angel.
LIBER 418 --- THE VISION AND --- First published in Equinox I, 5.
THE VOICE A new publication was issued
subsequently with the full text, an
Introduction, and extensive Com-
mentary by The Master Therion.
LIBER LEGIS --- THE BOOK OF --- This Book is the foundation of
THE LAW the New Aeon, and thus of the
whole Work.
LIBER VII --- THE BOOK OF --- Gives in magical language an
LAPIS LAZULI account of the initiation of a
Master of the Temple. This is
the only parallel, for beauty
of ecstasy, to The Book of the
Heart Girt with the Serpent.
LIBER TRIGRAMMATON --- Describes the course of Creation
under the figure of the interplay
of Three Principles. The book
corresponding to the Stanzas of
Dzyan.
LITTLE ESSAYS TOWARD TRUTH --- (Formerly called The Wine of the
Graal) --- --- --- A collection
of 17 Essays which constitute in
themselves a complete system of
initiation.
MAGICK IN THEORY AND PRACTICE --- A complete work on Magick, with
Appendices, the more important
columns from 777, etc.
777 --- A complete Dictionary of the cor-
respondences of all magical ele-
ments. It is to the language of
occultism what Webster is to the
English language.
I N D E X
A.'. A.'. xvii, xxiii, xxvii, 46, Alexandria, 36
47, 48, 53, 60, 70, 83, 146, Alexandrines, xviii
151, 167, 202, 210, 212, 214, Alkali, deposit in S. Africa, 270
217, 237, 276, 322, 323, 324, Allah, 311
349, 354 Alphabets --- see Ch. LXVIII, pp. 307
Abano, Pietro di, 98, 379 312, 326
Abrahadabra, 81 --- Greek, xxiii, xxvii
57
Abbey of Cefal, 128, 180 (see also Amalantrah, 48, 161
Cefal) Amennti, xxii, xxiii, 346
Abramelin, xxvi, 132, 193, 198, 379; American Tourists, 255
--- demons, 263 --- officer story, 333
--- scorns astrologers, 100 A.M.O.R.C., 55
--- Sacred Magic of, 98, 198, Amoun-Ra, 352
242, 374 Amrit, 37
Ab-ul-Diz, 48, 226, 234, 235, 236 Ananda, 283, 284
Abyss, xxiv, 48, 60, 62, 64, 65, Ananga Ranga, 48, 83
66, 67, 69, 120, 194, 214, Angels, 18, 196, 264, 266, 300,
342, 379 307, 351
--- Oath of, 215 Anima, 127
Achad, 18, 180, 219 Animal Automatism, 301
Adam Qadmon, 93, 94 Animism, 34
Adept, 48, 227, 266 Animus, 127
Adept Minor, 47, 61, 193 Ankh, 155, 286
Adeptus Exemptus, 60, 228, 229 Ankh-f-n-khonsu, xvi, xxvi, 170,
Adler, Dr. Alfred, 117 179, 189, 238
Adonai, 132 Antichrist, 35, 211, 316
Adonis, xviii, 351 Antinomianism, 39
Advaitism, 21, 25 Aphrodite, 97, 197
Advaitist, 21, 23 Apocalypse, 17, 29, 163
Advent, Second, 177 Apollo and the Fates, (Browning) 36;
Adytum, 67 --- Invocation of, 193
Aenead, First Book of, 47 --- God of Music, 287
Aeon, 49, 216, 228, 346, 365, Apollonius of Tyana, 115, 116, 130
--- of Isis, Osiris, Horus, 216 Apophis, 63
Aesopus Island, 161; Hermit of, 166 Apostles, 327
Agrippa, Cornelius, 98, 379 Apuleius, 83, 338
Aha! 201 Arabian Nights, 338, 339
Ahamkara, 191, 192, 284 Arabs, xxiii, 344, 351
Ahaz, 146 Arahat, 129
Aheba, 18 Archangels, 18, 351, 352
Ahriman, 21 Archetypes (Plato), 56, 57
Aiwass, 48, 218, 237, 351 Ark, 67
A ka dua, 109 Armada, 98
Akasha, 116 Armadale, 233
Alchemy, 40 Arnold, 111
Alder, 53 Arnold, Mathew, 199
Aleph, 65 Asana, 92, 121, 213
I N D E X
Asar, 311 Balzac, 83, 338
Asankyas, 192 Banishings, 110
Ascendent, 103 Baphomet, xix
Asi, 37, 311 Barbey d' Aurevilly, 193
Asiatic God, 36 Barrett, Elizabeth, 117
Assyrian, 48 Bartzabel, 180, 226
Astroth, 197, 311 Basilisk, (Egg), 63
Astarte, 197, 311 Baudelaire, 163, 361
Astral Body, xxiii, 167, 324, 378, Beachy Head, dangerous, 243
--- Plane, xxii, xxvi, 19, 110 Beast, 216
231, 260, 263, 264, 272, Beatific Vision, 64
287, 300, 377 Beer, 223
--- Projection, 123, 167 Beerbohm, Max, 199
--- Travel, xxiii, xxv, 273, 276, Bees, 355
287, 310 Belsen, 347
Astrology, 326 Beni Elohim, 351
58
Asuras, 21 Bennett, Allan, 122, 129, 157, 190
Athanasian Creed, 358, 359 261, 262, 307
Athanasius, 358 Berashith (Crowley, Coll. Works)
Athanor, 64 20, 24
Athene, 193 Berkeley, Bishop, 23, 301
Atma, 127, 192 Besant, Annie, 42, 55
Atmadarshana, 22, 23, 62 Bethlehem, 30
Atman, 23 Bhagavad-Gita, 22
