Magick Without Tears, by Aleister Crowley

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Chapter VIII: The Three Schools of Magick (3)

Cara Soror,

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

It has been a long—I hope not too tedious—voyage; but at last the harbour is in sight.

Our Essay approaches its goal; the theory of Life to which initiation tends.

Let us continue!

There is in history only one movement whose object has been to organize the isolated adepts of the White School of Magick, and this movement was totally unconnected with religion, except in so far as it lent its influence to the reformers of the Christian church. Its appeal was not at all to the people. It merely offered to open up relations with, and communicate certain practical secrets of wisdom to, isolated men of science through Europe. This movement is generally known by the name of Rosicrucianism.

The word arouses all sorts of regrettable correspondences; but the adepts of the Society have never worried themselves in the least about the abuse of their name for the purposes of charlatanism, or about the attacks directed against them by envious critics. Indeed, so wisely have they concealed their activities that some modern scholars of the shallower type have declared that no such movement ever existed, that it was a kind of practical joke played upon the curiosity of the credulous Middle Ages. It is at least certain that, since the original proclamations, no official publications have been put forward. The essential secrets have been maintained inviolate. If, during the last few years, a considerable number of documents have been published by them, though not in their name, it is on account of the impending crisis to civilization, of which mention will later be made.

There is no good purpose, even were there license, to discuss the nature of the basis of scientific attainment which is the core of the doctrines of the Society. It is only necessary to point out that its correspondence with alchemy is the one genuine fact on the subject which has been allowed to transpire; for the Rosicrucian, as indicated by his central symbol, the barren cross on which he has made a rose to flower, occupies himself primarily with spiritual and physiological alchemy. Taking for "The First Matter of the Work a neutral or inert substance (it is constantly described as the commonest and least valued thing on earth, and may actually connote any substance whatever) he deliberately poisons it, so to speak, bringing it to a stage of transmutation generally called the Black Dragon, and he proceeds to work upon this virulent poison until he obtains the perfection theoretically possible.

-- Temptations of Dr. Antonio (Le Tentazioni Del Dottor Antonio), directed by Federico Fellini, Starring Anita Ekberg and Peppino De Felippo

Incidentally, we have an almost precise parallel with this operation in modern bacteriology. The apparently harmless bacilli of a disease are cultivated until they become a thousand times more virulent than at first, and it is from this culture that is prepared the vaccine which is an efficacious remedy for all the possible ravages of that kind of micro-organism.

. . . . . . . .

We have been obliged to expose, perhaps at too considerable a length, the main doctrines of the three Schools. The task, however tedious, has been necessary in order to explain with reasonable lucidity their connection with the world which their ideas direct; that is to say, the nature of their political activities.

The Yellow School, in accordance with its doctrine of perfectly elastic reaction and non-interference, holds itself, generally speaking, entirely apart from all such questions. We can hardly imagine it sufficiently interested in any events soever to react aggressively. It feels strong enough to deal satisfactorily with anything that may turn up: and generally speaking, it feels that any conceivable action on its part would be likely to increase rather than to diminish the mischief.

It remains somewhat contemptuously aloof from the eternal conflict of the Black School with the White. At the same time, there is a certain feeling among the Yellow adepts that should either of these Schools become annihilated, the result might well be that the victor would sooner or later turn his released energy against themselves.

In accordance, therefore, with their general plan of non-action, as expressed in the Tao Teh King, of dealing with mischief before it has become too strong to be dangerous, they interfere gently from time to time to redress the balance.

During the last two generations the Masters of the Yellow School have been compelled to take notice of the progressive ruin of the White adepts. Christianity, which possessed at least the semblance of a White formula, is in the agonies of decomposition, even before it is actually dead. Materialistic science has overwhelmed the faith and hope of the Christians (they never possessed any charity to overwhelm) with a demonstration of the sorrow, transitoriness and cruel futility of the Universe. A vast wave of pessimism has engulfed the fortress of Mansoul.

It was indeed a deadly blow to the adepts of the White School when Science, their own familiar friend in whom they trusted, lifted up his heel against them. It was in this conjuncture that the Yellow adepts sent forth into the Western world a messenger, Helena Petrowna Blavatsky, with the distinct mission to destroy, on the one hand, the crude schools of Christianity, and, on the other, to eradicate the materialism from Physical Science. She made the necessary connection with Edward Maitland and Anna Kingsford, who were trying rather helplessly to put the exoteric formulae of the White School into the hands of students, and with the secret representatives of the Rosicrucian Brotherhood. It is not for us in this place to estimate the degree of success with which she carried out her embassy; but at least we see today that Physical Science is at last penetrating to the spiritual basis of material phenomena. The work of Henry Poincarè, Einstein, Whitehead, and Bertrand Russell is sufficient evidence of this fact.

Christianity, too, has fallen into a lower degree of contempt than ever. Realizing that it was moribund, it made a supreme and suicidal effort, and plunged into the death-spasm of the first world-war. It was too far corrupt to react to the injections of the White formula which might have saved it. We see today that Christianity is more bigoted, further divorced from reality, than ever. In some countries it has again become a persecuting church.

With horrid glee the adepts of the Black School looked on at these atrocious paroxysms. But it did more. It marshalled its forces quietly, and prepared to clean up the debris of the battlefields. It is at present (1924 e.v.) pledged to a supreme attempt to chase the manly races from their spiritual halidom. (The spasm still [1945 e.v.] continues; note well the pro-German screams of Anglican Bishops, and the intrigues of the Vatican.)

The Black School has always worked insidiously, by treachery. We need then not be surprised by finding that its most notable representative was the renegade follower of Blavatsky, Annie Besant, and that she was charged by her Black masters with the mission of persuading the world to accept for its Teacher a negroid1 Messiah. To make the humiliation more complete, a wretched creature was chosen who, to the most loathsome moral qualities, added the most fatuous imbecility. And then blew up!

. . . . . . . .

This, then, is the present state of the war of the Three Schools. We cannot suppose that humanity is so entirely base as to accept Krishnamurti; yet that such a scheme could ever have been conceived is a symptom of the almost hopeless decadence of the White School.* The Black adepts boast openly that they have triumphed all along the line. Their formula has attained the destruction of all positive qualities. It is only one step to the stage when the annihilation of all life and thought will appear as a fatal necessity. The materialism and vital scepticism of the present time, its frenzied rush for pleasure in total disregard of any idea of building for the future, testifies to a condition of complete moral disorder, of abject spiritual anarchy.

The White School has thus been paralysed. We are reminded of the spider described by Fabre, who injects her victims with a poison which paralyzes them without killing them, so that her own young may find fresh meat. And this is what is going to happen in Europe and America unless something is done about it, and done in very short order.

* Note. This passage was written in 1924 e.v. The Master Therion arose and smote him. What seemed a menace is now hardly even a memory.

The Yellow School could not remain impassive spectators of the abominations. Madame Blavatsky was a mere forerunner. They, in conjunction with the Secret Chiefs of the White School in Europe, Chiefs who had been compelled to suspend all attempts at exoteric enlightenment by the general moral debility which had overtaken the races from which they drew their adepts, have prepared a guide for mankind. This man, of an extreme moral force and elevation, combined with a profound sense of worldly realities, has stood forth in an attempt to save the White School, to rehabilitate its formula, and to fling back from the bastions of moral freedom the howling savages of pessimism. Unless his appeal is heard, unless there comes a truly virile reaction against the creeping atrophy which is poisoning them, unless they enlist to the last man under his standard, a great decisive battle will have been lost.

This prophet of the White School, chosen by its Masters and his brethren, to save the Theory and Practice, is armed with a sword far mightier than Excalibur. He has been entrusted with a new Magical formula, one which can be accepted by the whole human race. Its adoption will strengthen the Yellow School by giving a more positive value to their Theory; while leaving the postulates of the Black School intact, it will transcend them and raise their Theory and Practice almost to the level of the Yellow. As to the White School, it will remove from them all taint of poison of the Black, and restore vigour to their central formula of spiritual alchemy by giving each man an independent ideal. It will put an end to the moral castration involved in the assumption that each man, whatever his nature, should deny himself to follow out a fantastic and impracticable ideal of goodness. Incidentally, this formula will save Physical Science itself by making negligible the despair of futility, the vital scepticism which has emasculated it in the past. It shows that the joy of existence is not in a goal, for that indeed is clearly unattainable, but in the going itself.

This law is called the Law of Thelema. It is summarized in the four words, "Do what thou wilt."

It should not be necessary to explain that a full appreciation of this message is not to be obtained by a hasty examination. It is essential to study it from every point of view, to analyse it with the keenest philosophical acumen, and finally to apply it as a key for every problem, internal and external, that exists. This key, applied with skill, will open every lock.

From the deepest point of view, the greatest value of this formula is that it affords, for the first time in history, a basis of reconciliation between the three great Schools of Magick. It will tend to appease the eternal conflict by understanding that each type of thought shall go on its own way, develop its own proper qualities without seeking to interfere with other formulae, however (superficially) opposed to its own.

What is true for every School is equally true for every individual. Success in life, on the basis of the Law of Thelema, implies severe self-discipline. Each being must progress, as biology teaches, by strict adaptation to the conditions of the organism. If, as the Black School continually asserts, the cause of sorrow is desire, we can still escape the conclusion by the Law of Thelema. What is necessary is not to seek after some fantastic ideal, utterly unsuited to our real needs, but to discover the true nature of those needs, to fulfill them, and rejoice therein.

This process is what is really meant by initiation; that is to say, the going into oneself, and making one's peace, so to speak, with all the forces that one finds there.

It is forbidden here to discuss the nature of The Book of the Law, the Sacred Scripture of Thelema. Even after forty years of close expert examination, it remains to a great extent mysterious; but the little we know of it is enough to show that it is a sublime synthesis of all Science and all ethics. It is by virtue of this Book that man may attain a degree of freedom hitherto never suspected to be possible, a spiritual development altogether beyond anything hitherto known; and, what is really more to the point, a control of external nature which will make the boasted achievements of the last century appear no more than childish preliminaries to an incomparably mighty manhood.

It has been said by some that the Law of Thelema appeals only to the élite of humanity. No doubt here is this much in that assertion, that only the highest can take full advantage of the extraordinary opportunities which it offers. At the same time, "the Law is for all." Each in his degree, every man may learn to realise the nature of his own being, and to develop it in freedom. It is by this means that the White School of Magick can justify its past, redeem its present, and assure its future, by guaranteeing to every human being a life of Liberty and of Love.

Such, then, are the words of Gérard Aumont. I should not like to endorse every phrase; but the whole exposition is so masterly in its terse, tense vigour, and so unrivalled by any other document at my disposal, that I thought it best to let you have it in its own original form, with only those few alterations which lapse of time has made necessary.

Love is the law, love under will.

Fraternally,

666

P.S. Our own School unites the ruby red of Blood with the gold of the Sun. It combines the best characteristics of the Yellow and the White Schools. In the light of M. Aumont's exposition, it is easy to understand.

To us, every phenomenon is an Act of Love, every experience is necessary, is a Sacrament, is a means of Growth. Hence, "...existence is pure joy;..." (AL II, 9) "A feast every day in your hearts in the joy of my rapture! A feast every night unto Nu, and the pleasure of uttermost delight!" (AL II, 42-43).

Let this soak in!