Atonement, 315 Bhikkhu, xiv, 191
Attila, 30 Bhikkhu Ananda Metteya: see
Attis, xviii, 351 Bennett, Allan
Atziluth, 57 Big Business, 344, 350
Aucassin et Nicolette, 247 Binah, 77, 78, 91, 222, 358
Augoeides, 132, 193, 352 Black Brothers, xvi, xvii, 33, 60
Augustus Caesar, 36 63, 66, 67, 82, 133, 151, 191,
Aumont, Grard, 9, 28, 44 193, 230, 342
Auphanim, 196 --- Dragon, 40
Auto-Hagiography, 122 --- Lodges, 74, 201
Autolycus, 204 --- Magician, 60, 71
Ayin, 18 --- Mass, 358
--- Prince, 168
B --- School of Magic, 29 sqq.;
--- --- defined,
Ba, 127, 132 33 sqq., 42
Babalon, 30, 66, 67, 237 --- Star, 224
Babe of the Abyss, 61 Blake, William, 305, 352
Babylon, 68 Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna, 41,
Bach, Joh. Se., (Vision), 90 42, 43, 52, 192, 212, 228,
Bacchae of Euripides, 70 262
Bacchus, xviii Blitz (London) episode, 85, 283
Bacon, Francis, 225 Blougram, Bishop, 359
Baghdad, xxix Bodleian Library, Oxford, 231
Bagh-i-Muattar, 83, 372 Boccaccio, 83
Balfour, Jabez, 105 Bodhisattva, 148
Baltis, 245 Body of Light, 203, 374
Bog, 134, 307
I N D E X
Boleskine, 108, 231 Byzantium, 36
Book of the Dead, xxiii
Book 4, details on, 226, 234
Book 4, Part I, 23, 84, 380, 92 C
--- II, 97, 107, 108
--- III, see "Magick" Cabell, James Branch, 73, 342
--- of Thoth, v, xxvii, 20, 134, Cadiz, 288
153, 155, 219, 311, 373 Caesar, Julius, 30, 168
--- of the Law, xi, xii, xxi, 17, Cairo, 36, 232, 236, 238
44, 48, 80, 87, 89, 111, Cairo Working, xi, 189, 234, 345
147, 150, 152, 159, 173, Caithness, Lady, 168
178, 180, 189, 194, 208, Cakravarti-Rajah, 286
209, 227, 248, 251, 258, Caldarazzo, Villa, 236
286, 305, 331; difficulties Cambridge, 177, 186
of, 216, 218 Capri, 221
--- of Lies, xxiv, 88, 113, 138, Carthage, 93
172, 282, 286, 304, 305, Catholic Church, 31
314 --- Mysticism, 39
--- of Heart Girt with Serpent, Cato, xxvii
(LXV), 347 with quotations Cato, Scipio, 93
59
Boulak Museum, 179 Catullus, 6, 79, 83, 153, 191, 284
Brahma, 192 Caucasians (don't believe in Vedas),
Brahmacharya, 242 243
Brahma Lokas, 167, 192 Cefal, 128, 130, 178, 253, 326
Brahman, 22, 23, 192 --- Diaries from, 166
Brahmin (caste), 242, 243, 317 Centaur, 299
Bralduh, 110 Centuries of Nostradamus, 117
Brewer's, Dr., Guide, v Ceres, 65
Brocken, 304 Chamelion, Path of, 47
Bront, Emily, 153 Chaldea, School of, 38
Browning, Robert, 36, 97, 117, 139, Chaldean Square system (Astrol-
144, 202, 177, 256, 312 ogy), 104
Brunton, 55 Chant, Mrs. Ormiston, 199
Buchari-siddhi, 121 Chaos, 63
Buchenwald, 347 Charybdis, 151, 338
Buckmaster, Professor, 355, 368 Chaucer, 342
Buddha, 33, 34, 38, 52, 122, 129 Chron, Jane, 238
191, 192, 359 Chesterton, J.K., 307
Buddhahood, xxiv Chiah, 172, 212, 222, 358
Buddhi, xxii, 127, 192 Chimaera, 90
Buddhism, connected with Black China, walk across, 157, 214,
School of Magick, 33, 35, 37, 290, 368
111, 113, 129, 228, 361 Chinese system of thought, 25,
Buddhist, 112, 128, 135, 155, 159, 26, 33, 157, 158
165, 284, 285 Chokmah, 46, 77, 78, 358
Buer, 262, 263 Choronzon, 66, 67, 68, 322
Bunyan, John, 342 Christ, 21, 119, 241, 260
Buridan's Ass, 174 Christian - attitude, xv
Burin, 63 --- path, xvi, 84, 317, 347
Burma, 299, 368 --- Home, 249
Business, 344, 345 --- Science, 35, 36, 233
I N D E X
Christian Scientist, 23 Darshana, 192
Christianity, xviii, 34, 35-42, 312 Davy, Sir Humphrey, illumination,
Church of Rome, 275 16
Churchill, Winston, (reference to), Death, Fear of, 281
75 Dee, Dr. John, 98, 231, 379
Chymical Marriage of C.R., 338 Demiurge, 21
City of the Pyramids, 68, 71, 224, Democracy, 336
245 Demon, Demons, 163, 194, 196;
Cleopatra, 6, 168 Mercurial, 263
Cloud upon the Sanctuary, 205 Denikin, General, 243
Clymer, 55 Descartes, 225
Collected Works of Aleister Desdemona, 120
Crowley, 24 Destiny, xxiv, 11
Collins, Mabel, 338 Devachan, 167, 212
collins, Wilkie, 223 Devas, 21
Collon, Mont, 261 Devil(s), 21, 22, 120, 145, 197
Communism, 289, 368 Dhamma, Three Baskets of, 283
--- Jewish, 35, 327 Dhammapada, 35, 157
Co-Masonry, xvi, xvii Dharana, xxvi, 92, 131
Combes, 317 Dhyana, 92, 152
Comment/Commentary, 227 Diabolism, 30
Concentration Camps, 84, 218 Dialogue before eating, xii
Confucius, xx Diana, 60
Conrad, 342 Diary, Magical, xii, 203, 281,
Consols, 356 372, 373
60
Contes Cruels, 193 Diary of a Drug Fiend, 154
Coriolanus, 249 Diez, 73
Cotytto, 197, 309 Dionysus, 36, 193, 223
Couism, 95 Disks (Tarot), 97, 109
Courtier, Jules, 239 Dittany of Crete, 262
Crawford, F. Marion, 255 Divine Pymander, 139
Creative Dyad, 18 Dobson, Austin, 247
Crippen, 134 Dogme et Rituel (Lvi), 115
Crucifixion, 39 Dolphin, 67
Crux Ansata, 155 Domodossola, 352
Cumaean Sybil, 47 Donne, 83
Cup, 109 Doodle-Bug, 145
Curie (s) The, 218 Dostoievsky, 35
Curtius, 313 Doubt, 303
Curzon, George Nathaniel, 135 Doughty, Dr., 248
Czechoslovakia, rape by Hitler, Dover (Browning story), 313
183 Draco, 222
Dracula, 298, 300
Dragon, 287
D Drake, 352
Dreams, analysis of, 189, 190
Dath, 62, 66, 77, 229 Drugs, 358, 359, 360, 361
Daleth, 77 Dryads, 197
Damascus, 36; Burden of, 177 Dualism, Dualists, 22, 23
Dante, 6, 116 Dumas, 338
Daphnis and Chloe, 247 Duns Scotus, 56
I N D E X
Duranty, Walter, 116 Excalibur, 43
Dweller of the Threshold, 191 Exempt Adept, see Adept
Dyad, Creative, 18
Dying God, xviii, 21
F
E Fabre, 42
Fabre d'Olivet, 308
Eblis, 286 Fama Fraternitatis, 62
Ecclesiastes, 35 Family system, 250
Eckenstein, Oscar, 157 Farrrre, Claude, 302
Ecstasy, xxv Fascism, 334
Eden (and the Fall), 210 Fate, xxiv
Ederle, Gertrud, 318 Faubourg St. Germain Aristocracy,,
Egyptian Theogony, xxvi; School, 38 61
Eight Lectures on Yoga, xi, xxii, 84 Ferranti (stove), 108
112, 219, 227, 316, 373, 380 Fielding, Henry, 184
Eight Limbs of Yoga, xxii Fifth Dimension, 53
Einstein, Albert, 42 Fountainebleau (Mort), 237
Eire, 61 Forth Bridge, 219
Elementals, 163, 262 Fourth Dimension, 155
Elemental Tablets (Watch Towers), France, Anatole, 127
231, 232 Franco, 117
Elephant, 163 Frater O.I.V.V.I.O., 29
Elias, 211 Frazer, Sir William, 28, 36, 146
Elixir of Life, 36 Freemasonry, 74
Elizabethan period, 367 Free Will, xxiv, 11
Elohim, xx Freud, Sigmund, xxv, 11, 30, 117
Eloi, eloi, Iama, sabacthani, 69 132
Empire State Building, 176 Freudian Forgetfulness, 165
61
Empress (Tarot Card), 171 Frobisher, 352
Encyclopaedists, 30 Fugue, 91
End (justifies the means), 221, 225 Fu-Hsi-Trigrams, 270
Endor, Witch of, 116 Fuller, J.F.C., 256, 323
Engergized Enthusiasm, 42, 83 Fundamentalists, 34
England, General Election, 348, 449
Enochian Tablets, see Elemental
Epicurus, 21 G
Equinox, The, general, why begun,
346 Gabriel, 6, 48, 351
--- of the Gods, reporter's Gale, Norman, 247
story quoted, 228 Galileo, 141, 168
Erdmann, 117 Gallio, 146
Ethics of Thelema, 208, 209, 218 Gamiani, 83
228, 318 Ganges, 289
Ethyl Oxide, 266 Garret, Garet, 344
Euclid, 226 Gaulle, Gnral de, 117
Euripides, 70 Gebhardi, Otto, 217
Evangelical (cults), 35 Geburah, 46, 229
Everest (mystery), 185 Gematria, xxiii, 19
Evolution and Ethics, 33 Genius, 82, 192, 315, 348, 352, 368
Exaltation, xxiii Geomancy, 268
I N D E X
Gertrude, Nun, 359 Hardy, Thomas, 247, 342
Gestapo, 19, 345 Harpocrates, 90, 95
Gethsemane, 69 Harte, Bret, 369
Gilbert, William Schwenk, 150, 200, Haseltine, Philip, 98
281 Hashish, 349, 359
Gillette, William, 196 Hatha Yoga, 121, 222
Gimel, xx, 222 Hathor, 197
Gnomes, 261 Hawk, Golden, 123, 124
Gnostics, 36, 308 Hebrew, Alphabet, 308, 309;
Goat of Mendez, 35 --- Gods, 311
Gobineau, de, 217 Heindl, Max, 55
Goclenian Sorites, xxviii Heinzelmnner, 261
God, xxvi, xxvii, xxix, 5, 14, 19, Henley, W.E., 14, 148
21, 27, 52, 70, 112, 127, 132, Henry VIII, 168
134-136, 144, 145, 155, 163, Heraclitus, 159
176, 193, 222, 238, 259, 264, Herbert, A.P., 83, 201
266, 286, 347, 358 Hereward the Wake, 224
--- Asiatic Dying, xviii Hermaphrodite of Panormita, 20
God-form, 90, 95 Hermes, xxiv, xxvi, 65, 140, 352
Gods, 95, 115, 163, 193, 196-198, Hermes Eimi, xxi, 48
206, 231, 237, 264, 287, 309- Hermit, 217
311, 336, 347, 351-353, 356, Herod, 347
358, 371, 377 Herrick, 83