_______________

Notes:

1: Inject something about Krishnamurti here, and soften the racial remark made above – WEH.
Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986): about 1909, while a boy in Adyar (the Indian base of the Theosophical Society), he was "discovered" by C.W. Leadbeater, then one of the leading lights of the Society; Leadbeater claimed that Krishnamurti was to be the "World Teacher", a kind of universal Messiah figure. In 1911 Leadbeater and Annie Besant set up an organisation called "The Order of the Star in the East" as a vehicle for Krishnamurti. The culmination of this campaign came in 1925; about the same time Crowley issued four broadsheets ("To Man" (a.k.a. the Mediterranean Manifesto), "The World Teacher to the Theosophical Society," "The Avenger to the Theosophical Society" and "Madame Tussaud-Besant" in which he staked his own claim to World Teacherdom. In 1929 Krishnamurti disowned the Toshosopists and went his own way; the Order of the Star in the East collapsed shortly afterwards. Source for most of this; Encyclopedia of the Unexplained, s.v. "Krishnamurti" and "Theosophical Society" See also Francis X. King's Sexuality, Magic and Perversion, chapter "The Bishop and the Boys" – T.S.

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Chapter IX: The Secret Chiefs

Cara Soror,

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

Very glad I am, since at one time I was obliged to be starkly stern about impertinent curiosity, to note that your wish to be informed about the Secret Chiefs of the A.'.A.'. is justified; it is most certainly of the first importance that you and I should be quite clear in our minds about Those under whose jurisdiction and tutelage we both work.

The question is beset with thickets of tough thorn; what is worse, the path is so slippery that nothing is easier than to tumble head first into the spikiest bush of them all.

You justly remind me that one of my earliest slogans was "Mystery is the enemy of Truth;" how then is it what I acquiesce in the policy of concealment in a matter so cardinal?

Perhaps the best plan is for me to set down the facts of the case, so far as is possible, from them it may appear that no alternative policy is feasible.

The first condition of membership of the A.'.A.'. is that one is sworn to identify one's own Great Work with that of raising mankind to higher levels, spiritually, and in every other way.

Accordingly, it stands to reason that those charged with the conduct of the Order should be at least Masters of the Temple, or their judgment would be worthless, and at least Magi (though not that particular kind of Magus who brings the Word of a New Formula to the world every 2,000 years of so) or they would be unable to influence events on any scale commensurate with the scope of the Work.

Of what nature is this Power, this Authority, this Understanding, this Wisdom—Will?

(I go up from Geburah to Chokmah.)

Of the passive side it is comparatively easy to form some idea; for the qualities essential are mainly extensions of those that all of us possess in some degree. And whether Understanding - Wisdom is "right" or "wrong" must be largely a matter of opinion; often Time only can decide such points.

But for the active side it is necessary to postulate the existence of a form of Energy at their disposal which is able "to cause change to occur in conformity with the Will"—one definition of "Magick."

Now this, as you know, is an exceedingly complex subject; its theory is tortuous, and its practice encompassed with every kind of difficulty.

Is there no simple method?

Yes: the thaumaturgic engine disposes of a type of energy more adaptable than Electricity itself, and both stronger and subtler than this, its analogy in the world of profane science. One might say, that it is electrical, or at least one of the elements in the "Ring-formula" of modern Mathematical Physics.

In the R.R. et A.C., this is indicated to the Adept Minor by the title conferred upon him on his initiation to that grade: Hodos Camelionis:—the Path of the Chameleon. (This emphasizes the omnivalence of the force.) In the higher degrees of O.T.O.—the A.'.A.'. is not fond of terms like this, which verge on the picturesque—it is usually called "the Ophidian Vibrations," thus laying special stress upon its serpentine strength, subtlety, its control of life and death, and its power to insinuate itself into any desired set of circumstances.

It is of this universally powerful weapon that the Secret Chiefs must be supposed to possess complete control.

They can induce a girl to embroider a tapestry, or initiate a political movement to culminate in a world-war; all in pursuit of some plan wholly beyond the purview or the comprehension of the deepest and subtlest thinkers.

(It should go without saying that the adroit use of these vibrations enables one to perform all the classical "miracles.")

These powers are stupendous: they seem almost beyond imagination to conceive.

"Hic ego nec metas rerum nec tempora pono;
Imperium sine fine dedi."

as Vergil, that mighty seer and magician of Rome at her perihelion says in his First Book of the Aenead. (Vergil whose every line is also an Oracle, the leaves of his book more sacred, more significant, more sure than those of the Cumaean Sibyl!)

These powers move in dimensions of time and space quite other than those with which we are familiar. Their values are incomprehensible to us. To a Secret Chief, wielding this weapon, "The nice conduct of a clouded cane" might be infinitely more important than a war, famine and pestilence such as might exterminate a third part of the race, to promote whose welfare is the crux of His oath, and the sole reason of His existence!

But who are They?

Since They are "invisible" and "inaccessible," may They not merely be figments invented by a self-styled "Master," not quite sure of himself, to prop his tottering Authority?

Well, the "invisible" and "inaccessible" criticism may equally be leveled at Captain A. and Admiral B. of the Naval Intelligence Department. These "Secret Chiefs" keep in the dark for precisely the same reasons; and these qualities disappear instantaneously the moment They want to get hold of you.

It is written, moreover, "Let my servants be few & secret: they shall rule the many & the known." (AL I, 10)

But are They then men, in the usual sense of the word? They may be incarnate or discarnate: it is a matter of Their convenience.

Have They attained Their position by passing through all the grades of the A.'.A.'.?

Yes and no: the system which was given to me to put forward is only one of many. "Above the Abyss" all these technical wrinkles are ironed out. One man whom I suspect of being a Secret Chief has hardly any acquaintance with the technique of our system at all. That he accepts The Book of the Law is almost his only link with my work. That, and his use of the Ophidian Vibrations: I don't know which of us is better at it, but I am sure that he must be a very long way ahead of me if he is one of Them.

You have already in these pages and elsewhere in my writings examples numerous and varied of the way in which They work. The list is far from complete. The matters of Ab-ul-Diz and of Amalantrah show one method of communication; then there is the way of direct "inspiration," as in the case of "Hermes Eimi" in New Orleans.*

Again, They may send an ordinary living man, whether one of Themselves or no I cannot feel sure, to instruct me in some task, or to set me right when I have erred. Then there have been messages conveyed by natural objects, animate or inanimate.† Needless to say, the outstanding example in my life is the whole Plan of Campaign concerning The Book of the Law. But is Aiwaz a man (presumably a Persian or Assyrian) and a "Secret Chief," or is He an "angel" in the sense that Gabriel is an angel? Is Ab-ul-Diz an Adept who can project himself into the aura of some woman with whom I happen to be living, although she has no previous experience of the kind, or any interest in such matters at all? Or is He a being whose existence is altogether beyond this plane, only adopting human appearance and faculties in order to make Himself sensible and intelligible to that woman?

I have never attempted to pursue any such enquiry. It was not forbidden; and yet I felt that it was! I always insisted, of course, on the strictest proof that He actually possessed the authority claimed by Him! But I felt is improper to assume any other initiative. Just a point of good manners, perhaps?

You ask whether, contact once made, I am able to renew it should I so wish. Again, yes and no. But the real answer is that no such gesture on my part can ever be necessary. For one thing, the "Chief" is so far above me that I can rely on Him to take the necessary steps, whenever contact would be useful; for another, there is one path always open which is perfectly sufficient for all possible contingencies.

Elsewhere I will explain why they picked out so woebegone a ragamuffin as myself to proclaim the Word of the Aeon, and do all the chores appur- tenant to that particular Work.

The Burden is heavier as the years go by; but—Perdurabo.

Love is the law, love under will.

Fraternally,

666

P.S. Reading this typescript over for "literals," it struck me that you would ask, very reasonably: "But if the Secret Masters have these boundless powers, why do They allow you to be plagued by printers, held up for lack of secretaries, worried by all sorts of practical problems? . . . Why, in a word, does anything ever go wrong?"

There are several lines of reply; coalescing, they suffice:

1. What is "wrong?" Since four wars is Their idea of "right," you may well ask by what standard you may judge events.

2. Their Work is creative; They operate on the dull mass of unrealized possibilities. Thus they meet, firstly, the opposition of Inertia; secondly, the recoil, the reaction, the rebound.

3. Things theoretically feasible are practically impossible when (a) desirable though their accomplishment may be, it is not the one feat essential to the particular Work in hand and the moment; (b) the sum total of available energy being used up by that special task, there is none available for side-issues; (c) the opposition, passive or active, is too strong, temporarily, to overcome.

More largely, one cannot judge how a plan is progressing when one has no precise idea what it is. A soldier is told to "attack;" he may be intended to win through, to cover a general retreat, or to gain time by deliberate sacrifice. Only the Commander in Chief knows what the order means, or why he issues it; and even he does not know the issue, or whether it will display and justify his military skill and judgment.

Our business is solely to obey orders: our responsibility ends when we have satisfied ourselves that they emanate from a source which has the right to command.

P.P.S. A visitor's story has just reminded me of the possibility that I am a Secret Chief myself without knowing it: for I have sometimes been recognized by other people as having acted as such, though I was not aware of the fact at the time.

* I will remember to give you details of these incidents when the occasion arises.

† One thing I regard from my own experience as certain: when you call, They come. The circumstances usually show that the call had been foreseen, and preparations made to answer it, long before it was made. But I suppose in some way the call has to justify the making.

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Chapter X: The Scolex School

You actually want to know how to distinguish gold from copper pyrites1—"fool's gold" they called it in '49 California—no! I wasn't there— or "absolute" alcohol and—Liqueur Whisky from "alki" (commercial alcohol—see Jack London's The Princess, a magnificent story—don't miss it!) and Wartime Scotch as sold in most British pubs in 1944, era vulgari.

One pretty good plan is to take a masterpiece, pick out a page at random, translate it into French or German or whatever language you like best, walk around your chair three times (so as to forget the English) and then translate it back again.

You will gather a useful impression of the value of the masterpiece by noticing the kind of difficulty that arises in the work of translation; more, by observing the effect produced on you by reading over the result; and finally, by estimating the re-translation; has the effect of the original been enhanced by the work done on it? Has it become more lucid? Has it actually given you the information which it purported to do?

(I am giving you credit for very unusual ability; this test is not easy to make; and, obviously, you may have spoilt the whole composition, especially where its value depends on its form rather than on its substance. But we are not considering poetry, or poetic prose; all we want is intelligible meaning.)

It does not follow that a passage is nonsensical because you fail to understand it; it may simply be too hard for you. When Bertrand Russell writes "We say that a function R is 'ultimately Q-convergent α' if there is a member y of the converse domain of R and the field of Q such that the value of the function for the argument y and for any argument to which y has the relation Q is a member of α." Do we?

But you do not doubt that if you were to learn the meaning of all these unfamiliar terms, you would be able to follow his thought.

Now take a paragraph from an "occult teacher."

What's more, I'll give you wheat, not tares; it seems terrifyingly easy for sound instruction to degenerate in to a "pi-jaw." Here goes!

To don Nirmanakaya's humble robe is to forego eternal bliss for self, to help on man's salvation. To reach Nirvana's bliss but to renounce it, is the supreme, the final step—the highest on Renunciation's Path.2

Follows a common-sense comment by Frater O.M.