Goetia, 73, 262 Hertz, 4, 6, 30; rays, 239
Golden Bough, 351 Heru-pa-kraath, 171
Golden Dawn, Order of The,(G.'.D.'.), Hesinger, 355
280, 323, 343 Hexagram, Unicursal, 109; of Yi
Golden Hawk, 123, 124 King, 26, 270, 286
Good and Evil, 21 Hezekiah, 146
Gordian Knot, 132 Hierophant, 171
Grant, Gregor, 261 Higher Manas, 127, 192
Great Work, xi, xii, xiv, xv, xxv, Higher Self, 132, 192, xxix
77, 80-82, 86-89, 148, 149 Hill, Raven, 199
151, 204, 212, 223, 229, Hilton, James P., 151
62
241-243, 256, 276, 288, 290, Himalayan Sheep, 300
325, 333, 337, 356, 366, 372, Hindu, xxi, 52, 92, 144, 159, 192,
379 285, 308, 317, 361, 373, 380;
Great Work "a tea party," xv Orders, xiv, xxi, 39; Proverb
Greene, Grahame, 210 about women, 258
Guernica, 218 Hinton, P., 155
Gunas, xix Hismael, 117
Guru, xxv, xxvii, 204, 222, 289 Hitler, 60, 77, 104, 259, 288, 331,
336, 347; mag. child of I.W.E.,
217
H Hitler Speaks, 217
Hod, xx, 18
Hadit, 74, 169, 171, 212 Hodos Camelionis, 47
Haeckel, Ernst, 22, 129, 130, 169 Holy Deadlock, 201
Haldane, J.B.S., 282 Holy Ghost, 359, 360
Hamilton, Sir William, 265 Holy Guardian Angel, xxiii, 22, 132,
Hammurabi, 20 193, 196, 222, 348, 252, 375,
Hanuman, xxvi, xvi, 352 378 (see also K. and C. of
H.G.A.)
I N D E X
Holy Man, 316, 317, 318 I.W.E., Soror, 217
Home, D. D., 117, 184
Homer, 180
Hong Kong, 123 J
Hood, 352
Hoor-paar-kraat, 182, 351 Jacobs, Indian Rothschild, 255
H.P.B. --- see Blavatsky Jeans, Sir James, 16
Horoscope, xii Jechidah --- see Yechidah
Horus, 174, 180, 216, 250, 318 Jehannum, 286
Hume, 35 Jehovah, xix
Huxley, Aldous, 248, 368 Jerusalem, 36
--- Thomas Henry, 33, 35, 146, Jesuits, 94, 221
299, 301 Jesus, xviii, 22, 177, 311, 347
Huysmans, 338 Jesus Christ, xv, 115
Hybris, 95 Jew, 289, 344
Jewish (Communism), 327
--- Theology, xxvi
I Jinn, 91, 351
Johannesburg, 268
I, 26 John, 311
Iacchus, 59, 65 Joshua, 146, 310
IAO, xxvi, xvi, xix Judaism, 34, 35, 38
Ibsen, 336, 337 Judas, 347
Iddhi, 290 Jung, 117, 139, 249
Iehi Aour s. Allan Bennett Jupiter, xix, 198, 352
"If" (Kipling), 84 Juvenal, 83
Incarnations, past, xiii, xiv, 281
Incubi, 300
India, xxii, 163
Indifference, 284 K
Indra, 352
Inertia (Formula of Nature), 250 Ka, 127
Initiates, xxii, xxiii, 342 Kama Loka, 167, 212
Initiation, xxii, 133, 136, 141, Kama Shastra, 83
223, 224, 241, 324, 330, 348 Kama Sutra, 83
Inquisitor, 193 Kandy, 92, 122, 157
Instinct, 222, 223 Kant, 35, 222
63
Interlaken, 233 Kaph, xix
Invocation, 86, 110, 193, 194, 311, Karma, xv, xxiv, 88, 211, 212, 224,
324 228, 244, 245, 346; Lords
Iophiel, 117 of, 245
Ipsissimus, 70 Kelly, Edward, 98, 231, 379
Ireland, 102; Irish, 336 Kephra, xv
Iroquois, 20 Kether, 108, 222
Isaacs, Mr., 255 Khabs, 132, 171
Isis, 35, 174, 204, 219, 250, 344, Khamsin, 61
347 Khen, 35
Islam, 39, 311, 317, 361; parable Khu, 127, 141
from, 282 Kiblah, 308
Italians, 336 Kidneys, defective, 280
Itzatccihuatl, 300 King, The, quoted from AL, II, 171,
Ivan the Terrible, 368 208, 209
I N D E X
King Kang Khang, 153 Liber CCCLXX, 83
Kingsford, anna, 41 --- DCCCXXXI, 83
King's Scale, 18, 57, 87, 98 --- CLXXV, 83
Kinks in Time, 124 --- CLVI, 83
Kipling, Rudyard, 84, 104, 179, 335 --- 418 = The Vision and The Voice, 29
Kiriloff, 35 --- III vel Jugorum, 92
Knowledge and Conversation of Holy Lidice, 218
Guardian Angel, xxiii, 61, 193, Lilith, 60, 299
219, 229, 375, 376, 379 Lingam, xix, 287
Konx Om Pax, 323 Little Essays toward Truth, xiv,
Krishna, xviii xxii, 166, 211, 284
Krishnamurti, 42 Lion Serpent, xxvi
Kwa, 26 Litton, 299
Logic, xv, 24
Logos, 358
L Loki, 352
London, Jack, 51
Lafayette, 61 Longfellow, 324
Lakhs, 142 Longus, 247
Lamb, 67 Lorraine, 61
Lamen, xxii Lost Horizon, 151
Lao Tse, 11, 135, 153, 158, 160 Love under will, xv
172 Lovers, The, 222
Lapis Lazuli, 37 Lower Manas, 192
La Poule aux Rats, 364 Ludlow, 361
Laughter, Trance of, 285 Lunn, Colin, 185
Law of Thelema, 43 Lupin, Arsne, 224
Laylah, 234 Luxor, 189
Leech, 366 Lycanthropy, 289
Left-hand Path, 60, 61, 63, 191 Lynch Law, 335, 337
Legge, 161, 162 Lytton, 338
Lehrjahre, 278
Lenin, 346
Leo, Alan, 225 M
Leonardo da Vinci, 2
Lethe, River of, 167 MacCarthy, Desmond, 334
Levant, 36 Machen, Arthur, 338
Lvi, Eliphas, xii, 115-119, 168, Macroprosopus, 17
212, 298, 300, 374 Magical Child, 217
Leviathan, 66 --- Formula, 218, 219
Levitation, 289 --- Link, 288
64
Liber Aleph, 113, 284, 327-330 --- Memory, 372
--- Legis, xxiii, 76, 80; Find- --- Power, 256, 289
ing of MS, 212; see also --- Record, see Diary
Book of the Law --- Theory, 275, 288
--- OZ, 333 Magick, v, xi, xii, xxii, xxiii,
--- Resh vel Helios, xii, 92, 281 xxvii, 20, 27, 28, 76, 77,
--- Thisarb, xii, 129, 165, 211, 84, 85, 165, 200, 209, 226,
213, 214, 215, 372 262, 289, 301, 302, 322, 330,
--- LII, xvii 373, 374, sqq.
--- LXV, xvii --- Defined, 28
--- VII, xvii --- History, 288
--- LXVI, 83 --- Wand, xxviii
I N D E X
Magick in Theory and Practice, 20, Medici, Catherine de, 105
211, 219, 266, 373; genesis, 180 Medicine Man, 34
Magician, 66, 368 Meinhold, 338
Magus, Magi, 46, 65, 238, 319 Mein Kampf, 331
Maha Brahma, 135 Melander's Millions, 185
Mahaparinibbana Sutta, 52 Melcarth, xviii, 22, 351
Mahasatipathana, 41, 58, 155 Mendez, Goat of, 35
Mahatmas, xxix Mercury, xix, xxvi, 98
Maitland, Edward, 41 Meru, 163
Malaria, 366 Messiach, 210
Maliel, 57 Messiah, 42, 210
Malkuth, xx, 166, 195 Michelet, 352
Manas, xxii, 127, 192 Mikado, 347
Mandrake, 65 Milinda, Questions of King, 135
Manifesto (of O.T.O.), 70 Mill, John Stuart, 222
Mansoul, 41 Minerval, xxvii
Mantra, 73 Ministry of Fear, 210
Mantra Yoga, 311 Minutum Mundum, 97
Manu, 222 Mirabeau, 61
Maremma, 93 Mithras, xviii, 22, 351
Marie Antoinette, 168 Mohammed, 6, 289, 351
Marlow, Louis, 334 Mohammedan Orders, xiv
Mars, xx, 352 Molinos, 130
Marsyas, 351 Money, xv, 251, 252, 253
Martial, 83 Monist, Monism, 21, 22, 23
Marx, Karl, 30, 343 Mont Cervin, 352
Marxism, 35 Monte Carlo, 187
Mary, blasphemy against Babalon, Monte Silvio, 352
66; Inviolate, 82 Montgomery, General, 117
Mary, Queen of Scots, 168 Moon, salutation, 92; Vision,
Masoch, Sacher, 83 90; Tarot Card, xx
Mason, xv Mort, 237
Masonry, xi Morningstar, Otto, 272
Mass (Christian), 39 Morte d'Arthur, 338
Master, (opposed to Slave), 217 Moses, 52, 127
--- of the Temple, xvii, 46, Moslem, 37
64, 66, 88, 89, 141, 142, Motte Fouqu, de la, 338
148, 208, 228, 229, 319, Motto, xviii
343, 379 Mozart, 256
Masters, xxi, 243, 244, 245, 259, Mller, Max, 158
345, 346, 347, 348, 350, Munich, 183
351, 356 Music Halls, described, 199
--- Who are not magicians, 99 Musset, Alfred de, 83
--- "Hidden", xxix Mussolini, 347
65
Masturbation, 194 Mystic, 26, 89
Masucci, 83 --- danger of the path, 193
Mathematics, 330 Mysticism, xi, 39, 87
Matriarchy, 216
Matterhorn, 352 N
Maya, 22
Means (does it justify the end?), Nagasena, Arahat, 135
221, 225 Naples, 255
I N D E X
Naples Arrangement, 20 Ommeya, xxix
Napoleon (Bonaparte) 8, 30, 104, 239 Onanism, opposed to sexual inter-
259, 352 course, 193
Nats, 197 One Star in Sight, xvi, xvii, xxiv
Nazi (School), 35; party, 289 70, 322
Nechesch, Serpent, 210 Ontology, 126
Necromancy, 289 Ophidian Vibrations, 47
Nelson, 352 Oppenheimer, E. Philips, 187
Nemo, 66 Opus Lutetianum, 212
Nemyss, 109 Oradour-sur-Glane, 218
Neophyte, xxi, 64, 70, 231, 323 Orders, Christian, Monkhood, xiv
--- ceremony of Golden Dawn, 280 --- Hindu, xiv
Nephesch, 127, 166, 222, 223, 224 --- Mohammedan, xiv
Nerciat, Andr de, 83 --- A.'.A.'. xiv
Neroda-Sammapatti, 23, 159 Orgasm (s), 78, 152
Neschamah, 103, 113, 127, 135, Ormzd, 21
136, 142, 155, 172, 192, Osiris, xviii, xxii, xxiii, 21,
212, 222, 223, 224, 330 36, 59, 174, 175, 319, 344,
Neschamic, 63, 142 347, 351; in Amennti, xxiii
Nettles (boyhood exper.), 260 --- Aeon of, 250
Neuberg, 231, 232 Othello, 120
New Aeon, 180 O.T.O., xi, xii, xv, xvi, xvii,
Newman, Cardinal, 338 xxi, xxiii, 47, 124, 125,
Newman, John Henry, 298 203, 217, 300, 322
New Orleans, xx, 48 --- Grand Treasurer of, xii
Newton's Third Law of Motion, 211 --- Rituals, xxiii, 323
New York Times, 299 --- System of, 70 sqq.