All this about Gautama Buddha having renounced Nirvana is apparently all a pure invention of Mme. Blavatsky, and has no authority in the Buddhist canon. The Buddha is referred to, again and again, as having 'passed away by that kind of passing away which leaves nothing whatever behind.' The account of his doing this is given in the Mahaparinibbana Sutta; and it was the contention of the Toshophists that this 'great, sublime Nibbana story' was something peculiar to Gautama Buddha. They began to talk about Parinibbana, super-Nibbana, as if there were some way of subtracting one from one which would leave a higher, superior kind of a nothing, or as if there were some way of blowing out a candle which would leave Moses in a much more Egyptian darkness than we ever supposed when we were children.

This is not science. This is not business. This is American Sunday journalism. The Hindu and the American are very much alike in this innocence, this 'naiveté' which demands fairy stories with ever bigger giants. They cannot bear the idea of anything being complete and done with. So, they are always talking in superlatives, and are hard put to it when the facts catch up with them, and they have to invent new superlatives. Instead of saying that there are bricks of various sizes, and specifying those sizes, they have a brick and a super-brick, and 'one' brick, and 'some' brick; and when they have got to the end they chase through the dictionary for some other epithet to brick, which shall excite the sense of wonder at the magnificent progress and super-progress—I present the American public with this word—which is supposed to have been made. Probably the whole thing is a bluff without a single fact behind it. Almost the whole of the Hindu psychology is an example of this kind of journalism. They are not content with the supreme God. The other man wishes to show off by having a supremer God than that, and when a third man comes along and finds them disputing, it is up to him to invent a supremest super-God.

It is simply ridiculous to try to add to the definition of Nibbana by this invention of Parinibbana, and only talkers busy themselves with these fantastic speculations. The serious student minds his own business, which is the business in hand. The President of a Corporation does not pay his bookkeeper to make a statement of the countless billions of profit to be made in some future year. It requires no great ability to string a row of zeros after a significant figure until the ink runs out. What is wanted is the actual balance of the week.

The reader is most strongly urged not to permit himself to indulge in fantastic flights of thought, which are the poison of the mind, because they represent an attempt to run away from reality, a dispersion of energy and a corruption of moral strength. His business is, firstly, to know himself; secondly, to order and control himself; thirdly, to develop himself on sound organic lines little by little. The rest is only leather and prunella.

There is, however, a sense in which the service of humanity is necessary to the completeness of the Adept. He is not to fly away too far.

Some remarks on this course are given in the note to the next verse.

The student is also advised to take note of the conditions of membership of the A.'.A.'.

(Equinox III (1), Supplement pp. 57 - 59).

So much for the green tree; now for the dry!

We come down to the average popular "teacher," the mere humbug. Read this:—

"One day quite soon an entirely different kind of electricity will be discovered which will bring as many profound changes into human living as the first type did. This new electricity will move in a finer ether than does our familiar kind, and thus will be nearer in vibration to the fifth dimension, to the innermost source of things, that realm of 'withinness' wherein all is held poised by a colossal force, that same force which is packed within the atom. Electricity number two will be unthinkably more powerful than our present electricity number one." (V.S. Alder, The Fifth Dimension, p. 132)
Exhausted; I must restring my bow.

Love is the law, love under will.

Fraternally,

666

_______________

Notes:

1: If Homer can nod, so can Crowley. The mineral called "fool's gold" is actually iron pyrites, not copper. It has a brassy look, and that might account for this error – WEH.

2: Liber LXXI (Blavatsky, The Voice of the Silence &c. with a commentary by Crowley), Part II ("The Two Paths"), s. 42 (the section numbers are due to Crowley. See Equinox III (1) or IV (1) – T.S.

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Chapter XI: Woolly Pomposities of the Pious "Teacher"

I do not think that it was any new kind of electricity. I think it was the passage itself that has given me neuralgia. It disgusts me beyond words.

To put the matter in a nutshell, tersely, concisely, succinctly, the world is being corrupted by all this ---

Asthmatic Thinking / Torpid Thinking / Nauseous Thinking
Bovine T / Uncertain T. / Old-maidish T.
Chawbacon T. / Venomous T. / Purgative T.
Diffuse T. / Whelp T. / Querulous T.
Excretory T / Yahoo T. / Rat-riddled T.
Fog-bound T. / Zig-zag T. / Superficial T.
Gossiping T. / Ambivalent T. / Tinsel T.
Higgledy-piggledy T. / Broken T. / Unbalanced T.
Ill-mannered T. / Corked T. / Viscous T.
Jibbing T. / Disjointed T. / Windy T.
Kneeling T. / Eight-anna T. / Yapping T.
Leaden T. / Flibberty-gibbet T. / Zymotic T.
Moulting T. / Glum T. / Addled T.
Neurotic T. / High-falutin' T. / Blear-eyed T.
Orphan T. / Invertebrate T. / Capsized T.
Peccable T. / Jazzy T. / Down-at-heel T.
Queasy T. / Knavish T. / Evasive T.
Rococo T. / Leucorrhoeic T. / Formless T.
Slavish T. / Motheaten T. / Guilty T.
Hypocritical T. / Unsystematic T. / Lachrymose T.
Ignorant T. / Void T. / Maudlin T.
Jerry-built T. / Waggly T. / Neighing T.
Knock-kneed T. / Atrophied T. / Odious T.
Lazy T. / Bloated T. / Pedestrian T.
Messy T. / Cancerous T. / Quavering T.
Nasty T. / Dull T. / Ragbag T.
Oleaginous T. / Eurasian T. / Sappy T.
Purulent T. / Futile T. / Tuberculous T.
Slattern T. / Immature T. / Veneered T.
Unkempt T. / Beige T. / Woolly T.
Over-civilized T. / Emaciated T. / Flat T.
Gluey T. / Dislocated T. / Emetic T.
Crippled T. / Slushy T. / Insanitary T.
Foggy T. / Teaparty T. / Gloomy T.
Wordy T. / Negroid T. / Jaundiced T.
Opportunish T. / Babbling T. / Pedantic T.
Muddy T. / Onanistic T. / Flatulent T.
Unclean T. / Hybrid T. / Sluttish T.
Flabby T. / Nebulous T. / Stale T.
Unsorted T. / Hurried T. / Mangy T.
Prim T. / Empty T. / Portentous T.
Theatrical T. / Vain T. / Loose T.
Vaporous T. / Loose T. / Wooden T.
Myopic T. / Bloodless T. / Soapy T.
Flimsy T. / Ersatz T. / Gabbling T.
Unfinished T. / Pontifical T. / Wishful T.
Mongrel T. / Unripe T. / Frock-coated T.
Irrelevant T. / Glossy T. / Fashionable T.
Hidebound T. / Officious T. / Unmanly T.
Snobbish T. / Misleading T. / Slippery T. *

as we find in Brunton, Besant,1 Clymer,2 Max Heindl,3 Ouspensky and in the catchpenny frauds of the secret-peddlers, the U.B., the O.H.M.,4 the A.M.O.R.C.,5 and all the other gangs of self-styled Rosicrucians; they should be hissed off the stage.

We want it dinkum! Advance Australia! Stick to your flag! March to your National Anthem:—

"Get a bloody move on! Get some bloody sense Learn the bloody art of Self-de-bloody-fence!"

So much for Buckingham!

* [Note by editor: In the original Manuscript the list of adjectives contains about 1,000 words; a small selection only has been used.]

Now that we are agreed upon the conditions to be satisfied if we are to allow that a given proposition contains a Thought at all, it is proper to turn our attention to the relative value of different kinds of thought. This question is of the very first importance: the whole theory of Education depends upon a correct standard. There are facts and facts: one would not necessarily be much the wiser if one got the Encyclopaedia Britannica by heart, or the Tables of Logarithms. The one aim of Mathematics, in fact—Whitehead points this out in his little Shilling Arithmetic—is to make one fact do the work of thousands.

What we are looking for is a working Hierarchy of Facts.

That takes us back at once to our original "addition and subtraction" remark in my letter on Mind. Classification, the first step, proceeds by putting similar things together, and dissimilar things apart.

One asset in the Audit of a fact is the amount of knowledge which it covers. (2 + 5)2 = 49; (3 + 4)2 = 49; (6 + 2)2 =64; (7 + 1)2 = 64; (9 + 4)2 = 169 are isolated facts, no more; worse, the coincidences of 49 and 64 might start the wildest phantasies in your head—"something mysterious about this." But if you write "The sum of the squares of any two numbers is the sum of the square of each plus twice their multiple"—(a + b)2 = a2 + b{2} + 2ab—you have got a fact which covers every possible case, and exhibits one aspect of the nature of numbers them- selves. The importance of a word increases as its rank, from the particular and concrete to the general and abstract. (It is curious that the highest values of all, the "Laws of Nature," are never exactly "true" for any two persons, for one person can never observe the identical phenomena sensible to another, since two people cannot be in exactly the same place at exactly the same time: yet it is just these facts that are equally true for all men.)

Observe, I pray, the paramount importance of memory. From one point of view (bless your heart!) you are nothing at all but a bundle of memories. When you say "this is happening now," you are a falsifier of God's sacred truth! When I say "I see a horse", the truth is that "I record in those terms my private hieroglyphic interpretation of the unknown and unknowable phenomenon (or 'point-event') which has more or less recently taken place at the other end of my system of receiving impressions."

(Is this clear? I do hope so; if not, make me go on at it until it is.)

Well, then! You realize, of course, how many millions or billions of memories there must be to compose any average well-trained mind. Those strings of adjectives all sprang spontaneously; I did not look them up in books of reference; so imagine the extent of my full vocabulary! And words are but the half-baked bricks with which one constructs. Millions, yes: billions probably: but there is a limit.

See to it, then, that you accept no worthless material; that you select, and select again, always in proper order and proportion; organize, structuralize your thought, always with the one aim in view of accomplishing the Great Work.

Well, now, before going further into this, I must behave like an utter cad, and disgrace my family tree, and blot my 'scutcheon and my copybook by confusing you about "realism." Excuse: not my muddle; it was made centuries ago by a gang of curséd monks, headed by one Duns Scotus—so-called because he was Irish—or if not by somebody else equally objectionable. They held to the Platonic dogma of archetypes. They maintained that there was an original (divine) idea such as "greenness" or a "pig," and that a green pig, as observed in nature, was just one example of these two ideal essences. They were opposed by the "nominalists," who said, to the contrary, that "greenness" or "a pig" were nothing in themselves; they were mere names (nominalism from Lat. nomen, a name) invented for convenience of grouping. This doctrine is plain commonsense, and I shall waste no time in demolishing the realists.

All à priori thinking, the worst kind of thinking, goes with "realism" in this sense.
And now you look shocked and surprised! And no wonder! What (you exclaim) is the whole Qabalistic doctrine but the very apotheosis of this "realism"? (It was also called "idealism", apparently to cheer and comfort the student on his rough and rugged road!) Is not Atziluth the "archetypal world?" is not—

Oh, all right, all right! Keep your blouse on! I didn't go for to do it. You're quite right: the Tree of Life is like that, in appearance. But that is the wrong way to look at it. We get our number two, for example, as "that which is common to a bird's legs, a man's ears, twins, the cube root of eight, the greater luminaries, the spikes of a pitchfork," etc. but, having got it, we must not go on to argue that the number two being possessed of this and that property, therefore there must be two of something or other which for one reason or another we cannot count on our fingers.

The trouble is that sometimes we can do so; we are very often obliged to do so, and it comes out correct. But we must not trust any such theorem; it is little more than a hint to help us in our guesses. Example: an angel appears and tells us that his name is MALIEL (MLIAL) which adds to 111, the third of the numbers of the Sun. Do we conclude that his nature is solar? In this case, yes, perhaps, because, (on the theory) he took that name for the very reason that it chimed with his nature. But a man may reside at 81 Silver Street without being a lunatic, or be born at five o'clock on the 5th of May, 1905, and make a very poor soldier.