New York World, 180 Ottilia (vision), 90
Nibbana, 11, 33, 52 Ouarda, 234, 345
Neitzsche, Friedrich, 16, 36, 316 Ouspensky, 55
--- Prophet of Thelema, 217 Owen, Professor, 299
Nihilist, 21
Nineveh, Burden of, 177
Nirmanakaya, 51 P
Nirvana, 33, 51, 52, 111
Noah, 29 Paccheka-Budhha, 167
Nominalists, 56 Padmasana, 122
Northcliffe, Lord, 104 Paganism, 38
Nostradamus, 117 Pairs of Opposites, 21
Nous, 127 Pan, 287
Nu, Nuit, 62, 142, 165, 169, Pantheism, 36, 39
172, 222, 238 Parabrahm, 34
Nymph, 197 Paramahamsa, 148
Parananda, Shri, 157
Parinibbana, 52
O Paris Working, 212
Parsimony, Law of, 265
Oath (of Abyss), 244 Partouse, 355
66
Occult (Sciences), 126 Passover, 67
O.H.O. = Outer Head of O.T.O., xxi Pasteur, 366
Olcott, Colonel, 224 Pastos, 62
Olympus, 163 Patanjali, 157
I N D E X
Path of Ayin, 18 Purana, 157
Path of Gimel, 222 Purusha, 127, 192
Path of Samekh, 18 Pylon, 67, 68
Patriarchy, 216 Pymander, Divine, 139
Paul, Saint, 222, 305, 327 Pyramid (s), 64, 67, 68, 189, 287;
Peer Gynt, 249 City of, 214; Ritual of, 214
Pentagram, 18, 63, 286 Pyramis, xviii, xix, xx
Pentagram Ritual, xxiii Pythagoras, 31
Perdurabo, xxiii, 49, 84, 121, 181,
184
Persian, 48 Q
Petronius Arbiter, 83, 338
Petuchio, 146 Qabalah, xi, xix, xx, xxiii, xxvi,
Phallos, xx xxvii, 13, 14, 17, 57, 58, 66,
Phallus, xix, 119 87, 90, 120, 121, 150, 155,
Phidias, 256 160, 166, 219, 222, 226, 291, 309,
Phoenicians, xxiii 323, 339, 351, 356, 361
Phren, 127 --- Arabic, xxi, 219
Phryne, 33 --- Greek, 219
Picasso, 62 Qabalistic Zero, 153, 192
Pickwickianism, 31 Qedemel, 196
Plato, 30, 159, 222, 286 Qliphoth, 116, 117, 166
Platonic concepts, 160 Qoph, xx
Plymouth Brethren, 94, 260 Queen Scale, 57, 98
Poe, Edgar Allen, 361 Quincey, 361
Poincar, Henrie, 42, 378
Point Event, 11, 14, 155, 173
Poirot, 142 R
Poland, 102
Politics, 259 Rabelais, Francois, 83, 113, 138
Polymnia, 287 Raffles, 224
Pope, 275 Ra Hoor, xv
Posilippo, 235 Ra Hoor Khuit, 79
Possessed, The, 35 Rajas, xix
"Potted Sex Appeal," 120 Raleigh, 352
Poulain, Father, S.J., 120 Rameses I, 189
Prana, 115 Raphael, 104
Pranayama, 121, 122, 152 Rats (story Le Poule aux), 363
Praxiteles, 204 Ratziel, Archangel, 196
Price, Harry, 303 Reformation, 39
Priestess, The, 222 Re-incarnamtion, xxviii, 168
Prince, 98 Religion, 358, 361, 362
Princess Scale, 98 Religious Experience, 23
Probation, xxii Remus, 352
Probationer, 109, 231, 322 Renaissance, 344, 346
Propitiation, 39 Reuss, Dr. Theodor, xxi, 71, 124
Protestant Mysticism, 39 Rhys-Davids, 158, 283
Protestants, 39 Riddle of the Universe, The, 21,
Psyche, 127 22, 26
Psychoanalysis, 281 Riemann, 141
Psychology of Hashish, 359 Riemann-Christoffel, 179
Ptolemy, 101 Right-Hand Path, 60
67
I N D E X
Rig-Veda, 127 Sand, Georges, 83
Robbery, breach of Thelema, 224 Sangha, 157
Robin Hood, 224 Sankhara (tendency), 58, 168, 359
Rodney, 352 Sankhya, 157
Rome, 235; Church of, 275 Sanna (perception), 58, 359
Romulus, 352 Sannyasi, 242, 255
Rntgen, Professor, 4, 218 Sanskrit, 307, 310
Rosebery, Lord, 352 Santa Barbara, 180
Rosencreutz, Christian, 62, 338 Sat, 92
Rosetta Stone, Equinox to be, 346 Satan, 65, 94, 179, 233
Rosetti, 153 Sattvas, xix
Rosicrucians, xxi, 42, 55, 108, 284 Saturn, 90, 91, 233
Rosicrucian system, 243; custom, 278 Saviour, 243
Rosicrucianism, 40 Saul, King, 116, 176
Ross, 366 Scarlet Pimpernel, 224
Rosy Cross, 109, 155 Scarlet Woman, 216
Rotterdam, 218 Scented Garden of the Sheikh
Rousseau, 313 Nefzawi, 83
RR et AC, 47, 343 Schopehauer, 35, 36, 169
Ruach, xxi, 77, 101, 115, 116, 118, Science, method of, 10, 85, 151
135, 136, 140, 166, 192, 195 Scipio, 93
212, 221, 330 Scott, Sir Walter, 260
Rupert of Hentzau, 185 Scylla, 151, 338
Russell, Bertrand, xxviii, 42, 51, Sebek, 90
57, 129, 266, 344 Secret Chiefs, 231, 233, 234, 237,
Russia, 116, 368 239, 324
Ruysbroek, 130 Seele, 127
Sepher Sephiroth, 18, 19, 91
Sephira, 229; Sephiroth, 166
S Set, 21, 179, 311
Sex, 358, 360, 361
Sacrament, 45 Sex and Character, 173
Sade, Marguis de, 83 Sexual Intercourse and Onanism, 193
Sagittarius, 18 Shaivite, 157
Sahara, 158 Shakespeare, 168
Saint Augustine, 359 Shaman, 116
Saint Elmo's Fire, 299 Shavasana, 283
Saint Germain, Comte de, 120 Shaw, George Bernard, 179, 256, 366
Saint John, 133 Sheikh of Mish, 317
Saint Moritz, 233, 234 Shelley, 153
Saint Peter's in Rome, 226 Shiva, 153
Saint Teresa, 359 Shivadarshana, 23, 62
Salamander, 375 Shri Parananda, 157
Salt, xix Siberia, 116, 135
Salvation Army, 34 Sibylline Books, 206
Samadhi, 23, 79, 121, 193, 281, 283 Sicily, 123
Samekh, 18 Siddhi, 165, 290
Sammasati, 129, 130, 131, 191, 198, Sierras (Spain), 158
232, 245, 372 Simpson, Mrs., 117
Samuel, 116 Skeat, xxvii, 119, 127, 132, 134
San Luis Potosi, story of confidence 146, 191, 313
trick, 306 Skooshocks, 167
I N D E X
Sludge, Mr., the Medium, 117, 144, T
177
68
Socialism, 334, 336 Tahuti, xv, xxvi, 81, 352
Socialists, 348, 349, 366 Talisman (s), xxii, 71, 98, 178,
Society for Psych. Research, 239 226, 286, 287
Socrates, 193, 352 Tamas, xix
Solar System, xxiii Tantras, 34, 157
Soldier and the Hunchback, 21, 129, Tao, 25, 88, 135, 136, 149, 155,
139, 381 156, 229, 286, 287
Solomon, xxvii, 36 Taoism, 31
--- The King, Greater and Taoist doctrine; sectaries, 11;
Lesser Keys, 98, 379 aspect, 148, 149, 154
Solon, 222 Tao Teh King, 231, 41, 121, 153
Soviets, 336 154, 157, 158, 160, 161, 166
Spain, walk through, 252, 253 Taphthartharath, xvi, xxvi
Spedalieri, Baron, xii Tarot, 97, 98, 109
Spelling Bee, 331, 332 Tarquin, 206
Spencer, Herbert, 14 Tat, 92, 153
Sphinx, 73, 109; Four Powers of, Tau, path of, xxii
155; fully explained, 255 Tau Cross, xxii, 109
Spinoza, 36 Tcheka, 345
Spinthria, 355 Teh, 172
Spiritist, Spiritism, 115, 117, 176 Telekinesis, 239
Stalag, 218 Telepylus, 180
Stalin, 224, 259, 336 Telesmata, 97
Star, The, 222 Templar (position), 283
Steiner, Rudolph, xvii Temurah, 19
Stl of Revealing, 108, 179, 238 Temurah Thash Raq, 119
Stern, 83 Tengyueh, 140, 299
Sterne, Laurence, 342 Tennyson, Alfred Lord, 324, 335
Stingaree, 224 Termite, 352, 355, 365
Stoker, Bram, 298 Tests, magical, 340, 341
Straus, Ralph, 334 Tetragrammaton, xxvi, 27, 77, 222,
Succubi, 300 255
Sufis, 39, 157, 159 Thai Yang, 26; Thai Yin, 26
Sukshma-Khumbakam, 121 Thebes, 189
Sullivan, J.W.N., 193, 355 Theism, 27
Sulphur, xix Thelema, Law of, 43, 44, 174, 221,
Sun, Spirit of the, xvi 316
Sunday, Billy, 34 Theognis, 338
Supernal Triad, 62, 115, 140, 166, Theoricus, 323
195, 197, 211 Theurgy, 38
Swami, 204 Thomas, J.H., 345
Swastika, 289 Thomson, James, 111, 342
Swift, 83 Thor, Hammer of, 289
Swinburne, Algernon, 6, 300 Thora, 91
Sword, 109 Thoth, xvi, xxvi, 307, 326, 352
Sword of Song, 24 Three Baskets of the Dhamma, 283
Tibet, 91, 221
Tiger, 149
Tiphareth, 18, 57, 78, 108, 195
212, 222, 229
I N D E X
Titanic, 102 Vatican, 42
Titian, 256 Veda, Vedas, 34, 130, 157, 243
Tohu Bohu, 119 Vedana (sensation), 58
Tom Jones, 184 Vedanta, 157
Tories, 349 Vedantism, Vedantists, 36, 39, 135
Totalitarianism, 250 Venus, 196, 197
69
Trance, 23 Venus in Furs (Sacher Masoch), 83
Trance of Wonder, 130 Vergil, 47, 116