"No, no, my dear sister, how tempted soever,
To nominalism be faithful forever!"

(If you want to be very learned indeed, read up Bertrand Russell on "Classes.")

Enough, more than enough, of this: let us return to the relative value of various types of thought.

I think you already understand the main point: you must structuralise your thinking. You must learn how to differentiate and how to integrate your thoughts. Nothing exists in isolation; it is always conditioned by its relations with other things; indeed, in one sense, a thing is no more than the sum of these relations. (For the only "reality," in the long run, is, as we have seen, a Point of View.)

Now, this task of organizing the mind, of erecting a coherent and intelligible structure, is enormously facilitated by the Qabalah.

When, in one of those curious fits of indisposition of which you periodically complain, and of which the cause appears to you so obscure, you see pink leopards on the staircase, mmmmm "Ah! the colour of the King Scale of Tiphareth—Oh! the form of Leo, probably in the Queen Scale" and thereby increase your vocabulary by these two items. Then, perhaps, someone suggests that indiscretion in the worship of Dionysus is respon- sible for the observed phenomena—well, there's Tiphareth again at once; the Priest, moreover, wears a leopard-skin, and the spots suggest the Sun. Also, Sol is Lord of Leo: so there you are! pink leopards are exactly what you have a right to expect!

Until you have practiced this method, all day and every day, for quite a long while, you cannot tell how amazingly your mnemonic power increases by virtue thereof. But be careful always to range the new ideas as they come along in their right order of importance.

It is not unlike the system of keys used in big establishments, such as hotels. First, a set of keys, each of which opens one door, and one door only. Then, a set which opens all the doors on one floor only. And so on, until the one responsible person who has one unique key which opens every lock in the building.

There is another point about this while System of the Qabalah. It does more than merely increase the mnemonic faculty by 10,000% or so; the habit of throwing your thoughts about, manipulating them, giving them a wash and brush-up, packing them away into their proper places in you "Crystal Cabinet," gives you immensely increased power over them.

In particular, it helps you to rid them of the emotional dirt which normally clogs them;* you become perfectly indifferent to any implication but their value in respect of the whole system; and this is of incalculable help in the acquisition of new ides. It is the difference between a man trying to pick a smut out of his wife's eye with clumsy, greasy fingers coarsened by digging drains, and an oculist furnished with a speculum and all the instruments exactly suited to the task.

Yet another point. Besides getting rid of the emotions and sensations which cloud the thought, the fact that you are constantly asking your- self "Now, in which drawer of which cabinet does this thought go?" automatically induces you to regard the system as the important factor in the operation, if only because it is common to every one of them.

So not only have you freed Sanna (perception) from the taint of Vedana (sensation) but raised it (or demolished it, if your prefer to look at it in that light!) to be merely a member of the Sankhâra (tendency) class, thus boosting you vigorously to the fourth stage, the last before the last! of the practice of Mahasatipathana.

Just one more word about the element of Vedana. The Intellect is a purely mechanical contrivance, as accurate and as careless of what it turns out as a Cash Register. It receives impressions, calculates, states the result: that is A double L, ALL!

Try never to qualify a thought in any way, to see it as it is in itself in relation to those other elements which are necessary to make it what it is.

Above all, do not "mix the planes." A dagger may be sharp or blunt, straight or crooked; it is not "wicked-looking," or even "trusty," except in so far as the quality of its steel makes it so. A cliff is not "frowning" or "menacing." A snow-covered glacier is not "treacherous:" to say so means only that Alpine Clubmen and other persons ignorant of mountain craft are unable to detect the position of covered crevasses.

All such points you must decide for yourself; the important thing is that you should challenge any such ideas.

Above all, do not avoid, or slur, unwelcome trains of thought or distressing problems. Don't say "he passed on" when you mean "he died," and don't call a spade a bloody shovel!

Thresh out such matters with Osiris' flail; on the winnowing-fan of Iacchus!

Truth in itself is beautiful, and the best bower-anchor of your ship; every truth fits all the rest of truth; and the most alluring lies will never do that.

"The toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in its head."

and the result of letting

"Two ghastly scullions concoct mess
With brimstone, pitch, vitriol, and devil's dung."

in the end repay investigation.

The vision and the Voice again, please! That frightful Curse—how every phrase turns out to be a Blessing!6

I shall break off this brief note at this point, so that you may have time to tell me if what I have so far said covers the whole ground of your enquiry.

Love is the law, love under will.

Fraternally,

666

* I hope there is no need to repeat that whether any given thought is pleasant, or undesirable, or otherwise soiled by Vedana, is totally irrelevant.

_______________

Notes:

1: Annie Besant, theosophist.

2: R. Swinburne Clymer, founder of an American "Rosicrucian" group. He had denounced Crowley and the O.T.O. in print in his "Rosicrucian Fraternity in America", a work largely devoted to attacking H. Spencer Lewis and AMORC (q.v. infra) – T.S.

3: Max Heindel (1865-1919); born in Denmark, briefly involved in Theosophy; emigrated to the USA and founded the "Rosicrucian Fellowship" using material plagiarised from Rudolph Steiner – T.S.

4: Order of Hidden Masters; minor English occult fraternity operating about this time. I have little information on them – T.S.

5: Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crucis. Mail-order "Rosicrucian" fraternity founded by H. Spencer Lewis (1883-1939). Lewis had some kind of charter or "Gauge of Amity" from Theodor Reuss of O.T.O., and certain of his teachings were plagiarised from Crowley – T.S.

6: See in particular the ninth and second Æhytrs; the reference is to the Call of the Thirty Æthyrs – T.S.

[admin]

Chapter XII: The Left-Hand Path—"The Black Brothers"

Cara Soror,

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

It is the introduction of the word "self" that has raised such prickly questions. It really is a little bewildering; the signpost "Right-hand Path", "Left-hand Path", seems rather indecipherable; and then, for such a long way, they look exactly alike. At what point do they diverge?

Actually, the answers are fairly simple.

As far as the achievement or attainment is concerned, the two Paths are in fact identical. In fact, one almost feels obliged to postulate some inmost falsity, completely impossible to detect, inherent at the very earliest stages.

For the decision which determines the catastrophe confronts only the Adeptus Exemptus 7° = 4°. Until that grade is reached, and that very fully indeed, with all the buttons properly sewed on, one is not capable of understanding what is meant by the Abyss. Unless "all you have and all you are" is identical with the Universe, its annihilation would leave a surplus.

Mark well this first distinction: the "Black Magician" or Sorcerer is hardly even a distant cousin of the "Black Brother." The difference between a sneak-thief and a Hitler is not too bad an analogy.

The Sorcerer may be—indeed he usually is—a thwarted disappointed man whose aims are perfectly natural. Often enough, his real trouble is ignorance; and by the time he has become fairly hot stuff as a Black Magician, he has learnt that he is getting nowhere, and finds himself, despite himself, on the True Path of the Wise.

"Invoking Zeus to swell the power of Pan,
The prayer discomfits the demented man;
Lust lies as still as Love."

Thereupon he casts away his warlock apparatus like a good little boy, finds the A.'.A.'., and lives happily ever after.

The Left-hand Path is a totally different matter. Let us start at the beginning.

You remember my saying that only two operations were possible in Nature: addition and subtraction. Let us apply this to magical progress.

What happens when the Aspirant invokes Diana, or calls up Lilith? He increases the sum of his experiences in these particular ways. Sometimes he has a "liaison-experience," which links two main lines of thought, and so is worth dozens of isolated gains.

Now, if there is any difference at all between the White and the Black Adept in similar case, it is that the one, working by "love under will" achieves a marriage with the new idea, while the other, merely grabbing, adds a concubine to his harem of slaves.

The about-to-be-Black Brother constantly restricts himself; he is satisfied with a very limited ideal; he is afraid of losing his individuality—reminds one of the "Nordic" twaddle about "race-pollution."

Have you seen the sand-roses of the Sahara? Such is the violence of the Khamsin that it whips grains of sand together, presses them, finally builds them into great blocks, big enough and solid enough to be used for walls in the oasis. And beautiful! Whew! For all that, they are not real rocks. Leave hem in peace, with no possible interference—what happens? (I brought some home, and put them "in safety" as curiosities, and as useful psychometrical tests.) Alas! Time is enough. Go to the drawer which held them; nothing remains but little piles of dust.

"Now Master!" (What reproach in the tone of your voice!) All right, all right! Keep your hair on!—I know that is the precise term used in The Vision and the Voice, to describe the Great White Brother or the Babe of the Abyss; but to him it means victory; to the Left-Hander it would mean defeat, ruin devastating, irremediable, final. It is exactly that which he most dreads; and it is that to which he must in the end come, because there is no compensating element in his idea of structure. Nations themselves never grow permanently by smash-and-grab methods; one merely acquires a sore spot, as in the case of Lorraine, perhaps even Eire. (Though Eire is using just that formula of Restriction, shutting herself up in her misery and poverty and idiot pride, when a real marriage with and dissolution in, a real live country would give her new life. The "melting-pot" idea is the great strength of America.)

Consider the Faubourg St. Germain aristocracy—now hardly even a sentimental memory. The guillotine did not kill them; it was their own refusal to adapt themselves to the new biological conditions of political life. It was indeed their restriction that rotted them in the first instance; had Lafayette or Mirabeau been trusted with full power, and supplied with adequate material, a younger generation of virtue, the monarchy might still be ruling France.

But then (you ask) how can a man go so far wrong after he has, as an Adeptus Minor, attained the "Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel"?

Recall the passage in the 14th Aethyr "See where thine Angel hath led Thee", and so on. Perhaps the Black Brother deserts his Angel when he realises the Programme.

Perhaps his error was so deeply rooted, from the very beginning, that it was his Evil Genius that he evoked.

In such cases the man's policy is of course to break off all relations with the Supernal Triad, and to replace it by inventing a false crown, Daäth. To them Knowledge will be everything, and what is Knowledge but the very soul of Illusion?

Refusing thus the true nourishment of all his faculties, they lose their structural unity, and must be fortified by continuous doses of dope in anguished self-preservation. Thus all its chemical equations become endothermic.

I do hope I am making myself clear; it is a dreadfully subtle line of thought. But I think you ought to be able to pick up the essential theorem; your own meditations, aided by the relevant passages in Liber 418 and elsewhere, should do the rest.

To describe the alternative attitude should clarify, by dint of contrast; at least the contemplation should be a pleasant change.

Every accretion must modify me. I want it to do so. I want to assimilate it absolutely. I want to make it a permanent feature of my Temple. I am not afraid of losing myself to it, if only because it also is modified by myself in the act of union. I am not afraid of its being the "wrong" thing, because every experience is a "play of Nuit," and the worst that can happen is a temporary loss of balance, which is instantly adjusted, as soon as it is noticed, by recalling and putting into action the formula of contradiction.

Remember the Fama Fraternitatis: when they opened the Vault which held the Pastos of our Father Christian Rosencreuz, "all these colours were brilliant and flashing." That is, if one panel measured 10" x 40", the symbol (say, yellow) would occupy 200 square inches, and the background (in that case, violet) the other 200 square inches. Hence they dazzled; the limitation, restriction, demarcation, disappeared; and the result was an equable idea of form and colour which is beyond physical understanding. (At one time Picasso tried to work out this idea on canvas.) Destroy that equilibrium by one tenmillionth of an inch, and the effect is lost. The unbalanced item stands out like a civilian in the middle of a regiment.

True, this faculty, this feeling for equilibrium must be acquired; but once you have done so, it is an unerring guide. Instant discomfort warns one; the impulse to scratch it (the analogy is too apt to reject!) is irresistible.

And oh! how imperative this is!

Unless your Universe is perfect—and perfection includes the idea of balance—how can you come even to Atmadarshana? Hindus may maintain that Atmadarshana, or at any rate Shivadarshana, is the equivalent of crossing the Abyss. Beware of any such conclusions! The Trances are simply isolated experiences, sharply cut off from normal thought-life. To cross the Abyss is a permanent and fundamental revolution in the whole of one's being.

Much more, upon the brink of the Abyss. If there be missing or redundant even one atom, the entire monstrous, the portentous mass must tend to move with irresistible impact, in such direction as to restore the equilibrium. To deflect it—well, think of a gyroscope! How then can you destroy it in one sole stupendous gesture? Ah! Listen to The Vision and the Voice.

Perhaps the best and simplest plan is for me to pick out the most impor- tant of the relevant passages and put them together as an appendix to this letter. Also, by contrast, those allusions to the "Black Brothers" and the "Left-hand Path." This ought to give you a clear idea of what each is, and does; of what distinguishes their respective methods in some ways so confusingly alike. I hope indeed most sincerely that you will whet your Magical Dagger on the Stone of the Wise, and wield most deftly and determinedly both the White-handled and the Black-handled Burin. In trying to express these opinions, I am constantly haunted by the dread that I may be missing some crucial point, or even allowing a mere quibble to pass for argument. It makes it only all the worse when one has become so habituated by Neschamic ideas, to knowing, even before one says it, that what one is going to say is of necessity untrue, as untrue as it is contradictory. So what can it possibly matter what one says?

Such doubts are dampers!

"Enough of Because! Be he damned for a dog!"

Here follow the quotations from The Vision and the Voice.

The Angel re-appears

The blackness gathers about, so thick, so clinging, so penetrating, so oppressive, that all the other darkness that I have ever conceived would be like bright light beside it.

His voice comes in a whisper: O thou that art master of the fifty gates of Understanding, is not my mother a black woman? O thou that art master of the Pentagram, is not the egg of spirit a black egg? Here abideth terror, and the blind ache of the Soul, and lo! even I, who am the sole light, a spark shut up, stand in the sign of Apophis and Typhon.

I am the snake that devoureth the spirit of man with the lust of light. I am the sightless storm in the night that wrappeth the world about with desolation. Chaos is my name, and thick darkness. Know thou that the darkness of the earth is ruddy, and the darkness of the air is grey, but the darkness of the soul is utter blackness.

The egg of the spirit is a basilisk egg, and the gates of the understanding are fifty, that is the sign of the Scorpion. The pillars about the Neophyte are crowned with flame, and the vault of the Adepts is lighted by the Rose. And in the abyss is the eye of the hawk. But upon the great sea shall the Master of the Temple find neither star nor moon.

And I was about to answer him: "The light is within me." But before I could frame the words, he answered me with the great word that is the Key of the Abyss. And he said: Thou hast entered the night; dost thou yet lust for day? Sorrow is my name and affliction. I am girt about with tribulation. Here still hangs the Crucified One, and here the Mother weeps over the children that she hath not borne. Sterility is my name and desolation. Intolerable is thine ache, and incurable thy wound. I said, 'Let the darkness cover me;' and behold, I am compassed about with the blackness that hath no name. O thou, who hast cast down the light into the earth, so must thou do for ever. And the light of the sun shall not shine upon thee and the moon shall not lend thee of her luster, and the stars shall be hidden because thou art passed beyond these things, beyond the need of these things, beyond the desire of these things.

What I thought were shapes of rocks, rather felt than seen, now appear to be veiled Masters, sitting absolutely still and silent. Nor can any one be distinguished from the others.

And the Angel sayeth: Behold where thine Angel hath led thee! Thou didst ask fame, power and pleasure, health and wealth and love, and strength and length of days. Thou didst hold life with eight tentacles, like an octopus. Thou didst seek the four powers and the seven delights and the twelve emancipations, and the two and twenty Privileges and the nine and forty Manifestations, and lo! thou art become as one of These. Bowed are their backs, whereon resteth the Universe. Veiled are their faces, that have beheld the glory Ineffable.

These adepts seem like Pyramids—their hoods and robes are like Pyramids.

And the Angel sayeth: Verily is the Pyramid a Temple of Initiation. Verily also is it a tomb. Thinkest thou that there is life within the Masters of the Temple that sit hooded, encamped upon the Sea? Verily, there is no life in them.

Their sandals were the pure light, and they have taken them from their feet and cast them down through the abyss; for this Aethyr is holy ground.

Herein no forms appear, and the vision of God face to face, that is transmuted in the Athanor called dissolution, or hammered into one in the forge of meditation, is in this place but a blasphemy and a mockery.

And the Beatific Vision is no more, and the glory of the Most High is no more. There is no more knowledge. There is no more bliss. There is no more power. There is no more beauty. For this is the Palace of Understanding; for thou art one with the Primeval things.

Drink in the myrrh of my speech, that is bruised with the gall of the roc, and dissolved in the ink of the cuttle-fish, and perfumed with the deadly nightshade.

This is thy wine, who wast drunk upon the wine of Iacchus. And for bread shalt thou eat salt, O thou on the corn of Ceres that didst wax fat! For as pure being is pure nothing, so is pure wisdom pure ——*, and so is pure understanding silence, and stillness, and darkness. The eye is called seventy, and the triple Aleph whereby thou perceivest it, divideth into the number of the terrible word that is the Key of the Abyss.

I am Hermes, that am sent from the Father to expound all things discreetly in these the last words that thou shalt hear before thou take thy seat among these, whose eyes are sealed up and whose ears are stopped, and whose mouths are clenched, who are folded in upon themselves, the liquor of whose bodies is dried up, so that nothing remains but a little pyramid of dust.

And that bright light of comfort, and that piercing sword of truth, and all the power and beauty that they have made of themselves, is cast from them, as it is written, "I saw Satan like lightning fall from heaven." And as a flaming sword is it dropt though the Abyss, where the four beasts keep watch and ward. And it appeareth in the heaven of Jupiter as a morning star, or as an evening star. And the light thereof shineth even unto the earth, and bringeth hope and help to them that dwell in the darkness of thought, and drink of the poison of life. Fifty are the gates of Understanding, and one hundred and six are the seasons thereof. And the name of every season is Death.

(The Vision and the Voice. 14th Æthyr.)

And for his Work thereafter?

So we enter the earth, and there is a veiled figure, in absolute darkness. Yet it is perfectly possible to see in it, so that the minutest details do not escape us. And upon the root of one flower he pours acid so that the root writhes as if in torture. And another he cuts, and the shriek is like the shriek of a Mandrake, torn up by the roots. And another he sears with fire, and yet another he anoints with oil.

And I said: Heavy is the labour, but great indeed is the reward.

And the young man answered me: He shall not see the reward; he tendeth the garden.

And I said: What shall come unto him?

And he said: This thou canst not know, nor is it revealed by the letters that are the totems of the stars, but only by the stars.

And he says to me, quite disconnectedly: The man of earth is the adherent. The lover giveth his life unto the work among men. The hermit goeth solitary, and giveth only of his light unto men.

And I ask him: Why does he tell me that?

And he says: I tell thee not. Thou tellest thyself, for thou hast pondered thereupon for many days, and hast not found light. And now that thou art called NEMO, the answer to every riddle that thou hast not found shall spring up in thy mind, unsought. Who can tell upon what day a flower shall bloom?

And thou shalt give thy wisdom unto the world, and that shall be thy garden. And concerning time and death, thou hast naught to do with these things. For though a precious stone be hidden in the sand of the desert, it shall not heed for the wind of the desert, although it be but sand. For the worker of works hath worked thereupon; and because it is clear, it is invisible; and because it is hard, it moveth not.

All these words are heard by everyone that is called NEMO. And with that doth he apply himself to understanding. And he must understand the virtue of the waters of death, and he must understand the virtue of the sun and of the wind, and of the worm that turneth the earth, and of the stars that roof in the garden. And he must understand the separate nature and property of every flower, or how shall he tend his garden?

(Ibid. 13th Æthyr.)

Thus for the Masters of the Temple; for the Black Brothers, how?

For Choronzon is as it were the shell or excrement of these three paths, and therefore is his head raised unto Daäth, and therefore have the Black Brotherhood declared him to be the child of Wisdom and Understanding, who is but the bastard of the Svastika. And this is that which is written in the Holy Qabalah, concerning the Whirlpool and Leviathan, and the Great Stone.

(Ibid. 3rd Æthyr)

Moreover, there is Mary, a blasphemy against BABALON, for she hath shut herself up; and therefore is she the Queen of all those wicked devils that walk upon the earth, those that thou sawest even as little black specks that stained the Heaven of Urania. And all these are the excrement of Choronzon.

And for this is BABALON under the power of the Magician, that she hath submitted herself unto the work; and she guardeth the Abyss. And in her is a perfect purity of that which is above, yet she is sent as the Redeemer to them that are below. For there is no other way into the Supernal mystery but through her and the Beast on which she rideth; and the Magician is set beyond her to deceive the brothers of blackness, lest they should make unto themselves a crown; for it there were two crowns, then should Ygdrasil, that ancient tree, be cast out into the Abyss, uprooted and cast down into the Outermost Abyss, and the Arcanum which is in the Adytum should be profaned; and the Ark should be touched, and the Lodge spied upon by them that are not masters, and the bread of the Sacrament should be the dung of Choronzon; and the wine of the Sacrament should be the water of Choronzon; and the incense should be dispersion; and the fire upon the Altar should be hate. But lift up thyself; stand, play the man, for behold! there shall be revealed unto thee the Great Terror, the thing of awe that hath no name.

(Ibid. 3rd Æthyr)

And now She cometh forth again, riding upon a dolphin. Now again I see those wandering souls, that have sought restricted love, and have not understood that the "word of sin is restriction."

It is very curious; they seem to be looking for one another, or for something, all the time, constantly hurrying about. But they knock up against one another and yet will not see one another, or cannot see one another, because they are so shut up in their cloaks.

And a voice sounds: It is most terrible for the one that hath shut himself up and made himself fast against the universe. For they that sit encamped upon the sea in the city of the Pyramids are indeed shut up. But they have given their blood, even to the last drop, to fill the cup of BABALON.

These that thou seest are indeed the Black Brothers, for it is written: He shall laugh at their calamity and mock when their fear cometh. And therefore hath he exalted them unto the plane of love.

And yet again it is written: He desireth not the death of a sinner, but rather that he should turn from his wickedness. Now, if one of these were to cast off his cloak he should behold the brilliance of the lady of the Aethyr; but they will not.

And again:—

Oh, I see vast plains beneath her feet, enormous deserts studded with great rocks; and I see little lonely souls, running helplessly about, minute black creatures like men. And they keep up a very curious howling, that I can compare to nothing that I have ever heard; yet it is strangely human.

And the voice says: These are they that grasped love and clung thereto, praying ever at the knees of the great goddess. These are they that have shut themselves up in fortresses of Love.

(Ibid. 7th Æthyr.)