Transits, 101 Victoria, Queen, 115, 356
Transmutations, 123 Victorian Period, 367
Tree of Life, xxiv, 16, 57, 76, Vinci, Leonardo da, 2
291 Vinnanam, 359
Treves, Sir Frederic, 335, 336 Virakam, Soror, 122, 226, 233-236
Trimurti, 192 Vishnu, 22
Trinc, 113 Vishvarupadarshana, 22, 101
Tripitika, 34, 283 Vision and The Voice, xiv, 59, 61,
Trismegistus, Hermes, 140 63, 65, 120, 229, 230, 287,
Trotsky, Leon, 243, 244 339, 373; quotations, 63-69
True Will, xv, 77, 80, 95, 96, 154, Vital Force, 300
175, 221, 250, 263, 288, 289, Vivekananda, 157, 201, 318, 373,
313, 319, 337, 348, 350, 358 380
Trusts, 348 Vladivostok, 288
Truth, of All Truth, 140, 141, Volga Famine, Duranty story, 362
142, 330
Tsar, 116
Twain, Mark, 336 W
Tyndall, 4
Typhon, 63 Waite, A. E., 201
Wand, 109
Wanderjahre, 278
U War of the Roses, 168
Ward, Kenneth, 231, 232, 237
U.B., 55 Warren, 283
Udgitha, 192 Waterloo, 352
Unicursal Hexagram, 109 Weiniger, 35, 173
Universe, Force of the, xviii Wells, H.G., 146, 202, 302, 333
--- Riddle of the, xiv, xix, 10 Werewolves, 123, 300
Upanishads, 22, 34, 130, 157, 158 Wesley, John, 76
U.S.W. = German, und so weiter = and Wheel of Fortune, xix
so forth, 265 Whisky anecdote, 273, 274
Ut, 132, 192 White School of Magick, 29 sqq.
Utopia, 367 33 sqq., 40
Utopia mongers, 367 Whitehall, 75
Whitehead, 42, 55
Wilde, Oscar, 104, 201
V Willett, 146
Wilson, Woodrow, 104
Valhalla, 37 Wolfe, Jane, 284
Vallire, Louise de la, 120 Wonder, Trance of, 284
Vamacharya Schools, 34 Wren, 19
Vampirism, 249
Vannus Iacchi, 245
I N D E X
Y
Yang, xix, 26
Yechidah, 4, 127, 172, 212, 222
Yellow School of Magick, 29 sqq.
33
Yesod, xx, 18
Ygdrasil, 66
Yi King, xi, xx, 26, 88, 270;
70
divination, 237, 238, 239
Yin, 26
Yod, xix
Yoga, 73, 84, 90, 131, 157, 203,
209, 222, 226, 227, 262, 283,
323, 368, 373, 374, 377 sqq;
Danger of, 381, 382
Yoga for Yellowbellies, xxv
Yogi (s), 122, 135, 289, 316, 368,
376
York, Archbishop of, 105
Yucatan, 221
Yun Nan, 158, 299
Z
Zancig, 176, 177
Zelator, xxi
Zeno, 31
Zermatt, 352
Zero, 85, 250
Zeugnis der Suchenden, 217
Zeus, 193, 311, 352
Zola, 203, 247, 248
Zoroaster, 36, 38, 290
Zrich, 233
BOOKS QUOTED OR REFERRED TO
Raphael's Shilling Handbook on Astrology 104
Barley's 101 "Notable Nativities" 104
"More Nativities" 104
City of Dreadful Night, James Thomson 111
Sir Palamede The Saracen, Equinox I, 4 113
Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, Lvi 115
I Write as I Please, Walter Duranty 17, 116, 362
Mr. Sludge the Medium, Robert Browning 117, 144, 177
Lost Horizon, James Hilton 151
Diary of a Drug Fiend, Aleister Crowley 154, 229
Bhagavad Gita 157
Sex and Character, Weiniger 173
Tom Jones, Fielding 184
Rupert of Hentzau 185
John Chilcote, M.P. 185
Melander's Millions 185
Contes Cruels, Barbey d'Aureville 193
Holy Deadlock, A.P.Herbert 201
J'Accuse, Zola 203
Cloud on the Sanctuary, Equinox I, 1 205
Ministry of Fear, Grahame Greene 210
Hitler Speaks, Herman Rauschning 217
Armadale, Wilkie Collins 223
Spirit of Solitude, "Confessions", Crowley 231
La Terre, Emile Zola 247
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley 248
71
Mr. Isaacs, F. Marion Crawford 255
Buddhist Psychology, Mrs, Rhys-Davies 283
La Maison des Hommes Vivants, Claude Farrrre 302
Antichrist, Friedrich Nietzsche 316
Ouroboros, Garet Garrett 344
The Psychology of Hashish, Oliver Haddo, Equinox I,2 359
Mr. Amberthwaite, Louis Marlow 366
Raja Yoga, Vivekananda 373
The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, 374
MacGregor Mathers
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