Moreover, this also:

And this is the meaning of the Supper of the Passover, the spilling of the blood of the Lamb being a ritual of the Dark Brothers, for they have sealed up the Pylon with blood, lest the Angel of Death should enter therein. Thus do they shut themselves off from the company of the saints. Thus do they keep themselves from compassion and from understanding. Accursed are they, for they shut up their blood in their heart.

They keep themselves from the kisses of my Mother Babylon, and in their lonely fortresses they pray to the false moon. And they bind themselves together with an oath, and with a great curse. And of their malice they conspire together, and they have power, and mastery, and in their cauldrons do they brew the harsh wine of delusion, mingled with the poison of their selfishness.

Thus they make war upon the Holy one, sending forth their delusion upon men, and upon everything that liveth. So that their false compassion is called compassion, and their false understanding is called understanding, for this is their most potent spell.

Yet of their own poison do they perish, and in their lonely fortresses shall they be eaten up by Time that hath cheated them to serve him, and by the mighty devil Choronzon, their master, whose name is the second Death, for the blood that they have sprinkled on their Pylon, that is a bar against the Angel Death, is the key by which he entereth in.†

(Ibid. 12th Æthyr.)

Finally:

Yet must he that understandeth go forth unto the outermost Abyss, and there must he speak with him that is set above the four-fold terror, the Prince of Evil, even with Choronzon, the mighty devil that inhabiteth the outermost Abyss. And none may speak with him, or understand him, but the servants of Babylon, that understand, and they that are without understanding, his servants.

Behold! it entereth not into the heart, nor into the mind of man to conceive this matter; for the sickness of the body is death, and the sickness of the heart is despair, and the sickness of the mind is madness. But in the outermost Abyss is sickness of the aspiration, and sickness of the will, and sickness of the essence of all, and there is neither word nor thought wherein the image of its image is reflected.

And whoso passeth into the outermost Abyss, except he be of them that understand, holdeth out his hands, and boweth his neck, unto the Chains of Choronzon. And as a devil he walketh about the earth, immortal, and be blasteth the flowers of the earth, and he corrupteth the fresh air, and he maketh poisonous the water; and the fire that is the friend of man, and the pledge of his aspiration, seeing that it mounteth ever up- ward as a Pyramid, and seeing that man stole it in a hollow tube from Heaven, even that fire he turneth into ruin, and madness, and fever, and destruction. And thou, that art an heap of dry dust in the city of the Pyramids, must understand these things.

Beware, therefore, O thou who art appointed to understand the secret of the Outermost Abyss, for in every Abyss thou must assume the mask and form of the Angel thereof. Hadst thou a name, thou wert irrevocably lost. Search, therefore, if there be yet one drop of blood that is not gathered into the cup of Babylon the Beautiful: for in that little pile of dust, if there could be one drop of blood, it should be utterly corrupt; it should breed scorpions, and vipers, and the cat of slime.

And I said unto the Angel: "Is there not one appointed as a warden?"

And he said:

Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani.

Such an ecstasy of anguish racks me that I cannot give it voice, yet I know it is but as the anguish of Gethsemane.

(Ibid. 7th Æthyr.)

Love is the law, love under will.

Fraternally,

666

* I suppose that only a Magus could have heard this word.

† (I think the trouble with these people was, that they wanted to substitute the blood of someone else for their own blood, because they wanted to keep their personalities.)

[admin]

Chapter XIII: System of the O.T.O.

Cara Soror,

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

You inform me that the Earnest Inquirer of your ambit has been asking you to explain the difference between the A.'.A.'. and the O.T.O.; and that although your own mind is perfectly clear about it, you find it impossible to induce a similar lucidity in his. You add that he is not (as one might at first suppose) a moron. And will I please do what I can about it?

Well, here's the essential difference ab ovo usque ad mala; the A.'.A.'. concerns the individual, his development, his initiation, his passage from "Student" to "Ipsissimus"; he has no contact of any kind with any other person except the Neophyte who introduces him, and any Student or Students whom he may, after becoming a Neophyte, introduce.

The details of this Pilgrim's Progress are very fully set forth in One Star in Sight; and I should indeed be stupid and presumptuous to try to do better than that. But it is true that with regard to the O.T.O. there is no similar manual of instruction. In the Manifesto, and other Official Pronunciamenti, there are, it is true, what ought to be adequate data; but I quite understand that they are not as ordered and classified as one would wish; there is certainly room for a simple elementary account of the origins of the Order, of its principles, of its methods, of its design, of the Virtue of its successive Grades. This I will now try to supply, at least in a brief outline.
Let us begin at the beginning. What is a Dramatic Ritual? It is a celebration of the Adventures of the God whom it is intended to invoke. (The Bacchae of Euripides is a perfect example of this.) Now, in the O.T.O., the object of the ceremonies being the Initiation of the Candidate, it is he whose Path in Eternity is displayed in dramatic form.

What is the Path?

1. The Ego is attracted to the Solar System.
2. The Child experiences Birth.
3. The Man experiences Life.
4. He experiences Death.
5. He experiences the World beyond Death.
6. This entire cycle of Point-Events is withdrawn into Annihilation.

In the O.T.O. these successive stages are represented as follows:—

1 0° (Minerval)
2 I° (Initiation)
3 II° (Consecration)
4 III° (Devotion)
5 IV° (Perfection, or Exaltation)
6 P.I. (Perfect Initiate)

Of these Events of Stations upon the Path all but 3 (II°) are single critical experiences. We, however, are concerned mostly with the very varied experiences of Life.

All subsequent Degrees of the O.T.O. are accordingly elaborations of the IIø, since in a single ceremony it is hardly possible to sketch, even in the briefest outline, the Teaching of Initiates with regard to Life. The Rituals V°–IX° are then instructions to the Candidate how he should conduct himself; and they confer upon him, gradually, the Magical Secrets which make him Master of Life.

It is improper to disclose the nature of these ceremonies; firstly, because their Initiates are bound by the strictest vows not to do so; secondly, because surprise is an element in their efficacy; and thirdly, because the Magical Formulae explicitly or implicitly contained therein are, from a practical point of view, both powerful and dangerous. Automatic safeguards there are, it is true; but a Black Magician of first- class ability might find a way to overcome these obstacles, and work great mischief upon others before the inevitable recoil of his artillery destroys him.

Such cases I have known. Let me recount briefly one rather conspicuous disaster. The young man was a genius—and it was his bane. He got hold of a talisman of enormous power which happened to be exactly what he wanted to fulfill his heart's dearest wish. He knew also the correct way of getting it to work; but this way seemed to him far too long and difficult. So he cast about for a short cut. By using actual violence to the talisman, he saw how he could force it to carry out his design; he used a formula entirely alien to the spirit of the whole operation; it was rather like extracting information from a prisoner by torture, when patient courtesy would have been the proper method. So he crashed the gate and got what he wanted. But the nectar turned to poison even as he drained the cup, and his previous anguish developed into absolute despair. Then came the return of the current, and they brought it in "while of unsound mind." A most accurate diagnosis!

I do beg you to mark well, dear sister, that a true Magical Operation is never "against Nature." It must go smoothly and serenely according to Her laws. One can bring in alien energies and compel an endothermic reaction; but—"Pike's Peak or bust?" The answer will always be BUST!

To return for a moment to that question of Secrecy: there is no rule to prohibit you from quoting against me such of my brighter remarks as "Mystery is the enemy of Truth;" but, for one thing, I am, and always have been, the leader of the Extreme Left in the Council-Chamber of the City of the Pyramids, so that if I acquiesce at all in the system of the O.T.O. so far as the "secret of secrets" of the IX° is concerned, it is really on a point of personal honour. My pledge given to the late Frater Superior and O.H.O., Dr. Theodor Reuss. For all that, in this particular instance it is beyond question a point of common prudence, both because the abuse of the Secret is, at least on the surface, so easy and so tempting, and because, if it became a matter of general knowledge the Order itself might be in danger of calumny and persecution; for the secret is even easier to misinterpret that to profane.

Lege! Judica! Tace!1

Love is the law, love under will.

Fraternally,

666

________________

Notes:

1: Lat., "Read! Judge! Be silent!"

[admin]

Chapter XIV: Noise

Cara Soror,

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

You ask me what is, at the present time, the greatest obstacle to human progress.

I answer in one word: NOISE.

You will recall that in Yoga the concise compendium of Initiated Instruction is:

Sit still
Stop thinking
Shut up, and
Get out.

The second of these postulates the third; for one can neither think nor stop thinking with all that row going on.

Then again, the Fourth Power of the Sphinx is Silence; on this subject I must refer you to Little Essays Toward Truth (No. 14, p. 75).

We are really trying to discuss something totally different; something practical in daily life. Very well, then; you remark that Goetia actually means "howling", that we use officially the Bell, the Tom-Tom, the Incantations, the Mantras and so on. All quite true, about Magick; but none of it applies to Yoga, for even with the Mantra the practice is to go faster and more quietly as one proceeds, until it becomes "Mental Muttering." M is the letter that is pronounced with the lips firmly closed; and Silence is the meaning of the MU root of Mystery.

However, we must admit the value of rhythmical, one-pointed sound; that is very different from Noise. Old French has noise, nose, a debate, quarrel, noise; Provençal noisa, nausa, nueiza. But Diez claims the derivation from nausea—and by the Living Jingo, I consider Diez a hundred per cent white man!

Now, most modern talking is little better than a series of conventional grunts; most people seem to aim deliberately at not saying anything with meaning, at least in normal conversation. (James Branch Cabell is exceedingly funny in his displays of this intolerable habit.)

I once had a most wholesome lesson: how diffuse and therefore unnecessary is much of even our most would-be-compressed speech.

I had been charged by my Superior with the reconstruction of a certain ritual.1 This was in 1912; already the tempo of the world had speeded up mercilessly; to get people to learn even short passages by heart would be no easy job. So, warned by the prolix, pious, priggish and platitudinous horrors of Freemasonry (especially the advanced degrees of the Scottish and Egyptian Rites), I resolved to cut the cackle and come to the 'osses in the most drastic manner of which I was capable.
It was a great success.

But then we had a candidate who was stone deaf. (Not "a little hard of hearing;" his tympana were burst.)

Obviously, one could show him slips of paper, as one did in talking to him. But there in much of the ceremony the candidate must be hoodwinked!

Nothing for it but to communicate by the deaf and dumb alphabet on his fingers. This I did—and found that I could cut out on the spur of the moment at least forty per cent of the "Irreducible minimum" without doing any damage at all to the effect of the ritual. "That larned 'im!"

Of course, there is such a thing as the Art of Conversation; I have been lucky enough to know three, perhaps four, of the world's best talkers; but that is not to the point. As well object to impasto because it wastes paint.

What I am out to complain of is what I seriously believe to be an organized conspiracy of the Black Lodges to prevent people from thinking.

Naked and unashamed! In some countries there has already been compulsory listening-in to Government programmes; and who knows how long it will be before we are all subjected by law to the bleatings, bellowings, belchings of the boring balderdash of the B.B.C.-issies?

They boast of the freedom of religious thought; yet only the narrowest sectarian propaganda is allowed to approach the microphone. I quite expect censorship of books—that of the newspapers, however vehemently denied, is actually effective—and even of private letters. This will mean an enormous increase in parasitic functionaries who can be trusted to vote for the rascals that invented their sinecures. That was, in fact, the poison ivy that strangled the French poplar!

But these soul-suffocating scoundrels know well their danger. There are still a few people about who have learnt to think; and they are palsied with terror lest, as might happen at any moment these people realized the peril, organized, and made a clean sweep of the whole brood of scolex!

So nobody must be allowed to think at all. Down with the public schools! Children must be drilled mentally by quarter-educated herdsmen, whose wages would stop at the first sign of disagreement with the bosses. For the rest, deafen the whole world with senseless clamour. Mechanize everything! Give nobody a chance to think. Standardize "amusement." The louder and more cacophonous, the better! Brief intervals between one din and the next can be filled with appeals, repeated 'till hypnotic power gives them the force of orders, to buy this or that product of the "Business men" who are the real power in the State. Men who betray their country as obvious routine.

The history of the past thirty years is eloquent enough, one would think. What these sodden imbeciles never realize is that a living organism must adapt itself intelligently to its environment, or go under at the first serious change of circumstance.

Where would England be today if there had not been one man,2 deliberately kept "in the wilderness" for decades as "unsound," "eccentric," "dangerous," "not to be trusted," "impossible to work with," to take over the country from the bewildered "safe" men?

And what could he have done unless the people had responded? Nothing. So then there is still a remnant whose independence, sense of reality, and manhood begin to count when the dear, good, woolly flock scatter in terror at the wolf's first howl.

Yes, they are there, and they can get us back our freedom—if only we can make them see that the enemy in Whitehall is more insidiously fatal than the foe in Brownshirt House.

On this note of hope I will back to my silence.

Love is the law, love under will.

Fraternally,

666

_______________

Notes:

1: Given the date the reference is almost certainly to the O.T.O. initiations – T.S.

2: Winston Churchill – W.E.H.

[admin]

Chapter XV: Sex Morality

Cara Soror,

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

Thank you! I am to cover the whole question of sex in a few well-chosen words? Am I to suppose that you want to borrow money? Such fulsome flattery suggests the indirect approach.

As a matter of fact, your proposal is not so outrageous as it sounds at first; for as far as the English language goes, there is really hardly anything worth reading. 98.138 per cent of it is what Frances Ridley Ravergal used to call "fiddlesticks, blah, boloney, Bull-shit, and the bunk."

However, quite recently I issued an Encyclical to the Faithful with the attractive title of Artemis Iota, and I propose that we read this into the record, to save trouble, and because it gives a list of practically all the classics that you ought to read. Also, it condenses information and advice to "beginners," with due reference to the positive injunctions given in The Book of the Law.

Still, for the purpose of these letters, I should like to put the whole matter in a nutshell. The Tree of Life, as usual, affords a convenient means of classification.

1. To the physical side of it psychological laws apply. "Don't monkey with the buzz-saw!" as John Wesley might have put it, though I doubt whether he did.

2. The "moral" side. As in the case of the voltage of a cissoid, there isn't one. Mind your own business! is the sole sufficient rule. To drag in social, economic, religious, and such aspects is irrelevance and impurity.

3. The Magical side. Sex is, directly or indirectly, the most powerful weapon in the armoury of the Magician; and precisely because there is no moral guide, it is indescribably dangerous. I have given a great many hints, especially in Magick, and The Book of Thoth—some of the cards are almost blatantly revealing; so I have been rapped rather severely over the knuckles for giving children matches for playthings. My excuse has been that they have already got the matches, that my explanations have been directed to add conscious precautions to the existing automatic safeguards.

The above remarks refer mainly to the technique of the business; and it is going a very long way to tell you that you ought to be able to work out the principles thereof from your general knowledge of Magick, but especially the Formula of Tetragrammaton, clearly stated and explained in Magick, Chap. III. Combine this with the heart of Chap. XII and you've got it!

But there is another point at issue. This incidentally, is where the "automatic safeguards" come in. "...thou hast no right but to do thy will." (AL I, 42) means that to "go anwhoring after strange" purposes can only be disastrous. It is possible, in chemistry, to provoke an endothermic reaction; but that is only asking for trouble. The product bears within its own heart the seed of dissolution. Accordingly, the most important preliminary to any Magical operation is to make sure that its object is not only harmonious with, but necessary to, your Great Work.

Note also that the use of this supreme method involves the manipulation of energies ineffably secret and most delicately sensitive; it compares with the operations of ordinary Magick as the last word in artillery does with the blunderbuss!

I ought to have mentioned the sexual instinct or impulse in itself, careless of magical or any other considerations soever: the thing that picks you up by the scruff of the neck, slits your weasand with a cavalry sabre, and chucks the remains over the nearest precipice.

What is the damn thing, anyway?

That's just the trouble; for it is the first of the masks upon the face of the True Will; and that mask is the Poker-Face!

As all true Art is spontaneous, is genius, is utterly beyond all conscious knowledge or control, so also is sex. Indeed, one might class it as deeper still than Art; for Art does at least endeavour to find an intelligible means of expression. That is much nearer to sanity than the blind lust of the sex-impulse. The maddest genius does look from Chokmah not only to Binah, but to the fruit of that union in Da'ath and the Ruach; the sex-impulse has no use for Binah to understand, to interpret, to transmit. It wants no more than an instrument which will destroy it.

"Here, I say, Master, have a heart!"

Nonsense! (I continue) What I say is the plain fact, and well you know it! More, damned up, hemmed in, twisted and tortured as it has been by religion and morality and all the rest of it, it has learnt to disguise itself, to appear in a myriad forms of psychosis, neurosis, actual insanity of the most dangerous types. You don't have to look beyond Hitler! Its power and its peril derive directly from the fatal fact that in itself it is the True Will in its purest form.

What then is the magical remedy? Obvious enough to the Qabalist. "Love is the law, love under will." It must be fitted at its earliest manifestations with its proper Binah, so as to flow freely along the Path of Daleth, and restore the lost Balance. Attempts to suppress it are fatal, to sublime it are false and futile. But guided wisely from the start, by the time it becomes strong it has learnt how to use its virtues to the best advantage.

And what of the parallel instinct in a woman? Except in (rather rare) cases of congenital disease or deformity, the problem is never so acute.

For Binah, even while she winks a Chokmah, has the other eye wide-open, swivelled on Tiphareth. Her True Will is thus divided by Nature from the start, and her tragedy is if she fails to unite these two objects. Oh, dear me, yes, I know all about "spretæ injuria formæ" and "furens quid femina possit"; but that is only because when she misses her bite she feels doubly baffled, robbed not only of the ecstatic Present, but of the glamorous Future. If she eat independently of the Fruit of the Tree of Life when unripe, she has not only the bad taste in the mouth, but indigestion to follow. Then, living as she does so much in the world of imagination, constantly living shadow-pictures of her Desire, she is not nearly so liable to the violent insanities of sheer blind lust, as is the male. The essential difference is indicated by that of their respective orgasms, the female undulatory, the male catastrophic.

The above, taken all in all, may not be fully comprehensive, not wholly satisfying to the soul, but one thing with another, enough for a cow to chew the cud on.

Good night!

Love is the law, love under will.

Fraternally,

666

_______________

Note:

In the paper edition of Magick Without Tears, the above letter was followed by Artemis Iota. As the latter document is already on this site in its entirity, it is here omitted – T.S.

[admin]

Chapter XVI: On Concentration

Cara Soror,

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

You wisely ask me for a special letter on Concentration; you point out that I have implied it constantly, but never given plain instruction.

It hope I have not been so vague as to allow you to suppose that Concentration Camps are evidence that benevolent and enlightened governments are at last seriously concerned to educate the world to Yoga; but I do agree that it cannot do great harm if I take a dose of my own medicine, and gather into one golden sheaf all the ripe corn of my wisdom on this subject.

For concentration does indeed unlock all doors; it lies at the heart of every practice as it is of the essence of all theory; and almost all the various rules and regulations are aimed at securing adeptship in this matter. All the subsidiary work—awareness, one-pointedness, mind- fullness and the rest—is intended to train you to this.

All the greetings, salutations, "Saying Will," periodical adorations, even saying "apo pantos kakodaimonos" with a downward and outward sweep of the arm, the eyes averted, when one sees a person dressed in a religious (Christian) uniform: all these come under "Don't stroke the cat the wrong way!" or, in the modern pseudo-scientific journalese jargon "streamlining life."

Let us see if Frater Perdurabo has anything to the point! Of course, Part I of Book 4 is devoted to it; but there is too much, and not enough, to be useful to us just now.

What your really need is the official Instruction in The Equinox, and the very fullest and deepest understanding of Eight Lectures on Yoga; but these lectures are so infernally interesting that when I look into the book for something to quote, it carries me away with it. I can't put it down, I forget all about this letter. Rather a back-handed advertisement for Concentration!

The best way is the hardest; to forget all this and start from the beginning as if there had never been anything on the subject written before.

I must keep always in mind that you are assumed to know nothing whatever about Yoga and Magick, or anything else beyond what the average educated person may be assumed to have been taught.

What is the problem? There are two.

β: To train the mind to move with the maximum speed and energy, with the utmost possible accuracy in the chosen direction, and with the minimum of disturbance or friction. That is Magick.

α: To stop the mind altogether. That is Yoga.

The rules, strangely enough, are identical in both cases; at least, until your "Magick" is perfect; Yoga merely goes on a step further. In Beta you have reduced all movements from many to One; in Alpha you reduce that One to Zero.

Now then, with a sigh of relief, know you this: that every possible incident in the Beta training is mutatis mutandis, perfectly familiar to the engineer.

The material must be chosen and prepared in the kind and in the manner, best suited to the design of the intended machine; the various parts must be put together with the utmost precision; every obstacle to the function must be removed, and every source of error eliminated. Now cheer up, child! In the case of a machine that he has devised and constructed himself with every condition in his favour, he thinks he is doing not too badly if he gets some fifteen or twenty per cent of the calculated efficiency out of the instrument; and even Nature, with millions of years to adjust and improve, very often cannot boast of having done much better. So you have no reason to be discouraged if success does not smile upon you in the first week or so of your Work, starting as you do with material of whose properties you are miserably ignorant, with means pitifully limited, with Laws of Nature which you do not understand; in fact, with almost everything against you but indomitable Will and unconquerable courage.

(I know I'm a poor contemptible Lowbrow; but I refuse to be ashamed for finding Kipling's If and Henley's Don't remember-the title; they may not be poetry—but they are honest food and damned good beer for the plebeian wayfarer. It was such manhood, not the left-wing high-brow Bloomsbury sissies, that kept London through the blitz. Pray forgive the digression!)

There is only one method to adopt in such circumstances as those of the Aspirant to Magick and Yoga: the method of Science. Trial and error. You must observe. That implies, first of all, that you must learn to observe. And you must record your observations. No circumstance of life is, or can be irrelevant. "He that is not with me is against me." In all these letters you will find only two things: either I tell you what is bad for you, or what is good for you. But I am not you; I don't know every detail of your life, every trick of your thought. You must do ninety percent of the work for yourself. Whether it is love, or your daily avocation, or diet, or friends, or amusement, or anything else, you must find out what helps you to your True Will and what hinders; cherish the one and eschew the other.

I want to insist most earnestly that concentration is not, as we nearly all of us think, a matter of getting things right in the practices; you must make every breath you draw subservient to the True Will, to fertilize the soil for the practices. When you sit down in your Asana to quiet your mind, it is much easier for you if your whole life has tended to relative quietude; when you knock with your Wand to announce the opening of an Invocation, it is better if the purpose of that ceremony has been simmering in the background of your thought since childhood!

Yes indeed: background!

Deep down, on the very brink of the subconscious, are all those facts which have determined you to choose this your Great Work.

Then, the ambition, conscious, which arranges the general order and disposition of your life.

Lastly, the practices themselves. And my belief is that the immense majority of failures have their neglect to brush up their drill to thank for it.

For technical advice on all these subjects, I shall refer you to those official works mentioned in the early part of this letter; I shall be happy if you will take to heart what I am now so violently thrusting at you, this Middle Work of Concentration.

Love is the law, love under will.

Fraternally,

666

[admin]

Chapter XVII: Astral Journey: Example, How to do it, How to Verify your Experience

Cara Soror,

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

There is no better way of training the memory than the practice of the Holy Qabalah.

The whole mechanism of memory depends on joining up independent data. You must go on adding a little to little, always joining the simple impressions by referring them to others which are more general; and so on until the whole of your universe is arranged like the brain and the nervous system. This system in fact, becomes the Universe. When you have got everything properly correlated, your central consciousness understands and controls every tiniest detail. But you must begin at the beginning—you go out for a walk, and the first thing you see is a car; that represents the Atu VII, the Chariot, referred to Cancer.

Then you come to a fishmonger, and notice certain crustacea, very mala chostomous. This comes under the same sign of Cancer. The next thing you notice is an amber-coloured dress in Swan and Edgar's; amber also is the colour of Cancer in the King's Scale. Now then you have a set of three impressions which is joined together by the fact that they all belong to the Cancer class; experience will soon teach that you can remember all three very much more clearly and accurately than you could any one of the three singly.

You have not increased the burden on your memory, but diminished it.

What you say about tension and eagerness and haste is very true. See The Book of the Law, Chapter I, 44.

"For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect."

This, from a practical point of view, is one of the most important verses in the book.

The unusual word "unassuaged" is very interesting. People generally suppose that "will" is the slave of purpose, that you cannot will a thing properly unless you are aiming at a definite goal. But this is not the case. Thinking of the goal actually serves to distract the mind. In these few words is included the whole method without all the bombastic piety of the servile doctrine of mysticism about the surrender of the Will. Nor is this idea of surrender actually correct; the will must be identified with the Divine Will, so-called. One wants to become like a mighty flowing river, which is not consciously aiming at the sea, and is certainly not yielding to any external influence. It is acting in conformity with the law of its own nature, with the Tao. One can describe it, if necessary, as "passive love"; but it is love (in effect) raised to its highest potential. We come back to the same thing: when passion is purged of any "lust of result" it is irresistible; it has become "Law." I can never understand why it is that mystics fail to see that their smarmy doctrine of surrender actually insists upon the duality which they have set out to abolish!

I certainly have no intention of "holding you down" to "a narrow path of work" or any path. All I can do is to help you to understand clearly the laws of your own nature, so that you may go ahead without extraneous influence. It does not follow that a plan that I have found successful in my own case will be any use to you. That is another cardinal mistake of most teachers. One must have become a Master of the Temple to annihilate one's ego. Most teachers, consciously or unconsciously, try to get others to follow in their steps. I might as well dress you up in my castoff clothing! (In the steps of the Master. At the feet of the Master. Steward!)

Please observe that the further you get on, the higher your potential, the greater is the tendency to leak, or even to break the containing vessel. I can help you by warning you against setting up obstacles, real or imaginary, in your own path; which is what most people do. It is almost laughable to think that the Great Work consists merely in "letting her rip;" but Karma bumps you from one side of the toboggan slide to the other, until you vcome into the straight." (There's a chapter or two in the Book of Lies about this, but I haven't got a copy. I must find one, and put them in here. Yes: p. 22)1

O thou that settest out upon the Path, false is the Phantom that thou seekest. When thou hast it thou shalt know all bitterness, thy teeth fixed in the Sodom-Apple.

Thus hast thou been lured along that Path, whose terror else had driven thee far away.

O thou that stridest upon the middle of the Path, no phantoms mock thee. For the stride's sake thou stridest.

Thus art thou lured along that Path, whose fascination else had driven thee far away.

O thou that drawest toward the End of The Path, effort is no more. Faster and faster dost thou fall; thy weariness is changed into Ineffable Rest.

For there is no Thou upon that Path: thou hast become The Way.

As in the Yi King, the 3rd hexagram has departed from the original perfection, and it takes all the rest of the hexagrams to put things right again.

The result, it is true, is superior; the perfection of the original has been enhanced and enriched by its experience.

There is another way of defining the Great Work. That explains to us the whole object of manifestation, of departing from the perfection of "Nothing" towards the perfection of "everything", and one may consider this advantage, that it is quite impossible to go wrong. Every experience, whatever may be its nature, is just another necessary bump.

Naturally one cannot realize this until one becomes a Master of the Temple; consequently one is perpetually plunged in sorrow and despair. There is, you see, a good deal more to it than merely learning one's mistakes. One can never be sure what is right and what is wrong, until one appreciates that "wrong" is equally "right." Now then one gets rid of the idea of "effort" which is associated with "lust of result." All that one does is to exercise pleasantly and healthfully one's energies.

It will not do to regard "man" as the "final cause" of manifestation. Please do not quote myself against me.

"Man is so infinitely small,
In all these stars, determinate.
Maker and master of them all,
Man is so infinitely great."2

The human apparatus is the best instrument of which we are, at present, aware in our normal consciousness; but when you come to experience the Conversation of the higher intelligences, you will understand how imperfect are your faculties. It is true that you can project these intelligences as parts of yourself, or you can suppose that certain human vehicles may be temporally employed by them for various purposes; but these speculations tend to be idle. The important thing is to make contact with beings, whatever their nature, who are superior to yourself, not merely in degree but it kind. That is to say, not merely different as a Great Dane differs from a Chihuahua, but as a buffalo differs from either.

Of course you are perfectly right about the senses, though I would not agree to confine the meaning to the five which are common to most people. There must, one might suspect, be ways of apprehending directly such phenomena as magnetism, electrical resistance, chemical affinity and the like. Let me direct you once more to The Book of the Law, Chapter II, vs. 70 - 72.

"There is help & hope in other spells. Wisdom says: be strong! Then canst thou bear more joy. Be not animal; refine thy rapture! If thou drink, drink by the eight and ninety rules of art: if thou love, exceed by delicacy; and if thou do aught joyous, let there be subtlety therein!

"But exceed! exceed!

"Strive ever to more! and if thou art truly mine—and doubt it not, an if thou art ever joyous!—death is the crown of all."

The mystic's idea of deliberately stupefying and stultifying himself is an "abomination unto the Lord." This, by the way, does not conflict with the rules of Yoga. That kind of suppression is comparable to the restrictions in athletic training, or diet in sickness.

Now we get back to the Qabalah—how to make use of it.

Let us suppose that you have been making an invocation, or shall we call it an investigation, and suppose you want to interpret a passage of Bach. To play this is the principal weapon of your ceremony. In the course of your operation, you assume your astral body and rise far above the terrestrial atmosphere, while the music continues softly in the background. You open your eyes, and find that it is night. Dark clouds are on the horizon; but in the zenith is a crown of constellations. This light helps you, especially as your eyes become accustomed to the gloom, to take in your surroundings. It is a bleak and barren landscape. Terrific mountains rim the world. In the midst looms a cluster of blue-black crags. Now there appears from their recesses a gigantic being. His strength, especially in his hands and in his loins, it terrifying. He suggests a combination of lion, mountain goat and serpent; and you instantly jump to the idea that this is one of the rare beings which the Greeks called Chimaera. So formidable is his appearance that you consider it prudent to assume an appropriate god-form. But who is the appropriate god? You may perhaps consider it best, in view of your complete ignorance as to who he is and where you are, to assume the god-form of Harpocrates, as being good defence in any case; but of course this will not take you very far. If you are sufficiently curious and bold, you will make up your mind rapidly on this point. This is where your daily practice of the Qabalah will come in useful. You run through in your mind the seven sacred planets. The very first of them seems quite consonant with what you have so far seen. Everything suits Saturn well enough. To be on the safe side, you go through the others; but this is a very obvious case—Saturn is the only planet that agrees with everything. The only other possibility will be the Moon; but there is no trace noticeable of any of her more amiable characteristics. You will therefore make up your mind that it is a Saturnian god-form that you need. Fortunate indeed for you that you have practiced daily the assumption of such forms! Very firmly, very steadily, very slowly, very quietly, you transform your normal astral appearance into that of Sebek. The Chimaera, recognizing your divine authority, becomes less formidable and menacing in appearance. He may, in some way, indicate his willingness to serve you. Very good, so far; but it is of course the first essential to make sure of his integrity. Accordingly you begin by asking his name. This is vital; because if he tells you the truth, it gives you power over him. But if, on the other hand, he tells you a lie, he abandons for good and all his fortress. He becomes rather like a submarine whose base has been destroyed. He may do you a lot of mischief in the meantime, of course, so look out!

Well then, he tells you that his name is Ottillia. Shall we try to spell it in Greek or in Hebrew. By the sound of the name and perhaps to some extent by his appearance one might plump for the former; but after all the Greek Qabalah is so unsatisfactory. We give Hebrew the first chance—we start with Ayin Teth Yod Lamed Yod Aleph Hé. Let us try this lettering for a start. It adds up to 135. I daresay that you don't remember what the Sepher Sephiroth tells you about the number; but as luck will have it, there is no need to inquire; for 135 = 3 x 45. Three is the number, is the first number of Saturn, and 45 the last. (The sum of the numbers in the magic square of Saturn is 45.) That corresponds beautifully with everything you have got so far; but then of course you must know if he is "one of the beliving Jinn." Briefly, is he a friend or an enemy? You accordingly say to him "The word of the Law is Θελημα" It turns out that he doesn't understand Greek at all, so you were certainly right in choosing Hebrew. You put it to him, "What is the word of the Law?" and he replies darkly. "The word of the Law is Thora." That means nothing to you; any one might know as much as that, Thora being the ordinary word for the Sacred Law of Israel, and you accordingly ask him to spell it to make sure you have heard aright; and he gives you the letters, perhaps by speaking them, perhaps by showing them: Teth, Resh, Ayin. You add these up and get 279. This again is divisible by the Saturnian 3, and the result is 93; in other words, he has been precisely right. On the plane of Saturn one may multiply by three and therefore he has given you the correct word "Thelema" in a form unfamiliar to you. You man now consider yourself satisfied of his good faith, and may proceed to inspect him more closely. The stars above his head suggest the influence of Binah, whose number also is three, while the most striking thing about him is the core of his being: the letter Yod. (One does not count the termination "AH": being a divine suffix it represents the inmost light and the outermost light.) This Yod, this spark of intense brilliance, is of the pale greenish gold which one sees (in this world) in the fine gold leaf of Tibet. It glows with ever greater intensity as you concentrate upon observing him, which you could not do while you were preoccupied with investigating his credentials.

Confidence being thus established, you inquire why he as appeared to you at this time and at this place; and the answer to this question is of course your original idea, that is to say, he is presenting to you in other terms that "mountainous Fugue" which invoked him. You listen to him with attention, make such enquiries as seem good to you, and record the proceedings.

The above example is, of course, pure imagination, and represents a very favourable case. You are only too likely, and that not only at the beginning, to meet all sorts of difficulties and dangers.

Love is the law, love under will.

Fraternally,

666

_______________

Notes:

1: The passage quoted is from chapter 13 (ΙΓ), "Pilgrim-Talk" p. 36 of the second edition – T.S.

2: The last stanza of Crowley's poem "At Sea," published in Equinox I (9). The Equinox publication had "Maker and moulder of them all," as the third line – T.S.